Podcasts about Desktop Metal

John is joined by Christopher Kercher, partner in Quinn Emanuel's New York office, and Jeffrey Chivers, co-founder of litigation AI company Syllo AI.  They discuss the transformative role artificial intelligence played in a recent Quinn Emanuel trial victory in Delaware Chancery Court.  The case involved Desktop Metal's attempt to force Nano Dimension to complete a $183 million merger, where Nano tried to stall the deal by slow-walking regulatory approvals by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States until the drop-dead date for the transaction had passed.  Quinn Emanuel was hired to represent Desktop Metal only six weeks before trial, requiring an accelerated approach to discovery and case preparation.  The team used Syllo AI, a litigation focused product that allowed them to review and organize massive volumes of documents through natural language prompts, create timelines, tag relevant material, and identify patterns much faster than traditional methods.  The Syllo platform also integrates multiple AI models that cross-check each other's outputs while following built-in mental models of legal reasoning.  During the trial, Syllo customized its tools to provide rapid privilege log and document production deficiency analysis, helping to identify gaps in the opposing side's discovery.  The team also worked with Claude, a large language model developed by Anthropic to test ideas, explore potential legal theories, and brainstorm approaches to witness examinations.  Syllo and Claude helped attorneys identify relevant evidence for use in expedited post-trial briefs and suggested potential lines of questioning for depositions.  Attorneys directed all AI usage, with Claude serving as a cognitive tool that amplified the legal team's capabilities while the attorneys maintained full responsibility for all work product.  AI did not displace anyone on the trial team. Instead, it complemented the attorneys' expertise, enhancing their ability to deliver strategic insights and respond effectively to case developments.  It may soon become malpractice not to use AI in trial preparation.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

On this episode of the Additive Insight podcast, we're joined by Tuan Tranpham, an additive manufacturing veteran who currently works as the President of Americas and Asia Pacific for Anisoprint. Tranpham came into the additive manufacturing industry more than 20 years ago, starting with a sales role at Z Corp and only a beginner's knowledge of 3D printing. Since then, he has gone on to work for the likes of 3D Systems, Arcam and Desktop Metal, selling metal, polymer and composite 3D printing technologies and becoming the most followed AM professional on LinkedIn. Joining the Additive Insight podcast, Tranpham shares his thoughts on the progression of additive technology, how machine OEMs should handle application development, and what attracted him to his latest role at Anisoprint. We also discuss his time at Desktop Metal, and touch on what else he wants to achieve in his career.

Welcome to 2025, and welcome to Printing Money Episode 25!  For this episode Danny welcomes back a couple of previous guests: Arno Held (AM Ventures) and startup advisor Tali Rosman. It's a new year so, naturally, this episode has its share of reflecting on the 2024 that was and the 2025 (and beyond) that will be. Danny, Arno, and Tali start off by harkening back one last time to Formnext – what is traditionally the end of the 3D printing year turned out only to be a prelude to a whole lot of industry-shifting news in December. So yes, Danny, Arno and Tali discuss Shapeways' rebirth, Forward AM's insolvency, Velo's restructuring, voxeljet's go-private. And this is all really interesting, but it's only the appetizer. Next, Episode 25 wades into the deep end, analyzing and opining on the goings-on with Nano Dimension. Will the acquisitions of Desktop Metal and Markforged happen? Will the shareholder activists force the company to unwind? And what's this about tin foil hats and Russian oligarchs? After the Nano Dimension discussion, Episode 25 moves on to review some of 2024's venture capital raises, including a few recent ones.  Then, Danny, Arno and Tali consider the current artificial intelligence (AI) revolution and how it might dovetail with what's to come for additive manufacturing (AM) this year and further into the future. Please enjoy Episode 25, and please join Danny, Arno, Tali, and your other favorite Printing Money personalities at AM Strategies next month, Feb 4-6 in New York City. This episode was recorded January 8, 2025. Timestamps: 00:14 – Welcome to Episode 25 00:31 – Welcome back to Arno Held (AM Ventures) and Tali Rosman 01:21 – Reflections on Formnext and summing up 2024 03:48 – BASF Forward AM insolvency filing 05:11 – So much happened after Formnext! 07:38 – Shapeways reborn 09:14 – Velo3D (VLDX) restructured 11:31 – Voxeljet acquired by its investor, Anzu Partners 12:10 – Whither Nano Dimension (NNDM), Desktop Metal (DM), and Markforged (MKFG)? 13:11 – A pile of cash, shareholder activism, lawsuits… 15:01 – russianoligarchs.com (That's not a typo!) 17:32 – The Oerlikon (OERLY) connection 21:45 – What should/could Nano Dimension do? 26:35 – Siemens to acquire Altair, 3D Systems selling Geomagic to Hexagon 28:23 – Buyers' market: VC into AM has dropped 80% in twenty-four months 30:33 – Broad themes for 2025: M&A is coming back, Reshoring is now, Materials in focus 35:10 – Fabri raises $5M for investment casting 36:33 – Industrializing AM technology: Conflux raises $11M Series B 38:23 – AM Ventures and HZG Group co-invest on Spectroplast 39:43 – HZG invests in Craftcloud/All3DP 40:31 – AI in the 3D printing industry 41:46 – 1000 Kelvin and Euler deploy AI to 3DP/AM 45:27 – The next wave for 3DP/AM has already gotten started 47:02 – Come meet us at AMS (Feb 4-6 in NYC)! 47:43 – Thanks to Arno and Tali! Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice. Referenced transactions are sourced from publicly available information.

