3D vlog: everything about digital production - # 1

Hello! My name is Vasily Kiselev, I am the owner and managing director of Top 3D Shop, and this is the first issue of my video blog dedicated to the development of 3D technology in Russia.

Introduction

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In these videos, we will talk with those who promote additive technologies - manufacturers of equipment and materials and consumers of their products, with those who use digital technologies in production and with amateur makers, discuss successes and consider individual application cases.



I want to start the first issue with an introduction to our company, so now we are going to our central office and see how it all works.

Acquaintance

Top 3D Shop is a trading and manufacturing company that supplies equipment for digital production - these are 3D printers, 3D scanners, machines, consumables, auxiliary equipment, accessories and components.

On the history of the company Top 3D Shop, its appearance and first steps you can read in an article in our blog.



We have production departments in Moscow and St. Petersburg that provide services on this equipment and others that are logically related - that is, in addition to 3D printing and scanning, these are modeling, prototyping, molding of plastics and metals, machining on CNC machines, laser and milling.



In addition, we have a service department that deals with commissioning, repair, training and technical support.



In our Moscow showroom, we meet clients, demonstrate to them the possibilities of digital production, advise and solve specific production problems using digital processes.







On the second floor of the office are the sales and logistics departments, administrative and support staff.



Our office is similar in composition and size in St. Petersburg, and the total number of staff is about 60 people, including IT staff and the content department.

Downstairs we have a premise for preparing goods for shipment.



Here are the storekeepers and service department managers.

Development

For 2017, we have grown great and “pumped up”, approaching the total annual turnover of 400 million rubles.

Organizational processes within the company evolve - the growth of turnover and number of personnel determines these changes, making the structure of the company more rational and thoughtful.

Now, for example, we are building a middle line of management - formerly top managers, a commercial and managing director, were responsible for all processes in the company, personally managing client managers and engineers. It justified itself at the initial stages, but it is impossible to manage a larger structure in this style - we are now identifying leaders, leading experts in areas of activity, and distributing responsibility, duties, and powers among them.

According to the results of 2018, we determined that the share of transactional sales through the online store is about 20%, all other sales - with an understanding of customer needs, consulting, with an individual solution of the tasks - that is, here the online store acts as an aggregator, and not a direct selling tool.

Of course, this will affect the company's processes in 2018 and further, and Alexey Shchetkin, our commercial director, tells us about this:



“Our first goal for 2018 is to achieve total revenue of half a billion rubles; the second is the development of the franchise, the opening of the Top 3D Shop office in every million-plus city in order to provide people with quick access to our services throughout the country, while there are six such offices; The third goal is to take a firm position in the industrial segment, to develop targeted solutions for manufacturing companies of different directions, the next areas in this area now are metal casting and the jewelry industry. Such are our plans for the beginning of the year.



Contributes to the implementation of these plans, in particular, the development of the sales department, which is now 20 people and includes employees working in three areas: for the sales of the online store - this is retail, sales for b2b - for organizations, and sales of industrial solutions. Qualification and knowledge to work in each of these areas need different, for the most part - do not overlap with each other, and we successfully develop employees in each area.

In addition, we have developed a training course on sales department standards, which we are actively implementing.

Taking into account the results of last year and the systematic progressive development of the company as a whole, the goal of 500 million turnover seems quite achievable to me.

Work with staff is an important factor in the development of the company. The market of additive technologies is young, experienced professionals are almost impossible to find, and Top 3D Shop is the only company known to us that has a developed system of training and adaptation, and training specialists in the field of 3D technologies. We have been developing this system for over a year - collecting and processing information, looking for the most effective methods for presenting educational material, developing courses, preparing tests.

Now we can give a training course to a new employee and know for sure that he received the necessary knowledge and skills for professional growth. A novice manager in our company, having passed the stage of working with clients of an online store, can in the shortest possible time become a manager of b2b or industrial solutions, and we will be confident in its competence and professionalism. We have done everything to make this possible.

You can read more about the device and internal processes of Top 3D Shop here .

We travel a lot to manufacturers around the world, to thematic conferences and exhibitions, we shoot all this on video, make photo reports and write articles, which we then publish on our blog.

About our trip to the factories of Chinese manufacturers, for example, you can read here .



It helps to establish contact with consumers and contributes to our development. The reader also receives reliable information first-hand - if you are interested in additive technologies, digital production and everything connected with it, in our 3DToday blog and on our YouTube channel you will find a lot of interesting things for yourself. ”

Having got acquainted with our office, we are going to Balaklavsky Avenue - we will show you our production facility.

