10.5.23-Showcase-Tokyo-3D_Architect

SPEAKER 1: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

RYO ISHIBASHI: Oh, what? OK. [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

[APPLAUSE]

KAI NARITA: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

So hello, everyone. My name is Kai Narita. I'm a co-founder and CEO of 3D Architech. We are metal 3D print startup located in Cambridge in the US.

Well, here we go. So here's the team. I'm also a visiting scientist at MIT. And also our startup, the 3D Architech is selected by the START.nano, which is one of the accelerator program organized by MIT.nano, the research facility at MIT.

So as a metal 3D printing startup, or the metal manufacturing startup, we have a vision here. We revolutionized metal manufacturing platform to realize the imagination with a complete freedom of materials, architectures, and production volumes. Behind this vision we see there are two fundamental problems in the metal manufacturing space, which has been changed for decades.

The first problem, we see the manufacturable resolution. The performance and efficiencies of metal devices, such as heatsinks, is currently locked by the limited micron-scale control and also material selections technology such as micron-scale control. So heatsink currently has more than 100 micrometer thick fins. And this is a limitation limited by the current manufacturing process. If you could make it smaller, we could increase the surface area and improve the cooling performance. However, we're already limited by how small or how fine we can make the metals.

The other problem, we see the trade-off between part cost and production volume. We need always make a lot to reduce our part cost in the metal manufacturing. The traditional and also a great example is the metal injection molding. The mold costs around $100,000, which means for one design we need to pay $100,000 as a CapEx.

And metal 3D printers have emerged around 2015. And people are really excited about this technology because we thought we finally, we could on-demand production. But that hasn't happened yet. The reason is that metal 3D printer is also expensive. It usually costs $1 million. Or the most affordable one still costs $100,000. So we need to make a lot to reduce the part costs because of the high upfront CapEx.

So to solve these two fundamental problems, we invented a new technology, which is a gel-based metal 3D printing. We invented a very completely different way of making metals. So we developed gel materials, which can be 3D printed by commercially available UV light-based 3D printers. And we can make 3D structural gel, which has a form factor of the final products. And by using our proprietary conversion chemistry from gel to metal, we can make 3D structural metals by using this commercially available UV light-based 3D printers, which is usually used for making the plastic.

So what we can do by this technology is that we can offer 10 micrometer feature size, which is 10 times smaller than any other metal 3D printers can offer. And also, we have versatile material selections, including pure copper or tungsten, which is one of the strongest metals. And this type of 3D printer is very affordable, which costs around $100,000-- sorry, $1,000 per printer. So we can offer 100 times lower equipment cost. And this allows us to do low part costs, even from one piece of the production.

And here's what we can make. So in the left side, you see the silver structures with a 40-micrometer feature size, which is a half size of the human hair thickness. And with this feature size, we can make more than 3 centimeter copper sheet, which is used for the heatsink. We have also versatile material selections. We can make alloys, which is the combination of different metals. And if you're interested in these prototypes, we have the prototypes here in the booth. So please come by and look at it.

And by using this technology, and also taking advantage of this fine-feature products, we have been working on application development with corporate partners in the various industries, including heatsinks, hydrogen production, electrical motors for EVs, and jewelry market. And today I'd like to give you one example of the heatsink application, especially in the data center cooling.

So heat is a huge problem in the data center. That Thermal Design Power, TDP, which represents how much heat is generated per CPU or GPU, has nearly doubled recently and will increase more. And also, if you look into the energy consumption, the cooling actually occupied more than 40% of the data center energy consumption. So we need a new cooling solution which keeps the much efficient cooling performance.

So by collaborating with the heatsink design companies, we are developing the new liquid cooling heatsinks. So compared with a traditionally manufactured heatsink, which is basically made by CNC Machining, we can offer 10-micrometer feature size, with a topologically optimized structure. This gives us the more than four times as energy efficient cooling performance. It also gives a competitive price point of making this type of heatsink.

And this is just one of the examples. So far, we have discussed with more than 20 companies in Japan. And we have the ongoing proof-of-concept studies for application development with nine-- sorry, seven Japanese companies. We also have recently launched the Japan R&D site in Sendai, Tohoku. So today I look for the discussion for the application development, especially in these industries, heatsink, heat exchangers, water electrolysers for the hydrogen generation or fuel cells, or electronics and MEMS.

We are also interested in scaling up this technology in Japan. So we are interested in the partnership discussion with the 3D printing service bureaus and 3D printer manufacturers. With that, thank you so much. We are 3D Architech. We Revolutionize metal manufacturing. [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

[APPLAUSE]