Company Profile
Oribi Manufacturing
Company Overview
Oribi’s unique combination of practical, high speed automation with material science has unlocked the full potential of continuous fiber reinforced composites for nearly any application imaginable. Originally limited to niche applications in the aerospace market, we collaborate with our customers to deliver on the true potential of advanced thermoplastic composites to reduce weight and improve performance, affordably.
Company History
Ingenuity is in our DNA
Oribi is unique. We are, first and foremost, practical, inventive, and creative. And, we are not a typical composites business. Our success in the composite materials industry is attributed in large part to the fact that we did not build a composites business constrained by the common way of thinking about how to design and produce parts using advanced materials.
We started with a base knowledge and background in engineering and manufacturing, combined with a focus and a passion for automation, robotics, and machinery. Our belief was, and remains, that unique and inventive processes could be developed and optimized to address the biggest gap in the composite materials industry: How to make advanced composite parts affordable and accessible to all markets. We want to bring advanced composites to the masses.
In other words, first we focused on the ‘how’ and then we focused on the on the ‘what’. And, because we wanted to create a production solution that truly takes advantages of all of the benefits of continuous fiber reinforced composites, we naturally focused on using thermoplastic-based input materials, since we can process these materials quickly with high levels of automation, making parts that meet nearly any performance requirement but are also affordable, recyclable, and are widely used across many industries. Our process is rooted in automation, and our ultimate goal on every part we make is to minimize touchpoints and transfers, and to create products that add enormous value to our customers.
Today, 12 years in the making, Oribi is leading the industry in enabling widespread adoption of advanced, lightweight materials for nearly every market segment – sporting goods, military and defense, industrial machinery, transportation, medical equipment, and consumer goods. We have made over one million parts for our customers. We now have over 10 fully automated production cells processing thousands of pounds of advanced composite materials weekly.
To understand Oribi, it helps to understand our founder, Jack Wilfley. By nature, Jack is inventive, and thinks differently.
Timeline:
1999: Jack goes wild. He leaves his industrial manufacturing job, decides to ride his motorcycle across the world. Literally. Jack started his journey in Denver, CO with a backpack on his bike, and ended up 6 years later, with 28 countries and untold miles under his belt. Along the way, Jack visited Ushuaia, worked in the Galapagos, farmed in South Africa, competed in The Remarkables, ran the Zambezi, designed and built the world’s largest gorge swing in Oribi Gorge, South Africa, and a couple other things between.
2008: Jack settles down. He joins Fiberforge in Glenwood Springs, CO, and gets his hands dirty in the shop, learning about thermoplastic composites and process automation techniques.
2009: Jack starts Oribi in a leased space inside of a 100 year old manufacturing building in Denver, CO, with a single layup machine. His first volume customer uses parts made at Oribi for a high performance backpack designed for the US special forces. The part embodies many of the great properties of thermoplastic parts: stiffness in some directions, flexibility in others to allow the user to move naturally while carrying a load, lightweight to reduce fatigue, and durable to survive abuse in the field.
2009: First robot deployed for complex trimming and deburr process.
2010: Oribi secures 3 new programs in the skateboard market, making highly tailored, but affordable, decks for some of the most recognized brands in the industry.
2011: Oribi secures first structural military parts for mass production.
2013: Oribi launches its first military helmet program and expands in capabilities to include CNC trimming and cored parts.
2013-2016: Oribi continues to expand into industrial, commercial, consumer, and military programs with volume.
2016: Oribi moves into a purpose-build, 50,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility.
2016-2020: Oribi expands to include 8 layup machines, 9 forming presses, and adopts a new rapid consolidation system, called Kulu, to minimize production times and improve throughput.
2019: Oribi engages in a strategic partnership with Cannon Capital. Cannon specializes in supporting high potential/high growth companies scale up and develop into elite organizations. Cannon begins working in close partnership with the Oribi team to build out a top-tier management organization and help industrialize Oribi’s processes to support significant growth.
2020: Oribi, via partnership with CSS Composites, launches the first mass produced carbon fiber thermoplastic mountain bike wheel rim. The product is wildly successful.
2021: Oribi joins with ReBuild Manufacturing to continue the expansion of the American Manufacturing Sector.