ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING


Northbrook, IL-based 3D printing firm develops an additive technology that can create ready-to-use, complex, high-strength parts with few geometric restrictions.


Impossible Objects goes after ‘functional parts’


Katelyn DaMour Digital Editor


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hen Bob Swartz first saw a 3D printer in person, at a MIT lab where he worked as a consultant, he was only casually inter-


ested in the technology. Swartz, a lifelong inventor and entrepreneur, had worked at his late father’s manufacturing plant but had since moved away from the industry. He studied mathematics and computer science in grad school and went on to found several software and patent licensing companies. But after reading an issue of “The


Mathematical Intelligencer,” he realized the implications of 3D printing and how it could create physical representations of


mathematical objects that were previously impossible to create. The geometric restric- tions that had challenged companies like his father’s were fading. “I was fascinated by the notion that you


could ... reflect the elegance of mathematics in a physical form,” he said during an inter- view with Manufacturing Engineering in his Northbrook, IL, manufacturing facility. More than that, he was excited by the notion “that you could also produce objects that were not feasible by any other technique.” But when he sought to learn more about


the process, he was disappointed. He found it expensive, slow and the parts to be infe- rior, or not as good as they could be. “And so I became obsessed with it and started


3D CBAM parts (left to right): Small aircraft rear stabilizer mount, aerospace clevis strut, automotive air foil.


Spring 2016


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