Carbon Has Made its First Acquisition, Expanding its Software Capabilities
The additive manufacturing market, despite some setbacks, has generally been showing its growth through a number of mergers and acquisitions in the past few years. Now Carbon, one of the leaders when it comes to resin 3D printing solutions, has announced its first acquisition, ParaMatters. By acquiring the additive manufacturing software provider, Carbon expects to overcome the design constraints of traditional manufacturing, expanding especially its generative design software capabilities.
Carbon is well-known in the resin 3D printing sector for its extremely fast, precise Digital Light SynthesisTM (DLS) technology. Meanwhile, ParaMatters, is, according to its website, “a fully autonomous and intuitive generative design, simulation and manufacturing cloud platform that optimizes the most labor-intensive steps in the digital work flow from design to manufacturing.” With this acquisition, Carbon will be expanding its software capabilities, allowing users to make more products using the technology, saving time and materials thanks to its optimization capabilities.
ParaMatter’s platform will allow Carbon to expand its generative design capabilities (photo credits: ParaMatters)
Carbon Highlights the Importance of Software With This Acquisition
Though of course this move shows the continued growth and health of the entire market, what is of note is that for its first acquisition, Carbon chose a software provider. This, however, should not be surprising. Though often manufacturers acquire companies using different AM technologies, it has long been known that software, and especially design software, is one of the keys to designing parts that are optimized and suited to the unique benefits of additive manufacturing. As such, we have seen an increasing focus on software including design and workflow management solutions. Carbon itself has highlighted its importance with this acquisition.
ParaMatters is expected to help Carbon to overcome the design constraints of traditional manufacturing. The platform has been designed specifically for use with additive manufacturing, helping advance the technologies by unlocking the potential beyond traditional ideas. By integrating modern design software adapted to AM, Carbon hopes to increase automation as well as enable the production of more complex, higher performance part designs. Understandable when you consider that generative design works by allowing a user to input the necessary parameters and then helping to design a fully optimized part.
Photo Credits: ParaMatters
The acquisition is also hoped to build upon Carbon’s introduction of its own software, Design Engine™ earlier in the year. This software is able to automate the process of developing latticed parts for production. Craig Carlson, Chief Technology and member of the Office of the CEO at Carbon, concluded, “Software is the backbone of our idea-to-production platform and we believe the generative design capabilities from ParaMatters are a key expansion of our design software. By expanding our software capabilities that are optimized for additive manufacturing we are empowering a generation of designers and developers to create better end use products with advanced geometries and improved performance characteristics.” You can find out more in the press release HERE.
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*Cover Photo Credits: Carbon