On the final Additive Insight episode of the year, TCT Head of Content Laura Griffiths and Group Content Manager Sam Davies get together to discuss the biggest trends and developments in AM over the last 12 months. They discuss: - Why Nano Dimension is acquiring both Desktop Metal & markforged, as well as the pressure Nano faces from a vocal shareholder. - BMW's successful application of additive manufacturing, with more than 400,000 parts now being 3D printed per year. - The rise, fall and rise again of Shapeways as two of the original co-founders revive the brand in the wake of its bankruptcy this summer. - Increased investment in the aerospace and defence sectors, with the likes of GKN Aerospace and GE Aerospace pumping tens and hundreds of millions into its AM efforts. - Forward AM's insolvency filing and where the company goes next. - And their personal highlights covering the AM sector.

Episode 23 is here, and it's chock-full. Alex Kingsbury, nLIGHT Market Development Manager and, not to mention, co-creator of the Printing Money podcast, re-joins Danny and the result is 60 minutes of additive manufacturing (AM) deals and analysis. First, we jump right in to cover Nano Dimension's in-progress deals with Desktop Metal and Markforged. Then, we cover services bureaus, major public-private funding news, and a lot of venture capital (VC) raises and financings. Last, we touch on the recent news of the postponement of Formnext Chicago. Here are just a few companies that get mentioned in this episode: Incodema, I3D, KAM, ADDMAN, Sintavia, Stifel North Atlantic, ASTRO America, Summers Value Partners, Stellantis, In-Q-Tel, Embedded Ventures, SpaceX, nTop, Seurat, NVIDIA, AE Ventures, HorizonX, Nimble Partners, AM Ventures, Breakthrough Victoria, Finindus, Sumitomo, and more. Please enjoy Episode 23, and see you later this month at Formnext in Frankfurt, or, as Danny so well puts it, “The Super Bowl of 3D printing." This episode was recorded October 29, 2024. Timestamps: 00:14 – Welcome to Episode 23, and welcome to Alex Kingsbury 01:37 – We have a lot to cover! 02:03 –AMS was a telling preview of 2024 02:53 – Nano Dimension (NNDM) acquiring Desktop Metal (DM) 05:21 – NNDM-DM last steps before closing in Q4 2024 08:04 – Nano Dimension (NNDM) acquiring Markforged (MKFG) 10:25 – An enormous amount of efficiencies 12:09 – How will NNDM, DM, and MKFG integrate? 14:19 – Markforged settles litigation from Continuous Composites 15:41 – ADDMAN acquires KAM 19:18 – AM service bureau markets: All boats are floating in the US, and all boats are sinking in Europe (Or, “Europe makes the printers, The USA prints the parts”) 20:02 – Sandvik divesting investment in BEAMIT 20:26 – Proto Labs closing metal LPBF facility in Germany 23:36 – AM Forward fund is approved by SBIC 26:26 – Restor3d closes $70m financing ($55M equity, $15M debt) 27:56 – 6K $82M Series E round 31:17 – Chromatic3D closes $6M round 32:55 – Freeform raises $14M 35:15 – NVIDIA backs 3D printing! 38:11 – nTop receives investment from NVIDIA 40:34 – AM Ventures' portfolio companies get a boost 40:53 – Conflux raises $11M Series B for heat exchangers 43:58 – Fortius Metals raises $2M from Finindus 45:15 – Sun Metalon raises $21M Series A led by Sumitomo 47:49 – UpNano raises EUR 7M 48:33 – NematX raises EUR 1.5M 50:33 – Mosaic Manufacturing raises CAD 28M 52:01 – Formnext Chicago is postponed 56:55 – See you at Formnext Frankfurt in a few weeks! Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice. Referenced transactions are sourced from publicly available information.

