London-based Ai Build has received a significant investment to boost their manufacturing platform.
Ai Build, founded in 2015, is all about 3D printing toolpaths. Their flagship product, AiSync, is an extremely powerful software platform that can generate highly complex additive toolpaths for multi-axis devices. The software can also control and monitor operations in real time, regardless of printer location.
These capabilities seem to be most frequently used with robotic 3D printing systems, where there is tremendous freedom of movement over the more conventional cartesian or layer-by-layer 3D printing systems.
That freedom, combined with toolpaths generated by Ai Build, can enable radical 3D printing approaches, including:
- Non-planar toolpaths
- Multi-planar toolpaths
- Conformal toolpaths
- Segmented toolpaths
- Angular toolpaths
- And more
Basically, it would appear that AiSync can make additive robots do almost any practical deposition approach you can imagine. There are several major benefits:
- Parts are strong in the directions required
- Need for support structures is reduced or eliminated
- Less material is used
This capability has enabled Ai Build to take on a series of fascinating and highly complex build projects, one of which was selected as our Design of the Week in 2017. Ai Build offers access to their cloud-based system on a subscription basis.
Currently, the company has been working with robotic-based systems from Kuka, and metal 3D printing technology from Meltio, in addition to their own machines that we detailed back in 2019.
The news is that the company has secured an investment round of US$3.2M to boost their development efforts. They explain:
āThe new investment received will accelerate Ai Buildās efforts to further develop its machine learning models for fully automated quality assurance and integrate its software into a wide range of industry standard 3D printers around the world. By creating a collaborative culture among its partners and customers across multiple industries, Ai Build has the express interest of unlocking the full potential of additive manufacturing to reach true global scalability.ā
Their powerful tools are in a very good spot right now, as many manufacturers seek internal or at least regional manufacturing solutions due to the breakdown of global supply chains. Ai Buildās platform can enable the production of large and complex parts that few, if any other 3D print companies are able to do.
Thatās my suspicion as to why the investors came forward at this time: there is great potential for expansion, and I suspect this is not the last raise to be received by Ai Build.
Via Ai Build
