A MassChallenge finalist founded in a Somerville community work center says it's created the world's first hybrid 3D printer they've dubbed a "machine shop in a box."
The Mebotics Microfactory combines the best of two types of manufacturing machine: one that starts with nothing more than a design and adds layer upon layer of material — usually plastic — to create a prototype, and one that begins with an amorphous material and chips away at it until the machine has sculpted the prototype according to the design's specifications.
"By combining the additive and the subtractive, we're able to work in a huge range of materials that a standard 3D printer can't," said Jeremy Fryer-Biggs, Mebotics' co-founder and CEO.
The result can be the difference between a plastic letter opener that breaks when you try to use it, and one made out of metal with a wooden handle that's not only functional but attractive, he said.
Fryer-Biggs has also used the Microfactory to make a custom speaker, a phone dock, woodblock prints, wax-casting chess pieces and a chess board made of exotic woods.
His fascination with building things began when he was a kid playing with Legos.
"Later on, while other kids were spending their allowances on pizza," he said, "I was buying things at Radio Shack for my next invention."
By the time Fryer-Biggs saw a 3D printer in action for the first time when he was a graduate student at Tufts University, he was hooked. After earning his master's degree in biomedical engineering in 2010, he started his own product-development company.
Sharper Image hired him to make a bagel-slicing device, but Fryer-Biggs was in no position to pay $500,000 for a new professional 3D printer. So he rented time on one.
"The client got angry because it took longer than expected," he said. "I said, 'Something's got to give.'"
At the time, Fryer-Biggs and three friends — Judah Sher, Calvin Domenico and Edison Gieswein — were helping grow a Somerville "maker space" called Artisan's Asylum, and they began kicking around the idea of making a hybrid manufacturing machine, one that, unlike most 3D printers, would be quiet, portable, clean and affordable.
In December 2012, they founded Mebotics, and over the next five months they financed the development of five versions of the Microfactory, each one a refinement over its predecessor.
The current version is a self-cleaning machine that can fit on a kitchen table, print materials in four colors and cut them. Because the Microfactory is connected to the Internet, Fryer-Biggs and his co-founders also are working on innovations that will allow people to remotely start their prints and monitor their machine's status, download content directly to it and network Microfactories together.
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