Episode 22 of Printing Money comes with a twist: this episode is from a live recording on the Formnext stage at IMTS on September 9, 2024.  We were lucky enough to have Danny joined by Dave Burns (Senior Advisor, AMT) for an executive perspective on the additive manufacturing (AM) markets, replete with decades of first-hand experience, first as CEO of Gleason Corporation and then as a co-founder and President of ExOne (now part of Desktop Metal). First we talk through Dave's career, with a focus on the founding of ExOne in 2005 through its IPO in 2013. Then we view the current state of the 3D printing industry, discussing market capitalizations, transaction values, and investing for the long game. This is followed by a look ahead at the drivers to propel the AM industry into maturity, with a focus on applications. Last, we have the heretofore unique chance to field questions from our live audience. Please forgive us any audio imperfections. Considering this was recorded live using an iPhone and amid a crowd of 100,000+ IMTS attendees, we are proud of it, and thankful to have such a great podcast producer (thank you, Jake!). So, please enjoy Episode 22, stay tuned for coming episodes, and browse our recent discussions while you wait for the next ones. Timestamps: 00:15 – Welcome to Printing Money Live at IMTS! 00:37 – Introducing Dave Burns (AMT) 01:26 – Dave Burns' career in manufacturing technology 03:32 – AM and traditional manufacturing are co-dependent 04:14 – From 3D printing start-up to IPO: Dave's experience at ExOne 08:00 – Market Caps in the context of historical 3DP/AM deals 08:56 – Patient Money: 3DEO receives $3.5M investment from Mizuho 12:09 – Existential De-risking: Key drivers for a long-term AM strategy 16:20 – What does the maturity of the 3D printing industry look like? 18:33 – A different mindset: Application specific printers to compete with larger all-purpose machines? 22:21 – Audience Q&A: More on the value of application specific 3D printing 24:58 – Audience Q&A: Are we solving the same problem? 27:17 – Audience Q&A: Reshoring via government funding as a path to 3DP/AM industry maturity? 29:51 – Wrap-up and thank you Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice. Referenced transactions are sourced from publicly available information.

Zhou v. Desktop Metal, Inc.

The future of home building. In it we cover putting construction in the cloud, home buying simulations, AI co-pilots for builders, onsite computer vision, advances in material science, and the future of new homes. Marc Minor is the CEO of Higharc, a software platform that helps new home builders get to market with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Higharc's mission is to modernize the $100 trillion U.S. residential real estate market and make home ownership more affordable. The platform has been used to design over 4,000 homes and has raised more than $80 million from top built-world investors such as Fifth Wall, Spark Capital, Lux, and a host of strategic partners, including Home Depot. Marc spent his career in the 3D printing and fabrication space, leading the marketing departments at Carbon and Desktop Metal before founding Higharc in 2018. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How can AI, automation, and technology democratize custom home design and improve the home building process for both buyers and architects?On this episode of Practice Disrupted, we welcome Marc Minor and Michael Bergin, the co-founders of Higharc. With Marc's passion for combining design and technology and Michael's dedication to improving the built environment through design automation, they created Higharc. Higharc provides software tools to make custom home design more accessible, enabling users to design, estimate, sell, and build their ideal homes. Our discussion is focused on their vision for democratizing custom home design.First, Marc and Michael discuss the origins of Higharc, their relationship as co-founders, and their goal to bring design automation to the industry. They highlight the ways tech can address housing shortages, improve affordability, and enhance the home-building process.Then, we dive into efficient customization in home design and how Higharc empowers architects to engage with the industry on a larger scale. They share strategies for optimizing the home-buying experience for both buyers and architects, working with the industry's supply and demand, and managing the current housing market.What really is going to make it so that houses are more affordable is addressing the supply problem. Higharc as a business is also very pointed at this soft cycle supply problem making it faster to build homes so that we have more homes for people to move into. There's an ecosystem here, and if we could take that knowledge and have systems that enable professionals to engage with this process, this industry at greater scale, we all stand to benefit. - Michael BerginTo wrap up the conversation, Marc and Michael look to the future and share their vision for bridging the gap between architects and buyers, with the goal to create more diverse, automated, and connected communities.Tune in next week for an episode with Tanooki Labs Product Manager, Liz Fibleuil. Guests:Marc Minor:Marc started Higharc with the goal of making good home design accessible to more people. He's passionate about pairing design with technology and guiding teams to bring those technologies to market. Prior to starting Higharc, Marc launched two 3D printing companies — Desktop Metal and Carbon3D — out of stealth to become industry leaders, and held management roles for some of the world's most beloved brands and creative consultancies.Michael Bergin:Michael is VP of Product and Co-Founder of Higharc. Throughout his career, he has been dedicated to improving the built environment through design automation. Early in his architecture training, he became dissatisfied with the slow pace and limited accessibility of custom home design. Frustrated, he returned to graduate school and explored the potential to improve these conditions through research into mass-customization of homes. He applied these concepts in practice as a Research Lead at Autodesk, creating a product enabling design automation for the automotive and aerospace industries. His work leading the product design effort culminated in the release of Autodesk Generative Design.

On this episode of the Additive Insight podcast, we're joined by Fluent Metal CEO Peter Schmitt. With a background in fine art, most of Schmitt's career has been focused on design, with the CEO spending several years occupying the role of Chief Designer at Desktop Metal. During his tenure at Desktop, Schmitt's eyes were opened to the opportunities of metal additive manufacturing, as well as the remaining and challenges, some of which he's looking to address with this new venture. Earlier this year, Fluent Metal emerged from stealth with 5.5 million dollars of funding and the tease of an as-yet unlaunched single-step, drop on-demand liquid metal 3D printing process. We talk about all that and much more on this episode of the Additive Insight podcast, starting with Schmitt's learnings from his previous roles in AM.

