#3DStartup: F3nice To Innovate AM With Its Sustainable Powders Made From Metal Scraps

Nowadays, sustainability and environmental issues are increasingly topical, given the challenges we face in reducing global warming and consumption of non-renewable resources. This trend impacts every sector, regardless of the activities performed or the industry in which it operates. Additive Manufacturing could respond to this global need by being able to offer an alternative to traditional manufacturing methods. It is in this context that f3nice, our start-up of the month, fits in. The Italian startup has in fact come up with a method to produce metal powders in a sustainable way, promoting a circular economy ecosystem. We interviewed them to find out more about their innovative project!

3DN: Hello! Could you introduce yourselves?

Of course! We are f3nice, an Italian innovative start-up based in Italy and Norway. We are proud of our roots firmly in our country, a factor that we think sets us apart in the market given our excellent know-how in the fields of manufacturing, steel and metallurgy. In fact, our start-up is based on the expertise brought primarily by the two co-founders of f3nice, Matteo Vanazzi and Luisa Elena Mondora. Their background in materials engineering allowed them to identify this interesting business opportunity by intersecting specific high-level skills on metal alloys with the 3D printing model. With this vision, we market ourselves as a producer of sustainable metal powder for 3D printing. F3nice, in fact, comes not coincidentally from the concept of the ‘phoenix’, the mythological bird that obtains new life by rising from the ashes of its predecessor. It is precisely for this reason that we set ourselves the ambition to live up to our name, giving new life to scrap metal and disused parts by transforming them into metal powder that then feeds new additive manufacturing processes.

Matteo Vanazzi and Luisa Elena Mondora, co-founders of f3nice. (Photo credits: f3nice)

3DN: When and how was your startup born?

Founded in May 2020, right during the endless months of lockdown, f3nice was actually born from an idea in 2019, in the wake of an in-depth analysis of the oil & gas industry. The decommissioning of offshore assets in the North Sea oil fields, with the advantages offered today by digital inventory models, on-demand and just-in-time production of spare parts, represents a great opportunity to recover and process high-value alloys and to fuel a circular economy project. In this scenario, f3nice wants to innovate the Additive Manufacturing sector towards more sustainable production, promoting circular economy ecosystems in which to make the most of possible synergies created in industrial districts or along supply chains. Thanks to the f3nice process, in fact, part of the value of metal waste from the manufacturing sector can be recovered through up-cycling and regeneration of virgin powder. The primary objective is to mitigate the environmental and resource impact of 3D printing by reducing the input of virgin resources and the associated energy content, as well as the associated CO2 emissions.