Three years after opening up shop as two self-proclaimed nerds with an interest in 3D printing, John Schneider and Jake Clark announced this week that they are going global with their business.

Their company Fargo 3D printing has a few spin-offs that have developed since they launched in 2014, one of which being their 3D printing filament company, 3Dom USA.  Under this arm of the company they’ve worked with another local startup that specializes in biocomposite manufacturing, c2renew, to release filaments made from materials like coffee, beer and hemp.

In the meantime they attended trade shows and conferences around the world, evangelizing their product and connecting with the 3D printing industry. They joined with a small team in Ireland to form 3Dom Europe, with a vision to someday combine as one company.

That dream wasn’t realized until a meeting with a competitor at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2016.

“Jake and I have this policy where we don’t want to compete if at all possible. We’d rather be on competitively friendly terms,” Schneider said.

This lead them to approach the booth of 3D-Fuel, a 3D print filament provider based in Reno, Nevada, which was started by tech veterans Matthew Stegall and Steve Gall. 3D-Fuel was recently recovering from a split with their manufacturing providers, and, coincidentally, looking for a replacement. They knew about 3Dom, and after more conversation, the two decided they would be better together than apart.

The Irish fellows in 3Dom Europe joined the fun, and the three are now combining to become 3DomFuel. The new company now has manufacturing facilities in Fargo, Ireland, and a handful of remote sales people working from across the U.S.

One of the largest benefits to the merge is access to the well-established network of the 3D Fuel founders, Schneider said. Stegall and Gall each have over 20 years of experience in the tech world, and have built and sold an analytics company in the past as well.

“They have a lot of contacts that we just don’t have,” Schneider said. “This frees us up to focus on the manufacturing side, which is our strength.”

Stegall will take the role of CEO of 3DomFuel. Clark becomes the COO of the North American division for manufacturing, and Schneider the CTO. In Europe, Ciaran and Danny McMenamin will take similar roles as COO and CTO of the European division, respectively.

The next step is to unify their catalogs, Schneider said. They hope to release the finished product in the next 1 – 3 months.

Fargo 3D Printing will continue to operate as a separate entity as well. However, they are turning their focus away from individual printer sales, and focusing on 3D printing support and repair, Schneider said. Filament has simply proven to be much easier to scale, rather than the individual printers Schneider originally thought may become the next personal computer.

“People buy a printer once, but they have to keep buying materials,” he said. “It’s a more repeatable business.”

Although home 3D printing use has not taken off as much as the industry expected, what has emerged is a need for 3D printing in industrial businesses, Schneider said. In Europe especially, the 3D printing market is “huge,” according to Schneider. There’s an area that stretches from Northwest England to the northern tip of Italy called the Blue Banana, he said, that is bursting at the seams with hunger for new technology, and exploration in the world of 3D printers.

“I would argue that the market there is even bigger than North America,” he said.

The merging of the three companies means 3DomFuel now has an access to the European market, with a strong foundation in the U.S. to back it up. The impact will be like a rocket boost for their business, Schneider said.

“You’re going to see some very, very rapid growth in the next 6 – 12 months,” he said.

Photos courtesy of 3DomFuel.