We are back with Episode 19 of Printing Money.  The world does not stop turning. One not-so-profound reminder of that is the quarterly earnings reports of publicly traded companies.  It never ends, and we are always there to cover this aspect of the 3D printing world. Last episode, we zoomed out to talk about policies which shape the additive manufacturing (AM) industry. For Episode 19  we are zooming back in, welcoming back Wall Street analyst Troy Jensen (Cantor Fitzgerald) and looking at the Q1 2024 earnings reports of the variously publicly traded 3D printing companies.  Unfortunately, there were a few negative themes including reverse stock splits, missed earnings reports, and negative enterprise values.  But we also touch on positive trends for some with increasing gross margins, materials consumption, and healthy cash positions. Please enjoy Episode 19 and stay tuned for future shows. See you at RAPID! Timestamps: 00:13 – Hello, and welcome back, Troy Jensen. 00:43 – Getting ready for RAPID 2024 01:42 – Q1 2024 AM Public Company Earnings 01:50 – 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD), the earnings results that weren't (or, haven't been) 02:28 – 3D Systems makes a big deal with Align Technologies (ALGN) 08:18 – Stratasys (SSYS) Q1 2024 earnings 10:17 – Speculation (speculation only!) about a tie-up between Stratasys and HP (HPQ) 14:07 – Desktop Metal (DM) Q1 2024 earnings 16:41 – Desktop Metal reverse stock split 18:09 – Markforged (MKFG) Q1 2024 earnings 18:50 – Markforged loses $17M judgement on claim by Continuous Composites 22:03 – Nano Dimension (NNDM) Q1 2024 earnings 25:17 – Velo3D (VLD) Q1 2024 earnings 28:10 – Nikon (TSE: 7731) SLM Solutions and the growth in metal laser sintering 29:17 – voxeljet (VX8B: FRA) Q1 2024 earnings, and delisting from the US exchanges 30:07 – Materialise (MTLS) Q1 2024 earnings 32:35 – Shapeways (SHPW), the other earnings results that haven't been 32:33 – Xometry (XMTR) Q1 2024 earnings 36:06 – Proto Labs (PRLB) Q1 2024 earnings 37:00 – Conclusions and looking forward to the rest of 2024

As the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, a leader in manufacturing science and technology research, and a co-founder of multiple successful businesses, Prof. John Hart's career is an “engineering hat-trick.” His contributions to the trifecta of education, research, and entrepreneurship have earned him numerous industry awards and accolades. Beyond academia, John is the co-founder VulcanForms and Desktop Metal, two disruptive companies shaking up the world of additive manufacturing. In this episode, host Jon Hirschtick chats with Prof. Hart about VulcanForms' integration of advanced technologies like fusion power and artificial intelligence with additive manufacturing processes. He also explores how this new approach impacts the global production landscape and examines the challenges and opportunities associated with widespread adoption. The professor additionally shares advice for aspiring researchers in the field of manufacturing.

Printing Money returns with Episode 15! This month, NewCap Partners' Danny Piper is joined by Scott Dunham, Executive Vice President of Research at Additive Manufacturing (AM) Research, and Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, Executive Partner at AMPOWER.  Last month, we zoomed out with The Association for Manufacturing Technology's Chris Chidzik and examined the broader manufacturing market. This month, we zoom back in with two of the leading AM market analysts. Scott and Matthias took part in a market data panel at the 2024 Additive Manufacturing Strategies business summit earlier this month, and continue the conversation here. Danny queries Matthias and Scott on their respective market tracking methodologies and gets their views on global and regional trends across metals, polymers, hardware and services. The second part of Episode 15 takes a look at notable deals and market activity in the last month, including news from Wayland Additive, Desktop Metal, CORE Industrial, SOLIZE, Prototal, and others. Enjoy Episode 15 and stay tuned for more!   Time Stamps: 00:16 Danny introduces our guests 01:35 Meet Scott Dunham, EVP Research at AM Research 02:42 Meet Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, Executive Partner, AMPOWER 04:22 Wall Street research analysts vs. market research analysts 05:18 AM Research data methodology 07:18 AMPOWER data methodology 09:39 AM market trends: A regional discussion 14:01 Print services market trends: Specialized versus broader approach 18:38 OEM market trends: Does Chris Chidzik's broader manufacturing view apply to AM? 22:41 Build size: Is bigger better? 27:36 AMPOWER:  AM Ventures venture capital market study 32:25 Wayland Additive raises GBP 4.2M 37:38 More construction 3DP raises: Azure raises $5M & Black Buffalo raises $4.25M 39:48 Desktop Metal files $250M mixed shelf offering with Cantor Fitzgerald 40:20 CORE Industrial raises $887M 40:57 SOLIZE IPOs in Japan 42:16 Prototal acquires CA Models 44:53 NUBURU (NASD: BURU) seeking strategic alternatives 46:23 RIP 3D Printing: Arevo assets up for sale, Uniformity Labs equipment auction, Shapeways liquidating Desktop Metal hardware, Morf3D being phased out 48:59 Thanks to Scott and Matthias! This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice. Referenced transactions are sourced from publicly available information.

