Last year, we brought you the story of Arevo – a tech company that was looking to upend the bicycle manufacturing industry by developing a carbon fiber bike via the use of 3D printing. The process was intending to, in equal parts, address the high costs and extreme variability that typically came as the downside to the extremely lightweight and durable material of carbon fiber.
Jog forward a bit and we’ve got an update for you – not so much on Arevo, which seems to be doing fine by the way, but on a few of the company’s former leaders who have moved on to another venture – this one also involving carbon fiber and 3D printing.
Arris Composites began as “tinkering” in a Berkley, California garage – or so says founder Ethan Escowitz, the former director of manufacturing services for Arevo. According to Forbes, Escowitz was determined to take carbon fiber to the next level by bringing it, in a fast, easy and reliable way, to applications like automotive and consumer products.
He hopes to do so by utilizing “a new way of aligning the composite fibers using a new high-speed manufacturing process — which he calls in a patent ‘aligned fiber reinforced molding.’” The technology has apparently been so compelling that Escowitz’s firm had a purchase order before it even had a name. More recently, it’s been vetted by former CEO of GE Jeff Immelt, who serves as a partner at a venture capital firm that gave Arris a $10 million investment.
Immelt likened the technology to what happened in automotive in the 1980s when non-structural metal was replaced with injection molded composites. This, he says, is basically what “Arris has now enabled for the rest of the vehicle.”
The plan is for Arris to develop “continuous carbon fiber composites that can be combined with other materials in a high-speed process that combines 3D printing and traditional high-volume manufacturing.” The company has since moved out of Escowitz’s garage and is now testing parts for clients, with the expectation of kicking off high volume production runs by next year.