Interview with co-founder of Creative 3D printer

As an evangelist for the 3D printing industry, Imagen3d has enjoyed great success over the past five years. Its consumer FDM 3D printer has rapidly occupied the global market and maintained the no. 1 position, and successfully completed its first round of financing in May this year. What is the key to this success? On September 23, 2021, UNKNOWN Continent interviewed Mr. Liu Huilin, co-founder of Creative 3d, for in-depth interaction. Because financing has not been desensitized period, part of the problem did not reply. Details of the interview are as follows:

Liu Huilin, co-founder of Creative 3d

Unknown continent: Creationship 3d completed A round of financing this year, the industry is more concerned about, convenient to say the specific situation? After financing, what aspects will the main focus be on?

Liu Huilin:………

Unknown continent: As this year’s main push cloud platform, is Creationcloud just a model sharing APP or website? Is there anything else? Will Skycreate and 3D printing devices converge in the future?

Liu huilin: Skyvision is not just a model sharing APP or website. Creative Cloud is a creation sharing platform with 3D printing as the core, where enthusiasts from various fields keep creating, discovering and exploring, making 3D printing easier and easier to use. It covers social interactions, model downloads, firmware upgrades, hardware connectivity, and more.

There are not only a large number of free model resources, professional 3D printing knowledge, but also a variety of DIY fun ways. 3D printing enthusiasts from all over the world gather here to form a colorful 3D printing community. On the one hand, through this open cloud platform, we can build a massive model library to help users simplify the way to obtain models and hope to achieve one-click printing. On the other hand, we also hope that both white users and 3D printing enthusiasts can exchange and share their works on this platform, opening up infinite possibilities.

Now, we have built an ecosystem of 3D printing, and we can make specific 3D printing solutions for different user groups and industries to make manufacturing easier. For example, the application of our WIFI box enables the deep integration of Creative Cloud and 3D printing equipment. In the future, Creative Cloud will continue to change the complex operation mode of traditional 3D printing, reduce the threshold of 3D printing, create new 3D printing solutions, and become the world’s leading 3D printing service platform.

Unknown Continent: Ender-3 has always been the most popular single product in sales, so will there be the risk of over-concentration of explosive products? Will there be revolutionary products in the future? Are there any expectations in any direction?

Liu Huilin: Ender-3 series has been a popular product in 3D printer market since its launch due to its high cost performance and practicability, and the global sales volume has exceeded 1.5 million units. This proves the enduring vitality of ender-3 series, but it does not mean that there are no other popular products in Creative 3D.

For example, the CR-6 SE, which just won the Forbes world’s Best Overall 3D Printer award in 2021, is also popular. Last year, the product was launched on overseas crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and raised 31.06 million RMB, ranking first, proving that its modular fast assembly method and stable performance are recognized by the market.

In the future, I believe there will be revolutionary products, and Creative 3d has been working in this direction. Our ende-7 has solved the printing speed problem, increasing the printing speed by two to three times, and the CR-30 can print continuously small batch models and objects of infinite length without being attended. We hope to develop 3D printers that are more intelligent, compatible with more consumables, with faster printing speed and higher printing quality, so as to be the evangelist of 3D printing industry and truly introduce 3D printers into millions of households.

Unknown Continent: As a cross-border 3D printer brand, Creality currently accounts for more than 80% of its sales in the overseas market. How do you view the domestic market? What is the layout?

Liu Huilin: Creative 3D hopes to become a benchmark enterprise in China’s consumer 3D printing market. Although the overseas market accounts for 80% of sales, we have always believed that the domestic market has a huge space for growth. It is because the bet on the domestic market potential, domestic sales team and international sales team proportion has been close to 1:1, at the same time, we in the domestic formed in shenzhen headquarters as the core, covering Beijing, Shanghai, chengdu, wuhan, xi ‘an of subsidiaries and offices, based on the layout of the domestic market, actively explore the domestic market, Raise awareness of 3D printers in China.

For the domestic education industry, we also research and develop 3D printers dedicated to education. We also carry out thousand-mission action and establish industry-university-research teaching and practice bases with many domestic colleges and universities to popularize 3D printing to the greatest extent by means of cooperative training and 3D printing competitions. When these children grow up and enter the society, they will become a driving force for the development of 3D printing industry and promote 3D printers to enter millions of households.

Unknown continent: In the past 6 years, Skyvision has grown from a small team of several people to a scale of nearly 2,000 people. How does it manage? What’s the secret?

Liu Huilin: It has been seven years since Creation 3d was founded in 2014. It has grown from four people to nearly 2,000 people now. I think the most important thing is to be specialized, refined, special and new.

Specialized, is to focus on the field of 3D printing. In 2014, Creative 3D decided to focus on the consumer 3D printing market, and has always regarded the EVANGEList of 3D printing industry as the spiritual core of the enterprise. This positioning has not changed since it was determined, and it has been focusing on the market and the needs of users for seven years.

Fine, is the product with the spirit of craftsmanship, excellence. The research and development team of Creation3d has nearly 500 people, who carefully conquer various problems in this field and develop 3D printers with higher accuracy, higher speed and higher stability according to the pain points of users, so that the products can better meet the needs of users.

