As Amazon and a few other companies are pushing 3D printing into e-commerce, Phoenix-based data center provider IO is bringing the technology into data center design.

The company uses a MakerBot 3D printer at its Chandler, Arizona, data center factory to prototype various components of its IO.Anywhere data center modules.

Getting a newly designed light-fixture bracket made by a contract manufacturer would cost between US$300 and $400 and take two weeks, Andreas Zoll, VP of engineering and product development at IO, said. The MakerBot produces the part in a few hours, and the cost is about $0.75.

“I can get it rather fast and for a low price,” he said. “If it doesn't work out, we can immediately go back to the drawing table and come up with another design.”

IO manufactures its data center modules in Chandler and ships them to its own or customers' sites in the US and overseas. The company constantly works on improving designs across all three of its product families: Core, Edge and Eco.

Other examples of parts the company's engineers prototype using 3D printing include door handles, solutions for hanging wires and for securing equipment.

They also print reduced-size models of the modules and infrastructure equipment, such as air handling units or power distribution gear to figure out the best ways to arrange the gear, Zoll said.

The company has been using the technology for about five months and the experience has been empowering. “Historically, we needed other companies or other organizations to help us with something,” he said.

The only way to avoid using outside manufacturers to make prototype parts before was to invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of metal working equipment.

Zoll declined to say how much the company spent on the printer, saying only that the MakerBot in Chandler was somewhere between the $2,000-plus models for home use and the heavy-duty industrial-grade units that cost tens of thousands of dollars.