Rat Rig is not particularly well-known outside Rep Rap festivals and DIY 3D printing communities. Despite its ten-year history, which includes awards for its machines, the company’s punkish black and green identity has never quite broken out of its shell and enjoyed sustained mainstream attention in 3D printing the way other manufacturers have. But Rat Rig wants this to change.
And that change begins at Formnext in Frankfurt next week, where the company will not only showcase products at its own booth for the first time but also introduce the company’s new Disrupt Engineering brand and its first product: an enclosed, fully-assembled 3D printer tailored to professional applications.
Speaking to All3DP ahead of Formnext, Rat Rig cofounder Sonat Duyar explained the contrasts and opportunities the company has increasingly found for itself. “For the better part of 10 years of our existence, we’ve been quite a reclusive company. We haven’t gone to many trade shows and networked and things like that.” In 2023, things came into sharp focus following concurrent visits to Formnext and then the Rocky Mountain Rep Rap Festival. From the former, a “corporate event, very professional, very industrial” in Germany’s financial capital, to an intimate community event in Colorado. “[It] was weird to travel across the world to find a space where everyone knows us, everyone is a fan.”
“What we noticed is that even though our target market has been the DIY community for the better part of our time in 3D printing, there are many professionals using our products, which is counterintuitive, because why would professional companies be going through the trouble of assembling do-it-yourself kits, learning to troubleshoot problems, understanding how all of it works? Somehow they think this is the best use of their time and money, rather than buying industrial printers.”
Setting aside the obvious, that the company must be onto something with its particular flavor of large, fast, configurable machines, it’s noticeable how fresh this confidence is. Until recently, Rat Rig likely wouldn’t even describe itself primarily as a 3D printing company. Its core proficiency is in motion systems; the company’s initial products? Sliders for videography equipment – an application that demands supreme stability. In 3D printing, it logically followed for Rat Rig to play to its strengths and specialize in large high-performance desktop machines – up to 500 x 500 mm build areas. “[That] is where the other guys struggle.”
Videography sliders and rails expanded to open builds CNC machine refits, and then 3D printing in the company’s V-Core series, currently on its fourth numbered version but a half dozen variants deep, and the recently discontinued (though not for lack of demand) V-Minion 3D printers.
Much in the way that Bambu Lab has built around its engineering specialty in vibration and motor control, Rat Rig’s expertise in designing rails-based systems that sprawl up to larger-than-most build areas is the company’s essence.
“[For] V-Core 3, about 50% of sales were the largest size. Right now it’s something like two-thirds of sales are on the largest size,” explains Duyar.
That, and open source values. Everything Rat Rig makes is released to the community, not too dissimilar from how Prusa Research has in the past. Yet Rat Rig’s current form is markedly different from Prusa’s 1,000-employee operation in Czechia’s capital city.
Just ~30 employees don the Rat Rig merch at home in the south of Portugal, near the coastal city of Faro. “No one locally knows us. Our staff sometimes wear Rat Rig t-shirts on the streets, and people come to them and ask, ‘Oh! You guys get rid of rats? I have a rat infestation back at the office. Can you guys go there?'”
“Size, performance, openness; we feel that our target user really likes the fact that we empower our users for self-maintenance, self-repair, off the shelf, spare parts… there’s a self-empowerment, a self-reliance that comes from it.”
Rat Rig uses Creative Commons licenses to govern the licensing of its work and, since the V-Core 3.1, the non-commercial CC BY-NC-SA license. This does not preclude licensing, though. “You can modify, you can remix, but if you want to sell your modifications or remixes, you need to ask our permission. We [decide] whether we want to accept your commercial license. Our approach is to say ‘yes’ to anyone who wants to contribute to the ecosystem, broadening the offering.” Elaborating on the choice to use a non-commercial license, Duyar explains that issues with abuse of the company’s designs prior to them using the non-commercial variant. “We don’t want to incentivize bad players.”
In addition to Disrupt Engineering and its first product, which we know to be an enclosed system with minimal setup, a key focus of Rat Rig at Formnext will be its V-Core 4 3D printer. Available in three build area variants (300 mm², 400 mm², 500 mm²) this enclosable high-speed machine can be upgraded with a “hybrid” kit for higher speeds, and subsequent IDEX kit for independent dual extrusion, giving it multi-material capabilities and the possibility to print engineering-grade filaments with dedicated support material.
Or not. Part of the appeal is that the system is fully configurable to suit your needs. The company’s RatOS Klipper setup wizard helps this massively by taking an intimidatingly technical aspect of similar machines and making it a simple tickbox exercise. Simple for new users, and time-saving for the experienced.
The V-Core 4 marked a generational leap for Rat Rig. Built from the ground up to serve as the company’s primary 3D printing platform for the foreseeable future, it has been upgradable for speed and multi-material almost from the outset. “We have a huge pipeline of upgrades, mods, things like that. Over the next year, we will release stuff for the V-Core 4 that broadens its capabilities and introduces more features. There’s a lot of awesome stuff we’re working on, and we’re super excited about the pipeline for the V-Core 4, for sure.”
Rat Rig and Disrupt Engineering will be exhibiting at Formnext, in Frankfurt, Germany, November 19-22. You can find them in Hall 12.1, booth G71.
Check out the All3DP Formnext special for more on the biggest show in the additive manufacturing calendar.
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License: The text of "Rat Rig to Debut ‘Disrupt Engineering’ Brand at Formnext" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.