Brooklyn's Robotic 3-D Printing Factory Brings Manufacturing To The Masses Subscribe Sign In BETA This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here More From Forbes Sep 22, 2022, 06:06pm EDT Thursday, September 22. 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Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Voodoo's factory in Brooklyn contains over 200 3-D printers. Photo Credit: Voodoo Manufacturing Traditional manufacturing pipelines don’t work for modern startups. While budding entrepreneurs are full of ideas, they may not have the time or money to turn a clever design into a physical product. The process of creating and testing a single prototype can take months — and then there’s the matter of finding a factory to carry out large-scale production. The headache doesn’t stop when the first boxes of a company’s finished product finally arrive on its doorstep. Next it’s time to worry about whether there’s too much inventory, which will be difficult to shift, or too little to meet demand. Bringing a product to life is not as simple as sending a word document to the printer. But it could be, if Voodoo Manufacturing, a robotic 3-D printing company in New York, has anything to do with it. There’s not an old-fashioned assembly line to be found inside Voodoo’s factory in Brooklyn. Instead, there are rows of 3-D printers building objects one layer of plastic at a time, and robotic arms to help operations run smoothly. Voodoo has one of the largest clusters of 3-D printers anywhere in the world, and it’s using them to make high-volume manufacturing accessible to anyone who wants it. Last month, the company introduced a “full stack” manufacturing service called Fulfilled by Voodoo (FBV). The solution lets Voodoo's customers upload a design file to its website and leave the manufacturing, assembly, packaging and shipping of products to Voodoo. The idea is to free small startups from costly production runs by letting them order the precise number of items they need, when they need them. “The companies we’ve been working with don’t hold inventory,” explains Jonathan Schwartz, Voodoo’s co-founder and chief product officer. “That is such an amazing thing, if you think about it, because it means the risk they are taking is essentially zero.” FBV is made to serve the internet’s retail entrepreneurs, who can easily set up digital storefronts on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Etsy. These sites act as a showcase for as many designs as a company can devise. And with the help of FBV, none of these products have to be made until someone has actually ordered them. In the world of digital manufacturing, there are no more tricky demand forecasts or minimum sales targets — and more options to satisfy consumers. “Traditionally, companies would have to select their top five or 10 designs and they’d have to place their bets on those,” Schwartz says. “This new generation of product websites lets customers find the design that’s right for them, and because companies don’t store any inventory, there’s no limit to the number of product variations they can create.” Today, Voodoo’s 200 3-D printers are capable of printing with two different types of plastic in numerous colors, and they’ve created everything from custom phone cases to prosthetic limbs. As the company grows, it plans to expand the range of materials it can print with to include metals and additional plastics. In time, it also hopes to export its factory model to other locations. However, Schwartz doesn’t buy into the idea of a “fully distributed” future for manufacturing, in which micro-factories like Voodoo’s would be installed on every street corner to make most consumer goods. The important thing for small and startup companies is that they have access to an on-demand manufacturing facility within a reasonable distance. Today’s efficient and optimized logistics companies will ensure that packages reach customers in good time. “Current logistics systems and supply chains are actually really good,” Schwartz says. “If you think about Amazon and FedEx, you can ship a package anywhere in the world in less than a day if you need to. Our goal is to reach the majority of our customers within this one to two day window.” In Voodoo’s vision of the future, makers of physical products will be able to act a lot more like software companies. They won’t be tied down to a warehouse, or even a physical storefront, and they certainly won’t have to spend time worrying about managing their stock. This leaves more time to create new products and grow a business. “Software developers can launch a website, and the only investment they have to make is the time it takes to build it,” Schwartz explains. “If they want to change things in a week because they’re learning things about their users, that’s very easy. But if you look at product development, it’s the exact opposite.” Ultimately, Voodoo’s factory is more than a cluster of modern manufacturing equipment for hire: It represents a new, attainable method of bringing products to market. “We don’t really consider ourselves a 3-D printing company,” Schwartz insists. “We are a digital manufacturing company.” Jennifer Johnson Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions