LEAP71
AI-based engineering company LEAP 71 has signed a three-party agreement with metal additive manufacturing firm MIMO TECHNIK and defence prime ASTRO Test Lab.
Announced at the 2024 AMUG Conference in Chicago, the agreement will see LEAP 71 work with MIMO TECHNIK and ASTRO Test Lab to develop an end-to-end workflow for the design, manufacture and validation of computationally engineered products. Primarily, this workflow will be utilised for aerospace applications, but the partners also see opportunity in mobility, heating and cooling, and other sectors.
Since its launch in January 2023, LEAP 71 has been championing the potential of computational engineering to develop complex physical products. Their process has been designed to allow engineers to encode their knowledge in computer algorithms which build Computational Engineering Models (CEM) that provide data files for manufacturing.
Having aligned with LEAP 71, MIMO TECHNIK and ASTRO Test Lab will now use and modify LEAP 71 CEMs to create products that fall under the ITAR/AECA regulations of the US Government and cannot be engineered outside the United States. Having established this three-way partnership - in addition to its existing collaboration with the Exploration Company - LEAP 71 is hopeful of having the first test fires of rocket engines based on its RP/CEM module this year.
Josefine Lissner, Co-founder and Managing Director of LEAP 71, commented: “Aerospace is a key focus for our company. Our computational systems can create sophisticated three-dimensional geometries based on encoded engineering principles and rooted in physics. However, we also need real-world manufacturing and testing feedback to continuously improve our models. By working with MIMO and ASTRO, we can move to a truly collaborative workflow with a closed feedback loop for the production and certification of very advanced systems.”
Jonathan Cohen, CEO of MIMO TECHNIK, added: “Over the past decade, MIMO TECHNIK built up the capability to produce complex metal aerospace parts at scale. Our technology stack allows us to control the metal 3D printing process in our facility on an unprecedented level. But how can we create designs that truly take advantage of our capabilities? When we saw the work that LEAP 71 is doing in this field, it was clear that this is the answer to significantly elevating the state of the art of engineering and manufacture things that were never created before.”
Humna Khan, CEO of ASTRO Test Lab, offered: “When I look back at my two decades of work at NASA, SpaceX, and others, I always faced the challenge to incorporate feedback from manufacturing and testing into the design side of the equation. While 3D printing allows us to manufacture a different variant of an object every time we start a print, traditional engineering using CAD simply isn’t flexible enough to adapt to constant feedback from testing. Because of all the manual work involved, objects built today are far from optimal. Using LEAP 71’s computational approach, we can re-engineer in an instant, incorporate feedback that comes directly from our testing systems, and manufacture again, creating a virtuous cycle of innovation that is unheard-of, especially in the conservative field of space technology.”
In October last year, Leap 71 released its PicoGK open-source computational engineering framework.
