Desktop Metal

Desktop Metal was founded in October 2015[20] in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a startup company focused on 3D metal printing.[21] Among the seven founders[1] were Ric Fulop[5] and Jonah Myerberg of A123 Systems, Rick Chin of SolidWorks, and Yet-Ming Chiang, Ely Sachs, Chris Schuh,[21] and A. John Hart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[1] Sachs was known for coining the term 3D printing years earlier.[15] At the time of its founding, the company was developing a process for metal 3D printing that would be fast and small enough for office settings.[22] Xconomy wrote that the company's intent was to create a metal 3D printer that would "churn out parts more quickly" and be "much cheaper, smaller, safer and easier to operate" than alternatives on the market.[14] To eliminate the need for trained personnel to operate the equipment, dangerous features such as lasers were not made a part of the design process.[22] By October 2015 the company had 11 employees,[21] with Ric Fulop as CEO.[22]

Initially the company raised around $14 million in startup funding,[22] with leading Series A funders including New Enterprise Associates, Kleiner Perkins, and Lux Capital.[6][21] By the spring of 2016, the company was headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts and had developed functioning prototypes.[5][23] After former investors injected an additional $34 million into Desktop Metal in April 2016,[5][22] that summer the company raised funding from investors including GE Ventures and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures.[23] By February 2017, the company had moved its headquarters to Burlington, Massachusetts.[7][8][24] That month the company raised $45 million in a Series C round of venture funding[7][20] led by GV[24] and including participation from BMW iVentures and Lowe's Ventures.[7][8][20] With total raised brought to $97 million,[7][8][20] the capital was used for research and development, with plans to begin selling the first product later that year[8] in a variety of industries.[7]

Desktop Metal was collaborating with Ford Motor Company's research and advanced engineering and manufacturing teams by 2017, refining its system to meet manufacturing requirements.[25] Desktop Metals was also working with BMW in Munich to explore eliminating the need to warehouse parts,[7] and companies such as Milwaukee Tools[26] and Jabil Circuit Inc. A U.S. were evaluating the printers for production use.[27] The company revealed two distinct metal 3D printing systems in late April 2017: a studio model and a production model.[11] The Studio System, safe for office settings[28] is designed for rapid printing and the production of small volumes,[13] while the latter is intended for high-speed production of parts.[28] Both systems include a printer, furnace, and cloud-based software to operate the machines,[14] with the ability to print several hundred alloy types.[11] Forbes described the pricing scheme of the products as "competitive," noting the systems cost "10 times less than what's on the market."[15]

Stratasys, an investor in Desktop Metal,[6] announced in May 2017 that its resellers would stock Desktop Metal's products.[29] The World Economic Forum named Desktop Metal to its 2017 Technology Pioneers list of 30 companies in June,[19] and also that month, MIT Technology Review named Desktop Metal among its 50 Smartest Companies in the World for the year.[30] Desktop Metal raised a total of $115 million[26][31][32][33] in a Series D round of funding in July 2017,[32][34] its largest round to that point.[35][34] Funds went to R&D, its sales program, and international growth[33][34] and brought the total raised since founding to $212 million.[33][35][36] The company began shipping the Studio System in December 2017[25] as part of its "Pioneer" program. The first printer went to Google's Advanced Technology and Products Group[3] and among other early customers were the United States Navy, Built-Rite Tool & Die, and Lumenium.[37]

By early 2018 the company had been granted two patents for separable support and an interface layer, with around 100 patents pending for around 200 inventions.[3] In February 2018 the company previewed Live Parts,[3] a software program for automatically generating printable designs.[38]

At CES 2018 Desktop Metal won an emerging tech award from Digital Trends.[38] In 2018 it also won a Gold[39] Edison Award.[3] In March 2018, Ford Motor Company led a $65 million investment round in Desktop Metal, with Ford's CTO joining Desktop Metal's board of directors.[40] With a $1.2 billion valuation, by May 2018 Desktop Metal had been named the fast growing "unicorn" in United States history, surpassing $1 billion after 21 months in operation.[18] Desktop Metal introduced an upgrade to its industrial scale systems at Formnext 2018, claiming the 50% printing speed increase made the model "the fastest metal printer in the world."[41] Cofounder Ric Fulop asserted that the system dropped the price per part significantly compared to other systems, in one case from $700 per kilo of parts to $50 a kilo.[2]

In January 2019, Desktop Metal raised an additional $160 million in funding, resulting in a valuation at $1.5 billion.[9][42][43] By May 2019, the company employed around 300 people, mostly engineers, with the machines made through contract manufacturing. It also had a sales channel distributing in 48 countries.[2] In June 2019, the company began shipping to Europe.[44] By 2019, the company had raised $437 million from investors, and was one of only three 3D printing unicorns. In November it introduced a system for metal job shops[16] and a system using fiber placement.[17]

Desktop Metal will go public through a reverse IPO, a merger with Trine Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: TRNE), a special-purpose acquisition company.

Desktop Metal launched its first two products in April 2017:[11] the Studio System, a metal 3D printing system[12] designed for engineers and small production runs,[12][13] and the Production System,[11][14] intended for manufacturers and large-scale printing.[15] In 2019 the company introduced the Shop System, a metal binder jetting printing system designed for machine and metal job shops,[16] as well as Fiber, a continuous carbon fiber printer using automated fiber placement technology (AFP) to make parts.[17]

Both the Studio System and Production System include two key components: a printer that produces small objects out of metal powders, and a sintering furnace to densify the objects using[26] thermal processes.[15] The systems can print a variety of materials,[45] including steels, copper,[11] aluminum,[46] and alloys such as Inconel. Powders also used in the metal injection molding market[28] are housed in replaceable cartridges[15] made by various metallurgy companies and Desktop Metal.[11] As the process doesn't utilize dangerous lasers,[45] or hazardous materials, the Studio System can be housed inside office spaces[15] with standard wall outlets.[14]

The Studio System uses a proprietary technology called Bound Metal Deposition,[12] similar to fused deposition modeling (FDM)[45] where the printer "extrudes a mixture of metal powder and polymers to build up a shape, much as some plastic printers do." When the shape is complete, it is placed in a furnace which burns away the polymers and "compacts the metal particles by sintering them together at just below their melting point."[13] At that temperature the metal is fused without melting and losing its shape.[11] The sintering causes predictable shrinking, which the system's software compensates for by making items slightly larger during the printing step.[13] Beyond the printer and furnace, the Studio System also includes a debinder to remove part of the polymer binder before sintering.[34]

The Production System uses a printing method where droplets of a binding agent are "jetted" onto a metal powder in heated layers.[14] The method is called Single Pass Jetting, used for quickly producing metal parts.[28] According to the company, the system can process 8,200 cubic centimeters per hour, which is nearly 100 times faster than laser-based systems using powder bed fusion (PBF).[47] It can produce dozens of parts simultaneously.[48] The Production System was named by Popular Science as one of the top engineering innovations of 2017, in the magazine's annual Best of What's New issue.[49]

Desktop Metal developed Live Parts,[3] an AI software for users to automatically generate printable object designs.[38] The program allows users to input specifications for an object, then creates a computer model which can be printed[50] using any 3-D printing system.[3]