3D technology is rapidly gaining popularity, but unless you know how to use CAD or other modeling software, it’s difficult to take advantage of 3D printing. Enter Knockout Concepts. The technology company is foraging a new way to create 3D files.
“We created a mobile device that allows simple, interactive, volumetric capture,” says Knockout Concepts Founder and CEO Books Myers. “In other words, an all-in-one mobile 3D scanner. Our device is designed to be all you need to digitize physical, real-world objects and save the content in industry-standard formats for use in a 3D workflow.”
Instead of using programs like CAD, the device captures organic forms, eliminating modeling. Users will then be able to edit the captured files and send them directly to a 3D printer.
Knockout Concepts aims to make the marvels of 3D printing accessible to a wider audience through the device. “It’s not a new technology, 3D scanning, but nobody had put it together in a package that makes it accessible,” Myers says. “There’s a pretty large barrier to entry for 3D-scanning technology.”
Reducing the cost and complexity of the technology, the company is carving out a totally new product market by building their device from the ground up. Instead of attaching to another device, the scanner will be its own live-in system. The company faces an educational factor creating a totally new product. But Myers says “Awareness is building about this type of technology and how it can be used for a consumer or a hobbyist.”
Knockout Concepts is aiming towards a more consumer-oriented market to have access to the device as a tool and technology. Consumer applications of the device are abundant.
“It’s hard to say exactly what people will do with it,” Myers says. “It’s always fun to share what our device does and then listen to the ideas people have for potential applications.” The company is hearing ideas ranging from automotive manufacturing, to medical applications, to art, to utilitarian production and even applications in the fashion industry with custom-fitting clothing.
“I have been told by auto manufacturers and other professionals who are experienced with multiple brands of 3D scanners that there is a need for our product,” Myers says.
It wasn’t necessarily the multitude of applications but the technology itself that first intrigued Myers.
“I’ve always been interested in 3D as a technology and graphics as a medium,” he says, which reflects in his degrees from CCAD in Industrial Design and Time Based Media Studies. Myers was always sketching designs for new products that blended technologies when he became obsessed with creating a mobile device that captured 3D data. Living in LA at the time, he decided to bring the idea back to Ohio.
“Ohio is really basically at the tip of the spear for additive manufacturing technologies,” he says.
Knockout Concepts is headed to a new office space in Franklinton, not far from the Columbus Idea Foundry – which has played a pivotal role in the company’s development.
“As soon as we heard about CIF we knew that this was our ideal local target market,” Myers says. The space allows them to connect to consumers that could use the device, but also provides a valuable industry-education platform.
“Tapping in with the idea foundry for us is just connecting with the community that understands what’s going on right now,” Myers says.
The device has been well-received by investors as well. Knockout Concepts earned seed funding from local angels.
The company has created the first prototype and is developing the second in anticipation of attending Maker Faire in Detroit at the end of July.
For more information, visit knockoutconcepts.com.
