3DPOD: Insight from 3D Printing Pros

Brent Wright is a prosthetist and orthotist who uses 3D printing to help people regain function in their lives. Max and I both found talking to him to be super inspiring. Brent works for EastPoint Prosthetics & LifeNabled, as well as Additive America. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about HP Multi Jet Fusion, prosthetics sockets, wear, posterior cruciate ligaments, VarioShore TPU 3D printing filament, how to make an orthotic, and how to become a prosthetist. Needless to say, Max and I were both taken by the extremely motivating and wonderful work that Brent does. It’s also a 3D printing application that makes useful parts that are very valuable to patients. Check out the training, prosthetics, and work that Brent does here. $70 gets someone a knee.

Pia Harlaß is the Head of Global Marketing & Corporate Communications for DyeMansion, a leading post-finishing company that offers machines that can depowder, create a uniform surface texture, and then color powder bed fusion parts. Now expanding beyond sintered components, the company is a key enabler in turning parts into products.

I’m following the post-processing industry very closely because they’re a bellwether for our overall health. Anyone can buy a printer to liven up their innovation lab, but only those doing manufacturing will invest in post-processing equipment. Since so much of the cost of a 3D printed part is in labor, any gains made by DyeMansion and its peers will mean savings for all of us and more manufacturing opportunities. Between the promises of manufacturing with 3D printing stands a wall of costs and this wall is being brought down by DyeMansion and others. We really loved hearing from Pia about just how different the brash upstart DyeMansion is and how it has been to work at the company. We hope you’ll like this episode, as well!

Ethan Escowitz, whom we interviewed here, co-founded Arris, which hopes to revolutionize the world of composites. By combining molding and 3D printing, his company’s innovative technology can make parts with good surface finish almost automatically. It can also lay down continuous fiber in different compositions or concentrations across the part. This allows the company to reinforce parts or change properties of the part at certain areas, for example, modifying radio frequency properties or altering torsion in a determined way. The company hopes that it can play a role in drones, sports gear, cars, consumer electronics, and beyond. Arris is a really exciting startup with a lot of potential and we really enjoyed speaking with Ethan about the possibilities.

For the past several months, Jürgen von Hollen has been the CEO of Ultimaker. He comes from Cobot leader Universal Robotics and was previously in leading roles at several different filtration and industrial firms. von Hollen is a consummate strategist and professional, but will he expand the business while staying true to Ultimaker’s roots? What is his vision on segmenting, approaching, and selling into this market? What does he hope to achieve in the coming years? What role will resellers and partners play in the Ultimaker ecosystem? Learn the answers to all of these questions and get a feel for Ultimaker’s new chief on the 3DPOD.

Today, Max and I got to chat to Benny Buller, CEO of VELO3D. His company is shaking up the metal powder bed fusion market and Benny lets us in on the company’s strategy, how VELO3D’s technology works, and his vision on running and growing a business. Benny tells us about how he got to where he is today, as well.

Benny also discloses that he wants VELO3D to be a public company. While he did not comment on the current rumors that he is in talks to merge with Barry Sternlicht’s Jaws Spitfire Acquisition Corp to get listed, we have reached out to VELO3D for a comment about the potential SPAC meger.

He believes in direct communication and honesty. He additionally discusses the company’s focus on relatively few part families and industries. The firm wants to reach customers that could potentially buy many machines from it. This kind of thinking is very different from other players in the market and I love this approach to the industry. It’s a refreshing podcast with a lot of insight, especially for those who wish to grow their own businesses.

Sumeet Jain is the Senior Director of 3D Printing Worldwide for Arkema. Previously Sumeet headed up Sartomer, the company’s DLP and SLA resin brand, for seven years. Sumeet discusses with us how they make custom resins for applications and customers. Now, he’s also responsible for their sintering powders, including the bio-based Rilsan polyamide 11, Kepstan PEKK, and Kynar PVDF, among other materials.

We discuss Arkema’s approach to the industry, its go-to-market strategy, and how 3D printing fits into the overall Arkema picture. We also talk about the materials themselves, such as PEKK and PVDF, as well as the company’s PMMA for FDM, which us initially perplexing for us. We really loved having Sumeet on the 3DPOD and enjoyed his clear explanations and open approach to 3D printing. We hope you do to.

After studying at Loughborough and MIT he worked on making snowboard components for Burton, Mike Vasquez started 3Degrees. There, he’s not only a 3D printing consultant but also has his own podcast. So, as a first for us, we’re doing a collab where you and the 3Degrees audience will be able to listen to our joint show. Ignore the MIT degrees and the vast knowledge, as well as Mike’s silky smooth voice, please, and stick to our program!

Max and I again enjoyed this discussion and Mike’s vision on materials, polymers, and when and where 3D printing is useful. Mike is focusing on enabling small-to-medium businesses to tackle additive head-on in implementation and production. This is a super valuable area for him to leverage his knowledge. He has also launched Trace, an application to help companies track and implement quality management systems for additive.

I’m a huge nScrypt fan and love the firm’s technologies. The way they’ve defined their “line in a tool” approach to additive is really inspiring to me. With nScrypt machines, you can print electronics, polymers, micro dispense, mill and aerosol jet, all in one machine. The company is the only one that is working on combining bioprinting and electronics and is far ahead of anyone else in electronics 3D printing, as well. At the same time it leads in high-tech, rugged printers that can be used in austere environments and has worked on printers for use on board the International Space Station. I love the capabilities of nScrypt’s machines and think that they are criminally unknown.

Talking with the CEO of nScrypt, Ken Church, was a blast. We discussed bioprinting from a realistic standpoint, as well as electronics 3D printing and the future of our industry. Ken’s a straight shooter and is as knowledgeable as he is opinionated, so you’ll learn a lot from him, I’m sure. We also surprisingly talked a while about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with nScrypt having been partially funded by them. Unsurprisingly, Max and I had a little to say about that, as well. This would be a great episode to give a listen to, especially if you’re thinking of applying for DARPA funding or have something that could help them. But, if you just want to be completely jazzed out about our technology and the possibilities, well then you should listen, too.

On this episode of the 3DPOD, we go into bioprinting. With us is Hector Martinez, the CTO and a co-founder of CELLINK (CLNK-B.ST). CELLINK is a bioprinting rocket ship which took off only a few years ago. A small passionate team began selling bioinks and have since grown the company into a leader in bioprinting.

CELLINK is publicly traded and has a wide array of printers from the affordable to complex machines and from extrusion to DLP and holographic machines, as well. Martinez tells us about the foundation of CELLINK and the initial teams. He also has sage advice about how to know when your co-founders are the right partners for you. He talks to us as well about the near-term opportunities in bioprinting, what he expects from the market and where he expects interesting things to happen. If you are looking to explore bioprinting or are in the industry, this is a must-listen. I’d also recommend it to entrepreneurs and people with entrepreneurial spirits. You’ll walk away jazzed and informed from this one.

The affable and knowledgeable Dr. Ian Gibson is a professor of Design Engineering at the University of Twente, as well as the Scientific Director of the Fraunhofer Project Centre there. Dr. Gibson has written many papers on various areas in 3D printing across a long and deep additive career. He’s also a co-author of the 3D printing textbook Additive Manufacturing Technologies.

Working in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, he truly has a global perspective on additive technologies. From concrete printing to medical, metals, and polymers, he has an objective and learned view of many parts of the industry. He’s careful in what he says and how he says it and is wise in our 3D printed world. Max and I loved this, of course, and we went on a meandering journey past binder jet, house printing, implants and much more besides. We really hope that you like this talk.