Rizse is an innovative startup located in Austin, TX, and they are building the next generation of drone for maintenance and inspections in the aviation industry. Their goal is to use their drones to automate the inspection of aircraft with the benefits of reducing inspection costs, reducing aircraft downtime due to maintenance, and improving resource and lifecycle reporting capabilities.

 

The Problem

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Rizse had completed their initial drone design and were in the process of sourcing vendors to build the parts necessary for them to assemble one of their drones for testing. Because it is a prototype, it didn’t make sense for them to invest in injection molds for their numerous different plastic parts since some of the designs would most likely change in the future, rendering those molds useless. Other 3D printing solutions they had explored were also quite expensive. Rizse was facing challenges in sourcing their low volume plastic parts for their exterior shell quickly and cost efficiently

 

The Solution

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Accelerate3D partnered with Rizse to produce all of their high strength plastic parts. Due to the high-speed capabilities of Accelerate3D’s printers, we were able to print all for Rizse for less than $2000.

 

The Result

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The next best alternative Rizse had found previously cost them around $9000 for the same parts. That’s a 78% reduction in cost for those plastic parts and resulted in a roughly 25% overall reduction of their Bill of Materials (BOM). With this realized savings, Rizse was able to purchase the parts and complete their prototype and repurpose that saved $7000 to other efforts to develop their technology and offering.

 

Next Steps

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Both Rizse and Accelerate3D are extremely excited about this partnership and the value that each time creates for the other. Plus, we think drones are cool! We look forward to helping Rizse produce more prototypes in the future at these lower costs to help them build the best system they can. The best part is that Accelerate3D is capable of maintaining this cost reduction for any number of prototype iterations of low volume builds, as well as production runs of up to a few thousand parts and more before injection molding starts to make sense. This means Rizse can conserve precious capitol at this early stage of their company and reallocate those dollars they would have otherwise invested into more important parts of the company to help maximize their success!