Raven Space Systems, a Kansas City, Missouri-based startup, claims to have created a revolutionary technology, Microwave Assisted Deposition (MAD) 3D printing, that would enable the first scalable 3D printing of commercial, off-the-shelf thermoset composite components.
To advance the technology, the startup recently closed a $2 million pre-seed investment headed by Backswing Ventures, with participation from 46 Venture Capital, Mana Ventures, What If Ventures, and Cape Fear Ventures.
Microwave Assisted Deposition (MAD) 3D printing
Raven is able to accomplish this through the use of patented technology known as Microwave Assisted Deposition (MAD) 3D printing. Typically, thermoset composites require hours or even days in an oven to harden or cure, but the MAD technique cures the components while printing, similar to laser-based metal additive printing.
“We’re essentially unlocking an entire field of 3D printing to production scale. We’re taking these off the shelf materials that have been proven for both structures and thermal protection applications, and automating the near net shape production by 3D printing them for the first time.”
– Blake Herren, Co-founder and CEO, Raven Space Systems
Herren and his co-founder, Ryan Cowdrey, began working on the technology as graduate students at the University of Oklahoma. Around the time they graduated, they received approximately $1 million in funds from the Small Business Innovation and Research program to take the MAD 3D printing concept from whiteboard to prototype. Since 2020, Raven has received around $4.5 million in non-dilutive contracts from the Air Force, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other organisations.
The fresh funds will be used to establish the company’s first full-scale manufacturing lines, which will include production-scale 3D printers, mixing systems, and machining. Raven plans to relocate from its 3,000-square-foot building to a larger, aerospace-certified manufacturing by the second quarter of next year. There, they will begin manufacturing components for customers, beginning with tiny components and gradually increasing in size.
Raven’s go-to-market strategy is to provide thermal protection components for solid rocket motors and hypersonic vessels initially, because that’s where the two co-founders saw demand from the Department of Defense, Herren said.
He went on to say, “We are no longer the world’s powerhouse. There’s a huge demand for these thermal protection and construction materials — supply chain challenges, bottlenecks, and everyone’s on fire about it.”
“There are not enough suppliers,” he remarked, in these businesses. Many of the vendors who do exist work in obsolete factories using methods that have been in use for decades. Herren stated that scaling the new 3D printing technique will work hand in hand with developing a next-generation plant, reducing lead times to days rather than months or years.
“I think the industrial base requires implementing software and robotics into our factories to solve these supply chain issues and, frankly, compete globally,” he told.
Aside from hypersonics and rockets, the company has held discussions with autonomous systems providers, satellite manufacturers, and space propulsion companies. Recently, the business announced a collaboration with re-entry capsule maker SpaceWorks to create 3D-printed re-entry vehicle aeroshells — the structure that wraps the spacecraft and provides thermal insulation — to allow the DOD to test hypersonic technology.
The tech is still early, in that there are still tech challenges involved with scaling it to print larger structures, Herren admits, but “once it’s fully developed, I see this as changing the way we make large-scale composites.”
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