Prusa Research was founded in 2012 by Josef Prusa. The company started as just himself with no outside funding and quickly began to grow into a now 500-person company with over 9,000 printers running at the Prusa factory. His original i3 design for the printer became one of the most popular 3D printer designs due to its open-source nature. They have become the fastest-growing tech company in Western Europe with a growth rate of 17,118% over the last four years. The largest reason for the company’s success is the decision to remain a completely open source. All the firmware, models, circuit board designs, and blueprints have been made public for people to customize, improve, and tinker with to make the product their own if they care to do so. Prusa has managed to be a leader in 3D printing innovation and design because of this principle. This allows people within this community to build off the work of those that came before them, instead of constantly having to work from the ground up. There are countless other 3D printing companies and designs out there, but you would be hard-pressed to find a printer that is not based on or highly influenced by the work of Prusa. Prusa Research has managed to play one of the largest roles in innovation for the 3D printing community in such a short amount of time, and it has been one of the largest contributors to the progression of 3D printing today.

Written By: K. Mortensen