Innovator Stories

Jesse Coors-Blankenship ’11GSAPP and Frustum Inc. Are Upending the Engineering and Design Space

As a graduate student, Jesse Coors-Blankenship ’11GSAPP, rigorously studied algorithmic design. He was fascinated by the power that this approach had for opening up new design freedoms and performances.

Coors-Blankenship quickly realized that he could take designing parts for Additive Manufacturing — an incredibly complex, onerous, and time-intensive process — and reinvent it. And so, Frustum Inc. was born. Its goal? Solve for the underlying geometric problem designers faced while working with freeform geometries alongside traditional Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) programs. The company was so promising that it picked up $3M in seed funding from investors.

Frustum’s proprietary geometry kernel, and its cloud-based platform Generate, help designers create demonstrably better, lighter, and stiffer objects by allowing for quicker results. Designers are now able to spend their time bringing their imagination to life, rather than having to fiddle around manually manipulating CAD in very complex designs.

Recently, Coors-Blankenship launched the latest iteration of the groundbreaking Generate platform, which streamlines topology optimization and a variety of other design functions. This makes it easier than ever for designers to visualize, create, expand, and analyze their projects. In fact, the intuitive nature of Generate has helped users reduce overall design times by as much as 50%.

Earlier this year, Frustum announced a new partnership with Siemens, which integrates its technology with the Siemens’ NX and Solid Edge platforms. The two organizations have already collaborated via Siemen’s PLM Solution Partner Program and next47 innovation initiative, but this latest development will help this relationship soar to new heights. Frustum also announced a partnership with Onshape. This interfacing web application will allow Onshape users to create advanced designs, ideal for additive manufacturing even faster (and with far greater flexibility) than was previously possible.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Frustum is upending the engineering and design space, visit the website.

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