News:  Cuts at Desktop Metal https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/desktop-metal-announces-staff-cuts-as-part-of-latest-cost-reduction-plan-227886/ Segments:  XL Nozzle, Spool Joining, How to make money     Thing of the Week:  Soft Tape Measure Spool https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6445721   threedprintingtoday.libsyn.com or  Search for 3D Printing Today wherever you get your podcasts

Happy holidays to our esteemed Printing Money listeners. Alex re-joins for this episode, and we also welcome back Arno Held from AM Ventures. There have been a number of thought provoking 3DP/AM transactions and impressive venture rounds since we last covered these topics in Episode 11.  Danny, Alex and Arno have you covered with a wealth of knowledge about all of it.  We begin with some ruminations and reminiscence on Formnext 2023, then we cover M&A and VC, and dive a bit into the private financing environment. Along the way you'll notice some interesting themes including corporate streamlining, and an educational and entertaining ode to tungsten! 0:13   Introductions 0:51   Formnext 2023 impressions 4:35   Cumberland Additive acquires Stratasys Direct division 9:43   3D Systems likely selling Oqton? 10:47 Nexa acquires Essentium 13:05 BigRep buys HAGE3D, and pursues German SPAC 17:05 Desktop Metal sells Aerosint to Schaeffler 22:00 Sandvik acquires Buffalo Tungsten 23:48 6K Additive purchases Global Metal Powders 26:27 Vectoflow closes €4M Series A 31:15 Divergent closes $230M Series D, and buys Sigma Additive's IP 33:41 Immensa lands $20M Series B 37:07 Precipart takes growth equity from KKR 39:12 Cognitive Designs raises €2M 41:15 Lithoz invests in Amarea 43:00 Multi-material printing 45:45 Norsk Titanium secures €2M bridge loan This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice. Referenced transactions are sourced from publicly available information.    

On the last Additive Insight podcast episode of the year, the TCT editorial team sits down to pick the bones out of an eventful 2023.  Over the course of 90 minutes, TCT Head of Content Laura Griffiths, TCT Group Content Manager Sam Davies, and Junior Content Producer Oli Johnson assess the launches, bounces and mergers from January through to December.  Their conversation spans from the closing of Nikon's SLM Solutions acquisition to the never-ending saga surrounding Stratasys, Desktop Metal, 3D Systems and Nano Dimension. From 3D printed basketballs to 3D printed rockets. And from Chicago to Shanghai.  It has been a year of highs and lows, ups and downs, and the TCT editorial team share their thoughts on it all in this Additive Insight episode.

This episode is brought to you by PCBWay. Check them out at https://jle.vi/pcbway for all your fabrication needs!Jonas Galle is founder and CEO of ValCUN. ValCUN is a Belgian based company that has developed a new technology for metal 3D printing with the focus on aluminium with the goal to make metal additive manufacturing affordable, initially towards industrial production and eventually towards makers.Because Jonas is a maker/hobbyist himself and only starts projects where normal peoples stops:).The idea for ValCUN was triggered by the question: "Why is nobody printing metals like polymer FDM? Because that would make things way more easier for metal AM". In many hobby projects (including the ones of Jonas') required metal and preferrable aluminium as this is easier to process with outstanding weight-strength ratio. Many dedicated hobbist have basic milling machines but when more complex shapes are required CNC milling/3D printing would be desired. A single step aluminium FDM process could solve many problems (not limiting to hobbyist but also industry).

In this bonus episode, Alex and Danny interview Ric Fulop, co-founder and CEO of Desktop Metal. Desktop Metal has recently concluded merger talks with Stratasys after a shareholder vote led to a termination of the deal. In this interview, Ric dives into his motivations for the merger, and shares much of the background context on Desktop Metal's history with Stratasys, plus other players such as Nano Dimension and 3D Systems. Additionally, Alex and Danny dive into some of the history around Desktop Metal, Ric's move from VC back into the entrepreneurial world, his thesis for forming Desktop Metal, motivations for the SPAC, and the acquisition strategy thereafter.   0.00: Intros   3.56: Ric's background and DM's history   11.20: Development and launch of DMs Production System   15.45: Ric's move from VC to Founder   17.50: DMs fundraising prior to their SPAC   22.05: The reasons DM listed via a SPAC   26.45: DM's acquisition strategy and early talks with ExOne   28.07: DMs initial offer to acquire Stratasys in January 2021   31.26: DM's acquisition of EnvisionTEC and Adaptive3D   34.39: Nano Dimension's offers to acquire Desktop Metal   38.25: 3D Systems offers put to Stratasys   39.14: Termination of merger with Desktop Metal and Stratasys   40.55: Did Stratasys shareholders make the wrong decision?   45.17: Latest DM financials and cost savings   48.35: Integration strategy of DM of the acquired companies   51.55: What will Nano Dimension, 3D Systems and Stratasys do next?   54.32: Potential for another Desktop Metal merger in future?   55.50: Any future Desktop Metal acquisitions?   57.55: Wrap-up  