Special, that is, characteristic. Create three dimensional innovation and change, to create characteristic products. This year, in the field of light curing, we launched the HALOT series of self-developed integral light source technology, which integrates “self-developed integral light source”, “self-developed high-performance motherboard”, “self-developed slicing software” and other technologies, greatly improving the gloss and fineness of the print model.

New, of course, is constant innovation. Creative 3d’s r&d spending continues to grow, rising to about 15% of sales this year. To date, Creation3d has applied for more than 500 patents, accounting for about 25% of the invention patents.

It is because of these four points that Creation3d is committed to providing users with high value-added, cost-effective and high-tech products. Only in this way can creation3D become a state-level specialized special new little giant enterprise and one of the earliest 36 specialized special new “little giant” in Shenzhen.

Unknown Continent: How do you view the global market development trend of consumer FDM and photocurable 3D printers? Which do you think is more promising?

Liu Huilin: When Creation3d was founded, it chose the consumer 3D printing market, and became the first choice of FDM 3D printer in many people’s minds with the high cost performance and high quality of CR-10 series and Ende-3 series. But imagination three-dimensional also has been bullish on curing light 3 d printer market, since 2019 in curing light market layout, in the first half of this year, we introduced more independent research and development of the light source technology of light curing HALOT 3 d printer series, the series, which is with higher precision and glossiness, was welcomed by users.

Now creative 3D products have covered “FDM and photocurable”, FDM and photocurable two 3D printers have their own strengths and meet the needs of different users. FDM is a mature 3D printing technology with relatively cheap consumables and a wide selection of printing sizes, which is widely popular among enterprises and individual users. The objects printed by light curing technology are very smooth and delicate, which are widely used in animation hand works, jewelry, dental dentures and other fields. In fact, both of these technologies have huge development space and prospects, and will definitely be applied more widely in various fields in the future.

Unknown Continent: Will Creative 3D enter the industrial 3D printing market? How is this fundamentally different from the consumer market?

Liu Huilin: Creative 3D is the leading brand of consumer 3D printing, mainly for consumer 3D, but we have been in the layout of industrial 3D printers, has a series of industrial products, such as CR-5060, CR-1000, widely serve fixture, education, dentistry, lighting, aerospace and other industrial manufacturing industries. Creative 3D also focuses on education, advertising and other fields, and is developing 3D printers that can print 2-3M sizes for manufacturing large bathroom, car, home, food.

The essential difference between the consumer market and the industrial market is the difference in the application field, followed by the difference in user groups, production capacity, cost and other aspects. Just as our slogan says, it is delivered in the spirit of the preacher to make millions of households feel the convenience brought by science and technology. Consumer 3D printers are facing the most extensive mass groups, breaking through the ceiling of 3D printers and becoming popular consumer products. Industrial 3D printer market is facing the specialized fine market. It is widely used in aviation, aerospace, automobile manufacturing, mold, jewelry manufacturing and other industries, most of the user group gathered in large enterprises, manufacturing subcontractors, modeling manufacturers. The consumer 3D printer market is more concentrated in education, manufacturing, simple model production and other fields, and the customers are mainly individual players, makers, families and other mass groups.

Unknown Continent: After obtaining the financing, will Imagine3d consider a merger? Is there a relevant direction or appropriate target company?

Liu Huilin:……

Unknown continent: Creative 3D is now the world’s largest consumer 3D printer manufacturer, how to maintain rapid growth in the future?

Liu Huilin: Since its establishment in 2014, Image3d has maintained a good growth. Its shipments will exceed 1 million units in 2020, and it is expected to reach 1.8 million units this year. It also hopes to achieve a 50% increase in the future and truly become a unicorn in the consumer 3D printing industry.

In order to maintain rapid growth in the future, we will deepen the layout of “one body and two wings” in business, take 3D printing industry application solutions as the main body, build creative cloud platform based on user needs, and build an ecological closed-loop system of 3D printing industry. Will deepen the layout of “product power, brand power, channel power, organization power” four core capabilities, to maintain lasting market competitiveness.

The enterprise layout of “one body and two wings”, one body refers to the core of “3D printing industry solutions”, aiming at different user groups and different industries, to make 3D printing industry solutions more simple. Creation3d will always deeply cultivate the consumer usage scene, carry out product iteration towards professional and seiko, continue to explore and improve the 3D printer product line, and provide users with the best 3D printer.

The two wings refer to the “Creationcloud” and “Creationecosphere” two business blocks. Creative Cloud is a platform to make 3D printing easier and easier to use, covering social interaction, model download, firmware upgrade, hardware interconnection and other functions. The creative ecosystem is to build a user-centered ecological product platform and create an incubator platform for Internet products by building strategic alliances with industrial partners.

In the future, Creation3d strives for innovation in product innovation, user experience and application solutions, and will redefine experience.

Adhere to the enterprise layout of one and two wings to meet the market demand, in a broader field, for enterprises, families, individuals to provide more targeted 3D printing industry comprehensive solutions, to create a three-dimensional world’s leading intelligent manufacturing enterprise for one hundred years.