Mike Littrell
“WAV’s large build area and truly unique production method is ideal for large investment casting masters, large parts and large batch builds of smaller parts built on one platform,” said Mike Littrell, co-inventor of WAV and founder of Paxis LLC. “WAV (pronounced wave) is a truly scalable, modular industrial additive manufacturing technology, which is expandable in both build size and speed. The attributes of the WAV process will allow resin developers to re-think material development which was hindered by the limitations of previous technologies.”
Littrell has close to 20 years of experience in the additive manufacturing industry; Paxis is the second company he’s formed. The company’s patent-pending WAV process was imagined and developed, by a CIDEAS team, from the ground up. Co-founders Littrell and Fred Knecht were trying to solve an issue associated with large, trapped volume parts in vat-based processes.
The invention process is described on the Paxis website: “Fred described his theory on how to fix the issue to Mike Littrell, president of CIDEAS Inc., and ‘it was like getting hit with a ton of bricks…Fred didn’t just solve trapped volumes, he solved other issues plaguing the vat and jetted based processes for years.’ At this very intersection in time, WAV was born.”
The technology yields a lower cost of operation, while still enjoying upgradeable speeds that have modular hardware expansions. The technology was specifically designed in order to break through the limitations of existing technologies.
- larger parts with a small footprint: WAV can produce parts larger than the traditional AM systems currently on the market, but can actually fit through a standard doorway. It requires a smaller footprint, per cubic inch volume, than any current jetting, laser, or DLP-based process.
- expandable and fast: WAV has exponentially upgradeable speeds, and internal tests gave projected speeds of 4, 8, and 24 times faster than the largest vat systems.
- resin choice: WAV has a higher level of access to third party resins, and its design is the optimal deployment platform for hybrid and exotic materials.
- conquers current system limitations: WAV doesn’t have large vats to maintain, and can change materials in minutes, with no waste or loss of resin during change-over.
- multiple additive manufacturing applications: WAV technology is not limited in what it can do for additive manufacturing: large and small prototypes, resin development, investment casting, short-run bridge tooling, and large-scale manufacturing are all available.
