Case Studies

Transforming Manufacturing Capability Through Strategic Partnership

When your core business has been thriving for 50+ years, but evolving customer demands reveal a critical capability gap, incremental improvement isn't enough. Thermo Fisher Scientific faced exactly this challenge: a booming high-volume plastics manufacturing business that couldn't serve customers asking for custom, low-volume components. Working with B9Creations, they built an entirely new production capability, the first AM...

Food safety is getting a precision upgrade—thanks to bacteriophages, microneedles, and high-resolution 3D printing.

Overview:

Medtronic Puerto Rico, a leading medical device manufacturer with a workforce of 1,500 employees, operates a state-of-the-art production facility specializing in manufacturing aids, jigs, fixtures, and molds. One of their critical components, a mold tip, was being produced at a scale of 400 parts per day using traditional injection molding.

B9Creations and Mines Association of Rocketeers (MARS) partnered to design and 3D print rocket components for the Spaceport America Cup,the world’s largest intercollegiate rocket engineering competition. MARS—which is a part of South Dakota Mines CAMP, a competitive, student-centered engineering program—placed in the top fourth overall against the likes of Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Texas A&M, and over 150 other prestigious universities worldwide.

Robotic skin with human-like sensing holds immense potential in robotics, prosthetics, and healthcare, and presents a significant opportunity for the advancement of human-machine interfaces, artificial intelligence, and several other fields. Researchers are leveraging B9Creations 3D printing technology to create an adaptive robotic skin that possesses both high sensitivity and wide bandwidth, as well as an enhanced pressure-sensing ability that goes beyond that of human skin.

Leveraging B9Creations technology, researchers are developing 3D printed adhesive skin that offers intelligent and reversible adhesion in underwater environments, with capabilities mimicking the advanced manipulation, sensing, and control of octopuses.

Companies across the chemical manufacturing, research, engineering, and educational sectors are using B9Creations’ ultra-precision digital manufacturing solutions to bring breakthrough ideas to life. Today, B9Creations partners with 80+ of the top universities and research facilities across the globe.

ASouth Dakota Mines research team has developed technology – and established a subsequent startup company – that could be a key to finding a cure for osteoarthritis. 

Kevin Herrera is an R&D engineer in a division of Johnson & Johnson called the Cardiovascular and Specialty Solutions Group, which mainly focuses on electrophysiology, but has also grown to support neurovascular and ENT devices, as well. The team works to prove the feasibility of a device or concept through rapid iteration, and one of their main focuses is to find a way to pack as much technology as possible into a medical device through miniaturization.

B9Creations and Rapid City Area Schools have partnered to create a path for STEM opportunities available to the nearly 14,000 students in the area as part of a new education initiative piloted at several schools in the district.