Clinton Township, Mich.-based Xcentric Mold and Engineering Inc. will bolster its 3D printing services by outsourcing projects to Stratasys Direct Manufacturing, a subsidiary of Stratasys Ltd. that has more than 200 industrial-grade printers at eight facilities in North America.
The strategic partnership will allow Xcentric customers, which include engineers and designers at Amazon, Boeing, Intel, Jabil and Tesla, to place online orders with Stratasys.
Founded in 1986, Xcentric serves the medical, industrial, aerospace, consumer, defense and automotive markets with injection molding, prototyping, mold making and machining services in addition to some 3D printing services.
Xcentric CEO Matt McIntosh said the partnership with Stratasys will help the company meet the evolving needs of its customers.
"One of those needs is the expansion of our 3D printing capabilities and providing an automated quoting and order platform for those services," McIntosh said in a news release. "Partnering with Stratasys Direct was a strategic and obvious choice given their deep expertise and experience in additive manufacturing services. Our core values are aligned, and we are excited about growing this strategic relationship."
Xcentric has seen continued growth across industries, not only medical, company officials said last year when they announced a plan to expand capacity by 40 percent at the manufacturing plant in Shelby Township near the headquarters.
The 2021 expansion was undertaken to meet demand for rapid prototyping, which shortens the production cycle, and low- to mid-volume injection molding in quantities of 25 to 250,000 components.
This year's partnership with Stratasys enables online ordering of 3D printing services, including fused deposition modeling (FDM), stereolithography, laser sintering, PolyJet and multi-jet fusion technologies.
Additive manufacturing is becoming an increasingly mission-critical part of production operations, according to Josh Metzger, business operations director for Stratasys, which was founded in 1991.
"Our additive manufacturing services will complement Xcentric's core services, which will benefit Xcentric's customers by providing a broader range of manufacturing services at their fingertips," Metzger said.
To show off Xcentric's expanded 3D capabilities, the partners will host a joint webinar May 5 at 1 p.m. Eastern on the topic of when to use additive manufacturing vs. injection molding.