Case Study: Global Good Fund achieves rapid, low-cost 3D manufacturing of field-ready TB diagnostic cassettes with Carbon

Carbon + Global Good Fund 3D manufacture TB field-trial devices

Global Good Fund, a collaboration between Intellectual Ventures and Bill Gates, set out to develop an affordable, easy-to-use, sputum-free tuberculosis diagnostic for low-resource settings but faced slow, costly prototyping and expensive mold cycles. To accelerate product development, Global Good Fund partnered with Carbon, using Carbon’s M Series printer and Digital Light Synthesis™ technology to prototype and produce plastic diagnostic cassettes quickly.

Carbon’s end-to-end 3D manufacturing solution (using RPU 70 material) let the team iterate rapidly—completing about 10 design iterations in half the time of the traditional approach—and perform design, validation, and manufacturing on the same platform. The result: significantly lower development costs, two- to threefold more iterations, and more than 1,000 3D-manufactured TB tests field-tested, helping Global Good Fund speed time to market and advance a low-cost diagnostic for global impact.

Global Good Fund

Nathan Myhrvold

Founder, Chief Executive Officer