Stratasys Ltd. (NASDAQ: SSYS) announced Wednesday morning that it has entered definitive agreements to acquire two privately held companies in the additive manufacturing services business. Solid Concepts and Harvest Technologies will be combined with Stratasys’s own RedEye service business when the acquisitions are completed in the third quarter of this year.

Stratasys will pay a total consideration of $295 million for Solid Concepts. The company did not disclose how much it is paying for Harvest Technologies. Both acquisitions include retention-related payments. Stratasys’s CEO said:

These transactions are consistent with our core strategic imperatives and M&A strategy, which is focused on acquiring leading companies to support our goal of continued leadership in the segments in which we operate, as well as reaching new niche verticals.

The acquisitions are interesting because they seem to be on a smaller scale than the company’s earlier acquisitions of Objet and MakerBot. Both those purchases have been positives for the company, adding scale and revenues within a year of the acquisitions. Stratasys expects the same performance within 12 months for both Solid Concepts and Harvest Technologies. Solid Concepts was founded in 1991 and currently has 450 employees. Harvest Technologies was started in 1995 and has 80 employees, so both have established a customer base in the additive manufacturing space.

Stratasys’s acquisition history is far different from that of competitor 3D Systems Corp. (NYSE: DDD), which has made more than 40 acquisitions in the past three years, most of which were small companies acquired for technology reasons. 3D Systems has acquired seven different primary printing technologies, while Stratasys has acquired just two. Integrating the different pieces could be both more costly and more difficult for 3D Systems than for Stratasys.

Buying additional resources in the services business creates a market for Stratasys’s technologies and its consumables. As with razors and blades and printers and ink cartridges, the payoff in consumables is significant, and Stratasys has found one way to increase demand. Stratasys beat earnings and revenues estimates last quarter and in 2013, and the company appears determined to stay on a growth path.

Shares of Stratasys were up 1.3% at $112.18 Wednesday morning, in a 52-week range of $67.92 to $138.10.

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