proto labs – Real Parts. Really Fast.

Proto Labs was founded as The ProtoMold Company in 1999 by Larry Lukis, a successful entrepreneur and computer geek. Larry previously was co-founder of a successful $100 million company that wanted to design a better printer, and was floored by the time and money it took to get injection-molded parts. His answer was to develop an automated process for producing injection-molded parts in a fraction of the time and cost it had taken before. With a stated mission "to radically reduce the time it takes to get prototype injection-molded plastic parts" and "to make plastic injection molding a practical option for products not requiring large quantities of parts," Protomold was off and running.