HUTCHINSON—More than two decades of helping entrepreneurs get started in southwest Minnesota has taught Scott Marquardt many lessons, but perhaps none so important as these.
This place grows them, and they like it here.
How else to explain the Douglass brothers, Carl, Brian and Sean, and their commitment to Douglass Innovations in northern Kandiyohi County? They turn dreams into finished products on a 24-hour cycle taking advantage of advanced 3D printer technology.
“They could do this anywhere,”
WILLMAR—Grabbing onto business opportunities that blend innovative engineering skills and rapidly advancing 3D printing technology, three brothers are expanding their role in digital manufacturing that could be a game-changer for all manufacturers—and a benefit to consumers.
During a media tour Tuesday that included a live, virtual broadcast, Carl, Brian and Sean Douglass talked about their expanding business, DI Labs, at their new location in Willmar.
DI Labs was started in 2013 in Spicer. As
Two-thousand miles removed from the tech hubs of Silicon Valley and an ocean away from the burgeoning markets of Beijing, the small town of Spicer is about the last place one would expect to find the frontline of fabrication.
But tucked behind rows of oak trees at the end of a winding wooded driveway, in an otherwise unassuming building all 113th Ave NE, a trio of engineering brothers are, quite literally, developing the “cutting edge” of 3D printing as the manufacturing industry knows
A small 3D print shop in central Minnesota is building parts for some of the state’s biggest companies.
At DI Labs’ office about two hours west of Minneapolis, machines operate 24 hours a day printing prototypes of parts and thousands of other components for 3M, Toro, and a handful of other companies throughout the Upper Midwest and across the country. The company has built everything from full-sized aircraft fuselage to jigs and fixtures for manufacturing.
Last month, DI Labs rounded out its