Freeform, a cutting-edge metallic 3D printing firm based by completed leaders and engineers from SpaceX, is rising from stealth and deploying software-defined, autonomous printing factories all over the world. The corporate’s acknowledged objective is to convey on-demand manufacturing to mainstream industries and allow the way forward for innovation. Freeform’s superior printing know-how eliminates historic manufacturing limitations and permits producers in any trade to shortly go from thought to quantity manufacturing.
Freeform’s workforce includes trade leaders from the likes of SpaceX, Velo3D, Carbon, Tesla, and Apple, who of their experiences have efficiently overcome the challenges of disruption. Freeform has raised $45M up to now and is backed by main Silicon Valley traders together with Two Sigma Ventures, Founders Fund, and Threshold Ventures. Mo Islam, Associate at Threshold, and Dusan Perovic, Associate at Two Sigma, are on Freeform’s Board of Administrators.
A number of concerns instantly come to thoughts. One is that the Freeform identify was not but taken by one other additive manufacturing-related firm. One other is that the Freeform.com web site tackle is taken by an on-demand video service (which doesn’t make lots of sense). Extra severely although, one vital consideration is that the variety of digital manufacturing tasks and corporations in Silicon Valley (and close by areas) is now beginning to add as much as fairly a couple of very attention-grabbing corporations. It started with Arevo however now others equivalent to Velo3D, Carbon, 3DEO, Arris, Morf3D (Nikon) in addition to the various area corporations on House Seashore are creating a strong hub that’s going to form manufacturing within the many years to come back, by shortly embracing and investing tasks which have the potential to “freeform” the way forward for superior manufacturing.
A scalable manufacturing facility structure
Traditionally, manufacturing limitations and a heavy reliance on human labor have basically restricted the tempo of innovation and resulted in lengthy and expensive efforts to scale manufacturing. Whereas 3D printing had promised to beat these challenges, printing at scale had but to be realized – incumbent know-how is just too gradual, the associated fee and energy of proudly owning and working machines are too excessive, and even the perfect techniques in the marketplace immediately are unable to persistently produce high-quality elements shortly.
Freeform’s autonomous printing factories and manufacturing-as-a-service enterprise mannequin remedy these challenges. Its proprietary know-how stack brings the scalability of software program to bodily manufacturing by leveraging superior sensing, real-time controls, and data-driven studying in a scalable manufacturing facility structure. Because of this, the corporate is producing digitally-verified, high-quality elements at unprecedented pace and price. This breakthrough method allows all industries to innovate quicker by leveraging additive manufacturing to provide elements at mass manufacturing scale.
“Whereas at SpaceX, I leveraged metallic 3D printing to speed up the event of quite a few rocket engines. We had been innovating in ways in which weren’t attainable earlier than and accelerating our trajectory towards the longer term; nonetheless, we finally realized that it was inconceivable to print at manufacturing scale utilizing even the perfect present applied sciences. We based Freeform to unravel this downside and to make this transformative know-how obtainable to all industries, giving anybody the flexibility to quickly take an thought and produce it at scale,” mentioned Erik Palitsch, Co-Founder and CEO of Freeform. “We’re bringing the perfect expertise on the planet collectively to disrupt the manufacturing trade, and with our current fundraise, we’re excited to scale manufacturing capability to make printing at scale obtainable to all industries.”
Trukin’ from prototype to manufacturing
Freeform is already serving to clients to innovate and get merchandise to market quicker. “As Embark brings autonomous trucking know-how to market, we’d like the flexibility to seamlessly scale up from prototype to manufacturing,” mentioned Brandon Connors, Head of Applications and Manufacturing at Embark Vehicles, a number one developer of autonomous know-how for the trucking trade. “Which means sourcing commercial-grade metallic elements on brief timelines, persistently and at a sensible value. Freeform’s printing service allows us to satisfy our manufacturing wants, improves provide chain reliability, and provides us the flexibility to vary designs with out impacting supply time in order that we will speed up the deployment of our know-how.”
As well as, Freeform is enabling clients to simply scale from preliminary designs into high-volume manufacturing. “Freeform presents us the flexibility to scale up from prototype to manufacturing,” mentioned Nick Doucette, Chief Operations Officer at Ursa Main. Ursa Main is an American aerospace firm that works with Freeform for the manufacturing of rocket engine elements. “Freeform’s printing service provides us the flexibility to vary designs quickly with out impacting manufacturing value or supply time. We’re capable of get constant, high-quality metallic elements in days as an alternative of weeks.”
In an unparalleled tempo of growth, Freeform has gone from the preliminary idea to deploying its first production-scale printing manufacturing facility in simply a few years and has to pay clients throughout superior vitality, automotive, aerospace, and industrial sectors.
“Freeform has revolutionized the additive method,” mentioned Scott Nolan, Investor from Founders Fund. “Others have tried addressing one part or downside at a time, like thermal stress, however nobody else has rethought the whole structure and method. Freeform has created extra flexibility for a way elements are printed, and their cost-effective mannequin has opened up an entire new class of 3D-printable elements.”
Associate at Two Sigma Ventures, Dusan Perovic, who led Freeform’s most up-to-date spherical equally affirms that Freeform is the suitable firm to scale metallic printing for the primary time. “Freeform represents a quantum leap ahead for additive manufacturing. And maybe simply as importantly, Erik, TJ, and the workforce are the suitable individuals to convey this know-how to a variety of industries–mixing experience and engineering savvy, with a mindset of fixed enchancment.”