Fluent Metal—a company developing production-grade liquid metal printing that removes the barriers to entry for metal additive manufacturing—has launched out of stealth with an additional $3.2 million in funding. This funding round, led by E15 and with participation from Pillar VC and several angels, brings the total funding to $5.5 million.
The company’s drop-on-demand approach works with most metals, including refractories, and enables the creation of parts in a single-step process, minimizing variability. The process is energy efficient, using less starting material and producing no waste. This makes it far more sustainable than current powder-based metal 3D printers.
The existing metal additive manufacturing industry has been accepting the extensive industrial-scale overhead required to operate this equipment safely. Fluent Metal develops an alternative lean overhead process, making it more sustainable and operationally efficient, using an approach similar to an inkjet printer.
Fluent Metal’s drop-on-demand approach is:
- Functional — Fluent Metal enables accurate multi-metal printing, Using wire as the starting material and producing no waste. High-value metals can be intricately combined, creating properties that were never before possible. Complex shapes like fully enclosed voids and internal channels are possible due to the inkjet-like printhead and parallel throughput.
- Operationally efficient — Fluent Metal’s approach was designed to operate safely on a typical manufacturing floor or in a prototyping shop without needing clean rooms or expensive safety measures. The material changeover was also designed to be plug-and-play, reducing setup efforts and enabling higher machine uptimes.
- Sustainable — This approach does not produce waste and uses less energy than powder-based technologies.
Fluent Metal is led by industry veterans who have experience at Desktop Metal, Vulcan Forms, and the MIT Media Lab.
KEY QUOTES:
“Drop-on-demand technology is an elegant approach to create complex metal components. Whether it’s prototype iterations of an idea or production runs of a single part, Fluent Metal will provide customers with great operational and material flexibility. This freedom will unlock new creativity and problem solving abilities across industries.”
- CEO Peter Schmitt
“As the manufacturing industry evolves in response to the changing needs of global supply chains and sustainability demands, we need novel approaches to drive creativity and expand our collective conception about what’s possible. In the near term, Fluent Metal will spark the imagination of designers, engineers, and technologists to consider how rapid, on-demand production of custom metal parts could transform their capabilities. At scale, this approach will revolutionize the entire footprint and direction of industrial manufacturing.”
- Philip Liang, Managing Partner, E15
