Digital Alloys, a Boston based developer of metal 3D printers, has received a $12.9 million investment during a series B financing round led by G20 Ventures.
Industry readers will be familiar with Digital Alloys who, as we previously reported, has being developing a new approach to metal additive manufacturing since 2014. The latest round of investment comes after a $5 million round in 2017.
G20 Ventures was joined by Boeing HorizonX Ventures, Lincoln Electric, and Khosla Ventures in the series B financing.
Digital Alloys’ new metal additive manufacturing technology will be called Joule Printing. Today the company also announced two US patents for this wire feedstock 3D printing process – “Systems for Printing Three-Dimensional Objects” and “Magnet fabrication by additive manufacturing”.
What is this new metal additive manufacturing technique called Joule Printing?
Industry discussed Joule Printing with Digital Alloys CEO Duncan McCallum. McCallum explained that Joule Printing was, “created to free manufacturers from the shackles of slow, complicated and expensive metal 3D printing.”
One of the recent patents describes how a “wire is heated upon contact with the fabrication platform or a previous layer of the structure being fabricated via a pulse of electric current.” This enables the formation of “ a molten droplet (or “particle”) at the point of contact.
The metal additive manufacturing system is expected to find early application in “the production of conformally cooled tools for the automotive and consumer products industries, and the delivery of high-quality titanium parts for the aerospace industry,” according to Digital Alloys.
Investors comment on potential of Joule Printing
Bill Wiberg, co-founder and Partner of Boston-based G20 Ventures, said, “When you look at the process required to produce practical hard metal parts using the much-hyped early generation of metal printing, what you find is a Rube Goldberg machine of complexity, touchy materials, and complex finishing steps. This great team has invented and now commercialized an entirely new approach that’s both faster and cheaper to the point that – once you see it – you have to wonder why anyone would do it any other way.”
Brian Schettler, managing director of Boeing HorizonX Ventures said, “Our investment in Digital Alloys will further Boeing’s ability to produce a higher volume of metal structural aerospace parts faster than ever before.”
“Through emerging additive manufacturing technologies, we aim to accelerate the design and manufacture of 3D printed parts to transform production systems and products.”
Tom Matthews, senior vice president, technology and research and development at Lincoln Electric, said, “Our investment in Digital Alloys and Joule Printing™ technology extends Lincoln Electric’s presence in metal-based additive manufacturing and helps advance development of value-added solutions in areas such as tooling and low-volume cast parts.”
“Support from Boeing and Lincoln Electric will expand our expertise, technology and services,” said Duncan McCallum, CEO of Digital Alloys. “We are committed to providing the products and services manufacturers need to take advantage of metal 3D printing in production. We will save customers time, money, and hassle by enabling great engineers to solve manufacturing problems in new ways. The next industrial revolution is here”.
More information about Digital Alloys is available here.
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Featured image shows a render of the Digital Alloys metal 3D printer. Image via Digital Alloys.
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