Case Study: Escea Fireplaces
Heating the World
For Twenty years Escea has been designing and manufacturing fireplaces, always with the same question in mind: “how can they make the next one better?”
Escea has grown quickly into Australasia’s leading fireplace manufacturer. From a small team of eight in 2002, to over 160 staff operating from their Dunedin-based factory today. Escea has proven that manufacturing can still succeed from our corner of the world.
Opportunity:
Escea’s CEO Nigel Bamford and United’s CEO Sarah became friends when they were on the Board of Startup Dunedin together, “I’ve bent Nigel’s ear for advice A LOT, he’s been a great mentor for me over these last few years of growth at United”, explains Sarah.
So when United finished their new manufacturing facility, Nigel and the team from Escea were one of the first groups through the doors. And again in 2022 when we launched our Markforged X7 printer.
Escea’s design engineering team were interested in the X7 as an alternative to machining their high-wear assembly jigs and fixtures.
For such low run and simple components, machining was not efficient due to lead times. They either needed to manufacture larger runs and hold onto inventory, knowing they had stock when they needed it, or potentially face lead-times of weeks to get onto a machine.
Outcome:
“Up until recently the price of getting parts 3D printed has been too high and conventional machining processes have been the cheaper option”, explains Escea Production Engineer Malcolm Sherlaw.
That was until Malcolm discovered United’s X7 continuous fibre printer which produces highly durable industrial strength components. Markforged’s trademark composite material OnyxTM , has been tested to be equivalent in strength to aluminium.
“For such simple components the X7 is simpler and quicker, parts can be produced on demand printed “lights out” giving almost overnight turn around,” explains Malcolm.
Since their first run of components the team at Escea keep finding new uses for the X7 every other week. “To date we’ve been printing jig components, both for prototype and replaceable wear use. We are also looking to use it for product design and are very interested in printing tool steels for jigging and prototype tooling once their MetalX printers are up and running,” says Malcolm.
Final Word
Malcolm’s final word - “The team at United are always great, nothing is a problem, always keen to help and we know we’ll never have an issue with quality”. Thanks Malcolm! 😊
