$14 Million DyeMansion Investment Ensures A Colorful Future For 3D Printing

Jun 15

The world isn’t black and white, and neither is the future of industrial 3D printing. Munich-based DyeMansion has just raised $14 million in a Series B funding round, bringing the company’s total investment to $24 million.

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Founded in 2015, DyeMansion focuses on the later stages of the additive manufacturing workflow. Post-processing follows the actual 3D printing process, and involves everything done following a finished print job to turn it into a finished product. This includes everything from removing supports needed in the 3D printer to smoothing and coloring the part.

DyeMansion Portfolio

True to its name, DyeMansion has a strong focus on dyeing parts.

Ensuring batch-to-batch color consistency is critical for industrial manufacturing quality — and is no mean feat. With seven ASTM-recognized 3D printing processes each having variations in techniques, producers, and materials, there is no one right way to obtain consistent coloring when it comes to 3D printing.

DyeMansion, though, has been at work in the lab to reach colors across the RAL and Pantone spectra. These certified matches are of great importance to companies who want to ensure their trademark colors actually look like their trademark colors for any products they make — however they are made.

There’s quite a difference, that is, between “Coca-Cola Red” and “fire engine red” or “TARDIS blue” and “royal blue” when it comes to branding, even if the casual consumer may not always pay much attention to that shade of detail.

The company began operation five years ago with 13 basic color options, and has been growing in both color and compatible 3D printing technologies and materials since. Just this spring, for instance, DyeMansion introduced the first 17 vibrant colors compatible with HP Inc. +0.5%HPQ’s Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing process for parts made with grey PA12 material.

Dye, though, isn’t all that’s housed in this post-processing mansion.

The German startup also offers a variety of post-processing technologies, from depowdering and shot peening finished prints to finishing with their proprietary cleaning (Powershot C), PolyShot Surfacing (PSS, with the Powershot S), and VaporFuse Surfacing (VFS, with the Powerfuse S). The deep dyeing processes (DeepDye Coloring — DDC) rely on the DM60 equipment.

DyeMansion By The Numbers

The new funding round is the latest in the young company’s continued upward trending. While they have never publicly disclosed their revenues, and decline to do so now, the team did share a snapshot of their overall financial history.

DyeMansion launched with an $800,000 seed investment round in September 2015, followed in September 2018 by a $5 million Series A funding round. DyeMansion has to date now raised a total of $24 million in funding, adding in other funding and the new round.

For the Series B round, Nordic Alpha Partners (NAP) joins existing investors UVC Partners, btov Partners, KGAL, and AM Ventures.

NAP sees DyeMansion as “not only clear category leader, but with a position that is truly accelerating the [industrial] transformation,” as NAP Value-Creation Partner Laurits Bach Sørensen puts it.

DyeMansion continues to set high expectations, not only attracting NAP to join, but welcoming back all of its previous investors back for Series B. The company’s year-to-date (YTD) growth is +25% compared to 2019 — strong expansion in any economic environment, but especially impressive given downturns in 2020 due to the continuing Covid-19 global pandemic.

The team has also been increasing. At the time of the Series A funding round, DyeMansion claimed 34 employees; as of today’s Series B announcement, the team is 66 members strong.

DyeMansion also now has two locations: its headquarters in Munich, Germany, and a newer facility in Austin, Texas, where the team has established a permanent US presence. These two facilities now serve 650 customers in 34 countries.

Among those customers are global leaders like BMW, Daimler, Götti, JabilJBL +4.8%, and Under ArmourUAA -0.3%.

“We started at DyeMansion with offering Finishing and Coloring as a service (today called DyeMansion On-Demand Finishing). After that we began to develop and distribute hardware. As of today, we won 150 hardware customers and have an installed base of 450 machines in total. The rest of our customers are served through our On-Demand Finishing,” the DyeMansion team shares.

To continue serving customers, last month DyeMansion launched a new global post-processing partnership platform with 46 partners in production and sales.

European Innovation Council Grant

Just ahead of press time for the Series B announcement, DyeMansion has also shared another new success story. This time, the color most relevant is green.

The company has been selected in the first “Green Deal” funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC). Overall, the EIC has chosen 64 startups and SMEs in 17 EU member states to be awarded more than €307 million in grants or blended equity (grant/equity investment).

DyeMansion was selected as a grant awardee for its Powerfuse S system, which is described in the EIC announcement as: “A stable, reproducible and environmentally friendly physio-chemical process, the so called VaporFuse Surfacing (VFS), resulting in smooth, water-repellent and glossy surfaces.”

The DyeMansion team worked with a “green” focus in mind to develop the Powerfuse S for its VFS process, building upon its earlier PSS introduction. The Powerfuse S removes the need for harsh chemicals from the chemical smoothing process for polymer manufacturing.

“Additive manufacturing has a huge potential for a more sustainable supply chain and especially all post-processing steps need to support this vision. For us, it was a prerequisite solving all those challenges, before offering a system to the market,” DyeMansion CTO & Co-Founder Philipp Kramer explains. “The Powerfuse S is run with a solvent that is approved by the EU for food packaging, is used in many cosmetic products and can be run in a fully closed loop with integrated recycling of the solvent and no waste. We managed to develop a truly green solution here.”

A Brighter Future

Looking ahead, DyeMansion sees its next growth phases shaping up to continue to accelerate the broader adoption of digital manufacturing.

DyeMansion intends to put its new funds to use in creating more automated, digitally connected, fully integrated process chains for its product portfolio. Organizationally, the team is also targeting further expansion with new demonstration facilities, regional application consultants, and commercial business infrastructures to strengthen its global presence.

The company is well-poised for further growth as the future continues to look bright for additive manufacturing. This technology, which has seen steady increases in both investment and adoption, has been drawing ever more interest even through the challenges of a world in pandemic. 3D printing has offered exceptional opportunity during times of unprecedented difficulty in terms of providing both emergency use and stop-gap supply chain solutions, leading potentially to longer-term upticks in use.

With 3D printing on the rise, post-processing needs to step up its game to meet real-world expectations for finished products. DyeMansion promises to “turn 3D-printed raw parts into high-value products” with its “Print-to-Product” workflow, and with its latest investment and grant news is ready to hit the ground running.

THE AMRANI GROUP’S ROLE

Situation - During COVID the removal of face to face meetings for a hardware company posed a unique challenge for DyeMansion North America.

Challenge - COVID combined with a series of new hires and some personnel changes posed a concerning and challenging cocktail of variables to continue their success in the North American market.

Solution - The Amrani Group brought in 9 different specialists from Marketing, LinkedIn Ads, Supply Chain, SVP of Sales, Account Executives, SDR capabilities, Logistics, Executive Coaching, Videography and others to ensure DyeMansion established it’s dominate position in the North American market.

Results - DyeMansion successfully reestablished their revenue growth and organizational foundation in North America. The Amrani Group assisted in the promotion of Mike Schorr to be come President of North America to ensure continued and sustainable success in North America.

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Credits

This article was originally posted by Forbes on August 3, 2020. The original article can be viewed at https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahgoehrke/2020/08/03/14-million-dyemansion-investment-ensures-a-colorful-future-for-3-d-printing/?sh=233a03546eab

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