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Harvest Buys Fourth Sinterstation System From DTM

27 April 2000

Harvest Technologies Buys Fourth Sinterstation(R) System From DTM Corporation To Meet Increasing Demand for SLS Prototypes & Parts DTM LOGO DTM logo. (PR NewsFoto)[AS] AUSTIN, TX USA 08/05/1998    

    AUSTIN, Texas, April 26 DTM Corporation (Nasdaq: DTMC)
announced today that its customer, Harvest Technologies, has purchased a
fourth DTM Sinterstation(R) system.  Harvest is a rapid prototyping service
bureau in Belton, Texas, USA that serves manufacturers in the automotive,
electronics, medical, power tool, toy, and oil and gas industries.  Harvest
offers a wide range of services for rapidly producing models, prototypes,
patterns, and parts in numerous materials.  These services help companies
shorten product development time and bring better products to market sooner.
    Harvest purchased its first DTM system, a Sinterstation 2000, in 1995.
Its most recent purchase, a DTM Sinterstation 2500plus, will help Harvest meet
growing customer demand for Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) services.
    "We established our business plan around the SLS technology and it has
been the sole basis of our growth," says David Leigh, President for Harvest.
"As the company has grown, both our customer base and the diversity of the
rapid prototyping services required by those customers have grown, hence our
need for a fourth Sinterstation system."
    "We believe an inherent advantage of the SLS process is the ability to
work with a wide variety of materials.  This allows DTM to develop new
materials for our customers such as CastForm PS for investment casting
applications.  These new materials are opening up new markets and applications
for our customers, and are, in turn, driving machine sales to our customers as
their workload increases," notes Kevin McAlea, DTM's Vice President of
Marketing and Business Development.
    To date, Harvest has not purchased any other type of rapid prototyping
system.
    Harvest currently uses four of the eight SLS materials DTM offers for use
with its Sinterstation systems.  These include DuraForm(TM), DuraForm(TM) GF,
CastForm(TM) PS, and SOMOS(R) 201.  Harvest uses DuraForm and DuraForm GF
primarily for creating concept and functional prototypes, CastForm PS for
creating investment casting patterns, and SOMOS 201 for prototypes and
functional parts requiring flexibility, such as grommets, seals, and hoses.
    Harvest customers frequently use their SLS prototypes for functional
testing.  "Engineering budgets are more friendly toward a process that not
only provides good concept models, but also delivers the functional prototypes
and parts needed to acquire useful test data," notes David Leigh.
    One customer recently received clearance from Underwriters Laboratories
(UL) to use SLS-generated DuraForm parts as testing substitutes for ABS
production parts.  These parts underwent standard UL drop testing.
    "Also, with the addition of DTM's CastForm material for creating
investment casting patterns and the increasing acceptance in the marketplace
of the DuraForm and DuraForm GF materials, we are seeing a trend toward more
applications for limited run manufacturing," notes David Leigh.
    Many customers are ordering larger quantities of DuraForm parts produced
directly on the Sinterstation.  "With orders for several hundred parts, our
Sinterstations are booked solid," says Leigh.  "In order to maintain our
normal customer requirements, we had to either outsource the work or procure
additional equipment.  We decided to purchase another Sinterstation, and
within two weeks, we had it running customer parts."
    Another trend Harvest sees is customers who are migrating from resin-based
rapid prototyping processes, such as stereolithography or SLA, to the SLS
process.
    "For a long time, many companies used SLA exclusively, partly due to its
prevalence and acceptance in the industry," says Leigh.  "Many of these
customers still use SLA, but they have discovered the benefits of SLS:  more
material choices, greater application flexibility, and so on."  Harvest sees
many projects where a prototype assembly of parts is made from a combination
of SLA parts and SLS parts.