Fictiv
Canvas Category Software : Cloud Manufacturing : General
Fictiv is a Digital Manufacturing Ecosystem that rapidly delivers custom parts on-demand, to help companies accelerate new product introduction. From early-stage companies to large enterprises, thousands of companies use Fictiv to innovate with agility, de-risk their supply chains, and get products to market faster.
Assembly Line
Defining the Future of Supply Chain & Manufacturing with Fictiv CEO Dave Evans
Introducing Materials.AI: Your AI Assistant for Material Selection
With advances in material science and manufacturing technologies like 3D printing, it can be overwhelming (not to mention time-consuming) to find the right material for your project needs. That’s why we created Materials.AI: a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence assistant, powered by ChatGPT and Fictiv’s expansive manufacturing database, to help you navigate the complex landscape of plastic and metal materials.
Robotics offers route for US manufacturing renaissance
“The US is not going to build the same type of manufacturing China has built for the last four decades,” says Lior Susan, partner at Eclipse Ventures, which backs physical industries at the forefront of what it describes as the next industrial revolution. Venture capital, however, still flows overwhelmingly into software, IT and cloud infrastructure, and fintech, rather than heavy-duty machinery and automation. According to advisers EY, just 2 per cent of $44bn raised by VCs in the first quarter of 2023 went to industrials.
NBC Detroit: Fictiv CEO Dave Evans on Automative Manufacturing in America
How Honeywell Achieved 7X Faster Lead Times for a Critical Component
Why digital sourcing platform Fictiv stays in China when others are leaving
Despite challenges around COVID restrictions and geopolitics, “the China manufacturing base is not going away,” said Fictiv’s founder and CEO Dave Evans in an interview with TechCrunch. “Thirty years ago, Shenzhen was a fishing village, and now it’s the center of the world for manufacturing. It’s going to take a while for other ecosystems to really catch up,” he said, adding that Apple and its contract manufacturer Foxconn have offered a strong playbook for a generation of factory owners in the country.
“Because it’s so hard to access China in the last years, the value we have in combining software, technology and all the AI that we built with boots on the ground right next to our manufacturing partners has built a really compelling offering for all customers because they can’t fly to China,” said the CEO. The firm has built a global network of 250 vetted manufacturing partners, a third of which are in China, where production capacity is often larger. The rest of its suppliers are from India and the U.S. To date, Fictiv has produced some 20 million parts for thousands of customers. It runs a team of just over 300 employees around the world.
How to Review Injection Molding DFM Feedback With Fictiv
Fictiv Secures $100 Million in Funding to Solve Urgent Supply Chain Risks and Accelerate Time to Market for Product Companies
Fictiv, the leader in high-quality, on-demand manufacturing, today announced the closing of a $100 million Series E funding round. The investment will advance Fictiv’s mission to accelerate product innovation with an expanded focus on decreasing supply chain risk through its best-in-category technology and product experience. This unique combination of benefits helps Fictiv’s customers tackle both the continuous, competitive pressures to innovate faster and address the relentless, daily supply chain disruptions.
The funding round, led by Activate Capital, includes new investors Angeleno Group, Cross Creek, and The Westly Group, and existing institutional investors including Accel, Bill Gates, G2 Venture Partners, and Standard Investments. This Series E brings the total investment in Fictiv to $192 million since its founding in 2013.
Fictiv Secures $100 Million in Funding to Solve Urgent Supply Chain Risks and Accelerate Time to Market for Product Companies
Fictiv, the leader in high-quality, on-demand manufacturing, today announced the closing of a $100 million Series E funding round. The investment will advance Fictiv’s mission to accelerate product innovation with an expanded focus on decreasing supply chain risk through its best-in-category technology and product experience. This unique combination of benefits helps Fictiv’s customers tackle both the continuous, competitive pressures to innovate faster and address the relentless, daily supply chain disruptions.
The funding round, led by Activate Capital, includes new investors Angeleno Group, Cross Creek, and The Westly Group, and existing institutional investors including Accel, Bill Gates, G2 Venture Partners, and Standard Investments. This Series E brings the total investment in Fictiv to $192 million since its founding in 2013.
CNC Machining vs. Manual Machining
CNC machines are faster and produce less waste than their manual counterparts. Manual machines which have undergone a CNC retrofit have been shown to produce parts 75-300% faster. Increasing throughput reduces part costs by decreasing the number of man-hours required to produce each part. Also, switching tools on a CNC machine can be over four times faster than on a similar manual machine. This results in faster turnaround times to get finished parts to customers.
The higher accuracy and precision of CNC machines also produce a lower scrap rate and therefore a lower part cost.Lower scrap rates not only mean more money in your pocket upfront, but higher precision machining tends to decrease customer rejection rate as well. When you have a more precise, repeatable process, the risk for missing defects during inspection is low. This prevents the customer from receiving faulty parts which, in turn, increases customer satisfaction.
What You Need to Know About Injection Molding Gates
Injection molding forces molten plastic toward and through a gate, an opening that lets the material enter the mold cavity. Sprues and runners allow this material to flow, but it’s the gate that controls access to where molding happens. Because the size of the gate affects the pressure of the plastic, proper gate sizing is critical.
If the gate in an injection mold is too large, molten plastic fills the cavity unevenly, and makes defects such as shrinking and weld lines more likely. If the gate is too small, short shots and high levels of residual stress at the gate may result. The shape of the gate also affects the flow and can contribute to or help minimize part defects.
In addition to size and shape, injection molding gates differ in terms of thickness. Typically, large, thick-walled plastic parts require thicker gates to accommodate a higher volume of flow. Smaller injection molded parts usually require thinner gates, but not at the expense of adequate pressure.
Learn how HEBI Robotics streamlined their supply chain with Fictiv, to increase speed and agility.
With previous suppliers, HEBI was faced with significant quality, cost, and speed tradeoffs that created friction in their supply chain.
“We’ve passed up several hundred thousand dollar sales because we couldn’t produce the parts quickly enough,” said Bob Raida, Chief Operating Officer at HEBI Robotics. “Addressing those supply chain issues directly impacts the bottom line because we can deliver quickly and take advantage of new opportunities.”
“Typically, it took about a full day to hear back about lead times or where my parts were in the supply chain, all due to the time difference overseas,” Willig said. “Now, working with Fictiv, we can get instant communication. It really helps us quickly iterate, talk through things on our parts that may need to change, and even get updates on parts and shipments.”
Learn how Gecko Robotics partnered with Fictiv to manufacture tight tolerance custom robotics parts and accelerate development schedules.
After partnering with Fictiv, Gecko Robotics has seen countless changes in how they order and receive parts. With previous vendors, just getting a quote to begin was difficult.
“We’d send in for a quote, and we’d be waiting up to a week to get something back,” said Bryner. “Fictiv’s platform is able to quote almost instantaneously, which allows us to make quicker decisions. Their feedback even helps us evaluate whether or not we need to make a quick change to our design in order to help our robots come to life faster and more effectively.”
The partnership between Fictiv and Gecko Robotics has extended beyond just prototype designs as well. Once Bryner and his team decide that a part design will work on more than one of their robotic platforms, they start to scale to production through the Fictiv platform without worry.