Mantle has just secured a Series B financing of $25 million to expand commercial operations for its metal 3D printing technology. As a reminder, the California-based company turned stealth mode off in March when it launched its technology alongside a quiet $13M investment. While the current investment brings the total amount raised by the company to $41.5 million, this time it is led by Fine Structure Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments.
The new funding will support the development of new hardware, software and materials while increasing the workforce behind these developments.
The company that we recently interviewed in the latest edition of 3D ADEPT Mag is bringing to the market a metal 3D printing alternative that would provide a more interesting bet in terms of tool lead times and product-time-to-market; an alternative that is based on metal pastes.
The manufacturer has convinced more than one customer across industries that range from deodorant packaging to medical devices to dishwasher components. With over one million end-use parts produced for its customers, Mantle’s main focus consist in 3D printing the tools used to make end-use parts.
As per the words of the company, those tools traditionally have been time-consuming and expensive to make and are a bottleneck in manufacturers’ product launch schedules. At the heart of these productions, lies a technology that can combine accuracy, surface finish, and multiple tool steel materials while decreasing lead times and costs by over 65%, thereby shaving months off lengthy, costly hardware development cycles.
“Most of the products we use everyday are manufactured using the types of tools that Mantle prints,” said Ted Sorom, Mantle CEO and Co-Founder. “Our investors and customers are excited about the evolutionary and revolutionary nature of Mantle’s unique approach. Mantle allows companies to evolve with the manufacturing processes, materials, and supply chains they know and trust while realizing a revolutionary improvement in tooling lead time and cost.”
An interesting example of what the technology can do is seen in injection molding and custom automated assembly solutions. Tessy Plastics, a global contract manufacturer expert in the field has utilized Mantle’s 3D printed tooling components in a production tool for a high-volume consumer product. The company reports that over 400,000 cycles have run in the tool, which uses multiple 3D printed inserts. All moulded parts have met Tessy’s rigorous quality standards for dimensional accuracy and surface finish, Mantle shares in a press communication.
While we only highlighted the tooling market here, let’s remind that Mantle’s TrueShape technology can address a wide range of applications in the $350 billion precision parts market in the future, including jigs and fixtures, low volume industrial machinery and spare parts, and high volume part production.
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