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about five years after COVID-19 grind the world to a halt , the global provision chain still has n’t fully recuperate . strong suit industries like space travel were particularly severely collide with , given the impossibility of head down to the corner to pick up spare rocket engine parts .
Industries began taking a recollective , hard look at 3D printing as a root to such woefulness . What additive manufacturing lacks in scale , it make up for both in terms of make specialty function and decentralize a manufacturing industry that is highly hard in a handful of locating across the globe .
Solideonco - founder and CEO Oluseun Taiwo discover firsthand the mayhem such global case can work on the space industry . He was employed as a propulsion railroad engineer in the additive manufacture division of Virgin Orbit in May 2020 , when the companyfailed to launchits LauncherOne rocket engine . Virgin Orbit ’s journey ended in May 2023 .
“ What I saw at that fourth dimension was , if we had a localized way to manufacturer and did n’t have to rely on the worldwide supply range during a global pandemic , the fellowship would have done well , ” Taiwo tells TechCrunch . “ There was this hard thing of needing to build something like 30 rockets a year for the business model to puzzle out . We were doing maybe three a year , which was never good enough . ”
Taiwo left Virgin Orbit in 2021 to work for 3D printing process stalwart three-D Systems in 2021 , before institute Solideon at Techstars the following yr . The Bay Area - free-base arugula - printing service has raised $ 6.5 million in financial backing to appointment . It ’s just a start , given the firm ’s celestial ambitions . Solideon represent onstage today as part of the Startup Battlefield 20 atTechCrunch Disrupt 2024 .
“ What we really do is build robots for deployable microfactories that help 3D - print and assemble large aerospace structures and products , ” say Taiwo .
“ The reason that matter is you may decentralize fabrication and really get unaired to building an total product without any human intercession in the loop . Our farseeing - terminal figure goal is to do that anywhere in the solar organization at any point . ”
manufacture for space in blank is still a ways off , naturally . In the meanwhile , the company is centre on work out more immediate - condition problem , with an eye on defense contracts . Taiwo notes that the U.S. Defense Department is currently in the process of auditing its own supplying chain , in prevision of further hoo-ha — be it a natural disaster or global conflict .
“ The Navy is having the exit with very expensive asset , ” he say . “ The short term is to go help them solve that problem . The intermediate term that we ’re more focused on is the smaller , autonomous , attributable system . That ’s where we ’re see the biggest play for technology like this . build up a microfactory that ’s very mobile that operates nigh to where the changing landscape of the conflict is and being capable to conform appropriately . ”
