Interview with Junior Veloso, one of the co-founders of Kevvox

Mr. Veloso: First of all, thank you very much for inviting me, I will be happy to talk with you.
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Fabbers: How are you interested in 3d printing?
Mr. Veloso: My interest in 3D printing appeared 6 years ago when I looked at some new technologies. I saw some videos about the first FDM machines and I actually bought myself one of these DIY kits, and I was not happy with the result I got at home. And since the results were not so good, I began to do some research in terms of technology to get a good print result, and so the interest came and I think it delights what the industry will be like and how it will change the entire production and rapid prototyping business. So it is very exciting to be

Fabbers: Most of your work is done using SLA printing technology. Can you tell us how it works? And can you call the father of the SLA print?
Mr. Veloso: Good. No, I am not a developer of DLP printing, as in fact there are other inventors and some other companies using similar technology. So, why did I pay attention to DLP printing, since DLP printing is a high-tech micromirror device that was created and produced by Texas Instruments and for this reason I chose this way, mainly because it is very accurate
and very reliable technology, and, as you know, 3D printing, can take several hours
and sometimes, depending on the item you want to print, it may take several days. So you need very reliable equipment with high accuracy and repeatability, and this is what ensures the use of DLP printing. So, how it works: DLP is a microchip with millions of micromirrors that reflect light, and how we use it - we use a light-sensitive photopolymer.
This means that these liquids become solid when exposed to light, they have many different types of photosensitivity, from UV to visible light, depending on the technology and the way we do: we could use these very small mirrors,
microchip in order to very precisely focus the light in the right place of the liquid
and make part of the liquid solidified on a microscopic scale.
This means that we are building the object at the microscopic level, and this means that we are building the object by simply passing light in very small places with high accuracy. This is how it works. This is a very interesting new technology, especially because the main advantage of this technology is that in the presence of polymers, you can mix them with different materials and as a result you can have different material properties, which is a big advantage compared to other existing technologies because usually with other printing technologies you are tied to only one type of material or one type of chemical properties.
And this is the main advantage.

Fabbers: How was your company created?
Mr. Veloso: Well, we mostly started in the garage. Well, not really a garage, but a small office at home, we started working on weekends, and we started to get some ideas on how to really create a printer, only two people who worked part-time on weekends participated as a hobby and then we received some investments in order to create our own business and really reach a professional level of development and indeed, have a company and introduce very professional products to the market.

Fabbers: How do you see the development of 3d printing in the world?
Mr. Veloso: It develops quite quickly, because now we see that 3D printing is coming out in various markets where it was not several years ago. So it was a few years ago in rapid prototyping in the industry, which was used mainly to view the design, check the future product, now 3d printing is moving into production, for which the use of a 3D printer is relevant, for the production of final products that will be sold or supplied to the client we see that this area is growing very rapidly, especially in the dental industry and in the medical industry, so if you see an industrial hearing aid already fully digitized Ie, most manufacturers digitize.
You print a hearing aid that actually needs to be personalized to fit the structure of a person’s ear. We see many uses of personalized headphones. So if you want to have very specific headphones for your smartphone or iPad, listen to good music, you can pay to have such Headphones created specifically for your ears and growing in the dental industry, this business is growing in many aspects of various industries.

Fabber: As a manufacturer of 3D printers, what is the most incredible thing that you printed or did you see how it was printed on your printers?
Mr. Veloso: Every day, we are surprised that people type - various things
and in completely different industries that range from well-known brand toys to expensive European jewelry brands. And it's hard to say which is the most incredible, but there is one particular dragon that the artist made here in Singapore
So he typed an amazing dragon, I have one in my office and it is so beautiful and it looks so realistic, because he also painted it. I think this is one of the most amazing things that I have seen that could not be obtained by any other means besides this, to spend a huge amount of time and make sculptures by hand. It’s just amazing how quickly you can get this amazing object out of the printer.


Fabbers: Do you have plans to produce consumer printers or printers for other industries?
Mr. Veloso: So, we have some plans for the release of new printers. Thus, we are developing new printers with even higher precision with a larger print volume and we are really looking at different markets, including consumer. I think we are ready to launch several new products by the end of this year. We believe that next year we are going to take a serious look at consumer goods. This is not a well-studied market yet, but we believe that it has great potential and we see many opportunities to introduce new technologies
identification of higher quality high-tech products for consumers.

