Imaginary friends, Lego masterpieces, blanket forts. All children are inventors at heart, their imaginations unfettered by rules and conventions. Unfortunately, far too many outgrow this talent, tamped down by the refrain of what's real, what's possible, what's doable. 

Not Rich Stump.

Stump comes from a family of engineers and says he has always had an inventor's mindset. He flouted family tradition and got a business degree but says he never lost that inclination. "I never intended to invent one thing, I just always liked to tinker, to make things better."

Early in his career, Stump started to learn about additive manufacturing and immediately recognized that 3D printing was the technology that would loosen the constraints of what's possible. "I could see that the lines were being blurred," he says.

Rich Stump and Michelle Mihevc, FATHOM co-founders

A Different Way of Designing
The inflection point for Stump-at least the first one-was the CaliBowl, the brainchild of Jeff Bollengier, a surfer, who hated having salsa spill over the side of the bowl and thought that there had to be a better way. Enter 3D printing. "I knew it was a great product and that people would love it," Stump says. "We teamed up and exhibited a prototype at the LA Gift Show, and from there we met an editor from Oprah's magazine. She loved CaliBowl and placed it on the 'Favorite Things' list."
That experience whetted his appetite.

Then came Michelle Mihevc, a one-time software sales recruiter who had moved to Silicon Valley from Boston on the hunt for a new career. They took the time-honored startup path and started FATHOM out of an Oakland, California, garage in 2009.

Mihevc says, "In Around The World in 80 Days, Jules Verne says 'Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.' That's what we wanted to do at FATHOM. To give entrepreneurs and inventors a place to make their visions a reality. I could see the potential for 3D printing to re-create the world, and I wanted to be a part of it."

A maverick in her own right, Mihevc is an award-winning trailblazer and leader in the traditionally male-dominated manufacturing industry.

Together, Stump and Mihevc set out to build a company unlike any other. "The focus is on creativity, finding a solution, bringing together designers with the best tools and processes from the traditional manufacturing world and the latest technology innovations to bring ideas to life-and to do it better and faster than what's currently possible," explains Stump.

It's science non-fiction.

This past September, their growing company reached another inflection point when it merged with Wisconsin-based Midwest Composite Technologies (MCT), a company in the CORE Industrial Partners portfolio. Thanks to the FATHOM and MCT merger, Stump (Mihevc recently stepped back from day-to-day operations to spend more time with her three children) is now a leader-along with his partners from MCT-at one of the world's largest and highly scalable independent additive manufacturing companies, able to do more than ever before with 3D technology. What's more, at the end of 2019, MCT acquired ICOMold, a digital manufacturer specializing in injection molding. A triple threat, the combined force that is FATHOM, MCT and ICOMold is one with depth and breadth of expertise and one that's only getting more efficient by the day.

Empowering Next-Generation Innovation

FATHOM manufacturers prototypes and production parts with a unique advantage of speed and agility; their experts help companies go from concept to prototype to manufacturing in ways not previously possible, enabling inventors in established companies to up-level their concepts and products, increasing their value in the market. They are pushing the limits of manufacturing-dedicated to "making the unmakeable." To do this, they utilize HP Jet Fusion 4200 3D printing solutions to create whatever their customers can imagine-from IoT sensors that monitor the health of the world's manufacturing engines, to tools that help athletes up their game, to helping advance and democratize healthcare. With HP technology, FATHOM is breathing new life into the staid manufacturing sector.

FATHOM uses HP 3D printers to create custom solutions for everything from baseball pitching to military vehichles

Stump says that people are accustomed to the limitations of traditional manufacturing, and in some ways, those boundaries are comforting. But they also stymie innovation. "To really shake things up, to change the world, we need to break down those old parameters," says Rich. "Only then can we have freedom to generate fresh ideas. We depend on HP Multi Jet Fusion technology because it provides us a technology to help scale the use of Additive Manufacturing for low- to mid-volume production. As the industry evolves from prototyping into production, MJF is a technology platform which provides the ability to get more throughput and drive the break-even points of 3D printing versus traditional manufacturing. This allows customers to avoid investing in hard tooling-enabling a very agile product development solution."
He adds, "3DP enables the axiom of 'fail faster, fail better' because we can quickly and easily prototype new ideas and iterate in real-time."

That approach helped FATHOM's client Everactive as they sought possible solutions to the fact that the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) world was severely hampered by the millions of batteries required to keep it running. After all, a 1 trillion-sensor world would require more than 270 million battery replacements every day. Everactive now produces self-powered sensors for machines and motors of all sorts, from milk product factories to monitoring the steam valves that power New York City companies. And they lean on FATHOM to make it possible.

Jude Lee of Everactive says Merck is one of their biggest customers. "They understand the cost of a batch of antibiotics and the potential loss if a machine goes down unexpectedly during production. Our sensors are completely invisible, requiring no maintenance or support, unless they detect a problem. This allows the customer to plan for downtime and avoid expensive losses."

Then there's Kyle Boddy, a former college baseball player sidelined too often with injuries. When he started coaching JV baseball, he wanted to find a way to help his pitchers get better without experiencing the same arm pain he had. Joe Marsh, Director of R&D at Driveline says, "There were options for Velocity Based Training (VBT), but they were either affordable but not very effective or were helpful but cost $2,000. We knew that there had to be a way to create a great VBT system without the prohibitive cost." Boddy and Marsh developed an idea but to make it real they needed a 3D printing solution.  After some searching, they stumbled across FATHOM.

FATHOM creates custom luggage tags using HP Multi Jet Fusion technology

Marsh says, "The team at FATHOM had the right combination of the technology we needed for high quality parts with experts in various additive manufacturing techniques to help guide and iterate design improvements along the way-and to get us ready for mass manufacturing in the near future."

He adds, "The creativity of the process has also inspired us to pursue other ideas, too, such as a dynamic baseball T."

FATHOM also uses HP technology to underwrite a collaborative project for the United States Marine Corps to design a modular vehicle system that meets a wide range of logistical missions. The project started as an international challenge using the Launch Forth platform to prove the value of crowd-sourcing ideas instead of traditional product development practices. The entire development process typically takes years and the USMC Co-Lab team wanted to find a better, and faster, way to innovate.

Rich explains, "Our engineering and design team took over the winning concept, going from 3D CAD refinement, to design for manufacturing, to the fabrication of a working production-like prototype in just 10 weeks. We used a hybrid approach that dramatically shortens product development and production timelines, while also enabling greater collaboration throughout."

He adds, "We delivered 88 additive parts manufactured in engineering-grade materials using Multi Jet Fusion, Selective Laser Sintering, and Fused Deposition Modeling." 

"Boundless freedom can be disorienting just as it is exciting. It's uncomfortable and it seems risky. We are used to having limitations act as guidelines. When we're liberated by additive manufacturing, not paralyzed, we can drive innovations in a whole new way and drive significant advances," he says.

Stump wants to keep pushing the boundaries, especially in the medical arena, a personal interest for him. Both his wife and his son faced serious medical issues in the span of a few short years. He wants to put 3D printing to use to save lives.

Stump says, "I get to go to work every day knowing I'll have the opportunity to create something that hasn't been made before. That's awesome."

HP Inc. creates technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere. Through our portfolio of personal systems, printers, and 3D printing solutions, we engineer experiences that amaze. More information about HP Inc. is available at www.hp.com/go/3DPrint.