First Production Metal 3D Printer Delivered by Mantle

August 30, 2023 by Michael Molitch-Hou 3D Printing Business Metal 3D Printing North America

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Mantle, a Bay Area startup focused on metal 3D printing for tooling, announced that it is extending its market reach by delivering a P-200 printer and F-200 furnace to customer Westec Plastics. This represents the first production units rolled out by Mantle, after successfully completing several beta deployments.

Mantle announced the availability of its P-200 system in 2022. The P-200 3D printer combines bound metal extrusion with CNC milling to create highly accurate, near fully dense tool steel components. The system is capable of minimizing shrinkage and delivering a superior surface finish, requiring little to no post-processing. With this in mind, Mantle has targeted the $45 billion injection molding tools market.

The P-200 metal 3D printer alongside the F-200 furnace. Image courtesy of Mantle.

The commercial versions of the P-200 and F-200 feature additional hardware and process enhancements designed to boost performance. With the beta machine, Westec had already boasted the ability to cut tooling costs by half and operation hours from 40 to 10 hours for H13 tool steel inserts. Now, Westec represents the first Mantle customer to receive its production unit.

“Having the Mantle equipment in-house enables Westec to complete prototype and production steel tooling inserts with a much shorter lead time than standard mold builds,” said Tammy Barras, President of Westec Plastics. “This will benefit our customers by providing production-quality steel tooling with aluminum tooling lead times.”

Mantle will be part of a joint presentation at the upcoming Molding and Moldmaking Conferences on August 29-30 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Titled “Metal 3D Printing that Makes Dollars and Sense,” the presentation will feature insights from Mantle, Westminster Tool, and Nicolet Plastics, which is also in the process of deploying a Mantle metal 3D printing system.

Although not covered in the SmarTech Analysis report, “Market Opportunities for Additive Manufacturing in the General Industry and Tooling Sector 2020-2029,” Mantle is expected to play an increasingly significant role in a tooling market that could be worth $5.48 billion by 2029.