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Freshmade3D’s bowling ball shows strength with strikes
By Kalea Hall
BOARDMAN
Freshmade 3D is not in the business of making bowling balls, but it is in the business of making durable 3-D printed products.
To show off the durability of Freshmade 3D’s AmClad technology, the leaders of the Youngstown Business Incubator portfolio company scored some strikes and spares at Camelot Lanes on Tuesday.
“It’s durable, it’s scalable and affordable,” said Brett Conner, chief technology officer for Freshmade 3D and associate professor at Youngstown State University in manufacturing engineering.
The patent-pending AmClad, its creators say, is more cost effective, stronger, more durable, offers a wider variety of surface finishes and comes with a faster turnaround for medium-to-large size projects than its competition.
The development of AmClad began when Freshmade 3D was enlisted to make lifesize 3-D printed bobbleheads of President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election season for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
The existing 3-D printing processes out there were too expensive and unreliable for the large project, so together Conner, Christopher Tomko, chief operations officer of Freshmade, and Rich Wetzel, chief executive officer of Freshmade, developed their own process.
“Some of it was putting together our knowledge of 3-D printing,” Conner said. “Some of it was serendipity, and some of it was trial and error.”
AmClad is marketed to manufacturers, architects and artists.
“We can make relatively large artwork, and we can get a very fine surface finish,” Conner said. “We can basically make what the artist envisions.”
Conner is the expert on 3-D technology, while Wetzel is the business guy, and Tomko is about making sure everything works the way it should.
“We all come from different backgrounds,” Wetzel said.
“We really diversified our skills to bring together different experiences [for FreshMade3D].”
The Youngstown Business Incubator helped the startup company reach this point by assisting in its business plan, strategy and providing funding. Freshmade received $15,000 in YBI’s AMPED competition in 2015. YBI also helped Freshmade connect with customers.
“It was the collection of brains, but also the environment [of YBI],” Tomko said.