MERRIMACK – Solidscape, an area pioneer in building 3-D printers for small businesses, is about to expand greatly in the Chinese market, selling its printers to jewelers with a local partner and helping establish schools to teach and develop their use via computer-aided design.

“This is an example of leveraging local talent to be more and more a global player,” Fabio Esposito, president of Solidscape, said during a contract-signing presentation Wednesday that drew several executives from the Kangshuo Group in China.

Solidscape does all its research and manufacturing, including the development of special waxes for its molds, in its Merrimack headquarters, where 86 of the firm’s 94 employees work. The staff has increased by about 40 percent in the past year, partly in anticipation of more China sales, Dahl said.

The firm expects that the partnership with Kangshuo Group will increase its production of machines by about 25 percent within a year. Solidscape, a wholly owned subsidiary of Stratasys Inc., does not release sales figures.

The company, which traces its roots in the area back 22 years, to the birth of 3-D printing, has flourished due to the extreme precision with which its machines can create wax models that are used in casting of metal parts.

“We can deposit 5 drops across the edge of your business card,” said Bill Dahl, vice president of products and marketing for Solidscape, giving a visual image for the 6-micron resolution – or precision to six millionths of a meter – possible with the company’s 3-D printers.

Solidscape says this precision leads the industry, and is why it has prospered in the custom-jewelry business. The printers, which sell for between $20,000 and $55,000, create models that allow one-of-a-kind or specialty products such as rings, bracelets and earrings to be cast in precious metals, more cheaply and quickly than possible with traditional manufacturing.

The printers also create molds that lead to the creation of everything from components of a Bluetooth-enabled “smart bracelet” to ultra-precise models of historic artifacts for public display or academic research. They also show signs of disrupting the entire manufacturing process by cutting out entire steps.

Wednesday’s announcement drew Bin Liu, founder and president of the Beijing-based Kangshuo Group, and several members of his team to a singing ceremony to seal the agreement.

Kangshuo has been a reseller of Solidscape printers in China for a year. Under the new partnership, it will develop five service bureaus, starting this summer and expanding into Shanghai and Beijing by next year.

These bureaus will take computer-aided design or CAD files from jewelers and turn them into wax models. Those models will then be encased in plaster-like material, after which the wax will be melted away, leaving a void into which metal can be poured to create a piece of jewelry.

Local staff at the service bureaus will be trained to help jewelers understand how and when to use the printers, officials said.

About half of its printer sales are overseas, roughly split between Europe and Asia, Dahl said.

Esposito and Bin Liu said Wednesday that Solidscape would also be working with Kangshuo as part of the latter’s contract with the Chinese Ministry of Education to develop as many as 100 schools to teach computer-aided design and the use of 3-D printers for rapid manufacturing.

“We want to help China develop a middle class, develop a business class … to educate the market,” Esposito said. “This would be teaching how to design CAD and how to use 3-D printing.”

3-D printing is more formally known as “additive manufacturing” because material is slowly added to build up the final product. It uses printers similar to those in ink-jet printers, except they deposit wax into three-dimensional models rather than ink into two-dimensional print.

Part of Solidscape’s success lies in its proprietary waxes, which must meet a variety of specific characteristics involving such things as rate of shrinkage under high temperature and pressure, and lack of remaining ash after it has been burnt away – all while being non-toxic and easy to handle, said Laura Kiefer, a chemist who is Solidscape’s director of product development.

“We do everything with that in mind, that customers can handle them safely under a normal environment,” she said.

Part of the work done at the Merrimack facility involves developing and testing what are formally known as thermoplastic materials.

Customer feedback has led Solidscape to package the two waxes – one for support as the model is being created, the other for the model itself – in sticks that are not only different colors but different shapes, so they can’t be mistakenly placed in the wrong part of the 3-D printer.

“We are no longer making printers for engineers. There are used by people in offices, ordinary people,” said Dahl. Similarly, he said, the touch-screen controls are largely icons rather than words, which also aids international sales.

Solidscape traces its roots back to Royden Sanders of Sanders Associates fame, who in 1993 created a firm to build machines that created three-dimensional wax prototypes using personal computers. Although that effort was ahead of its time, it eventually became Solidscape.

Minnesota-based Statasys, which makes 3-D printers for different applications, bought Solidscape in 2011.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531, dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com or @GraniteGeek.