People often struggle to put their finger on why Waterloo Region is such a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship.
That struggle eases considerably when you step inside Hyphen, a new initiative of Christie Digital, the Kitchener-based maker of high-end projection equipment.
At Hyphen, you can put your finger on – and your hands around – an array of jaw-droppingly intricate and fully functional items made on the facility’s rapid prototyping machines, more commonly known as 3-D printers.
The printers, housed along with a full suite of environmental labs inside Christie’s sprawling Wellington Street plant, make it possible for companies to quickly build prototypes, test them immediately and perfect their designs before committing to production.
For Hyphen clients, it means lower costs, higher quality and less time to get products to market.
If you’re wondering how a cinema projector company wound up in the 3-D printing business, you would have been in good company at Hyphen’s official launch Thursday – until you met Jennifer Smith, Christie’s Vice President, Global Engineering.
As Smith explained, Christie bought its first 3-D printer in 2004 to build test versions of its own components. This solved the problem of having to send designs, along with Christie staff, to American prototyping facilities for testing, which was costly and time-consuming.
Given widespread interest in Christie’s products, it often hosts tours for customers, partners and suppliers, who “looked [at the printer], and all of a sudden their curiosity piqued,” Smith said. “It was kind of like, ‘Wait a minute; how can we use that?’”
Smith, along with Christie colleague Mark Barfoot, recognized the opportunity to fill a void in the rapid-prototyping market. They came up with a business plan that, once environmental testing services were added in, made Hyphen the first facility of its kind in Canada.
“We have probably more machines in one place than other facilities have to offer,” she said.
The results are stunning and immediately tangible, as visitors quickly discovered during the Hyphen launch. An array of items, from fully-functioning tools and artistic models to a goalie mask and a replica of a human spine, were laid out on tables to see and touch.
All were produced by one or another of Hyphen’s prototyping machines, which variously use fine powder, liquid, filament or a combination of these to build the items from computer-generated designs.
In addition to helping Christie test specific projector components, the ready availability of 3-D printers has sparked the imaginations of company engineers, which bodes well for future innovation.
“Now that we’ve got it here, it’s just opened their playing field,” Barfoot said.
As for Hyphen clients, they could include anyone from aerospace engineers and prosthetic-limb designers to artists looking to turn an idea into something tangible.
“It’s not just about those who make engineered products,” Smith said. “It really is about anybody who has an idea and sees a vision, and needs to hold it in their hand.”
Hyphen’s capabilities and dream-big ethos clearly wowed guests at the launch, who included Kitchener Mayor Carl Zehr and Catherine Fife, the newly elected MPP for Kitchener-Waterloo.
“When I walk in here, I see creativity and I see a strong sense of entrepreneurship and innovation,” Fife said. “To see Hyphen come out of that sense of innovation and entrepreneurship is really encouraging.”
Fife said Hyphen’s tagline – “Build-Test-Optimize” – could just as well apply to an economic development strategy for Ontario and for Canada.
“The sense of innovation and leadership that I feel when I’m in this facility, and what this brings to the riding and to the province, cannot be matched,” she said.
