Compete Differently with Tobu, Consumables 10 Times Cheaper than Competitors, Shenzhen's Emerging 3D Printing Company Secures Over $4.7 Million in Crowdfunding | Product Observation

Author | Zhang Ziyi

Editor | Yuan Silai

Currently, companies such as TuoZhu, SmartPie, and Creality have brought the price of consumer - grade 3D printers down to the mainstream entry - level threshold of a thousand yuan, and their sales account for over 90% of the global consumer - grade 3D printer market. It seems that there isn't much room for imagination for new entrants.

However, at the beginning of this year, a new player on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform still managed to break through: the FibreSeeker 3, the world's first consumer - grade continuous fiber 3D printer, raised over $4.7 million in crowdfunding with a price of less than $3,000.

The FibreSeeker 3 doesn't print plastic figurines, but carbon fiber structural parts with strength comparable to that of aluminum alloy. It is a new brand, CarbonSeeker Technology, launched by the emerging company Anisoprint 3D.

Carbon fiber is an area that most consumer - grade 3D printing companies haven't ventured into. Anisoprint 3D is one of the few companies in the world capable of researching, developing, and producing continuous fiber 3D printers. This company was founded in 2023 and used to do B - to - B business. As an emerging technology, continuous fiber 3D printing serves heavy - industry enterprises such as those in aerospace, automobile manufacturing, racing, and large machinery. The price of a single machine ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, which discourages ordinary consumers.

In 2024, Liu Rui, the CEO of Anisoprint 3D, decided to shift from the enterprise end to the consumer end. At that time, many people in the company thought he was "crazy." After all, they had to reduce the price of their machines and materials by 90% to enter the consumer - grade market. In the past, no company in the industry dared to make such an attempt.

But Liu Rui had his own considerations. "In many cases, the popularization of technology has no absolute connection with the maturity of technology. Instead, everything is closely related to people."

When a new technology is cutting - edge and expensive, young engineers are often the first to keenly capture its value. However, due to the lack of purchasing decision - making power, those engineers who are truly passionate and creative about technology end up being the ones who can't afford the machines.

This made Liu Rui feel it was a pity that the technology of carbon fiber 3D printing was limited by price and customers and couldn't be further popularized. Thus, the idea of making a consumer - grade continuous fiber 3D printer germinated.

"What if this technology isn't just used for rockets worth billions of dollars or racing cars worth millions of dollars? What if we turn this technology into a product that engineers, creators, and even students can use at their desks?" Liu Rui once said in a video.

Although the 3D printer market has a pattern of one dominant player and several strong ones, Anisoprint 3D has still made technological innovations. This might be the only possibility for a startup to carve out a share of the market.

01 "Dislocation Competition" of Emerging Technologies

CarbonSeeker Technology's crowdfunding results on Kickstarter have proven that they have achieved their initial goal of shifting to the C - to - C industry.

The crowdfunding results of the FibreSeeker 3 not only place it in the first echelon of the most successful 3D printer projects in Kickstarter's history but also mark that the originally expensive continuous fiber 3D printer can enter the desktop - grade 3D printing market at a price of less than $3,000.

The 3D printing media All3DP evaluated its crowdfunding performance as "directly threatening the dominant position of industry giant Markforged."

Currently, the competition in the consumer - grade 3D printing market is mainly concentrated in the plastic printing field. The products are highly homogeneous, and the focus of competition is on printing speed, price, and multi - color printing. This is a red - ocean market.

Outside the red - ocean market, in high - end scenarios of industrial R & D and consumer electronics, there is still a demand for high - strength and lightweight parts, which is precisely the advantage of carbon fiber 3D printing. Carbon fiber has strong rigidity and tensile strength, while its relative density is much lower than that of steel and aluminum. The strength - to - weight ratio of carbon fiber is extremely high, so it is widely used in the aerospace and automobile industries.

Carbon fiber 3D printing is divided into short - fiber and continuous - fiber printing. The former involves mixing chopped carbon fiber powder into plastic filaments. However, this can only slightly improve the rigidity and can't change the nature of plastic.

Continuous fiber was invented in 2014, breaking through the limitations of short - fiber printing. It can directly print a continuous, unbroken fiber (such as carbon fiber, glass fiber, or aramid fiber) wrapped in thermoplastic or thermosetting resin. Since the fiber is unbroken, the tensile strength of continuous - fiber printed parts in a specific direction can be comparable to or even exceed that of aluminum alloy, while being lighter in weight.

At that time, Markforged, a startup, launched the world's first continuous carbon fiber 3D printer, the Mark One. It pioneered the dual - nozzle continuous fiber printing technology, making it possible for desktop - grade devices to print parts with metal - level strength for the first time.

There are only a few companies in the world that commercially sell continuous fiber 3D printers on a large scale (with no more than 5 core players). This is undoubtedly a highly concentrated market with high entry barriers. And CarbonSeeker Technology is the only Chinese company in this field.

Looking back at the development history of Anisoprint 3D, HardKrypton learned that in 2020, Liu Rui, as the exclusive Chinese agent of Anisoprint, successfully introduced this technology into China and opened up the market. By 2022, due to the high overseas promotion costs and a weak supply chain, Anisoprint encountered a bottleneck in commercial implementation and couldn't achieve large - scale mass production. Based on the trust established through previous cooperation, the founding team invited Liu Rui to serve as the global CEO and lead the company's strategic shift to China.

