OPT Industries opens 24/7 continuous additive manufacturing facility in Massachusetts

The MIT spinout expands its flagship 3D printing technology to build innovative products for medical and consumer industries.

Highlights

• Launching a new 14,000-square-foot manufacturing site.
• Expanding access to RAMP™, OPT’s flagship technology and the world’s first 3D printing system powered by roll-to-roll based digital photolithography, currently serving medical and consumer products sectors.
• Enabling the 3D printing of continuous materials and products at unlimited lengths with new capabilities of micron-level precision to address functional and dimensional needs for end-use.
• Launching and manufacturing a dedicated medical product line – InstaSwab™ – a new kind of medical swab found to be 20 times more effective in bacterial sample elution and significantly more effective in viral sample elution for COVID-19 testing (including the Delta variant) than conventional swabs.

MEDFORD, MASS., August 19, 2021 — OPT Industries, a manufacturing technology startup, announced the opening of its first manufacturing facility in Medford, Mass. to scale market access to RAMP™, the first roll-to-roll 3D printing platform that allows continuous materials production at unlimited lengths with new levels of micron-level precision.

Spun out of MIT, OPT began with a patented 3D printing system built upon years of R&D in additive manufacturing and computational fabrication by OPT founder Jifei Ou. The technology enables 24/7 fully automated production of continuous 3D printed microstructures with no limitation in length. During the pandemic, the team quickly scaled up the technology to design and manufacture the InstaSwab™ novel nasal swab for COVID-19 testing. To date, OPT has supplied over 800,000 swabs to a number of healthcare and at-home testing organizations nationwide.

“Our proprietary additive manufacturing system specializes in making microstructures at a massive scale,” said Ou. “We’re unique in precision microfabrication that can create rolls of materials and designs with no limitation in length. Our technology stack currently provides material solutions for medical, cosmetic, and consumer product applications.”

OPT organizes its technology stack as a digital manufacturing system to rapidly design and mass produce a wide range of functional materials and products from micro to macro scale. The all-in-one system includes:

• RAMP™ 3D Printer: First-ever automated continuous manufacturing system powered by roll-to-roll based digital photolithography that allows for the creation of continuous materials and products at an unlimited length.
• Generative Software: Custom algorithms optimize the design of dense micron-scale structures to produce highly customized, ultra fine and freeform features.
• Engineered Polymers: Engineered polymers with micron-scale precision that can be designed for advanced properties — spanning mechanical, biological, thermal, and more.

With the Medford expansion, OPT is broadening R&D, manufacturing and fulfillment capabilities.

“New and emerging technology industries recognize that Medford is an ideal place to start a business and access our incredible talent pool, robust City resources and top level restaurants and shops,” said Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. “I am thrilled that OPT Industries is choosing to call Medford home and it was an honor to cut the ribbon on their new headquarters in the City. This innovative company is hard at work perfecting a revolutionary 3D-printed nasal swab that can detect trace amounts of the COVID-19 virus, enabling people to get diagnosed and treated faster.”

As a fully equipped research lab and manufacturing site, the 14,000-square-foot facility adheres to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines and is pursuing ISO 13485:2016-certification for medical device manufacturing. Amid growing demand by Fortune 500 companies and market leaders for OPT’s products, including the InstaSwab™ high efficacy medical swab, OPT is establishing its first product line focused on serving the medical sector.

“OPT will be continuously enhancing new capabilities from our technologies to introduce new product lines for the industries we serve,” added Ou. “We work with our customers as a one-shop stop partner to design, develop and manufacture end products to meet their exact needs. Whether you’re a distributor or a brand interested in co-inventing a new product, OPT’s collaborative business model offers a new paradigm for product creation from inception to manufacturing.”