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Oct 14, 2024

One Start-Up’s $20M Boost To Bring Injection Molding Back To The U.S.

An injection molded, threaded cap made from a 3D-printed metal mold insert, right, created on a ... [+] Mantle P-200 machine. Within reach of you right now are probably five to 10 plastic products, or

An injection molded, threaded cap made from a 3D-printed metal mold insert, right, created on a ... [+] Mantle P-200 machine.

Within reach of you right now are probably five to 10 plastic products, or parts of products, made with injection molding. It’s one of the most common manufacturing methods in the world, and most of it takes place in Asia, mostly for economic reasons. One company is hoping to change that by offering American manufacturers an alternative to the most expensive part of the injection molding process, the metal mold itself.

Mantle, a 3D printing startup, just received an additional $20M in Series C funding to expand its hardware-software-material solution that uses 3D printing metal to make ultra-precise steel injection molds in less time and at less cost than traditional processes. The funding is led by Schooner Capital, a Boston-based private investment firm, and joined by Fine Structure Ventures, Foundation Capital, Corazon Capital, 11.2 Capital, and Build Collective.

Every year, American manufacturers spend $8 billion making mold tooling, globally the figure is $45 billion. Mantle’s market is any company making molds, any injection molding provider, or any OEM that makes its own products using injection molding. In other words, it’s huge.

A Heyco mold insert 3D printed with Mantle for injection molding wire management products.

Mantle’s technology already has produced injection molds used to produce millions of end-use parts, ranging from medical devices and deodorant packaging to industrial components.

By focusing on 3D printing the tools that enable mass production, rather than 3D printing the parts themselves, Mantle is outside the mainstream 3D printer industry. It has focused exclusively on delivering a solution aimed as solving one of the global manufacturing industry’s toughest challenges: bringing down the high costs and lengthy production times associated with tool creation for mass production.

"Fundamentally, companies don't buy technology, they buy solutions to problems they have,” says Ted Sorom, CEO and co-founder of Mantle, “so early on, we focused on figuring out which problem in which industry we were going to solve. And then to be honest, we picked a hard one. And it's taken us over eight years and tens of millions of dollars to develop the solution.”

Other 3D printing technologies are also addressing the ripe-for-disruption mold-tool market. Metal 3D printing using laser powder bed fusion technology, such as from EOS EOS , Nikon-SLM, and 3D Systems, can produce molds with deep intricate cooling channels that aren’t possible to make with machining tools. But while these tools enable injection molded plastic parts to cool faster, which boosts quality and efficiency, the molds can end up costing more than traditional tools and take longer to make.

Plastic 3D printing has been successfully employed to make prototype molds and those that are viable for 10 to hundreds of uses before they degrade.

Where Mantle is unique is its focus on replacing machining for the same solid steel molds manufacturers use today. “In our case, we really sell speed and cost reduction in any tool you make,” says Sorom. “Plus, you still have the full capabilities of using those unique geometries that enable conformal cooling channels just like the other 3D printing solutions.”

US manufacturers spend $8 billion annually on molding tools. This mold insert was 3D printed on a ... [+] Mantle P-200.

Mantle’s machine called P-200, of which there are dozens installed across the U.S., is a hybrid 3D printing and CNC machining system. It integrates 3D printing metal with precision machining throughout the process to produce parts with the same accuracy (+/- 0.001 per inch) and surface finish as traditional tooling, the company says, but faster and more automated.

First, the digital design of the mold tool is uploaded to the printer. Then a metal paste is extruded to form the mold. A CNC machining toolhead comes into the process whenever needed to refine the part. The two processes continue until the final mold is formed. It’s then sintered in a furnace until fully solid.

The P-200 can make molds roughly the size of a breadbox, which sounds small but covers about 70% of all plastic parts made with injection molding, leaving only 30% of the market that Mantle cannot address.

Although there are other metal paste extrusion 3D printers on the market, Sorom says Mantle is a more integrated and focused solution.

“We built a pretty strong moat around our technology that makes it difficult for someone to replicate what we do,” he says. “You would have to have both a printer hardware technology, which took years to develop; a patent-pending materials technology, which we've developed; and we have patents on the software side, too.”

Since the pandemic supply chain disruptions, many manufacturers have sought to bring back critical part production to the U.S., or as much as is feasible. For companies that injection mold millions of parts a year, reshoring production is a sizable challenge, but even for the companies that produce far less and could transition production lines back to U.S. facilities, there’s another challenge: finding skilled tool makers, those who can machine, finish, and assemble a metal mold.

Manufacturer Heyco say with new automation from Mantle helps fill gap from the shortage of highly ... [+] skilled tool makers.

“There's been about a 60% reduction in the number of highly skilled toolmakers in the U.S. at the same time that there's a really strong demand to do more injection molding state side,” says Sorom. “Customers have been saying that they need something that automates this process, so that they can use the small number of skilled toolmakers they have left, and still grow their business.”

Automation in the form of a Mantle 3D printer is part of the solution Heyco Products, a U.S.-based manufacturer of electrical components, found to boost its in-house molding and toolmaking capabilities in 2023.

“We purchased a Mantle system for two reasons: to reduce time-to-market for our products and to make our toolroom more efficient while attracting next-generation talent to Heyco,” says Danny Anthony, the company’s vice president of operations. “By using Mantle to print mold tooling, we have already brought a new product to market two months faster than we would have otherwise.”

The Mantle 3D printer installed at Heyco used to produce the metal mold inserts on the right.

Innovation, and speed-to-market with that innovation, is key in any type of manufacturing today, which is another area Mantle sees as an ideal fit for its solution across a wide breadth of markets.

One Mantle customer, a medical device company, used the technology to make molds for 25 to 50 initial parts needed for FDA approvals. The FDA requires the mold to be the same material as the one for high-volume final production, so polymer prototype molds were out of the question.

At a time when sales of industrial 3D printing systems are down, Mantle’s sales in the first quarter of 2024 were 40% more than all of last year's revenues for the company, says Sorom.

“Manufacturing in Asia is not always cheaper anymore,” he says. “If you can get to the mold tool far quicker and cheaper, and you can prove it out and get into production quicker, that has a lot of value.”

Automated technologies adopted for toolmaking is just a matter of time, says Sorom, because “there just isn't the labor out there anymore, and companies need a new level of speed that didn't exist previously. That's exactly the opportunity here.”

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