Equispheres
Equispheres powder
Canadian materials science company Equispheres has received an $8 million investment from a national government agency to help scale its metal additive manufacturing powder production capacity.
Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) is a foundation set up by the Government of Canada to support and fund the development of new clean technologies. With Equispheres’ metal powders being designed specifically for additive manufacturing, a technology that can facilitate the lightweighting of components through optimised design, SDTC has offered its backing.
Equispheres’ believes its additive manufacturing powders boast superior features and characteristics than many of the alternatives already on the market. Its patent-pending atomisation technique is said to produce powders with uniform size and sphericity, as well as consistent microstructure and thinner oxide layers, and thus results in materials that have superior spreadability and flowability, absorb less water and have greater packer density. This, in turn, enables the printing of metal parts with advanced mechanical properties.
The materials specialist is confident its product will be of great interest to industries, like automotive and aerospace, which are keen to deploy structures and components that are lighter in weight without compromising their performance. This promise has enticed SDTC to back the company and help scale its production capacity over the next two years.
“We are excited to receive this funding award from the SDTC Foundation,” commented Kevin Nichols, CEO of Equispheres. “This support from SDTC speaks to the importance of our powder technology as a key to achieving significant emissions reductions in the automotive sector. The funding from SDTC will help Equispheres to continue to accelerate our production capacity and support this important work by our automotive partners.”
Leah Lawrence, President and CEO of SDTC, added: “Canadian clean tech entrepreneurs are tackling problems across Canada and in every sector. I have never been more positive about the future. Equispheres has developed a metal powder that acts as ink for 3D printing and enables automotive and aerospace manufacturers to reduce the weight of their products. With Equispheres’ powder set to remove 100-200 kg of mass from an automobile, this would be the equivalent to removing 75 million cars off the road.”