Production

The concepts of “additive manufacturing” and “3D printing” are quite narrow; they do not include many related and related processes, such as modeling, operation of robotics and CNC machines, casting metals using 3D printing forms and master models, 3D scanning, all sorts of software from this area and much more. In my vlog I will call this, collectively, the term “ Digital Production ”.

Digital production is a consequence of global digitalization, digital automation of production and related processes; it is growing at a rapid pace throughout the world, including in Russia. Despite the fact that hype and hype around additive technologies that have so raged in the infosphere over the past few years have waned, digital production itself does not even think to slow down.



The development of additive devices in the user segment, for home use by completely unprepared users, did not meet the expectations placed on it - too much was expected from it and the start was too briskly, the technologies are not yet ready for this, but this is a matter for the near future.

Digital production for professionals, on the contrary, continues to develop at an accelerated pace, which the Formnext 2017 exhibition at the end of last year, which grew by a third from the previous one and showed a huge amount of interesting new industrial equipment and integrated solutions, hinted unambiguously.

More information about the exhibition you can read and watch the video here .



If you are related to private production, corporate or state, look closely at this area right now - the equipment is gradually getting cheaper, becoming more accessible, you can already see successful cases of the introduction and application of digital production, now it’s the best time to introduce innovations into your production processes provide a competitive advantage over more conservative colleagues from other companies.

So, production.

We have equipped our production premises last year. There was nothing, bare walls. We made ventilation, fire alarm, wiring, internal partitions. Well, that's all. Read more about it here .

Here, in separate rooms, we have service engineers, 3D printing and scanning, painting, CNC machines and warehouses.



In our warehouses we store equipment that came from the manufacturer and has not yet left for the customer. For a long time it does not lie here, there is a constant rotation - parishes, shipments.



The production department solves many problems using 3D printing, 3D scanning, machine tools and manual assembly. In particular, work is underway on the layout. Some of its parts are printed on 3D-printers using two different technologies, FDM and SLA, some are made on CNC machines and, of course, there is a high proportion of 3D modeling. Next comes the build.



You can read more about this case here . Another couple of interesting cases: “ How we printed a machine gun from Mars on a 3D printer ” and “ How we made a copy of the Worker and Collective Farm Women for the Museum of the European Parliament ”.

A mill and a laser are located in a room with machine tools, and there is a small warehouse of sheet material.







Victor Naumov, the head of our production division, says:



“On Balaklavsky Avenue, we constantly have five people. The department is equipped with 3D printers that print using layer-by-layer fusion technology - FDM ( Picaso3D , Hercules , Makerbot Z18 ) and photopolymer stereolithography - SLA ( Form2 ) and DLP ( Flashforge Hunter ).



Stereolithography provides high accuracy, here we print products, in particular, for jewelers and dentists. For stationary 3D scanning, we have a RangeVision scanner, it is used in reverse engineering and for creating digital models for subsequent editing.



With a scanner for manual scanning, we digitize large objects, from a meter and more, such as cars, monuments, etc. ”

In the paint shop we, surprisingly, paint our products.



The service office has service engineers. They repair equipment, make adjustments and maintenance, make reviews of new equipment and provide technical support by email and telephone.





It was the first release of the top 3D Shop video blog dedicated to the development of digital production. so far we have just introduced ourselves, it will be much more interesting further: we have planned a number of meetings with the top officials of companies that develop this market - the first of our interlocutors will be manufacturers of equipment and consumables.



You will be very helpful in making this log more interesting and useful if you tell us from your area of ​​interest (amateur maker, education, small business, 3D printing studio, dentistry, jewelry, etc.) and what you would like to see in future releases. We are waiting for feedback!

Very soon, on the tenth of April, in Moscow, or rather, in the Technopolis “Moscow” on Volgogradsky Avenue, the annual exhibition and conference Top 3D Expo will be held.

This year's conference is dedicated to digital technologies in production. You are waiting for informative current presentations of professionals, an interesting exhibition, which includes a real industrial robot KUKA and a stand with augmented reality, as well as our branded master classes, free for all guests of the exhibition, and not just for our clients, as usual. Exclusive!



Attendance of the event itself is also completely free, but the number of places is strictly limited - advance registration is required. Sign up on the site and come.

See you!