Metal fabrication has been the name of the game for Cincinnati Incorporated, a Harrison, Ohio-based manufacturer, since the early 1920s, a few decades after its founding in 1898. So it would only make sense, as new technologies emerged, for the maker of metal presses and laser cutting machines to eventually get into the world of 3D printing.
More than three years ago, the company got into large-part 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Then, a couple weeks ago, the company did something it had never done before: acquired a venture capital-backed tech startup. The last time Cincinnati Incorporated made an acquisition, it was for a coil manufacturer in the 1970s.
In an email interview with Carey Chen, Cincinnati Incorporated's CEO and president, he told Cincy Inno that the company decided to acquire New Valence Robotics Corporation, a Boston-based 3D printer startup also known as NVBots, to give the company a smaller 3D printer product that would complement its large-scale additive manufacturing business. He added that Cincinnati Incorporated plans to pursue more acquisitions in the future.
"The NVBots acquisition provides CI with core additive manufacturing intellectual property and key talent," Chen said. "The NVBots acquisition also included cloud-based software and the ability to print in materials such as plastics, ceramics, composites, and metals — these capabilities have the potential to be leveraged towards CI’s [large-scale printer]."
While the deal only came together in three months, Cincinnati Incorporated's relationship with NVBots began in 2014, when Chen was giving a guest lecture on entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sitting in on that class was AJ Perez, a co-founder of NVBots who was working on his Masters in mechanical engineering, with a focus on additive manufacturing. A year later, Chen joined NVBots' board of directors.
"This partnership represents an exciting opportunity to extend NVBots’ core mission to make 3D printing as easy as printing on paper."
It was then in late 2016 that Cincinnati Incorporated formed a commercial relationship with NVBots that would involve CI selling a privately labeled version of its 3D printer — the manufacturers' first way of providing a small-scale additive manufacturing solution that would eventually lead to the acquisition. Several months before the acquisition, NVBots had spun out a metal 3D printing company called Digital Alloys.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Cincinnati Incorporated said that the company retained all of NVBots' employees and its base of operations in Boston, where it will remain for the foreseeable future. To Perez, the acquisition is another way to fulfill NVBots' mission.
"This partnership represents an exciting opportunity to extend NVBots’ core mission to make 3D printing as easy as printing on paper, and to fulfill our long-term vision where anyone can 3D print any part, in any material, anytime, anywhere," Perez said in a statement.
