Protolabs celebrates 20 years
Digital manufacturer Protolabs has celebrated its 20 year anniversary with the grand opening of its manufacturing facility in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
This new 215,000 sq. ft. facility will be Protolabs’ eighth manufacturing plant in the United States, and twelfth globally.
Protolabs, which was founded in 1999, has seen rapid growth over the past two decades due to its manufacturing model that couples digital front-end part analysis with automated toolpathing to produce custom machined components in as fast as 24 hours.
Vicki Holt, president and CEO at Protolabs stated: “We are truly living in an on-demand consumer economy and that’s no different for manufacturing. Our customers are hungry for manufacturing partners that can see their products through ever-shrinking life cycles and Protolabs is uniquely positioned to serve our customers’ needs from early prototyping to on-demand production.”
Protolabs serves more than 45,000 unique product developers each year, across three continents and 60 countries. Protolabs has grown in capabilities over the past 20 years with four flagship services and 11 manufacturing technologies. The company has also increased capacity with more than 1 million sq. ft. of manufacturing space that houses over 1,000 machines producing nearly 4 million parts each month.
“Protolabs has exceeded my wildest dreams,” said Larry Lukis, Protolabs’ founder. “The company was born out of personal frustration that manufacturing parts took months, when it could take days or even minutes. There needed to be a way to make it easier and faster for product developers to get prototype parts and accelerate development cycles. Protolabs has achieved that goal and made advanced manufacturing technologies accessible for everyone, from makers to startups to Fortune 500 companies.”
To mark the event, an official grand opening celebration and ribbon-cutting ceremony was held at the Brooklyn Park facility to provide community and industry leaders with an opportunity see the facility firsthand.