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An all-metal copper filament for 3D Printing electronics, sensors and antenna. Compatible with the most common printer on the market, FFF/FDM printers while costinng fractions.
About
Kupros is an innovation company currently focused on the field of Additive Manufacturing (AM). We are a service disabled veteran owned company with experienced leadership in business development. Born from the initial research carried out by a national laboratory, NSWC Crane, our flagship product Cu-29 offers high electrical conductivity for Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) for Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing or 3d printing. Cu-29 is domestically sourced and produced to avoid supply chain issues introduced by reliance on foreign markets. Utilizing Cu-29 customers can overcome traditional electronic design shortcomings for more innovative implementation without the need for extensive post processing. The impact of Cu-29 will change the landscape of the printed electronics field offering on-demand solutions to problems as they occur. Our initial outreach has shown a large technology gap related to printed electronics utilizing FFF printing. Interest in Cu-29 has been shown from both DoD and commercial business even at the fortune 50 level. Over the course of the next year Kupros plans not only to field its flagship product but also release five different complementary filaments (Higher Conductivity, Radiation Hardness, Aerospace, anti-tamper and Gold) to fill the technology gap. The portability of FFF style printing offers more versatility for innovations and designs changes. Its ease of use empowers the end-user to solve unique problems with custom solutions.
Key Benefits
AM is used by industry to develop products through rapid prototyping and local production of components and devices. By producing in-house designs, it allows for reduced weight, more efficient use of design space, accelerated prototyping times, and small-scale production. For electronics, Cu-29 allows the user to bypass common supply chain hurdles and lag with prototype production. Users can develop electronics utilizing standard wall power sockets and without the need for inert gas or vacuum chambers. The Covid-19 pandemic brought to light several weak points with the American national supply chain leading to critical shortages and exposing a dangerous reliance on foreign products. Cu-29 is created using domestic resources, with multi-vendor redundancy, thus bypassing the volatility of foreign markets. This reduces the risk of IP theft and backdoor creation within the supply chain. It can currently take up to 16 weeks to receive printed circuit boards (PCBs) with a 40-60% failure rate and another 16-week turnaround for the new part. By utilizing our product, the ability to rapidly prototype and field new equipment time is drastically reduced as there is no need to ship off components to be fabricated into a final assembly. Electronic prototypes must be designed and sent to a specialized manufacturer costing thousands of dollars and taking weeks to produce. Cu-29 allows for rapid prototyping of electronics in a matter of hours. Utilizing commonly available 3D printing machines reduces the cost to a small fraction of the specialist price (i.e. no post processing or $500K machines). Using material extrusion AM, specifically FFF style printing, allows for manufacturing without the need for potentially dangerous equipment. The process of printing with Cu-29 removes the need for machines with large rotating masses, rapid movement, fumes, lasers and vacuum chambers.
Applications
Kupros Inc’s all-metal copper filament Cu-29 is made without any polymer additives through an innovative, cost-effective process created by an NSWC Crane engineer. Copper is the industry standard for virtually all conductive applications. The filament is used similarly to consumable ink for home-office printers and due to its high copper content can print anything that requires conductive properties. Cu-29's unique formula eliminates the need for time and material-intensive post-processing, prevents delamination from underlying material, and prints circuits unparalleled in conductivity, even when using currently available entry-level 3D printers. 3D printed circuits with similar conductivity presently require expensive, specific use case printers that inhibit an operator's ability to iterate through prototype designs in an efficient, cost-effective manner. Future compositions of the Cu-29 formula will be specific to the aerospace and medical device industries for an even greater range of future applications. Currently industry has fielded several printers for AM electronics which is an enabling technology. Cu-29 can be utilized with the existing FFF 3D printers fielded by the end-user without the requirement for modification or facility upgrades. The primary risk added is the learning curve to optimize their current printer(s) with the reference printing profile we provide. The alternative to Cu-29 is either to use filament whose conductivity is so poor they are unable to be utilized at standard voltages or to use large expensive printers ($300k-$1m) that use some variation of ink jetting. While ink jetting can create electrically viable components, these devices utilize silver which can only be used for rapid prototyping. Fielding such devices is subject to drawbacks with silver’s material properties such as a short life cycle or need extensive post processing which increases the failure rate due to added complexity. Also, such processes cannot deliver large build volumes and must stick to small scale geometries or exponentially increase the print time. These machines are larger and cannot be fielded in forward operating areas due to size, mass and power requirements. The manufacturing maturity level for production of the Cu-29 filament was assessed at MRL 5. Kupros is committed to the following manufacturing maturity plan: 2023 – MRL 7; release Cu-29HC, AE and RH, 6,000-unit production; ISO 9001, 14001, 45001 2024 – MRL 8; release Au-79 gold filament; 12,000-unit production 2025 – MRL 9 – 24,000-unit production 2026 – MRL 10 – 40,000-unit production Cu-29 fills a technology gap in FFF style printing by allowing for unique solutions to problems. To stay cost effective without direct competitors in industry, the price point of Cu-29 has been set at a comparable cost to similar less conductive technologies with plastic additives. The results from this set price point mean a reasonable profit margin to allow for ongoing research and development into new innovations while also growing current production capabilities. Due to the company licensing the technology from the DoD, several private sector entities have already taken interest in our product from aerospace (Blue Origin), medical devices (GE Additive) to semiconductor manufacturers (FoxConn).