From large prototypes to beautiful refrigerators.

The next time you open your refrigerator, take a moment to appreciate all those bins, drawers and shelves. It’s a cool example (pardon the pun) of good space management. But keeping our foodstuffs well organized takes planning, iteration and validation on the part of appliance makers.

It’s a process Doug Steindl knows well. He’s the corporate development lab supervisor at Sub-Zero Group, maker of luxury appliances. His job is to help refine new products and make them production-ready. To do that, Steindl’s lab relies heavily on 3D printing, particularly in the concept modeling and prototyping stages.

Some of Sub-Zero’s refrigerators are sizeable, up to four feet wide. 3D printing prototypes for these large units is challenging because they exceed the capacity of most of Sub-Zero’s current printers. This results in the need to outsource, adding more cost and time to an already tight product development schedule.

Large-capacity 3D printers are available. But they’re either out of budget reach for some manufacturers or don’t possess the reliability they need. For Doug Steindl and others in a similar predicament, what’s lacking is a reliable, large-capacity printer using standard thermoplastics at an affordable price point. So when Steindl heard about the availability of the new big-scale Stratasys F770, he was quick to take the opportunity.

The size, simplicity and accessibility of the F770 has been a good fit for Sub-Zero. And it’s probably safe to say that future Sub-Zero refrigerators will owe their existence in part to the F770. You can read all about Sub-Zero’s experience with the latest large-scale FDM printer in this case study.