Zhongke Xianglong, Ningbo CAS lab spinout, invests over 100 million yuan in 100-plus metal 3D printers for aerospace parts

Ningbo Zhongke Xianglong Lightweight Technology, a five-year-old spinout from a Chinese Academy of Sciences lab, is deploying over 100 million yuan to build an aerospace key-component manufacturing and pilot-run facility in Ningbo's Qianwan New Area, installing more than 100 large metal 3D printers. Founder Zhang Hao says the company's design-driven model, taking a customer's requirements through structural design, simulation, metal 3D printing, post-processing and quality inspection in one chain, cuts product iteration cycles by 50 to 60 percent versus traditional casting. The company closed a Series A round in 2025 and in the same year received its first credit line from China Minsheng Bank's Ningbo branch, approved under a 5+1 evaluation framework that weighs team, technology and market traction over collateral and financial statements.

Zhongke Xianglong holds more than 70 intellectual-property filings, including over 20 invention-patent applications, and keeps R&D staff above 60 percent of headcount with annual R&D spending exceeding 25 percent of revenue on a base that just topped 100 million yuan. Zhang cites a national talent gap, only 28 Chinese universities have accredited undergraduate AM programs, all approved within the last three to four years, as the reason the company is opening a Beijing R&D center. He points to a major unnamed consumer electronics manufacturer's plan to adopt 3D-printed hinges in phones next year as a trigger that could unlock 30 billion yuan in printing-service demand alone, alongside commercial aerospace and electric-vehicle verticals each projected in the hundreds-of-billions range.

The account underscores that capacity and skilled labor, not printing technology, are now the binding constraints on China's AM industrialization, as national 3D-printing equipment output grew 48.5 percent year over year in the first half of 2026.