Introduction
Cosmic Grips was founded in 2020. It prints about 600 pieces prints with Raise3D E2 printers in half a year, and the final products through printing are installed and sold by Vertical Solution, which is a well-known brand that has completed over 100 rock climbing projects in the United States. The two founders of Cosmic Grips have deep backgrounds and experience in the climbing field. YUVAL HAMBURG is the founder of the largest climbing gym franchise in Israel – Performance Rock – one of the first indoor activity areas established in Israel. Another founder is NIR BEIT-AV, a product designer and engineer for the last 15 years. Cosmic pushes beyond the imaginable, using Raise3D’s E2 printers, digital tools and software, and transferring into the physical world with 3D printing.
Directly Printing for Prototyping and Printing Molds
Since its establishment, Cosmic Grips has pursued digital production. In addition to being the supplier of the well-known American brand Vertical Solutions, its products are mainly self-produced and self-sold. As a small startup, only small batches of climbing holds are ordered, and traditional manufacturing methods are not cost-efficient by the scale of production. Furthermore, due to the design requirements such as draft angle and tool setting accuracy, the traditional process is difficult to process the desired shape. Besides, handmake of molds is impossible to achieve consistent quality for small batches. How to solve these problems and achieve high-quality and efficient small batch production?
For the production of climbing holds, half of the process of manufacturing is through 3D printing and the final outcome is through casting. The advantage of the Raise3D E2 machine is that it has high printing accuracy and consistent printing precision. It can accurately print high-quality models and can easily manufacture complex structures that can‘’t be achieved by traditional processes. Designers can design parts more freely, and achieve high-quality production from aesthetics to mechanical optimization. Cosmic Grips uses multiple materials for the whole process, they use PLA for prototyping, as it’s the easiest and most simple material and gets excellent results. But ABS is used to print molds for sufficient heat resistance during casting where polyurethane is melted and poured into printed molds. Raise3D E2 printers can print it very well, as it has a close chamber, heating bed, and validated printing template, they get very easy and consistent results with ABS printing.
Durable Machine with Minimal Maintenance
As a start-up company, Comic has limited production management personnel, but at the same time, it needs to increase the working time of the machine and try to avoid the occupation of labor by non-production operations. Sometimes emergencies happen, such as power outages, machine overheating interruptions, machine maintenance and repairs, etc., that may cause production interruptions and affect output and production efficiency. With Raise3D’s printing machine, you can continue to print after a power failure, which solves the problem of interruption of printing due to power failure and the run-out of filaments. Cosmic purchased two Raise3D E2 machines, the Raise3D E2 machines run efficiently around the clock, and completed the small batch production of more than 60 product series within two years, ensuring that climbing holds and other models are sufficient for the self-produced and self-sold and ensuring the holds quantities for the product output to Vertical Solutions.
As NIR BEIT-AV says, “3D printing production method allows Cosmic to be elegantly quick, precise, and independent. Our Raise3D machines run 24/7 since we bought them 2 years ago, we definitely like them. Well-priced, we bought more of them and increased our capacity, they give us peace of mind, with minimal maintenance, without worrying about power loss or filament running out, and most important consistent, high-quality results.”
Looking Forward to The Industry
In the future, more and more niche markets can use 3D printers to overcome the bottleneck of small-batch manufacturing and realize commercialization. The reliable quality and other advantages of Raise3D machines is their guarantee.
As NIR BEIT-AV says, “When I reach out the Raise3D about the collaboration, I didn’t think it can actually work, this size of the company would care, but actually, it was a very nice experience, and the guys do care for us, we make very good communication up until the last minute, and here it is, it’s up in running, the printers are collaborated in working, and everything was like tip-top, so I was very pleased and happy with this collaboration, and I hope we can do larger things together in the future.”
The case is shared by Caliber, which is distributor of Raise3D in Israel.