In 2023, Liu Rui officially founded Anisoprint 3D. After receiving support from capital such as Sequoia Capital and GF Securities, the company completed a full - scale acquisition of Anisoprint. This move absorbed its core expert team, all technical patents, and global channels, and a R & D and production base was built in Suzhou.

HardKrypton has previouslyreported. In 2025, they officially entered the consumer - grade market.

An investor focusing on the Maker track believes that "CarbonSeeker Technology has chosen a very clever track. It is in a dislocation - competition market with TuoZhu, and TuoZhu won't enter this market at this stage. It can be used to print rigid parts, such as drone parts and wrenches. The market is not small. The only problem is that it doesn't have much social attribute, so it's a question mark whether it can enter households."

Not only is it in dislocation competition with TuoZhu, but the consumer - grade continuous fiber 3D printer can replace some CNC - machined metal parts in scenarios that require small - batch, highly customized, high - strength, lightweight parts and urgent delivery.

This also means that CarbonSeeker Technology can also enter the market that consumer - grade CNC products focus on.

02 An Open - Source System with a 10 - Fold Price Reduction

HardKrypton briefly used the FibreSeeker 3 in CarbonSeeker Technology's Shenzhen office. It is a bit larger than regular consumer - grade 3D printers. The screen on the machine can print pre - installed models, and the operation is almost foolproof.

Behind the foolproof operation is one of the moats built by CarbonSeeker Technology with its slicing software.

Traditional 3D printing slicing software can't handle fiber path planning and requires a special algorithm. The self - developed slicing software Rocket Slicer of CarbonSeeker Technology can automatically complete fiber path planning and generate printing codes with one click. Without the need for complex technical support and training, non - professional users can easily get started.

Liu Rui told HardKrypton that the fiber path planning algorithm of the Rocket Slicer software is trained based on thousands of groups of experimental data, containing a large number of empirical parameters and dynamic models, making reverse engineering extremely difficult.

The structural parts printed by the FibreSeeker 3 are quite strong. They have a plastic appearance, but upon closer inspection of the interior, carbon fiber can be seen arranged inside.

This uses the self - developed Composite Fiber Co - Extrusion (CFC) technology of Anisoprint 3D, which is also one of its core technologies. Its principle can be compared to reinforced concrete: while the plastic is melted and extruded, continuous carbon fiber filaments are embedded inside as a skeleton to bear the main load, making the tensile strength of the finally printed parts reach 900 MPa, more than ten times that of traditional materials.

Liu Rui told HardKrypton, "It's not difficult to make the machine simple. The difficult part is how to make the consumables cheap. If a consumer - grade device can't solve the problem of cheap materials, there's no point in selling it."

Reducing the price of consumables has also become the key to CarbonSeeker Technology's shift to the C - to - C market.

The price of continuous fiber 3D printing consumables is very high. Taking industry giant Markforged as an example, the price of a roll of continuous fiber consumables is usually about 3,000 yuan.

The production process of continuous carbon fiber is quite complex and requires a complex "pre - impregnation" treatment, that is, making the resin/polymer perfectly wrap and penetrate into the carbon fiber. The production difficulty is high, involving complex formula improvement and yield control. In the past, many industry insiders even thought it was "impossible" to reduce the cost of this process.

In Liu Rui's view, this is something worth taking a gamble on. They spent a lot of time and over ten million dollars, using various raw materials and processes to develop and experiment.

Finally, the price of the self - produced consumables of CarbonSeeker Technology is 70% lower than that of similar products on the market. A 1K 500m X - CCF continuous carbon fiber costs only 398 yuan per roll.

Different from Markforged, which uses a closed system and strongly binds the machine and consumables, the FibreSeeker 3 supports an open system. Users can freely match cheap PLA, PETG, or high - performance PC and special nylon on the market as plastic substrates. At the same time, to ensure that third - party materials can also achieve the nominal "metal - level strength," the self - developed Rocket Slicer slicing software has a built - in algorithm parameter library that can automatically adjust the extrusion speed and fiber tension according to basic parameters.

In Liu Rui's view, the continuous fiber 3D printing industry is still in its early stage of development. A closed system will increase the usage threshold for customers and limit the overall development of the industry. Only by opening up the material system, allowing more customers to try continuous fiber printing at a low cost, and attracting material manufacturers to join the company's ecosystem to jointly enrich the types of compatible materials can the entire industry finally mature.

In the evolution history of 3D printing, "openness" and "open - source" have always been the underlying logic. This technology, which was born in the 1980s, has truly broken through the walls of the laboratory and achieved the unprecedented prosperity of the consumer - grade 3D printer market today, thanks to generations of geeks and enterprises sharing hardware architectures and developing open - source software with enthusiasm.

As for continuous fiber 3D printers, international giants have built a very high wall around the technology with equipment prices of hundreds of thousands of dollars and strongly - bound expensive consumables, limiting this technology to a few industries and groups of people.

CarbonSeeker Technology, which is moving towards the consumer end, may be trying to break a gap in this high - tech wall, allowing more engineers and makers to use this technology at a very low threshold.