Progressive 3YOURMIND is revolutionizing additive manufacturing workflow

“This year, we successfully initiated a second-year contract with the United States Marine Corps, are expanding our endeavors in collaboration with the U.S. Navy and are expecting growth in other DOD sectors.”

3YOURMIND is a 3D printing software company, offering end-to-end on-demand manufacturing solution that empowers companies to identify and produce parts when and where they are needed. The company’s software analyzes part data to ensure the best business case for on-demand production throughout the entire product lifecycle. It serves clients worldwide.

Aleksander Ciszek and Stephan Kühr founded 3YOURMIND in 2014.

The Silicon Review got in touch with Mr. Ciszek, who serves as the CEO of 3YOURMIND, and here is his response.

Interview Highlights

What circumstances or events led to the creation of 3YOURMIND? Please brief us about the history so far.

Stephan Kühr and I co-founded 3YOURMIND as a spin-off of a technical university in Berlin. During our time there, we witnessed the remarkable capabilities of additive manufacturing technology and realized that its potential in the manufacturing industry was not being fully realized.

In 2014, we recognized that the prevailing approach to additive manufacturing was primarily centered around prototyping, with limited application in the production of final parts and spare components. Motivated by this insight, we decided to start a company that enables on-demand manufacturing.

Additive manufacturing offers substantial design flexibility while simultaneously disrupting conventional supply chain processes.

Setbacks are a part of every growing business. Tell us about a few roadblocks and learning lessons that helped 3YOURMIND grow through the years.

The company has a rich history, and I take pride in our team’s ability to demonstrate adaptability during pivotal moments. Our initial significant transformation as a company involved shifting our business model from a marketplace to enterprise software.

We recognized that the concept of on-demand manufacturing couldn’t be fully realized as a cloud-based marketplace, primarily due to its inherent limitations in safeguarding intellectual property. Thus, we pivoted toward an enterprise software solution, which enables us to expand our solution to major manufacturers in a wide range of industries, such as national defense and manufacturing sectors, which rely on a secure digital thread of data to meet repeatability and strict quality standards.

This pivotal move marked a significant turning point in our company’s journey.

Q. As an on-demand manufacturing software, what are 3YOURMIND’s key focus areas?

In the early days of 3YOURMIND, our primary customer group was automotive. Although we experienced significant growth in this market between 2017 and 2019, we recognized an opportunity in the defense and energy industries. These two industries are critical, widely distributed, and built on manufacturing models that are 40 to 50 years old. Because of this, they struggle to maintain and sustain legacy equipment as supply chains are disrupted, and original equipment manufacturers discontinue parts still in use today.

We offer these industries a means to manage their on-demand manufacturing operations by providing tools that simplify finding the right parts for additive manufacturing while also providing a platform that enables these industries to build a digital inventory of 3D-printable parts, which can then be securely ordered through approved suppliers without jeopardizing intellectual property.

I am quite proud that our company was able to fulfill the requirements of this adaptation successfully and to find a product market and positioning in these industries.

This year, we successfully initiated a second-year contract with the United States Marine Corps, are expanding our endeavors in collaboration with the U.S. Navy and are expecting growth in other DOD sectors.

Q. What can you tell us about your data platform? How does it benefit manufacturers?

When manufacturing organizations investigate additive manufacturing use cases, they’re not typically looking for one or two suitable parts…they want to find thousands. But when you have massive inventories that contain tens to hundreds of thousands of parts, how do you know which parts to explore first? That’s where 3YOURMIND comes into play.

Our software not only tells manufacturers whether a part is suitable for additive manufacturing (and with what technology), but it also calculates the saving potential of each part. In essence, 3YOURMIND creates a priority list of parts most suitable for additive manufacturing so engineers know exactly which parts are the most promising and which parts they should examine first

The data gathered in the initial part of screening is then connected throughout the rest of the platform. Whether you’re qualifying parts, building a 3D part catalog, ordering, or printing parts, 3YOURMIND creates a digital thread that captures the data journey of each part from identification to production. Ultimately, we enable local and on-demand manufacturing of parts to save warehousing costs and reduce lead time.

Q. Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges manufacturers faced and how 3YOURMIND helped them overcome those challenges?

I was moved by Ukraine’s resistance against the Russian invasion in February 2022. During the early days of the invasion, we mounted an initiative with several other additive manufacturing organizations to donate 3D printing machines, materials, and transport equipment to Ukrainian defense forces.

One of the major problems for defense industries is the availability of parts and equipment. As part of this initiative, we donated our platform, which enabled members of the global maker community to upload their part designs that other makers could print and donate to Ukrainian defense forces. Our software was critical for creating a central part catalog to obtain build files; and produce needed parts quickly and locally.

The initiative has donated over 50,000 parts to Ukraine, including medical equipment, periscopes, and gun mounts. Although it wasn’t our intent when we launched the initiative, we demonstrated that distributed manufacturing is possible in a wartime environment. We’re seeing increased interest in this capability from the defense sector as the war surges on.

Tell us, what’s next for 3YOURMIND.

In the next couple of months, we have a very ambitious road map, so there will be some major feature improvements coming up related to utilizing artificial intelligence in the process of identifying suitable parts for on-demand manufacturing and things related to IP security and IP monetization.

In terms of the commercial go-to-market strategy, we are currently working on major partnerships with major software companies that will allow much faster software implementation with our customers and utilize our product through other software providers. We expect that all of these activities will lead to significant growth in the defense and energy industries.

Aleksander Ciszek | CO-Founder & CEO

Aleksander Ciszek is fascinated by the future of production and supply chain. As the industrial world is profoundly changing, Aleksander is working with forward-looking manufacturing leaders and innovation-driven energy, transportation, and defense companies committed to adapting their operating models for more flexibility and sustainability. Aleksander is one of the Global Innovators at the World Economic Forum.

“I was moved by Ukraine’s resistance against the Russian invasion in February 2022. During the early days of the invasion, we mounted an initiative with several other additive manufacturing organizations to donate 3D printing machines, materials, and transport equipment to Ukrainian defense forces.”