Fortify
Fortify
Sample part produced via Fortify's Fluxprint process.
Fortify has closed a $10 million in Series A funding led by venture capital firm Accel and with contributions from Neotribe, Prelude Ventures, and Mainspring Capital Partners.
The investment follows a $2.5m seed round which was announced in January and will help fund the company’s Discovery Partner Program and an expansion of the Fortify team.
Fortify’s Discovery Partner Program will give a selection of manufacturers early access to the company’s Digital Composite Manufacturing (DCM) platform which is powered by Fluxprint technology. Fluxprint uses a magnetic field to best position reinforcing fibres within the UV cured matrix, before a Digital Light Processing (DLP) projector polymerises the composite resin multiple times per layer. Shipments of the beta machines are expected to take place in early 2020.
The company is eyeing the automotive and aerospace as target industries, believing its technology to be adept at producing quick turn, low volume runs of injection moulding tooling as well as high-performance end-use parts. Moulds are already being shipped to customers and Fortify is also working to find applications in the area of electrical connectors, impellers, mixers, and specialty drones. To facilitate a greater array of applications, Fortify has established the Fortify Fiber Platform for materials companies and resin suppliers to co-develop high-performance resins with the company’s chemical experts. DSM and BASF are among the companies to have already joined.
As it gears up to put its Fluxprint technology in the hands of industry next year, Fortify has stepped up its drive to generate funds from the likes of Accel, a venture firm which believes the vendor is ‘helping to lead the resurgence of American manufacturing.’ In the last year, Fortify has secured new office space and doubled the size of its workforce, with Ben Arnold (formerly of Desktop Metal) and Dave Colucci (formerly of Soft Robotics) joining as VP of Business Development and Embedded Systems Lead Engineer, respectively.
Attention now turns to its product offering, which it hopes to improve and expand, ahead of actioning its beta phase next year.
“We’ve achieved so much since our funding and we’re eager to expand on our platform capabilities,” commented Josh Martin, CEO and founder of Fortify. “With the support of our investors, we will focus on innovation, bring our technology to new partners, and grow our product offerings.”
“Material properties are the dominant factor driving adoption of additive manufacturing across industries,” added Ben Arnold, VP of Business Development at Fortify. “Our open materials platform leverages the world’s leading polymer chemists as they continually innovate. We reinforce these base resins with fibre as we print to gain significantly higher levels of performance. It’s quite exciting that even in this early stage of the company, we have customers buying parts for use in production applications.”
