3D printing, rapid prototyping company expands without leaving small community

The sort of work being done inside Primary Manufacturing might seem like the sort of specialization that would be found only in a tech-driven community in a large metro.To get more news about rapid prototyping companies, you can visit runsom.com official website.

Instead, the industrial 3D printing and rapid prototyping company is thriving in the Sioux Falls metro area from Humboldt, where it was founded in 2017.

“There’s a lot to be enthusiastic about in Humboldt, and Primary is right at the top of the list,” said Jesse Fonkert, president and CEO of Sioux Metro Growth Alliance. “The type of work being done here and the jobs being created are exactly what will help position a community like this for the future.”

We caught up with Ladd McCluskey, the engineer-founder behind the business – who’s now a Humboldt resident himself.It’s been good. We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds it seems. We have 10 employees now, and it’s been pretty awesome. We work with some of the biggest ag companies in the country and some very large automotive clients, but then we also work with local inventors. So it’s everything from one person who comes in with a cool idea to designing and building for some of the biggest names in industry.

We’ve added 3D metal printing recently, so we now can do three styles of stainless steel plus 4340, which is a steel that can be hardened. We doubled the size of our building to take on the steel process, so we’re at about 4,000 square feet now.
Why grow the business in Humboldt? What has kept you here?

We lived in Hartford at the time we started the business, and I saw Humboldt wasn’t growing at the same rate even though it was only 8 miles farther from Sioux Falls, and after watching the Twin Cities when we lived there in the ’80s and ’90s, there was an area that just exploded, and this made sense to me as our next tier out here.

How has Humboldt evolved as your business has?

It’s gone from having one or two houses come up for sale a year to having a development on the west side of town now. And our business isn’t the only one that’s built. First Manufacturing is in the process of building a new building. And there are new houses going up because you can still have a lot of things people really want in this part of the country. They want to live in a small town with safety and security, and get to know their neighbors. The other day, my wife and I were out for a walk, and a neighbor offered us extra tomatoes and zucchini. We help plow their snow. So it’s wonderful.

What more do you think Humboldt needs as a community?

We need to invest for the future to take advantage of the opportunities that exist for Humboldt. From Sioux Falls to Brandon is almost completely developed at this point, so development is coming, and we need a mindset of building for the future. We need to evolve in how we plan and look for jobs that will keep people local and pay a decent amount.