Manufacturing has been one of many hottest classes in enterprise this 12 months, however there are nonetheless many progressive supplies and processes but to scale. One instance is thermoset composites, supplies extensively utilized in aerospace and protection because of their excessive warmth resistance and lightweight weight, however which generally have lengthy lead instances and excessive costs for patrons.
Raven House Methods, a startup primarily based in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, says it has developed a brand new course of to allow the primary scalable 3D printing of economic, off-the-shelf thermoset composite parts.
“We’re essentially unlocking an entire field of 3D printing to production scale,” Raven cofounder and CEO Blake Herren mentioned in a current interview. “We’re taking these off the shelf materials that have been proven for both structures and thermal protection applications, and automating the near net shape production by 3D printing them for the first time.”
Raven is ready to do that utilizing a expertise they’ve patented known as Microwave Assisted Deposition (MAD) 3D printing. Often thermoset composites require hours and even days in an oven to harden or remedy, however the MAD course of basically cures the supplies throughout the printing course of, a bit like laser-based steel additive printing.
Herren and his cofounder, Ryan Cowdrey, began engaged on the expertise whereas grad college students on the College of Oklahoma. Across the time they graduated, they landed about one million in grants by means of the Small Enterprise Innovation and Analysis program to take the MAD 3D printing idea from whiteboard to prototype. Since 2020, Raven has scored round $4.5 million of non-dilutive contracts from the Air Pressure, NASA, the Nationwide Science Basis and different awards.
To take the expertise to the following degree, the startup additionally simply closed a $2 million pre-seed spherical led by Backswing Ventures with participation from 46 Enterprise Capital, Mana Ventures, What If Ventures, and Cape Concern Ventures.
The brand new capital will go towards the corporate’s first full-scale manufacturing traces: production-scale 3D printers, mixing techniques, and machining. By the second quarter of subsequent 12 months, Raven goals to maneuver out of its 3,000-square-foot facility and into a bigger manufacturing facility licensed for aerospace manufacturing. There, they’ll begin manufacturing parts for patrons, beginning with smaller parts and scaling up from there.
Raven’s go-to-market technique is to offer thermal safety parts for stable rocket motors and hypersonic vessels initially, as a result of that’s the place the 2 cofounders noticed demand from the Division of Protection, Herren mentioned.
“We’re not the world superpower we once were,” he mentioned. “There’s a massive need there — supply chain, bottle-neck issues, everybody has a hair-on-fire problem with these thermal protection and structure materials.”
In these industries, “there are not enough suppliers,” he mentioned. Of the suppliers that do exist, many work in outdated factories utilizing strategies relationship again a long time. Herren mentioned scaling the brand new 3D printing course of will go hand in hand with constructing a next-gen manufacturing facility, with a purpose to cut back lead instances to days as an alternative of a number of months or over a 12 months.
“I think the industrial base requires implementing software and robotics into our factories to solve these supply chain issues and, frankly, compete globally,” he mentioned.
Past hypersonics and rockets, the corporate has additionally had conversations with autonomous techniques suppliers, satellite tv for pc producers and house propulsion. Earlier this week, the corporate introduced it was partnering with reentry capsule developer SpaceWorks to develop 3D-printed reentry automobile aeroshells — the construction that encapsulates the spacecraft and supplies the thermal safety — to allow the DOD to check hypersonic tech.
The tech continues to be early, in that there are nonetheless tech challenges concerned with scaling it to print bigger constructions, Herren admits, however “once it’s fully developed, I see this as changing the way we make large-scale composites.”
“It’s going to take some capital and time to scale up to the very large systems that this can be used for … But right now, it’s simple, small parts, using designs that are delivered by customers, and solving the supply chain issues by really developing the most efficient production lines that we can.”
