Freemelt has taken a prototype order under a feasibility agreement with a defense company operating in Sweden, the company confirmed October 13. The company’s name has not been disclosed. The study covers production of several geometries in refractory metal, built on Freemelt’s electron beam powder bed fusion (E-PBF) process, for testing and evaluation against defense-grade requirements.
The stated goal isn’t just confirming that existing parts can be reprinted in AM. Freemelt CEO Daniel Gidlund framed it as testing whether digital design, material choice and the E-PBF process can be combined to cut development time and build toward qualified, scalable production runs, not just one-off prototypes.
No price, timeline or part count has been published. Freemelt hasn’t said which refractory metal is involved (the September order was tungsten) or what performance threshold the defense customer is testing against.
This follows a bigger refractory metal order in September, when Freemelt won a volume order from Fusion for Energy for tungsten components destined for a fusion research facility the company called one of the world’s most advanced. Freemelt pitched that win as proof it can carry a customer from early design work through process qualification to industrial delivery of refractory metal parts, a capability it’s now applying to a second sector within a month.
Freemelt runs two business lines: Production Systems, selling E-PBF machines and aftermarket support to customers building in-house capacity, and Manufacturing, which handles design, process development, qualification and delivery of parts itself. This order sits in the latter.
What’s missing from the published account: which refractory metal, how many geometries, contract value, and whether the “unnamed Swedish defense firm” is a prime contractor or subcontractor.