New inventions are a Boston tradition. The telephone, sewing machine, frozen foods and, of course, Boston Cream Pie were all invented here. Boston boasts America's first subway system, first college (Harvard), first public school (Boston Latin) and first national park (the Common). This series takes an in-depth look at some inventions and innovations, past, present and future, that you may not know were Built in Boston.
What: NVPrinter 3D Printer
Who: AJ Perez, Chris Haid, Forrest Pieper and Mateo Peńa Doll, founders of New Valence Robotics.
Where: Phi Delta Theta Fraternity at MIT.
Built in Boston: Much like Microsoft and Facebook, the NVPrinter was born in a dingy room with little natural light in Cambridge. A little over a year ago, a group of MIT students were having trouble getting their hands on a 3D printer so they decided to build one themselves.
Today, New Valence has built and leased three printers, two in public high schools and one at MIT. They are hoping to have eight in circulation by this spring, and 100 by next fall.
In short, New Valence wants to democratize 3D printing technology. Explained CEO AJ Perez:
Most technology has three phases: It starts with education, then innovation and commercialization. Our product is meant to expedite that "education" phase. We are working exclusively with schools and colleges so students can create 3D models and bring ideas to life.
Enabling creativity is what the New Valence Printer is all about. Students can use software like Solidworks or Autodesk to design a digital 3D model and queue it up to be printed. Perez calls it "Bring Your Own Model," or BYOM.
What makes the vision for the NVPrinter unique is that all of the machines run on a singular cloud-based network. When a school leases the printers, all of the model files students create and the actual printing queues live in the cloud. This means anyone with administrator access to the system can print anything from any printer via a connected device, be it a desktop computer or a smartphone.
Perez is very serious about making sure his printers are churning out models. If a school doesn't use a printer more than a few times a month, the lease will be ineligible for renewal and the machine will go to a different institution.
"There is no shortage of demand," said Perez. "There is a lot of enthusiasm from parents of students as well as teachers."
Moving forward, New Valance is working on some basic software models for teachers. As an example, Perez said:
Say a teacher is teaching her students about the human body and is explaining ball and socket joints. We want that teacher to be able to search for a ball and socket model and print it. This way students can have the experience of holding it and actually playing with [the joint] versus reading about it in a book or watching a video.
The goal, according to Perez, is to expose and educate as many people as possible about the potential of 3D printing as a method of manufacturing. By getting started on the education phase now, the innovation and commercialization phases can begin as soon as possible.
"We want to democratize the commercialization of things," Perez said. "3D printers can do that. Especially with our printer, anyone can be a small-batch manufacturer without having to know anything about 3D manufacturing."
Perez and his team are currently looking for a more permanent work space to grow their business after they finish their masters degree programs at MIT this spring. According to Perez, co-op spaces and incubators like MassChallenge are actively trying to recruit New Valence.
And who can blame them? Having a user friendly 3D printer to build prototypes on-site would be extremely advantageous in any startup setting.
In addition to work space, New Valance will soon be looking for investors to help fund the company's rapid plan to scale.
Check out this video of Perez explaining the NVPrinter at this year's Global Founders Skills Accelerator.
