Protolabs, Maple Plain, Minn., celebrates its 20-year anniversary with a grand opening of its state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing facility in Brooklyn Park, Minn. The 215,000 sq.-ft. CNC machining facility, which currently houses nearly 300 mills and lathes, is Protolabs’ eighth manufacturing plant in the United States, and twelfth around the globe.
The company says that its digital approach to manufacturing enables accelerated time to market, reduces development and production costs, and minimizes risk throughout the product life cycle. It produces custom parts and assemblies in as little as one day using automated 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal fabrication, and injection molding processes. Its manufacturing model couples digital front-end part analysis with automated toolpathing to produce some custom machined components in only 24 hours.
It now serves more than 45,000 unique product developers each year, across three continents and 60 countries. Over the past 20 years, Protolabs has grown in capabilities with four flagship services and 11 manufacturing technologies, and has added capacity with more than a million square feet of manufacturing space that houses over 1000 machines producing nearly four million parts each month.
“Protolabs has exceeded my wildest dreams,” says Larry Lukis, Protolabs’ founder. “The company was born out of personal frustration that manufacturing parts took months, when it could take days or even minutes. There needed to be a way to make it easier and faster for product developers to get prototype parts and accelerate development cycles. Protolabs has achieved that goal and made advanced manufacturing technologies accessible for everyone, from makers to startups to Fortune 500 companies.”
