3DPOD: Insight from 3D Printing Pros

Kenneth Jiang’s The Spaghetti Detective uses machine learning and vision to analyze your FDM prints. Relying on Octoprint, the tool looks at your 3D printer to determine whether or not it is printing spaghetti.

We manage to belatedly ask Kenneth what causes spaghetti, but most of the podcast is us brainstorming with Kenneth about all of the types of things his tool can do. Machine learning and machine vision will play an important part in 3D printing, but we have very few actual practical working examples. This is one of those few and we find out all about it, as well as Kenneth’s own story, in this podcast.

Olaf Diegel is a professor at the University of Auckland who specializes in all aspects of design for additive manufacturing (DfAM). He also 3D prints guitars, other instruments, and eyeballs to try to fool Apple’s facial recognition software. Olaf’s lab sometimes builds heat exchangers along with all sorts of other parts.

We have a conversation with him mostly about DfAM, including the software toolchain, AMF, nTopology, Fusion360, and more. We had a fun but valuable conversation with Olaf and hope that you enjoy it as well.

This time on the 3DPOD, we get to chat with Major Travis Tubbs of the U.S. Space Force. Surprisingly, a lot of the conversation was about plants, but we also discussed satellites, farming from space, farming in space, terraforming planets, 3D scanning plants, and a lot more.

We were also super curious about the brand new U.S. Space Force. We asked questions about what it’s like working there and being part of such a new service. Due to Major Tubbs’s extensive research, we get to bounce all over the place speaking to him about topics relevant to 3D printing. The result of this is a fun and informative conversation about many things that you may not expect to think about.

Clement Moreau founded Sculpteo and led the 3D print service for ten years before selling it to BASF. In this episode, we follow his journey, discuss what made Sculpteo successful, and how the company changed along with its market. We hear of an initial consumer focus that was replaced by one focusing on European businesses.

Now, as a part of BASF, how will Sculpteo fair? And what is Sculpteo’s role in BASF’s 3D printing expansion? Clement is open and direct and tells us about finding investors, growth, and focus. This is a really great story for entrepreneurs and those operating in the service bureau space!

In this episode, Max and I fall all over ourselves to ask questions of Douglas Hofmann, Principal Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). We also listen intently as Doug explains the ins and outs of bulk metallic glasses (aka “amorphous metals”) and why one would use these materials. With high wear and chemical resistance amorphous metals can be used for gearboxes that do not require lubrication, handy if you’re on Mars and the nearest Jiffy Lube is 319 million kilometers away.

We also get to understand a bit more about what it is that JPL does and how it uses 3D printing to make parts for its vehicles and projects. Max and I could scarcely contain our excitement with this episode and we hope that you enjoy it also. By the way, to learn more about how 3D printing is used for space programs, check out 3DPrint.com’s Space Zone.

I’m unabashedly a Domin fanboy. The UK-based company makes high-performance hydraulic valves in Poland using powder bed fusion. These optimized products are high value and outperform traditionally manufactured systems in many metrics. It seems that the valve world is ripe for digitization and may forever be changed via 3D printing.

Domin CEO Marcus Pont shimmers with ambition and has a lot of wise and insightful things to say on this podcast. We cover numerous subjects and I think that there are deep insights to be had in how to engineer for value and how to make breakthrough end-use parts. I was on a kind of hazy 3D printing high when this episode ended—give it a listen.

Byron Kennedy is the CEO of SPEE3D, an Australian firm that develops cold spray metal 3D printing. After a successful exit in powertrain components, he and his business partner Steven Camilleri were exploring 3D printing and new technologies. They found an existing 30-year-old technology, cold spray, and decided to make it additive. The result is a machine capable of producing 30 tonnes of metal parts a year at extremely low-cost points per part.

Byron talks us through the technology and applications. He speaks of opportunities in marine and defense with large, low-cost components that are out of bounds for most of the rest of our industry. The boys down under have really turned the cold spray process on its head, but have also upended the economics of 3D printing. Byron gives us a lot of engineering insight related to how the process was designed and how they’re finding applications for their technology. It was a real eye-opener for Max and me and really let us think much much bigger about additive than we did before.

This episode is a blast, as we descend into the mayhem that was the early days of MolyWorks. A team that tries to make a gas atomizer on a founder’s lawn inside a shipping container and survives is a lucky one indeed. And now, years later, Chris Eonta’s company is more mature and shipping its Greyhound containerized atomization facilities worldwide. These can turn scrap into low-cost, high-performance metal powders for powder bed fusion. You can also use them to recycle scrap or to turn failed prints and supports into new powder. I really feel that Molyworks is overlooked and think that they could have a profound impact on making 3D printing more sustainable and moving it into austere areas. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Jeff Mize is a veteran entrepreneur who sold his firm NAVTEQ to Nokia for $8.1 billion and his Climate Corporation to Monsanto for $1.1 billion. He now heads up PostProcess Technologies. There, Jeff wants to help 3D printed goods become a reality through a number of post-processing solutions. With a variety of technologies with exciting names, Post Process helps remove SLA supports, de-powder SLS builds, and surface finish parts. We talked about Jeff’s goals for the company and how he sees the industry grow and change. I think that both Max and I learned a lot from Jeff and hope that you will as well.

Technical ceramics keep on working when a lot of other materials fail. If a part needs to be in a very hot or very chemically abrasive environment, or if you need incredibly high abrasion resistance, then technical ceramics will continue to work where polymers and metals would have long since failed. In a lot of applications, they’re lighter, as well, and have great properties for very specific uses. But, of all the materials, technical ceramics are the bastard stepchildren of the materials world. Misunderstood and unloved they are underutilized.

One person who wishes to change this is Guillaume de Calan of Nanoe. Nanoe makes ceramic filaments for desktop machines and a number of other ceramics besides. Max and I were charmed by Guillaume’s deep knowledge of ceramics and the way he qualifies everything he says and is very realistic. We talk with Guillaume about sintering, binder jet, the use of desktop 3D printers for print ceramic parts, and many of the issues, as well as opportunities, with ceramics as well. At the end of it all, I think that this 3DPOD can really help you learn a lot more about ceramic materials and processes that could help you solve your problems.