“What amazed me was that within just a few minutes, the whole account setup was seamless. There were some additional documents needed for legal purposes, but the entire onboarding went super smooth.”
Maximilian Eils, CEO, Spectroplast
On a workbench in a Munich lab sits a human heart. It is not a real one, but it is close enough to fool the hands: soft where a heart is soft, thin-walled where the tissue thins, printed layer by layer from real silicone so that a surgeon can rehearse a valve operation before ever entering the operating room. Beside it is a model of a brain, complete with a tiny bulge on one of its vessels — an aneurysm, reproduced from a real patient’s scan so that a surgeon can practise placing the clip that will keep it from rupturing.
These are the parts that Spectroplast makes: objects that were, until recently, impossible to manufacture. Founded in 2018 as a spin-off of ETH Zurich, the company cracked a problem the 3D-printing world had struggled with for years — how to print in real silicone, not a substitute for it. Late in 2025 it moved its base to Munich and brought in a new CEO, Maximilian Eils, to carry the technology out of the laboratory and into serial production. One of his first decisions as he set up the new company had nothing to do with silicone at all. It was choosing which financial platform a fast-moving, deliberately digital business should run on.
An Enabler, Not a Product Company
Ask Max what Spectroplast does and he resists the obvious answer. The company does not sell simple 3D-printed parts. It sells a capability — the ability to combine the design freedom of 3D printing with the performance of a material that engineers already trust.
“We combine the advantages of 3D printing — design freedom, lot-size-one production — with the properties of real silicone, which especially in the medical context you need, in terms of biocompatibility and skin sensitivity,” Max says. Silicone is chemically inert, resistant to harsh chemicals and high temperatures, and gentle enough to sit against skin. It is, as his R&D director, Dr. Erika Fantino, puts it, “one of the most used polymers in the world” — but printing it, layer by layer, was the part no one had solved.
“We see ourselves as an enabler. We don’t bring the product to market ourselves, but we have a technology that enables new things.”
Maximilian Eils, CEO, Spectroplast
That positioning runs through the whole operation. A customer — an engineer, usually — uploads a CAD file to Spectroplast’s online shop. Within seconds the platform tells them whether the part is printable, flags walls that are too thin, and returns a price. If it works, they order it, and Spectroplast prints and ships it. No tooling. No minimum order quantity. A part in days, not months.
Where Milliseconds and Millimetres Matter
Spectroplast’s two core markets could hardly move at more different speeds, and that is precisely the point. In robotics, companies iterate fast — running several versions of a machine at once, each needing soft, custom parts to grip and sense the world. For one Spectroplast customer, a prosthetics manufacturer in the UK, that means printing six or seven versions of a customisable fingertip in a matter of days, so the customer can test them and pick the best one before scaling into production.
“This quick iteration speed, you can only do with 3D printing. But they still need the properties of silicone, and that’s our sweet spot.”
Maximilian Eils, CEO, Spectroplast
Medicine moves the other way — slowly, deliberately, under heavy regulation — but the payoff is just as concrete. Beyond the surgical-training hearts and aneurysm models, Spectroplast has printed components that go inside the body: one customer’s medical tool for closing a fistula uses vacuum channels so fine that no conventional process could form them. Some parts sit against the skin; some have worn inside a patient for 24 hours in clinical trials. The resolution that makes this possible reaches down to around 100 to 150 microns — roughly the width of a thin hair.
From an ETH Idea to a Munich Factory Floor
The story starts not in Munich but in Zurich. “Spectroplast originally started at ETH in Zurich. Two PhD students found a way to make silicone 3D-printable — that was a really unique innovation back then,” Max says. Those two researchers, Dr. Manuel Schaffner and Dr. Petar Stefanov, turned a laboratory breakthrough into a company. Max joined in late 2025 to build the next chapter: a new team, a new lab, and the shift from prototyping toward serial production.
The silicone material itself is proprietary. Spectroplast mixes its own silicone resins and holds the intellectual property on them — white and black as standard, custom colours on request, down to a fluorescent orange for one customer. Eleven printers run almost constantly on commercial orders while a separate bench tests new machines and new formulations. Down the hall, each batch is checked in a quality-control room: viscosity and cure speed, tear strength and elongation, and an automated microscope that measures whether the smallest parts came out to size.
“For me, it’s very interesting to build a company, and I’m fortunate to have a great team and amazing technology.”
Maximilian Eils, CEO, Spectroplast
Why a New Material Is Also a Certification Problem
The hardest part of Spectroplast’s work is often not the printing. It is proving that a printed part behaves like the material customers have relied on for decades. “The whole 3D-printing world faces the same challenge,” Erika explains. “With a new technology, the entire process chain and all the tests have to be redone to prove the material behaves like what you’re used to. And that takes time.”
“With a new technology, the entire process chain and all the tests have to be redone to prove the material behaves like what you’re used to. And that takes time.”
Dr. Erika Fantino, Director of R&D and Product Development, Spectroplast
In medical and aerospace applications, that means clearing a wall of regulation before anything reaches a patient or a machine. Spectroplast supplies the technology and the material and then supports its customers through the testing required to certify a product. In less-regulated industrial work — seals, housings, general parts — the path is shorter, which is why those markets are often the first door in. Either way, the company’s ambition under Max is to make silicone additive manufacturing dependable enough for real production, not just prototypes.
The Financial Platform for a Company Built to Move Fast
When Max joined Spectroplast and set up the new company in Munich, the practical questions piled up — including which financial provider to use. “For me it was clear that we want to go very progressive with our company. We want to move fast and leverage AI as much as possible,” he says. He wanted a financial partner that felt like the business he was building: innovative, and willing to push past the conventions of traditional finance. He found Vivid.
The onboarding, as the hero quote above records, was seamless — the account was set up in minutes. What kept him was what came after. Every member of the team has a card, and Max controls the whole picture from one place.
“Everyone on the team has a card, and issuing one is just a few clicks — a digital card in Apple Wallet, you enter the name, send the email, and it’s on their phone. I can control the spending limits and see who is purchasing what.”
Maximilian Eils, CEO, Spectroplast
Receipts are uploaded with a single photo. When a colleague forgets, Max can nudge them from the app. A new categorisation feature shows him where the money is going — useful for a young company with lean bookkeeping — and the records export cleanly to the external payroll provider and tax advisor who handle the rest. The point, for him, is focus: “This really ensures the team can focus on the core — developing materials and bringing parts to market — while the whole administration and finance side is at your fingertips and easy.”
He also values that the data is his to export and move elsewhere — the flexibility, as he puts it, of not being locked in.
Back in the lab, a printer lowers its platform into a bath of liquid silicone, and light begins to draw a shape that a mould could never release. In five days it will be a part in someone’s hand — a robot’s fingertip, a seal for a new product, a medical tool bound for a clinical trial. “We work with different industries and customers to bring products to market and let them use our technology to make an impact,” Max says. “That’s a great feeling.”
Note: This article reflects the individual experience of a Vivid customer and is provided for general information only. It is not legal, financial, investment or tax advice, and is not a guarantee of future results. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of capital; the value of investments can go down as well as up. Product availability, rates and conditions depend on your plan and may change. Information is accurate as of September 2026. For decisions specific to your business, seek qualified professional advice.
