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Ohio 3D printing company grows by focusing on the bigger picture

The co-founders of additive manufacturer JuggerBot 3D talk about expanding their product line

Members of an additive manufacturing company

Members of the JuggerBot 3D team—and a very faithful companion—pose before one of the company’s P3-44 pellet printers. JuggerBot’s vice president, Dan Fernback, is at left and president Zac DiVencenzo is fourth from right.

Sometimes you gotta go big. And sometimes you gotta go bigger.

The co-founders of JuggerBot 3D LLC, Zac DiVencenzo and Dan Fernback, have heeded those tidbits of advice since earning their engineering degrees at Youngstown State University in 2014. They met while sophomores at the Ohio college, where they gravitated to the university’s engineering laboratory to learn about additive manufacturing.

“We spent a lot of time in the lab so we could understand how the machines worked and where the current state of the technology laid,” said Fernback, the company’s vice president. “And that’s what led us to think about how we could use 3D printing to start a business.”

That idea resonated with DiVencenzo, JuggerBot’s president. His family shares a history of starting and operating businesses. That includes his grandfather, Nick, who owned a welding shop in Youngstown for more than 40 years. At 16, the grandson learned to MIG-weld at the shop—a skill he used throughout high school and college to earn money.

Although DiVencenzo enjoyed working as a welder, he wanted to follow in his family’s entrepreneurial footsteps. “It’s one thing to have a trade where you earn a livelihood, but it’s another thing completely to create a business that can sustain employment for others,” he said. “I like that every action I take has a ripple effect. That I can do things that grow [a business] and actually grow jobs. How cool is that?”

“I like that every action I take has a ripple effect. That I can do things that grow a business and actually grow jobs. How cool is that?” – JuggerBot President Zac DiVencenzo

Cool enough for him to join Fernback in taking the big step of launching a company shortly after graduation.

Today, JuggerBot employs seven full-time staff and a fluctuating number of contract workers, builds FFF (fused filament fabrication)- and pellet-style printers, sells materials, and offers 3D printing and design services. Sales of printers and associated services account for 85% of the company’s annual revenue.

In January 2022, Fernback told a Youngstown business magazine that the company projected revenue growth of 20% this year. “I’m proud to say that we are on pace for that,” he said while being interviewed for this article.

Desktop 3D printing machine

JuggerBot introduced the F1-11 dual-nozzle filament printer in 2017. It features a build envelope of 12 by 12 by 12 in. and is compatible with most types of thermoplastic filament—everything from ABS to TPE to nylon and fiber-reinforced materials to PEEK.

Filling a Gap

JuggerBot 3D began life as a portfolio company at the Youngstown Business Incubator. During the company’s first couple of years, Fernback and DiVencenzo provided engineering and consulting services while working on printer designs. They devoted 40 to 50 hours a week to the new enterprise while holding full-time manufacturing jobs elsewhere. DiVencenzo committed to JuggerBot full time in 2017 and Fernback followed suit in 2019.

Early on, the duo spent significant time conducting market research. They asked U.S. and Canadian users of filament-style 3D printers about the types of objects they additively manufactured, the problems they encountered with their printers, and how the equipment could be improved.

They discovered that users want high-temperature, high-throughput printers that are “material agnostic”—i.e., compatible with other suppliers’ filament. Users also said they want to spend a minimal amount of time learning how to operate a printer.

“We used that data to drive product development,” said Fernback.

While conducting research in 2014 on the then-available 3D printers, Fernback and DiVencenzo noticed a gap existed between desktop printers intended for hobbyists and those meant for industrial users. Filling the gap was one of the main reasons they decided to become OEMs,” said Fernback.

The printer they planned to develop would dramatically outperform low-end, entry-level machines and cost up to 75% less than top-tier industrial machines, said DiVencenzo. “Selling a machine for $25,000 … and then having it perform similar to a system that was $100,000 was going to make it incredibly valuable.”

JuggerBot spent two and a half years researching, designing, and building several iterations of an FFF-style 3D printer. The inaugural machine was completed in 2015. “That machine was a chance for us to build something of our own design that incorporated the different design [elements] that we were researching,” Fernback said.

In 2017, following additional research, the company introduced a dual-nozzle printer called the F1-11. It features a build envelope of 12 by 12 by 12 in. and a maximum extruder temperature of 932 degrees F, a 16-spool dryer, and a layer-height resolution of 0.006 to 0.040 in. It’s compatible with most types of thermoplastic filament—everything from ABS to TPE to nylon and fiber-reinforced materials to PEEK.

A key differentiator of the F1-11 is its patented Interdependent Drive System. The IDS applies both push and pull forces on the filament throughout the extrusion process. The action optimizes the extrusion rate by minimizing filament slippage and nozzle-clogging, regardless of whether the material is flexible or brittle. Slipping and clogging also can lead to unacceptable parts, Fernback said.

The idea for the IDS has its roots in MIG welding. Push-pull systems allow welders to work 20 ft. away from a power source. For FFF 3D printing, DiVencenzo explained, “It was just a matter of creating a push-pull system that allows a user to unspool large spools of filament from a distance, extrude the filament, and control the spool [during] printing.”

