Mantle Inc., a developer of precise and efficient metal 3D printing technology, announced its Series B financing of $25 million, bringing the total amount raised by the company to $41.5 million. The financing round was led by Fine Structure Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. Existing investors, including Foundation Capital, Hypertherm Ventures, Future Shape, 11.2 Capital, and Corazon Capital, joined the financing.

“Fine Structure Ventures sees that a digital transformation is happening in the manufacturing industry. Mantle is helping manufacturers redefine how they bring products to market by reducing lead times and costs while implementing more digital, flexible, and local supply chains,” said Shyam Kamadolli, Managing Director at Fine Structure Ventures. “We are impressed by the value that Mantle’s early customers have realized and look forward to supporting Mantle’s expected growth.”

Mantle also announced that its manufacturing customers continue to find success as over one million end-use parts – ranging from deodorant packaging to medical devices to dishwasher components – have now been produced with tool components made from Mantle’s technology. Unlike other 3D printing technologies that struggle to produce high-volume end-use parts directly, Mantle has focused on 3D printing the tools used to make these end-use parts. These tools traditionally have been time-consuming and expensive to make and are a bottleneck in manufacturers’ product launch schedules. Mantle’s unique combination of accuracy, surface finish, and multiple tool steel materials allows manufacturers to meet their stringent tooling needs while reducing lead times and costs by over 65%, thereby shaving months off lengthy, costly hardware development cycles.

”Most of the products we use everyday are manufactured using the types of tools that Mantle prints,” said Ted Sorom, Mantle CEO and Co-Founder. “Our investors and customers are excited about the evolutionary and revolutionary nature of Mantle’s unique approach. Mantle allows companies to evolve with the manufacturing processes, materials, and supply chains they know and trust while realizing a revolutionary improvement in tooling lead time and cost.”

Customer success continues. Recent examples include:

Tessy Plastics, a global contract manufacturer specializing in injection molding and custom automated assembly solutions, has demonstrated the successful use of Mantle’s 3D printed tooling components in a production tool for a high-volume consumer product. Over 400,000 cycles have run in the tool, which uses multiple 3D printed inserts. All molded parts have met Tessy’s rigorous quality standards for dimensional accuracy and surface finish.

A multinational medical device manufacturer successfully reduced the lead time for a prototype tool from 12 weeks to 4 weeks and reduced the cost by over 65% by using Mantle’s 3D printed tooling components. The printed mold components met the manufacturer’s strict accuracy and surface finish requirements. All molded parts met the requirements for dimensional accuracy and mechanical properties.

“Mantle has demonstrated tremendous progress in addressing the $45 billion tooling market,” said Steve Vassallo, General Partner at Foundation Capital. “They are consistently proving that they can help manufacturers reduce time and cost from their tooling programs. We believe that our further investment in the company will help bring Mantle’s precision metal 3D printing technology to a market that has desperately needed this innovation.”

Mantle will use the new financing to increase its hardware, software, materials science, and manufacturing teams to accelerate the development and installation of its first commercial systems in early 2022.

The tooling market is just the beginning for Mantle. Mantle’s TrueShape technology can address a wide range of applications in the $350 billion precision parts market in the future, including jigs and fixtures, low volume industrial machinery and spare parts, and high volume part production.

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