Composite 3D printing start-up Fortify secures funding

Fortify (Boston, Mass., U.S.), an additive manufacturing start-up and pioneer in Digital Composite Manufacturing (DCM), has closed a $10M Series A funding led by Accel with additional participation from Neotribe (Menlo Park, Calif., U.S.), Prelude Ventures (San Francisco, Calif., U.S.), and Mainspring Capital Partners (Boston, Mass., U.S.). The funding will support the launch of Fortify’s Discovery Partner Program and the growth of the Fortify team. This follows a previous seed round this year of $2.5M.

Fortify’s Fluxprint technology combines magnetics and digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing to produce composite parts with optimized mechanical properties. This is achieved by precisely orienting reinforcement fibers throughout the parts. Founded on research in composite 3D printing by Dr. Randall Erb and Dr. Joshua Martin at Northeastern University (Boston, Mass., U.S.), applications for Fortify’s technology can be found in the manufacturing, aerospace and automotive industries among others. Fortify’s patented hardware and software reportedly gives users control over fiber alignment throughout each printed part, allowing them to “tune” material properties for specific applications.

Fortify’s Discovery Partner Program will give select customers early access to the DCM platform. Fortify’s technology focus is initially on injection mold tooling for quick turn, lower volume runs and high-performance end-use parts. While these applications are not necessarily new to industry watchers, early Fortify users are reporting dramatic improvements over trials with other 3D printed mold tools. Fortify is currently supplying molds to support customer applications and will ship beta machines to select partners in early 2020.

Fortify is exploring end-use part applications with industry leaders in electrical connectors, impellers, mixers, and specialty drones. Additionally, the company this year introduced the Fortify Fiber Platform, inviting materials companies and resin suppliers such as DSM, BASF and others to develop high-performance resins in conjunction with Fortify material scientists and engineers.

“We’ve achieved so much since our founding, and we’re eager to expand on our platform capabilities,” says Josh Martin, CEO and founder of Fortify. “With the support of our investors, we will focus on innovation, bring our technology to new partners, and grow our product offerings.”

“Material properties are the dominant factor driving adoption of Additive Manufacturing across industries,” adds Ben Arnold, Fortify VP of Business Development. “Our open materials platform leverages the world’s leading polymer chemists as they continually innovate. We reinforce these base resin with fiber as we print to gain significantly higher levels of performance. It’s quite exciting that even in this early stage of the company, we have customers buying parts for use in production applications.”