A summer slow down in financings means that Troy, Danny, and Alex get to spend more time on acquisitions and the public markets this episode. Two acquisitions are up for discussion: SLM Solutions purchase of Adira Addcreative, and that of Xerox's Elem Additive by ADDiTEC. Next, the public markets have just completed Q2 reporting, so Troy Jensen, Senior Research Analyst from Lake Street Capital gives his market roundup. Together, Troy, Danny, and Alex continue the discussion on the Stratasys-3D Systems-Desktop Metal-Nano Dimension merger fest, and also consider the positions of Markforged and Velo3D. Then the trio discuss the 3D printing service bureaus, both publicly listed and also non-public, and how private equity is moving in the 3D printing industry. 0.48: Summer slowdown in financings 1.42: SLM Solutions acquires Adira Addcreative 6.25: ADDiTEC acquires Elem Additive 11.05: OEM public companies general commentary 12.27: Velo3D Q2 results and $70 million convertible offering 13.28: Markforged Q2 results, rumors of new machine and share price movement 16.10: Nano Dimension, Markforged, Velo3D results and merger discussion 20.22: Desktop Metal has a healthy Q2 21.08: 3D Systems faces challenging conditions in dental and industrial  22.13: Stratasys Q2 and negotiation tactics with 3D Systems 27.40: Consolidation in the industry and need for scale 29.23: Service bureau public companies general commentary: Fathom, Protolabs, Xometry, Shapeways 33.41: Market dynamics for 3d printing service bureaus, both public and private 41.07: Data disclaimer This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice.   

Wer die aktuellen Übernahmeaktivitäten von Stratasys, 3D Systems, Nano Dimension und Desktop Metal verfolgt hat stellt sich sicher auch die Frage, was geht dort nur ab? Wie soll man das bewerten? Ist das gut oder schlecht? Welche Auswirkungen kann das haben? Genau dies bespreche ich heute in dieser 3D-Druck Interview-Podcast Folge mit Hanz-Alfred Breuninger.

Limited hand function can make everyday tasks like cooking, cleaning, or writing difficult for people around the world with cerebral palsy, stroke, and many other conditions. To address these challenges, Hominid X is developing and delivering wearable assistive products that can help people increase their independence and enhance their lives. In this episode, you'll meet Thane Hunt, Founder and CEO of Hominid X — one of the startup companies in our 2023 Remarkable US Accelerator Program. In addition to this work, Thane is a Senior Systems Engineer at Desktop Metal. In the first episode of this two-part interview, Thane introduces himself, shares the story of how Hominid X came to be, and tells us more about Fiber — one of their innovative products that's an easy-to-use assistive device for people with hand weakness or paralysis.

In this week's episode of the VM podcast, we conversed with Andy Jeffery, a serial entrepreneur with a long-standing history in the 3D printing industry that stretches back to the early nineties. Jeffery's journey through the 3D printing industry offers a unique narrative - encompassing the founding of companies, exploration of diverse materials, and an ever-evolving interest in sustainability. Jeffery's first venture into 3D printing was with a company called Specific Surface, which was one of the first licensees of the Binder Jet 3D printing process from MIT. This marked the beginning of Jeffery's 3D printing career and spurred him to found numerous companies thereafter, with each new endeavor drawing on his initial experiences. However, Jeffery's restless entrepreneurial spirit wasn't quelled, and his interest in wood led to the establishment of Forust, in 2019. Despite the global pandemic, Forust caught the attention of Desktop Metal and was acquired by them within a year. Jeffery's work with Forust ignited his interest in sustainability and circular economies. His current venture, Marvel Labs, focuses on sustainable materials like sawdust, coffee grounds, and seaweed. These materials offer innovative solutions for 3D printing and encourage circularity in the manufacturing process. Join us as we delve into this absorbing conversation with Andy Jeffery, a pioneering figure who has reshaped the contours of 3D printing over the last few decades.

Tate and Tyler talk about their reaction the Stratasys and Desktop Metal merger

In what is shaping up to be the biggest deal in the 3D printing industry of 2023, Stratasys and Desktop Metal will combine to form a $1.8 billion company. Alex and Danny unpack the particulars of the deal, including some of the motivations behind it, namely repeated takeover attempts of Stratasys by Nano Dimension. The product portfolios of both Stratasys (Nasdaq: SSYS) and Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM) are discussed in relation to what the merged company may look like, how it may operate, and what potential cost savings are realistic. Additionally, ramifications for the broader industry and current listed companies are unpacked. The merger is still subject to shareholder approval however, so the value of this merger for shareholders on both sides is examined.

