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SMART IRELAND
different in the industry,” he continues. “That drove the innova- tion.Wewanted tomake a very low-costmachine, but,more im- portantly, a very eco-friendly and low-costmaterialmachine. “Whenwewere designing and coming upwith our patent and
our IP and getting the machine to work, it was always being driven by eco-friendly adhesives.We didn’t want to have it sol- vent-based.We didn’t want to have special extraction fans.We wanted something very, very simple.” For the first few years, the two brothers developed their ma-
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SKING THE CO-FOUNDER OF A COR- PORATIONNOWVALUED AT US$5BN TO BECOME CHAIRMAN OF THEIR LOUTH-BASED COMPANY MCOR TECHNOLOGIESTHISSUMMERISAN INDICATION OF THE SCALE OF CONORANDFINTANMACCORMACK’S AMBITION AND SELF-BELIEF. That Tipperary-born, Silicon Valley-based John Ryan, who set upMacrovision (now Rovi) in
1983 and has 70 US patents to his name, agreed to do so would seem to justify theMacCormacks’ confidence and their decision six years ago to give up their jobs to establish the company and comeupwiththeworld’s firstmass-market, eco-friendly3Dprinter. It’s not too difficult to see why Ryan was convinced. Over the
last fewyears, the brothers have developed amachine that prints out three-dimensional objects using only reams of A4 paper and water-based adhesive. According to Dr ConorMacCormack, his machine’s printing costs are up to 60 times less than those of his competitors’ printers. In addition, both the waste and the prod- ucts produced by theMcor printers are – uniquely – completely biodegradable. Meanwhile, 3D printing is widely being touted as the next big
thing: it was the feature of a cover story in TheEconomist earlier this year,which said itwill ‘transformmanufacturing’whileGart- ner recently predicted it will become mainstream in five to 10 years. Back in 2003, Conor,who is nowMcor’s CEO,wasworking for
Trinity College Dublin, focused on a fifth framework European project with Airbus on the A380, while Fintan,Mcor’s CTO, was based in Philadelphia, employed by one of the world’s leading companies in wire bonding machines in the semi-conductor in- dustry. Through their combined experience, the brothers had “seen the power of 3D printing and how it could be utilised, but also the fact that itwasn’t really being used in theway that it could be”, says ConorMacCormack. At the time, there were several high-cost 3D printers on the
market. “But the biggest thing about themwas that the consum- ables used in the 3D printers were incredibly expensive to run and it prevented people frommaking a ‘what if’ scenario print,” he says. “Sowe, quite grandiosely, decidedwewanted to do something
34 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 3 Autumn/Winter 2011
chine on a part-time basis as they continued in their jobs on sep- arate continents. “We’dwork in the evening until two or three in themorning. I’d be designing themechanical end andFintanwas designing the electronics and the software side. Every couple of months he’d send over a box of electronics and I’d build a me- chanical part in-house and thenwe’d put the part
together.Then we’dwork on themachine over Christmas. “When people saywe had an in-housemachine, itwas actually
in the front roomofmy house. Itwas in the living roomfor a cou- ple of years. “In 2005, based on the progress we’d made in those couple of
years,we realised itwas going to take us too long to get amachine thatwe could actually sell to anyone, sowe gave up our jobs.” The nextmajormilestones for the company included winning
the InterTradeIreland Seedcorn competition inNovember 2008 and theUlsterBankBusinessAchieversAward inMarch 2009.A couple ofmonths later, the duo received private investment and support fromEnterprise Ireland, through its high-potential start- up (HPSU) programme, totalling€750,000. “We took that investment and the betamachineswe had and it
then took us about a year to come up with a production variant. Since thenwe’ve just been selling andmodifying and getting that machine out there through our leads.” The machine is currently being sold into the UK for around
€25,000,whichmakes it slightlymore expensive than competitor printers. “But, because thematerial going into it is just standard sheets of A4 paper, you can get your costs back, usually within two or three full builds on
ourmachine.Fromthat point on you’re savingmoney.” According toMacCormack, the product has the capacity to be
trulymassmarket.At themoment, based on the 7mCADinstal- lations worldwide, the sector, including sales and services, is worth overUS$1bn a year.He believes, however, that themarket
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