AREVO, the Silicon Valley company redefining global composite manufacturing through digitalisation, won the prestigious Startup Booster competition at the 2019 JEC World conference and exhibition in Paris.
The competition featured ten finalists selected from 120 applicants from 30 countries representing a wide range of materials and manufacturing disciplines across the composites sector. The competition provides multinational companies access to cutting edge innovations in composites manufacturing with a potential impact on their industries.
The final evaluation round consisted of a five-minute pitch session in which the finalists presented their value proposition and expected market impact. Hemant Bheda, co-founder and Chairman of AREVO, focused on the company’s market-ready continuous carbon fibre thermoplastic composite parts ranging from bikes to airplanes.
Bheda said: “This award is a testament to the high-performance multi-disciplinary team at AREVO, which comprises 13 PhDs in computer science, materials science, and robotics from the best universities around the world. Team AREVO created the world’s first 3D-printed continuous carbon fibre bicycle frame in production, now with a process that takes a small fraction of the time as traditional manufacturing techniques. This is a good start to 2019 and we look forward to building upon our achievements with additional exciting developments.”
Trillion-dollar tech
The AREVO pitch covered recent technological and company-proprietary advances in the emerging ‘digital composite manufacturing’ sector which, according to analysts’ estimates, is a trillion-dollar market.
Innovation highlights included:
- Patented software algorithms used in composite generative design techniques,
- Patented free-motion robotics used for fibre direct energy deposition,
- High-speed deposition with an in situ closed loop control laser process incorporating machine learning and smart data,
- Local, modular, and scalable manufacturing, improving the time-to-market factor in many industries by eliminating the traditional supply chain bottlenecks,
- Sustainable manufacturing reducing materials by more than 30 per cent and minimising the shipping of parts from overseas,
- Hyper-customisable parts through on-demand manufacturing processes enabling a ‘Design, Print, Go’ experience, and
- US advanced manufacturing and domestic job growth bringing economic development and GDP growth.
AREVO’s aim is to deliver the future of composite manufacturing through breakthrough advancements in software, materials, and robotics, as well as to enable the 3D printing of large, mass-produced parts and structures, from bikes to aeroplanes.