One of the hardest parts of telling any history, is which innovations are significant enough to warrant mention. Too much, and the history is so vast that it can't be told. Too few, and it's incomplete. Arguably, no history is ever complete. Yet there's a critical path of innovation to get where we are today, and hundreds of smaller innovations that get missed along the way, or are out of scope for this exact story. Children have probably been placing sand into buckets to make sandcastles since the beginning of time. Bricks have survived from round 7500BC in modern-day Turkey where humans made molds to allow clay to dry and bake in the sun until it formed bricks. Bricks that could be stacked. And it wasn't long before molds were used for more. Now we can just print a mold on a 3d printer.   A mold is simply a block with a hollow cavity that allows putting some material in there. People then allow it to set and pull out a shape. Humanity has known how to do this for more than 6,000 years, initially with lost wax casting with statues surviving from the Indus Valley Civilization, stretching between parts of modern day Pakistan and India. That evolved to allow casting in gold and silver and copper and then flourished in the Bronze Age when stone molds were used to cast axes around 3,000 BCE. The Egyptians used plaster to cast molds of the heads of rulers. So molds and then casting were known throughout the time of the earliest written works and so the beginning of civilization. The next few thousand years saw humanity learn to pack more into those molds, to replace objects from nature with those we made synthetically, and ultimately molding and casting did its part on the path to industrialization. As we came out of the industrial revolution, the impact of all these technologies gave us more and more options both in terms of free time as humans to think as well as new modes of thinking. And so in 1868 John Wesley Hyatt invented injection molding, patenting the machine in 1872. And we were able to mass produce not just with metal and glass and clay but with synthetics. And more options came but that whole idea of a mold to avoid manual carving and be able to produce replicas stretched back far into the history of humanity. So here we are on the precipice of yet another world-changing technology becoming ubiquitous. And yet not. 3d printing still feels like a hobbyists journey rather than a mature technology like we see in science fiction shows like Star Trek with their replicators or printing a gun in the Netflix show Lost In Space. In fact the initial idea of 3d printing came from a story called Things Pass By written all the way back in 1945! I have a love-hate relationship with 3D printing. Some jobs just work out great. Others feel very much like personal computers in the hobbyist era - just hacking away until things work. It's usually my fault when things go awry. Just as it was when I wanted to print things out on the dot matrix printer on the Apple II. Maybe I fed the paper crooked or didn't check that there was ink first or sent the print job using the wrong driver. One of the many things that could go wrong.  But those fast prints don't match with the reality of leveling and cleaning nozzles and waiting for them to heat up and pulling filament out of weird places (how did it get there, exactly)! Or printing 10 add-ons for a printer to make it work the way it probably should have out of the box.  Another area where 3d printing is similar to the early days of the personal computer revolution is that there are a few different types of technology in use today. These include color-jet printing (CJP), direct metal printing (DMP), fused deposition modeling (FDM), Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM, multi-jet printing (MJP), stereolithography (SLA), selective laser melting (SLM), and selective laser sintering (SLS). Each could be better for a given type of print job to be done. Some forms have flourished while others are either their infancy or have been abandoned like extinct languages. Language isolates are languages that don't fit into other families. Many are the last in a branch of a larger language family tree. Others come out of geographically isolated groups. Technology also has isolates. Konrad Zuse built computers in pre-World War II Germany and after that aren't considered to influence other computers. In other words, every technology seems to have a couple of false starts. Hideo Kodama filed the first patent to 3d print in 1980 - but his method of using UV lights to harden material doesn't get commercialized.  Another type of 3d printing includes printers that were inkjets that shot metal alloys onto surfaces. Inkjet printing was invented by Ichiro Endo at Canon in the 1950s, supposedly when he left a hot iron on a pen and ink bubbled out. Thus the “Bubble jet” printer. And Jon Vaught at HP was working on the same idea at about the same time. These were patented and used to print images from computers over the coming decades. Johannes Gottwald patented a printer like this in 1971. Experiments continued through the 1970s when companies like Exxon were trying to improve various prototyping processes. Some of their engineers joined an inventor Robert Howard in the early 1980s to found a company called Howtek and they produced the Pixelmaster, using hot-melt inks to increment the ink jet with solid inks, which then went on to be used by Sanders Prototype, which evolved into a company called Solidscape to market the Modelmaker. And some have been used to print solar cells, living cells, tissue, and even edible birthday cakes. That same technique is available with a number of different solutions but isn't the most widely marketable amongst the types of 3D printers available. SLA There's often a root from which most technology of the day is derived. Charles, or Chuck, Hull coined the term stereolithography, where he could lay down small layers of an object and then cure the object with UV light, much as the dentists do with fillings today. This is made possibly by photopolymers, or plastics that are easily cured by an ultraviolet light. He then invented the stereolithography apparatus, or SLA for short, a machine that printed from the bottom to the top by focusing a laser on photopolymer while in a liquid form to cure the plastic into place. He worked on it in 1983, filed the patent in 1984, and was granted the patent in 1986.  Hull also developed a file format for 3D printing called STL. STL files describe the surface of a three-dimensional object, geometrically using Cartesian coordinates. Describing coordinates and vectors means we can make objects bigger or smaller when we're ready to print them. 3D printers print using layers, or slices. Those can change based on the filament on the head of a modern printer, the size of the liquid being cured, and even the heat of a nozzle. So the STL file gets put into a slicer that then converts the coordinates on the outside to the polygons that are cured. These are polygons in layers, so they may appear striated rather than perfectly curved according to the size of the layers. However, more layers take more time and energy. Such is the evolution of 3D printing. Hull then founded a company called 3D Systems in Valencia California to take his innovation to market. They sold their first printer, the SLA-1 in 1988. New technologies start out big and expensive. And that was the case with 3D Systems. They initially sold to large engineering companies but when solid-state lasers came along in 1996 they were able to provide better systems for cheaper.  