Dominic O’Sullivan

Managing Director

I have been involved in engineering for over 30 years and have seen many changes in design and manufacturing techniques. However, I have found that the advent and maturing of 3D printing was the most exciting change in manufacturing. For me, I can see it as a natural progression from 3D CAD packages, which enables what is designed on the screen to become reality in less than 24 hours. It was this manufacturing flexibility and speed of production that initially interested me in 3D printing. Once I had researched the various techniques and experimented on a small hobby printer (which I still use, it’s the small one on the printer pages that looks very out of place amongst the industrial printers), I thought this is the future of engineering design and manufacture. After much debate and discussion, I took the large step and left my job and started my own company, 3D Rapid Print.

In setting up the company I realised that it was necessary to have a range of printers available as each one has strengths and weaknesses. After much research I decided that Polyjet (very accurate) and FDM (large variety of materials) would cover most of engineering companies’ needs.