Robert Downey Jr.’s venture fund and Lockheed Martin are among the early investors in the three-year-old company Alloy Enterprises, which 3D prints aluminium.
Cans. Roofs. beer barrels. cases for computers. components for electric cars. These are five diverse uses for aluminium, one of the metals that is most frequently utilised worldwide in just about any industry you can think of.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that the race to electrify automobiles and industrial processes would lead to a significant increase in demand for aluminium, which is produced at a pace of roughly 68 million metric tonnes annually (as of 2021). Volume increased by 4% last year as a result of a surge in manufacturing for automotive and transportation applications.
Robert Downey Jr.’s venture fund and Lockheed Martin are among the early investors in the three-year-old company Alloy Enterprises, which 3D prints aluminium.
Cans. Roofs. beer barrels. cases for computers. components for electric cars. These are five diverse uses for aluminium, one of the metals that is most frequently utilised worldwide in just about any industry you can think of.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that the race to electrify automobiles and industrial processes would lead to a significant increase in demand for aluminium, which is produced at a pace of roughly 68 million metric tonnes annually (as of 2021). Volume increased by 4% last year as a result of a surge in manufacturing for automotive and transportation applications. We are interested in the success of this technology and have various use cases for Alloy’s capabilities.
Modern-day fab
To make components for the automotive, industrial, and heavy equipment industries, Alloy is developing and scaling 3D printing technology that combines laser-cutting methods and “diffusive bonding” (a solid state welding approach). Instead of the powders that other types of 3D metal printers generally require, it uses coiled sheets of aluminium as the raw material. According to Alloy CEO Ali Forsyth, a serial entrepreneur with engineering degrees from Harvard and Princeton, this results in cheaper material costs by “an order of magnitude” at higher production quantities than has typically been the case with 3D metal printing.
While Forsyth refused to disclose the names of Alloy’s clients, she claimed that the business has signed agreements with Fortune 100 clients in each of its three key target consumer segments. The electrification trend is creating opportunities. “We need to move at the speed of innovation,” she said, “and we need a way to make these components in an efficient way.”
The additional money will enable Alloy to increase its production this summer and set up its processes to make more parts in bulk. When the funding was announced, Maria Buitron, an investor with Piva Capital, said, “This is a breakthrough for the industry that addresses the need for reasonable lead times, significant cost reductions, and on-demand manufacturing, delivering direct benefits to EV, industrial, and heavy equipment.” How much will manufacturers who adopt Alloy’s methodology lower their carbon footprints?
That depends on where the aluminium coils used as feedstock were produced. The IEA estimates that primary aluminium production is responsible for around 3% of yearly industrial emissions globally. In contrast, steel makes up around 8% of the total.
About 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the manufacture of aluminium are attributable to its refining and smelting, with the remaining 10% coming from recycled production, anode production, and casting. The influence of Alloy will fall into the latter category, therefore only a small portion of the reduction potential is addressed by its procedure.
However, a lot of effort has been made into recent years to lessen the impact primary aluminium manufacturing has on emissions and to promote aluminum’s status as a “infinitely recyclable” material.
Apple has been particularly vocal among manufacturers about its efforts to decarbonize aluminium, which include a partnership with Alcoa and Rio Tinto as well as the iPhone recovery initiatives it is facilitating through investments in disassembly robots. At the time of its environmental upgrade in 2022, two-thirds of Apple’s aluminium parts contained recycled material.
Little information has been provided regarding the technology that Alloy will be using by Lockheed Martin. The aerospace firm’s investment in Alloy last year took the form of a SAFE agreement, also known as a simple agreement for future equity, which implies Lockheed Martin might end up owning an equity position in the event of a “triggering event.” That contract’s terms weren’t made public.