Founders of an additive manufacturing company

JuggerBot President Zac DiVencenzo (left) and Vice President Dan Fernback started the company right after graduating from college.

Big Epiphany

By the time of the F1-11’s introduction, competitors were hustling to plug the same gap in the industrial 3D printer market.

“The market was flooded with the same technology,” DiVencenzo said. “Then we had an epiphany. We saw it was best to scale up our systems to separate ourselves from the pack. So instead of a 12-inch-cube machine, we said, ‘Let’s do a 3-foot-cube machine or a 4-foot-cube machine.’ ”

Advancements in non-extrusion 3D printing technologies also contributed to JuggerBot’s decision to focus on larger-scale equipment. According to DiVencenzo, a significant percentage of the inquiries the company fielded in 2016 were about parts small enough to fit in a 12- by 12- by 12-in. work envelope. “But at the same time, companies like HP were showing what could be done on the powder bed fusion side,” he said. (HP introduced its Multi Jet Fusion additive system in 2016.– Ed.) “Extrusion is not the best for small parts. You saw that the game was changing for small parts.”

Extrusion technologies, on the other hand, are very well-suited for building large parts. But building bigger brings bigger challenges. It’s easier to heat a 12- by 12- by 12-in. build chamber, for example, than one measuring 4 by 4 by 4 ft. Bigger also means working with more components that often are more complex and costlier, which, in turn, raises the price of the printer.

“You have to have your technology and production set up to handle bigger systems,” said DiVencenzo. “You’ve got to have a sales strategy and people capable of selling valuable equipment. Not everyone can sell equipment that’s over $100,000.”

Click here to watch an interview in which JuggerBot President Zac DiVencenzo discusses filament versus pellet printing.

Pellet Printer Know-How

FFF-style 3D printing is among the simplest, cheapest, and easiest-to-use additive manufacturing processes. And, having been introduced in the late 1980s, it is a relatively mature, well-understood technology compared to other AM techniques. These factors have made filament the most popular type of 3D printing.

Pellet printing offers advantages over filament, including speed and material costs. Throughput for a pellet system can be 200 times higher, reports JuggerBot, and pellets, which filament is made from, cost up to 90% less. Not surprisingly, pellet printers are more expensive. They cost nearly twice as much as filament printers, said DiVencenzo.

Pellet-style printing also is more complicated and a relatively new technology. Its beginnings are rooted in work begun in the mid-2010s by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Strangpresse, a Youngstown manufacturer of nozzles and thermoplastic extrusion systems. They teamed up to develop an AM technology capable of printing large objects, such as boat plugs, car bodies, shelters, and helicopter rotor blades.

Click here to view a photo-essay of parts 3D-printed at ORNL.

additive manufacturing

The P3-44 pellet printer incorporates a Strangpresse vertical extrusion system and is available as a complete system that includes interchangeable pellet extruders; slicing and monitoring software; internal cameras; material dryer; and removable, cast aluminum print beds.

JuggerBot overcame a number of challenges during development of its vertical-extruding pellet printer, called the P3-44. One was that the company wanted to build a medium-scale machine—not a large-scale one like those already on the market.

“When we started working on the printer in the 2017, 2018 timeframe, there was a big learning curve,” Fernback said. “It was about being able to take that [large-scale] knowledge and scale it down and implement it on a medium-format machine, which introduces a lot of different variables you don’t necessarily have with a larger format.”

While conducting research on the 3D printers available at the time, JuggerBot co-founders Dan Fernback and Zac DiVencenzo noticed a gap existed between desktop printers intended for hobbyists and those meant for industrial use. Filling the gap was one of the main reasons they decided to become OEMs.

JuggerBot partnered with Strangpresse and ORNL on the project. It helped that the company had already built filament machines, said DiVencenzo. “We had a base system, so it was a matter of working with Strangpresse to learn how to put on the [extruder] and use it. And Oak Ridge supported us on how to process pellets vertically.”

He noted that JuggerBot has a CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) in place with ORNL.

Steady Progress

DiVencenzo said that tackling the pellet project dovetails with the company’s philosophy of developing data-driven equipment that reduces human error. “The machines have to be more intelligent and learn and store and gather information as we work our way towards plug and play. That’s what we’ve been working on for the past 18 months.”

As for the challenges and process of designing machines, Fernback said: “You ask yourself, ‘How hard can it be?’ Then you get into it and find out how hard it can be. But you finish your first revision and you’re like, ‘OK, we did that. Now we can improve upon these different pieces of it.’ And then you do the next version and the next version, and you keep building on the experience and knowledge you have.

“Then, eight years later, you say, ‘Look how far we’ve come,’” Fernback said.

3D printing machine

In 2020, JuggerBot released its Tradesman Series, comprising the F3-32 filament printer (shown) and the P3-44 pellet model. The build volumes of the printers are 36 by 36 by 24 in. and 36 by 48 by 48 in., respectively.

About the Author
FMA Communications Inc.

Don Nelson

Editor-in-Chief

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Don Nelson has reported on and been in the manufacturing industry for more than 25 years.