Jeanne Noonan for New York Daily News
Kegan Fisher, director of industrial engineering for Shapeways, which makes products using 3D printing technology and is opening a plant in Long Island City this summer.
The golden age of New York City manufacturing may long be over, but that isn’t stopping one enterprising company from setting up shop in western Queens.
Shapeways, which uses a high-tech 3D printing system to manufacture products cheaply, plans to open a factory in Long Island City this summer. The facility could eventually employ up to 80 workers, company officials said.
“We’re going to take an old manufacturing industry and turn it on its head,” said Shapeways’ Director of Industrial Engineering Kegan Fisher. “We’re on the edge of technology.”
Shapeways encourages designers and businesses to create designs for jewelry, hobby items and housewares on the computer and upload the files to the company’s website.
The company reviews the products and uses its system to create anywhere from a single product to 10,000 of them.
The system layers powder — metal, plastic and ceramic — in the shapes of desired objects as a laser melts them into place.
“Shapeways wants to enable people to make anything they want,” said company CEO and co-founder Peter Weijmarshausen. “With custom manufacturing, you tell us what you want and then we make it just for you. We do it locally here, so you can pick it up a few days later.”
This is a departure from large-scale production where companies often manufacture products overseas after making significant up-front investments. Those initial costs can be a barrier for new businesses.
At Shapeways, designers can sell their products directly to customers on the company’s website. Every time an order is placed, Shapeways will make the product on the spot and ship it out — even if it’s only a single necklace or toy.
That process has been a boon for Carl Collins, president of the Brooklyn-based jewelry company GothamSmith.
“It enables us to be a viable, small company because we don’t have any inventory costs,” said Collins, whose company orders a few pieces at a time. “It’s something that would never be possible in any other era.”
Seth Bornstein, executive director of the Queens Economic Development Corp., said Shapeways can help local businesses.
“We have a lot of designers, niche manufacturers,” he said. “And to do small orders at a reasonable price will benefit them.”
Shapeways was founded in 2007 in the Netherlands, where it has a plant, and moved its headquarters to Manhattan in 2010. The company also has a distribution center at 30-02 48th Ave. in Long Island City. The plant is set to open across the street.
Adam Friedman, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, which helps manufacturers stay in the city, said companies like this don’t necessarily compete with traditional, local manufacturers.
Larger companies can use the technology to cheaply produce protoypes, he said.
“The use of 3D printing to create new products could make a real contribution to the revival of manufacturing in New York City,” Friedman said.
