Rainbow Technology

Rainbow Technology is a Glasgow-based group of design-led companies, delivering a wide range of products and services to many industries, including the Industrial Printing and Coating sector. The company's clients often have process plants in the field that require design improvements, which is typically outsourced to small local machine shops, costing time and money. Rainbow Technology was looking at alternative solutions such as additive manufacturing to reduce time and cost.

When doing multi-stage silk screen printing, each color uses one screen, and must be laid precisely in alignment over the previous layer. Silk screen alignment issues are commonplace in the industry, and combating them requires complex, often bespoke tooling, fixtures, and jigs. Expensive camera systems are often used to align the screens, making the process even more inefficient. Using the Markforged platform, Rainbow Technology printed the unique alignment jigs they needed, and were able to iterate fast. They had a fully tooled and aligned solution before the job hit the print line. Custom printed parts cost over a GBP 100 and took days or even weeks to arrive; their printed components cost just GBP 13, and can be left to print overnight — saving an average of GBP 800 per silk screen print rig.