Singapore: Recognizing the potential landscape for the growth of 3D printing in Singapore, US-based Ultra Clean Holdings, a developer and supplier of critical systems and subsystems for sectors including medical and research industries, has acquired Singapore-based Prototype Asia and has expanded its additive manufacturing center in Singapore.

"Additive Manufacturing which enables the creation of three dimensional objects through successively adding layers of material, dramatically expands the scope of manufacturing and opens new realms of possibilities for industries and consumers," said Mr Clarence Granger, chairman and CEO, UCT. Mr Granger further added that "while this will have limited impact on our 2015 financial results, it is highly complementary to our existing offering and combining it with our existing contract manufacturing services will enable UCT's customers to benefit from the latest state of the art technologies while allowing UCT to expand its market reach."

Singapore has its 3D Printing Center that would support UCT to provide wide array of technologies including high-quality stereolithography, selective laser sintering, fused deposition modeling, wax jetting and direct metal laser sintering. It will offer services and develop Intellectual Property focusing on parts optimization and re-engineering for weight reduction and material savings, enablement of custom tooling creation for manufacturing, virtual warehousing and on demand part printing for spare, rare and obsolete parts, conformal cooling, micromechanics and on-demand consumer product manufacturing.

UCT will offer 3D Printing services to customers in industries, including medical, aerospace, computer/electronics, semiconductor, consumer products, and industrial machinery.

"We are excited to base our new 3D Printing service in Singapore where we benefit from a stable business environment, a rich pool of talent and the government's enthusiastic support of advanced manufacturing technologies. We will start providing our services during Q12015," said Mr Lavi Lev, SVP UCT Asia.