Super Modeling

How one company's belief in little plastic models could boost Hawaii's production and manufacturing

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Emil Reyes (left) and Russ Ogi (right) pose with masks created by the 3-D printers behind them.

Inside the studio of RAPID Technology LLC is Honolulu’s most haphazard collection of plastic figurines and models. There’s Luke’s light saber, a blanched skull, a five-inch-tall Aloha Tower, a palm-sized section of the Grand Canyon and a snarling samurai mask from feudal Japan. The creations seem to be pulled from a restless dream, but each one was actually pulled from one of the machines against the wall.

They are called 3-D printers and they take computer data, say from the computer model of Toy Story’s Woody, and lay down thin layers of a material, repeating the process hundreds or thousands of times until a three-dimensional Woody is built inside the machine. It’s like stacking slices of bread until you get the whole loaf.

Emil Reyes, founder of RAPID Technology, says the selling points for 3-D printing, also called rapid prototyping, are the affordability, accuracy and speed with which it creates models. Designers don’t have to wait days or weeks for modelers to create their prototypes. Research and development becomes quicker and feedback more responsive.

The technology has been around for decades, but only recently has it really boosted product development, Reyes says. It’s been used for BMW’s F-1 racecar, prosthetic limbs, NASA spacecraft, new Harley-Davidsons and cell phones. Hawaii, though, has generally missed out on 3-D printing.

Until RAPID Technology.

PROVING GROUND

Reyes moved from Cleveland in 2000 and started his first business, RAPID Technology, four years later. It is the first to offer dedicated 3-D printing services in Hawaii.

Reyes learned of the technology in the Army in the late ’90s. After sustaining injuries in Bosnia, he was reassigned as a future technology specialist to Ft. Knox’s Mounted Maneuver Battlespace Laboratory. After his service, Reyes wanted to start a business and help his parents retire. For the next few years, he followed the technology and, like a surfer waiting for the killer swell, he waited for his business to gain momentum in Hawaii.

In early 2004, Reyes began talking with Z Corp., a maker of 3-D printers, about representing its business in Hawaii. The response: There was no market for the technology, let alone any manufacturing that could benefit from it.

Reyes knew he had to convince the company that Hawaii was changing if he wanted a printer or its support, so his proposal emphasized growing industries – like medical, architecture and geographic information systems – that could benefit from it. At the very least, he proposed, his business would provide free marketing for the company.

His negotiations and determination paid off two months later when Z Corp. was finally willing to sell him a printer. First, though, he needed more money than he had saved up to buy a basic, $25,000 model. He turned to a small business’s next-best resource, family and friends. “But they were not yet convinced that there was a business, at this point I was not convinced yet either,” says Reyes.

For the next three months, he kicked the idea around until Reyes found his proving ground in a city planning conference. There, among surveyors, satellite imagers and GIS firms, he touted an unknown technology with topographical models, brochures and Kinko’s poster board. “I felt like I was making a fool out of myself,” he says. Still, he emphasized that 3-D printing can make models better, faster and cheaper than traditional methods. “By the time the first break happened everybody was surrounding my booth,” he says.

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