Fabbers: You just recently appeared on the Russian market and the model SP 4300 and SP6200 will be presented at Junwex exhibition in Moscow. What are your advantages in comparison with other manufacturers of 3d printers?
Mr. Veloso: Well, I think that the most important aspect, especially when you are talking about professional printers, is reliability. Therefore, if you want your professional printer to work in 24 to 7 format and you do not want to spend time on maintenance, spend time on repairing the printer, you do not want to spend time on setting up and calibrating, but just want your printer to be ready to print. Yes, it is a bit different from public DIY, because they get pleasure when assembling a printer
they even enjoy calibration and other things, the professionals do not care about it, they are happy when they get the results they want to get when printing, and I think the main advantage in our product is reliability, because of our products, we used the best products and the best components that exist on the market, so if you are talking about mechanical parts, we have high-precision mechanical parts, if we talk about the optical side, we have the best optical solutions. And, it is of great importance.
In addition, there is one thing that matters more that most people do not understand is that the software makes the difference in the printing process,
so, as a rule, when you are modeling a 3D part, it can be with some small holes, minor defects that you need to fix before printing it looks beautiful only if it is visualized on a computer screen, using CAD programs to print real things - this must be perfect
So most of our competitors provide software that will only cut and print your part. But we provide a very powerful solution that comes with all our printers, which allows the user to fix an object or use a number of tools. For example, to build supporting structures, to make part of the object hollow, to make a note to the project, the required size, allow the user to do many things above the parts of the object before printing, which ensures a successful result, this means that you will have a higher success rate than with other machines where you type, and then find out what was wrong with your object. And then I have to use different software, correct and print it again. So it is of great importance that we are very strong in hardware, and we are very strong in software. So we provide a complete solution, and in addition to this, we offer the best foundry material for jewelry on the market, which of course makes us stand out in the market. So, not all manufacturers today have good solutions for casting materials; they have materials that can be used for casting, but they leave ashes, and do not give good results for a jewelry manufacturer.

Fabbers: Tell me a joke or is it really true that you created all your photopolymers in your garage?
Mr. Veloso: Well, not so much. So, well, when I started, it was a bit funny, I had no idea about the photopolymers and I just bought some kind of glue in the store, UV glue
on a photopolymer basis and I spent a lot of time trying to improve it and mixing with other substances, trying to get some results when I did it in the garage, DIY, I did a lot of mixing and trying when I had no idea what I was doing, I did a lot of research on the internet. So finally, when we started the company, we hired one very prestigious laboratory in Singapore to develop our materials and now we have engineers and chemists who work full time for us, so in fact the person who developed these good materials are not me. So I know a little, and I, in fact, not an expert in the field of chemistry. Therefore, we have a person who works with this.

Fabbers: You can tell about the polymers you created, about their difference and application.
Mr. Veloso: So, as I said, the main advantage of this technology is that we can use different materials with different properties. Therefore, we have photopolymers that have different mechanical properties, such as ABS plastic, like polypropylene plastic. These materials are used as a replacement for engineering plastics for prototyping, for small-scale production.
or used as a base for making a mold, but we have some very good materials, especially molded for making jewelry, and it is also used in some very expensive toys, and in fact, when you print, it is very similar to wax properties, and in fact, after printing, you can melt the models, and use the resulting models to turn them into any material that can be gold, titanium, silver, so this is a very good material
Another material that we launch is dental material, which replaces dental materials in the dental industry. This is a very interesting material, I think that this is the main key material that we sell today.
And we are very pleased with the results.

Fabbers: And the last question, Junior. I would like to ask ... Your company is located in Singapore, but you do not look Chinese? :)
Mr. Veloso: Yes, that's right, I do not look like the Chinese. I live in Singapore, but I spend most of my time traveling, I myself come from Brazil, but I have been living in Singapore for about 6 years.
I lived in Asia for about 10 years, and lived in many parts of Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Australia, yes, I was there for a long time, but yes, I come from Brazil.