Fresh off its purchase of two additive manufacturing service providers, 3-D printing equipment maker Stratasys Ltd. has purchased a plastics materials specialist: Interfacial Solutions LLC of River Falls, Wis.
Minneapolis-based Stratasys announced it was buying Interfacial Solutions, which develops materials and processes, and does low-volume compounding. Stratasys has been a customer of Interfacial Solutions for the last three years.
Terms were not disclosed for the deal, which Stratasys announced April 4, just two days after it announced a deal to buy two additive manufacturing service providers, Solid Concepts Inc. of Valencia, Calif., and Harvest Technologies of Belton, Texas. They will be under Stratasys' digital manufacturing service business, called RedEye.
Stratasys also announced this week that it has developed a 3-D printing material that “simulates” polypropylene.
Stratasys is traded on the Nadaq stock exchange.
Buying a company with materials expertise will help Stratasys become vertically integrated in materials development and manufacturing, CEO David Reis said. Interfacial will help Stratasys to develop new materials faster.
In a prepared statement, Reis said: “Interfacial Solutions provides significant expertise in plastics and filaments. We believe its knowledgeable team and experience will accelerate Stratasys' materials development efforts for all of our FDM platforms, including MakerBot.”
FDM stands for fused deposition modeling, a Stratasys-patented technology to do build parts layer by layer from thermoplastics. FDM does three-dimensional printing of models, prototypes and end-use parts.
