A West Australian signage business has taken delivery of the state’s first Massivit 1800 3D printer and says its possibilities are endless and will take his business beyond signage production.
Artcom Fabrications managing director Mark Walkden won three Sign Association of Australia awards earlier this year and when his visit to collect the awards coincided with Visual Impact, he decided to also pay the expo a visit and there he spotted the Massivit.
The whopping 180cm high, 145cm wide and 111cm deep machine arrived at Walkden's operation on Wednesday becoming the third of its kind to land on Australian shores, with the others in Sydney and Melbourne.
“We are trying to keep up with technology and with 3D printers there are lot in the market place which are small and slow so when the Massivit came to mind, we saw a few videos and we thought if we are going to keep up with technology then this was the machine to do it with,” Walkden told ProPrint.
After seeing the 180cm high, 145cm wide and 111cm deep machine in action at PrintEx negotiations for purchase began through sole Australian distributor Graphics Art Mart.
In terms of what the machine can do for his business, Walkden says the possibilities are endless and is hoping it will allow him to break into heritage building restoration work, stage sets and other projects.
“We are a signage business, we have got laser cutting machines, we have a water jet cutter, we have a CNC router, we’ve got engraving machine and printers so the Massivit 3D printer was the next stage to kind of push off into the next level,” he says.
Once the machine is up and running after technicians come out from Israel to install it on January 7, Walkden is confident the opportunities it will offer will be endless.
“It’s unlimited. It’s a case of whatever you can think of and put it into a 3D drawing we can make it," he says.
"It means we are not just limiting it to signage. We are going to be doing restorations on buildings for mouldings, we going to be doing stage sets, museum work, anything. It’s endless.”
Previously, if Walkden needed a 3D job done he would send it out to external suppliers, but now, once the Massivit is installed and up and running, he won’t have to do that.
“We’ve heavily invested in new technology to stay in front of the game.”
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