A million parts in 3D printing? Mantle’s printed tooling powers mass production

I have written extensively on the rise of 3D printing and its use in countless applications for production tools and equipment, and parts and finished products. The technology has many advantages, but also has shortcomings in both areas. For finished parts, this is too slow for many mass production applications, so most experts agree that it will never replace legacy technologies like injection molding. For tooling, its tolerances and surface finishes often lead to the need for post-production processes that add time, cost and complexity.

Mantle, a San Francisco-based metal 3D printing startup, offers a solution. Focusing on the tools, molds and dies required for the production of high volume parts, the company has developed proprietary materials and a combined 3D printing and machining platform to provide production tools that have the required tolerances and surface finish without the need for post-processing. In so doing, they have significantly reduced both the time and the costs of developing and manufacturing the tools. Today, the company announced the closure of its Series B funding round, which raised $ 25 million and brought Mantle’s total funding to $ 41.5 million.

The members of the company’s management team bring a set of essential experiences to what Mantle has developed. “The impetus comes from where I started,” said Ted Sorom, CEO of the company. “I worked in a design and manufacturing plant that made underwater equipment and consumer products. I ended up becoming CTO and was responsible for the tools we used to make hundreds of metal and plastic parts. He brought knowledge of the difficulties of design and realization of these tools.

Paul DiLaura, Commercial Director, was working for the 3D printing company Carbon when they released their first products, and he built the sales and application engineering teams from scratch.

Steve Connor, Scientific Director of Mantle, brought his material and technology know-how from his background as a chemist in the solar industry, where he developed silver pastes used to cover the backs of photovoltaic panels. “He wasn’t excited about it as an industry, but it lived up to what we do: high-precision parts, with precision to tens of microns,” Sorom said.

What they developed was Mantle’s Trueshape technology. It starts with the company’s proprietary Flowable Metal Paste printing materials (inspired by Connor’s silver pastes), which mimic existing standard tool steels once the printing process is complete. The pastes are used to print a rough version of the tool being made using an extrusion-based printhead. While the part is still in the printer, it is shaped via a more standard machining process using a high speed cutting tool to provide the tight tolerances and fine surface finishes required. “We broke the problem down into a very specific set of steps,” Sorom said. “We know what material needs to be removed, because we put it there. “

From a production perspective, the process offers distinct advantages over the current CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machining standard for tool production. This completely subtractive method results in substantial material waste and additional costs, and is extremely time consuming. “We took an extremely expensive, multi-step process, and bundled it into one machine,” Sorom said.

The other advantage comes from Mantle’s production software. It takes a tool’s CAD file, including CAD files developed for legacy processing methods, and automatically creates toolpaths for printing and shaping. This eliminates the specialized and time-consuming CNC programming required for the subtractive process.

Mantle has worked with a number of part manufacturers to evaluate and validate its materials and technology, including Tessy Plastics and a global manufacturer of medical devices. Tessy has performed over 400,000 cycles using tools manufactured by Mantle, with parts produced meeting all quality standards. The medical device company was able to reduce the cost of developing a prototype tool by 65% ​​while reducing its development time from twelve to four weeks.

“The early years we focused on understanding the requirements – the materials and surface finishes – and developing the technology,” said DiLaura. “We wanted ours to be differentiated, and we didn’t want to come out with something that wasn’t fully formed. Now that the company begins to embark on full commercialization, with its first full-scale systems slated for delivery in early 2022, its co-founders see many opportunities. “A good thing about tooling is that the requirements are similar whether you are making a bottle cap or a surgical device,” DiLaura added. “We are able to handle a wide range of products in all industries because we focus on tooling. “

In the future, however, they see the direction changing. “In the long run, we don’t want to be a tooling company,” Sorom said. “We want to be a 3D printing company. We chose the tooling application specifically to build our business case. A potential future customer could be a manufacturer of older production machines requiring spare parts. Other metal 3D printers cannot make parts that will plug directly into the machine to get it back up and running. Our parts can. We envision a future where 60% of our business is in tooling and 40% in other such applications. “

Meanwhile, they also see themselves helping with other big issues. “We want to help bring the industry back from overseas,” Sorom said. “Billions of dollars of tooling are needed in the United States each year, and over 25% is currently imported from overseas. Almost all of the clients we speak to talk about relocation. And we know that our technology can also help address the skills shortage. “