The first anyone is likely to have heard of Azul 3D was in a deluge of 3D printing suppliers and users harnessing the technology to produce thousands of parts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in early 2020.

It is not exactly the first action the company expected to be making as it stepped out of stealth after three years. In fact, for a company that came into 2020 hoping to raise capital with institutional investors, a pandemic that would significantly dent the global economy was pretty daunting.

The investment was being procured to help accelerate the company’s High Area Rapid Printing (HARP) continuous stereolithography technology, which was developed at Northwestern University and is set to be shipped next year through a beta phase.

Negotiations were almost complete when the spread of COVID-19 meant many parts of the globe were going into lockdown. In much the same way companies far and wide had used 3D printing to pivot and manufacture parts they never had done before, Azul was forced to quickly change track halting conversations with one set of investors and going on the lookout for more.

“We were about to do a very big round with institutional folks,” Azul 3D’s Chairman of the Board Chad Mirkin tells TCT, “and then COVID hits, people start getting shy and other people start trying to take advantage. We had everything negotiated and all of a sudden, things started to get a little soft.”

While this was happening, there were concerns that the lockdown of factories in countries like China meant a severe shortage of face shields, face masks and PPE. The HARP process had not yet been used outside of Northwestern or Azul 3D labs and yet, within a couple of days of being asked to help, Azul were producing 1,000 face shields per day.

“The lead engineer and founder, David Walker, quickly went and found some files that would allow us to test whether or not we could produce these face shields. We went through a collaboration with some of the other 3D printing companies and it was remarkable. We had the first prototype within 24 hours and we were producing within 48 hours which, to me, was amazing. It was a demonstration of how good the technology was, how quickly we could pivot and used to address something like that and then it was the demonstration of the speed and throughput. That rate of 1,000 per day per printer was a pretty compelling case, not just for face shields but for anything polymer-based.”

This is something that has not been lost on the rest of the additive manufacturing industry – recently, Nexa 3D CEO Avi Reichental noted how the learnings AM companies will have got of their own tech during the pandemic is something usually only very few superusers would get – and is certainly helping Azul 3D establish itself in the AM space. Since the summer, the company has been working with state and federal governments to discuss the creation of disaster preparedness strategies that lean on the capabilities of 3D printing, as demonstrated in response to COVID-19.

“You get a crisis, flip the switch and go,” Mirkin says. “The face shield case is the perfect example. ‘Where are we going to get these?’ Oh, I’ve got a warehouse and a printer, I’ve got some resin, I can start producing within 24 hours. And we did. That’s going to be true of many types of things. Think where we’d be if we had these things in place before COVID or for the next pandemic or the next major crisis. I think there’s a real role for high throughput 3D printing.”

Azul’s promise of high throughout 3D printing comes in the form of HARP, a stereolithographic process that uses a mobile liquid interface to reduce adhesive forced between interface and printed object to enable a continuous 3D printing process. The non-stick interface is generated by a nonreactive fluorinated oil that also actively removes heat to deliver direct cooling and has filtering capabilities that removes and particulates to ensure a pristine interface. It also allows for resin to be dragged up vertically at speed, which the company suggests gives their machine unrivalled speed and scale.

This technology is being packaged up into four machines: pond, lake, sea and ocean. Pond is the machine that was initially deployed as part of Azul’s COVID-19 response, delivering 1,000 face shields per machine per day, and the Lake is the one that doubled the company’s capacity, generating 2,000 face shields per machine per day.

“I guess as we get bigger and bigger, we’re going to have to find bigger bodies of water,” Mirkin jokes. “But it shows you the scaling capability of this technology.”

Indeed, while Azul has aligned with governments to discuss the capabilities of 3D printing, and in particular HARP, technology for disaster preparedness, its aim is actually to have its machines on factory floors running 24/7, rather than sitting idle until when it is needed. Its business model is reliant on materials usage as opposed to machine sales and so is targeting opportunities where a lot of material is consumed in the manufacturing of parts: Big in size or big in volume. Automotive is noted as an obvious target market, sports and packaging materials too, and then there’s the partnership it announced with DuPont Electronics and Imaging in October. This collaboration is aiming to establish 3D printing within the electronics sector, opening up applications that were previously considered inaccessible with additive technology, and will see DuPont adopt HARP during the company’s beta phase.

“It’s a true partnership,” Mrikin says. “We’re working with them to develop resins for their applications but also to develop printers. They’re helping us move along our timeline to develop these bigger printers than we currently have now. They will be the first customer that truly validates the resin [-based business] model. This is a major validation [of Azul 3D] because you’ve got a Fortune 500 company that’s looked at all the options and concluded that the one to bet on is the Azul print technology. That, to me, is a company defining moment.”

For that title, there has been a lot of competition in 2020. The company immediately proved out its technology in responding to the pandemic, it then built and deployed its Lake machine to scale up production and it also secured more funding than it set out to achieve. Prior to coming out of stealth, Azul had raised $2.5m, with $8m more coming by May and the total rising to an ‘oversubscribed’ $12.5m by the end of August. Among the investors were former Geico CIO Louis A. Simpson, former 3D Systems chairperson Wally Loewenbaum, former 3D Systems VP of Corporate Development Hugh Evans, and former Stratasys Direct Manufacturing Joe Allison. Simpson and ExOne CEO John Hartner would later join the Board of Directors. The experience procured over the last through months is ‘fantastic’ per Mirkin and provides a further ‘vote in confidence’ for Azul.

“We were off to the races,” he says. “We told a lot of the institutional folks, ‘no thank you at this time, we’re not going to deal with you during a time of crisis, we’ll prove ourselves out and then, if so be it, we’ll come back at a later date and discuss options in a subsequent round.’”

It was perhaps a bold move for such a young company to turn down investment from one group of sources to find another. But it’s one that already the company feels has paid off. It will ship its first batch of printers to its beta customers – DuPont, a sports company and a third that, as of October, had not yet been identified – and now has more than $12m in the bank, the support of a host of industry veterans and a shedload of first-hand experience thanks to the turbulence of 2020. Azul 3D is now setting about disrupting the manufacturing space.

“There’s money out there almost at any time,” Mirkin assesses. “The problem is [in times like the COVID-19 pandemic] it kills you in terms of valuation and in terms of momentum. What they view as a win is not necessarily a long-term win for the company. It’s a long-term win for them. [As things got soft], we said to them, you’re looking at this the wrong way; you should be looking at this as ‘man, this is going to put a spotlight on the importance of additive manufacturing,’ which it did.

“In many respects, it made us a better company. It got us to focus, they got us to rally strong supporters that understood the business proposition and where we’re trying to go with this. This isn’t just about taking on 3D printing, it’s about creating true manufacturing capabilities and taking on aspects of injection moulding.”

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