Foundry Lab, a New Zealand metal foundry startup, has emerged from the stealth model after raising US$8 million in its Series A financing. 

With the support of venture capital firm Blackbird Ventures and Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck and others, the company has developed a digital microwave casting technology that enables the same-day turnover of metal castings.

According to Foundry Lab, its Digital Metal Casting (DMC) technology enables applications in large-scale manufacturing industries that metal 3D printing has not yet reached. The company said that through DMC, it can combine the freedom of metal 3D printing with the speed and economy of metal casting parts production.

David Moodie, CEO and founder of Foundry Lab, said: “3D printing is very suitable for making similar-looking parts, but the world runs on real parts, and metal printing can never produce real castings.” “We can use 3D Printing works at the speed you dream of."

Foundry Lab's DMC technology

Existing casting processes, such as investment casting, 3D printed sand molds, and die casting, usually require one to six weeks of production time. Foundry Lab is seeking to overcome the speed, simplicity and cost limitations of current metal casting technology through its DMC technology.

Where metal 3D printing can be slow and expensive due to limited and expensive materials, CNC machining "always has limitations" on the shapes it can produce, and leads to a lot of waste. At the same time, metal casting is an ideal large-scale manufacturing method, but the high set-up cost means that the technology cannot be used for anything with fewer than thousands of parts. 

Or, outsourcing castings to a foundry may delay the development cycle by several weeks, and many castings will not be short-term production because it is not cost-effective.

In order to solve the shortcomings of each casting technology, Foundry Lab developed its microwave DMC technology. DMC enables users to automatically generate parts for multiple components from CAD files in one day, and reportedly combines the geometry and design freedom of 3D printing with the production speed and economy of metal casting parts. 

Although the foundry laboratory has not released a lot of details about the working principle of DMC, it is designed to adapt to the company's existing development workflow without special design requirements. The company describes the DMC-Office System as a combination of hardware and software products that can achieve hands-free metal casting equivalents without pouring molten metal. 

The system is currently compatible with aluminum, magnesium, zinc, stainless steel and their casting alloys, and produces completely dense parts whose physical properties are "functionally equivalent" to those produced by traditional metal casting technology. According to Foundry Lab, the post-processing of parts produced by DMC is comparable to die casting. 

Foundry Lab is moving away from stealth mode after demonstrating its DMC technology's ability to produce strong cast components from CAD files in one day.

Foundry Lab claims that its DMC system enables users to create metal parts in any cast alloy for functional testing before mass production. To prove this, the company produced cast aluminum brake shoes from CAD files and completed the parts in less than eight hours. 

Looking to the future, the company said that the same parts manufactured on the DMC system will be used in large-scale manufacturing industries that metal 3D printing technology cannot yet serve. 

Foundry Lab has just completed a $8 million Series A financing and has received support from several well-known investors. Joining Blackbird and Beck are global investment companies such as GD1, Founders Fund, Promus Ventures, WNT Ventures, Icehouse, and K1W1. Autonomous car company Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma and former Autodesk CEO Carl Bass also expressed support for the company. 

Samantha Wong of Blackbird Ventures said: "Foundry Lab has the opportunity to influence the industry and redefine the way products are developed, and we are happy to help them expand globally." 

Foundry Lab regards the support of industry experts such as Beck, Iagnemma and Bass as an integral part of the company's global growth vision. The Series A financing will enable the company to expand its team as it seeks to recruit new talents in the fields of radio frequency and microwave engineering, mechatronics, and mechanical, analog, and software engineering. 

Promote metal 3D printing productivity

According to Ian Howe, CEO of 3D printer manufacturer Additive Industries, "reducing cost per kilogram" is "the biggest challenge facing the industry." In his view, if we want to really promote the penetration of metal 3D printing into industrial-scale applications, we must improve machine productivity and cost-effectiveness.

In the past, 3D printing and casting manufacturing processes were combined to manufacture molds at lower cost and higher efficiency. In the past, machine tool manufacturer TRUMPF deployed its TruPrint 1000 system to highlight the value of 3D printing in the manufacture of complex molds. Manufacturing system supplier Ingersoll Machine Tools used 3D printing to produce 22-foot-long mold blades for the production of helicopter rotor wings. 

Elsewhere, 3D printed molds have been used to produce transparent dental braces and hearing aids in the Middle East. Companies such as 3D Systems, voxeljet, and Soliscape have also released 3D printers dedicated to casting and molding applications. 

One potential competitor of Foundry Lab is the British metal 3D printing service Enable Manufacturing, which launched a new vacuum additive casting process earlier this year. The company claims that its technology can produce metal parts at a fraction of the cost of direct metal 3D printing, which is based on a hybrid method of 3D printing molds and cast part patterns, combined with vacuum casting technology to draw metal into fine structures. 

According to reports, Enable's additive casting process can provide the "best of both worlds", capable of producing more than 130 different metal parts at a lower cost than metal 3D printing and traditional manufacturing processes. 

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The featured image shows a metal bracket made using Foundry Lab's DMC technology. The photo is from the foundry laboratory.

Hayley is a 3DPI technical reporter with a background in B2B publications covering manufacturing, tools, and bicycles. She writes news and features, and has a keen interest in emerging technologies that affect the world in which we live.

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