The materials science engineering firm
Equispheres Inc is to receive a $3.5 million repayable contribution to ‘accelerate production of its metal powder materials for additive manufacturing’ from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario’s Ontario Business Scale-up and Productivity programme. Equispheres is bringing online additional ‘high-speed commercial reactors’ to manufacture its patent-pending aluminum powders.
Equispheres’ CEO Kevin Nicholds said: “Equispheres’ metal powders have unique properties that enable faster production of stronger, lighter and more reliable 3-D printed parts. This contribution will allow us to scale-up our production process and take advantage of an exponentially growing opportunity in the 3-D printing space.
“The company aims to enable industrial 3-D printing to compete with traditional manufacturing. Our metal powder technology dramatically reduces the cost per part making it economically viable for volume manufacturing applications in sectors such as automotive.
“Recent testing by equipment manufacturer Aconity3D showed that Equispheres’ high-performance feedstock can 3-D print three-times faster than traditional powders and achieve part cost reductions of 50%. The company’s materials can help Canadian and global manufacturers adopt additive manufacturing methods that are efficient, sustainable and cost-competitive.”
In December, Calvin Osborne joined Equispheres as chief operating officer, to ‘guide the company’s scale-up and commercialisation efforts’. Three new reactors are expected to come online in 2022, adding production capacity to meet surging market demand and creating new jobs in the Ottawa region.
The company’s aluminium powders are produced by a ‘unique atomisation process’ that creates highly uniform spherical particles with characteristics ‘well suited to the 3-D printing process’.