Threes are wild for this additive-manufacturing ace
It’s progress by the power of three at ChemCubed, where developing new chemistries to fuel the 3D-printing world is busy work.
Over the last year, the 2014 startup – which squirts out application-specific “jettable nanocomposites” that can be molded into optical lenses, electronics components and a host of structural materials – has taken several significant steps along the commercialization path, all while formulating new nano-stuff for the automotive, aerospace and defense industries, among others.
The additive-manufacturing upstart and Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC) client has furthered both its NanoCubed brand of 3D resins and its ElectroJet brand of printers and related materials, building multimarket awareness as it evolves from cutting-edge prototyping to scalable manufacturing.
There are verticals aplenty – military tech, medical devices, wearable electronics, basically any original equipment manufacturer dabbling in 3D printing – and ChemCubed aims to address them all, according to co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Daniel Slep.
“We’ve already commercialized the basic materials,” Slep says. “They’re being evaluated now for real manufacturing, not just prototyping, and hopefully, by the end of the year, manufacturing will be happening in some areas.”
The tech officer was tightlipped about where ChemCubed might break into full-on manufacturing, though he did note promising discussions with a “very progressive client” in the automotive sector.
Wherever that big break emerges, it will mark impressive progress for a company that’s barely five years old – though Slep notes the genesis of Chem3 LLC (dba ChemCubed) goes back a bit further.
Before co-founding the startup, Slep spent 25 years at Hauppauge-based Hilord Chemical Corp., rising to vice president and coming to know Phillip Prieur and Brian Weis, the chief executive and vice president, respectively, of Georgia-based Beaver Paper & Graphic Media.
Slep – who concentrated on electrostatics, polymer reactions and other chemical facets of graphics printing – and his friends at Beaver Paper, a global distributor with a strong research-and-development division, agreed that current technology wasn’t keeping up with additive manufacturing’s potential, and determined to create new and better 3D printing tools.
The trio cofounded ChemCubed – with Prieur as CEO and Wies as Chief Financial Officer – and the company was quickly accepted into the AERTC.
It was a homecoming of sorts for Slep, an adjunct SUNY professor who earned his PhD in materials science at Stony Brook University (SBU). And Slep’s circular path has proven beneficial to the early-stage enterprise, with the CTO crediting ChemCubed’s rapid rise in large part to critical support from the AERTC and other university programs.
“The laboratory space fits us perfectly,” he notes. “And being here on the campus not only allows us to collaborate with other related programs, like the [Center for Integrated Electric Energy Systems], but allows us to hire the best and brightest students.”
ChemCubed has done that precisely, growing its R&D staff largely from campus-based talent – just part of the “great support” the sky’s-the-limit startup has received from SBU and the AERTC, according to Slep.
“Being a part of this program means we can hit the road running,” he says. “We don’t have to spend time trying to build a lab or find the right people.
“We’ve been able to focus on the science,” Slep adds. “And now, it’s becoming a really exciting time for us.”