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Z Corporation
Z Corporation develops, manufactures, and markets the world’s fastest 3D Printers - machines that produce physical prototypes quickly, easily, and inexpensively from computer-aided design (“CAD”) and other digital data. Z Corp.’s 3D Printers are used by companies to make prototypes ranging from toys for market feedback to fan blades for functional testing. In the same way that conventional desktop printers provide computer users with a paper output of their documents, 3D Printers provide 3D CAD users a physical prototype of real world objects such as a mobile phone, an engine manifold, or a camera.
Z Corporation’s straightforward product interface provides users a means to automatically build appearance prototypes from their 3D CAD designs quickly and inexpensively compared to alternative costly and labor-intensive methods. For example, a mobile phone design can be turned from a screen image into a prototype in less than an hour. By using appearance prototypes early in the product development cycle, design engineers can receive critical feedback early in the design process. Z Corporation prototypes confirm market acceptance of new designs before the production process even begins, eliminating costly last-minute changes and enabling companies to be the first to market with their products.
The Company has over 1,000 customers including Sony, Fisher-Price, Adidas, Canon, Kodak, Clorox, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BMW, Porsche, United Technologies, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Harvard, MIT and Yale.
Z Corporation stands poised to change the way people design products and communicate, in the same way that low cost ink-jet and laser printers changed the way we use computers. Its technology advantage and proven management make Z Corporation uniquely able to develop the billion-dollar market for 3D Printing.
Technology
The Company’s 3D Printers build models by depositing a binder solution through an ink jet print head onto layers of a plaster-based powder. The core technology was invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is proprietary and protected by very broad patents. Z Corporation was founded in 1994 and exclusively licensed these patents from MIT for the 3D printing of prototypes. Z Corporation has over a dozen additional patents, both issued and pending, which cover the specifics of its own equipment, materials, and software. MIT and the Company have filed their patents in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Along with its strong patent position, Z Corporation also possesses proprietary know-how in combining software, electronics, and materials technology. Based on this intellectual property, Z Corporation’s technology has inherent and sustainable advantages over its competitors that put the Company in a strong position to penetrate the large market for CAD 3D output. These are competitive advantages that offer product differentiation today, but more significantly they are sustainable in the long term. These advantages are:
1.Speed: Z Corporation’s technology is the fastest in the marketplace. Z Corp. has an inherent speed advantage by a factor of 5-10x relative to other technologies.
2.Color: Z Corp. has the only technology that can print parts in full color. Color communicates more effectively than monochrome, and allows for complete 3D communication of engineering data. Color can be used for stress or thermal analysis, to demonstrate product labeling, or to represent more accurately the look of the final product. This provides significant product differentiation, as all of Z Corp.’s competitors produce parts in one or two colors only.
