Aurora Labs Nearing Launch of Revolutionary Metal 3D Printer

Aurora Labs is making good progress on launching their RMP-1 metal 3D printer.

The Australian company has invented a revolutionary new 3D printing process that can dramatically speed up the print duration, enabling the use of 3D printing in many more industrial scenarios. The only catch is, they haven’t released it yet.

We spoke with company representatives to find out more about the status of the machine.

The RMP-1 Rapid Manufacturing Printer is to be the first in a line of devices from Aurora Labs, and we’re told the device is still formally in the beta testing phase, but is “close” to being finalized.

They’ve made good progress on refining the machine’s output and speed. We are told they were able to achieve more than 99% density on recent metal test prints, and were able to 3D print a 180mm tall titanium part in only six hours.

Doing some arithmetic, that’s near 20 minutes per 10mm of part. For a metal 3D printer, that’s pretty fast. The best part is that this is their initial device configuration, and we’re pretty certain they’ll be able to increase speeds by adding more lasers and tweaking parameters.

Today the 40-person company is in the pre-order phase for the RMP-1, but seems to be successful. They have apparently lined up “6-12 months” of prototype work for the mining industry, which should keep them busy and financed.

Aurora Labs Partners With Gränges AB

This week they announced a deal with Sweden-based Gränges AB, a large manufacturer of rolled aluminum products, typically for heat exchangers used in the automotive industry. The deal with Gränges has them acquiring a new RMP-1 metal 3D printer, on which they will perform joint experiments with aluminum metal with Aurora Labs. I suspect they will be exploring different ideas to identify profitable use cases for industry, and in particular clients of Gränges.

The other interesting aspect of this arrangement is that Gränges will be supplying Aurora Labs with aluminum powder for use in their RMP-1 systems. This should solidify Aurora Labs’ supply lines for at least this particular metal. The memorandum of understanding between the two companies is to last five years.

Aurora Labs Financing

Aurora Labs says the arrangement could be worth up to US$7.75M if fully consummated. That’s good money for a startup company.

But I have a suspicion Aurora Labs will be getting a lot more money from other clients once their machine is finally released. They seem to have lined up a number of partners in several key industries that could be ready to take on the equipment when ready.

Via Aurora Labs