Seven years ago, Martin Feldmann, an Ex-Daimler who worked on castings at the automotive company, and John Hart, a professor at MIT had a concept, minimal lab testing and an approach that could address three main challenges in metal additive manufacturing: mass-manufacturing throughput at appropriate costs with material properties that were equivalent to well-established manufacturing techniques.
This idea eventually led them to develop and operate advanced digital manufacturing infrastructure. With a total of $355 Million raised to date, VulcanForms is valued at over $1 billion and counts among its investors VC firms like Eclipse Ventures, Stata Venture Partners, Fontinalis Partners, D1 Capital Partners, Standard Investments, Atlas Innovate, Boston Seed Capital, Industry Ventures, and the Simkins Family.
The announcement coincides with the inauguation of the company’s two digital production facilities, in Devens, MA and Newburyport, MA, which capture the full value chain for precision metal components and assemblies.
The Devens’ facility, VulcanOne, is powered by a fleet of VulcanForms’ proprietary 100-kilowatt class laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing systems, which will total over 2 megawatts of laser capacity. The Newburyport facility on the other hand, focuses on automated precision machining and assembly operations.
As you may guess, VulcanForms’ 3D printers are its core intellectual asset, protected by dozens of patents.
Merging these technologies with a digital thread, VulcanForms offers “U.S.-based digital manufacturing infrastructure to its customers”, a press release reads. By building each stage of the manufacturing process itself, making its own printers, designing parts, doing final machining and testing, VulcanForms is developing a concept that ensures control over the entire manufacturing process.
In order to seamlessly integrate additive production at scale with heat treatment, precision machining, assembly, and inspection, VulcanForms has acquired Arwood Machine Corporation in Newburyport, MA.
“By scaling advanced digital manufacturing, we can create a new era of U.S. innovation and economic growth,” said VulcanForms Co-Founder, President & CEO Martin C. Feldmann. “We’ve recognized a game-changing opportunity when additive manufacturing technology is scaled for industrial production and is seamlessly integrated with automated machining and robotics. VulcanForms has built the physical infrastructure and digital workflows to deliver this full-stack manufacturing solution at unprecedented speed, precision, quality, and scale. Our technologies combined with our team of engineering and operations leaders from Google, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney, Precision Castparts, IPG Photonics, Faro Technologies, Schlumberger, Alcoa, Autodesk, among others enable our customers to innovate, grow and deliver sustainable impact faster.”
With their manufacturing approach, VulcanForms targets companies in the aviation, space, defense, medical, semiconductor, and other critical industries. It currently supplies over a dozen U.S. Department of Defense programs, including the F35 Joint Strike Fighter and Patriot Air Defense System, has delivered thousands of components for the semiconductor industry, and is enabling innovation in medical implants.
“VulcanForms brings forth metal additive manufacturing as a scalable industrial process, and as a cornerstone of breakthrough digital production systems,” said VulcanForms Co-Founder John Hart, also a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. “Integrated digital production facilities are critical infrastructure which will accelerate domestic and global innovation and draw top talent to the manufacturing sector.”
“Move Fast and Make Things” has become more than just VulcanForms’ leitmotiv. With a newly funding round, an acquisition, hundreds of manufacturing jobs created, and a very attractive manufacturing concept, they are currently walking the talk.
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