Languages also have other branches. Another branch in 3d printing came in 1987, just before the first SLA-1 was sold.  Carl Deckard  and his academic adviser Joe Beaman at the University of Texas worked on a DARPA grant to experiment with creating physical objects with lasers. They formed a company to take their solution to market called DTM and filed a patent for what they called selective laser sintering. This compacts and hardens a material with a heat source without having to liquify it. So a laser, guided by a computer, can move around a material and harden areas to produce a 3D model. Now in addition to SLA we had a second option, with the release of the Sinterstation 2500plus. Then 3D Systems then acquired DTM for $45 million in 2001. FDM After Hull published his findings for SLA and created the STL format, other standards we use today emerged. FDM is short for Fused Deposition Modeling and was created by Scott Crump in 1989. He then started a company with his wife Lisa to take the product to market, taking the company public in 1994. Crump's first patent expired in 2009.  In addition to FDM, there are other formats and techniques. AeroMat made the first 3D printer that could produce metal in 1997. These use a laser additive manufacturing process, where lasers fuse powdered titanium alloys. Some go the opposite direction and create out of bacteria or tissue. That began in 1999, when Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative medicine grew a 3D printed urinary bladder in a lab to be used as a transplant. We now call this bioprinting and can take tissue and lasers to rebuild damaged organs or even create a new organ. Organs are still in their infancy with success trials on smaller animals like rabbits. Another aspect is printing dinner using cell fibers from cows or other animals. There are a number of types of materials used in 3D printing. Most printers today use a continuous feed of one of these filaments, or small coiled fibers of thermoplastics that melt instead of burn when they're heated up. The most common in use today is PLA, or polylactic acid, is a plastic initially created by Wall Carothers of DuPont, the same person that brought us nylon, neoprene, and other plastic derivatives. It typically melts between 200 and 260 degrees Celsius. Printers can also take ABS filament, which is short for acrylonitrile-butadien-styerene. Other filament types include HIPS, PET, CPE, PVA, and their derivative forms.  Filament is fed into a heated extruder assembly that melts the plastic. Once melted, filament extrudes into place through a nozzle as a motor sends the nozzle on a x and y axis per layer.  Once a layer of plastic is finished being delivered to the areas required to make up the desired slice, the motor moves the extruder assembly up or down on a z axis between layers. Filament is just between 1.75 millimeters and 3 millimeters and comes in spools between half a kilogram and two kilograms. These thermoplastics cool very quickly. Once all of the slices are squirted into place, the print is removed from the bed and the nozzle cools off. Filament comes in a number of colors and styles. For example, wood fibers can be added to filament to get a wood-grained finish. Metal can be added to make prints appear metallic and be part metal.  Printing isn't foolproof, though. Filament often gets jammed or the spool gets stuck, usually when something goes wrong. Filament also needs to be stored in a temperature and moisture controlled location or it can cause jobs to fail. Sometimes the software used to slice the .stl file has an incorrect setting, like the wrong size of filament. But in general, 3D printing using the FDM format is pretty straight forward these days. Yet this is technology that should have moved faster in terms of adoption. The past 10 years have seen more progress than the previous ten though. Primarily due to the maker community. Enter the Makers The FDM patent expired in 2009. In 2005, a few years before the FDM patent expired, Dr. Adrian Bowyer started a project to bring inexpensive 3D printers to labs and homes around the world. That project evolved into what we now call the Replicating Rapid Prototyper, or RepRap for short.  RepRap evolved into an open source concept to create self-replicating 3D printers and by 2008, the Darwin printer was the first printer to use RepRap. As a community started to form, more collaborators designed more parts. Some were custom parts to improve the performance of the printer, or replicate the printer to become other printers. Others held the computing mechanisms in place. Some even wrote code to make the printer able to boot off a MicroSD card and then added a network interface so files could be uploaded to the printer wirelessly. There was a rising tide of printers. People were reading about what 3D printers were doing and wanted to get involved. There was also a movement in the maker space, so people wanted to make things themselves. There was a craft to it. Part of that was wanting to share. Whether that was at a maker space or share ideas and plans and code online. Like the RepRap team had done.  One of those maker spaces was NYC Resistor, founded in 2007. Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach Smith from there took some of the work from the RepRap project and had ideas for a few new projects they'd like to start. The first was a site that Zach Smith created called Thingiverse. Bre Pettis joined in and they allowed users to upload .stl files and trade them. It's now the largest site for trading hundreds of thousands of designs to print about anything imaginable. Well, everything except guns. Then comes 2009. The patent for FDM expires and a number of companies respond by launching printers and services. Almost overnight the price for a 3D printer fell from $10,000 to $1,000 and continued to drop. Shapeways had created a company the year before to take files and print them for people. Pettis, Mayer, and Smith from NYC Resistor also founded a company called MakerBot Industries. They'd already made a little bit of a name for themselves with the Thingiverse site. They knew the mind of a maker. And so they decided to make a kit to sell to people that wanted to build their own printers. They sold 3,500 kits in the first couple of years. They had a good brand and knew the people who bought these kinds of devices. So they took venture funding to grow the company. So they raised $10M in funding in 2011 in a round led by the Foundry Group, along with Bezos, RRE, 500 Startups and a few others. They hired and grew fast. Smith left in 2012 and they were getting closer and closer with Stratasys, who if we remember were the original creators of FDM. So Stratasys ended up buying out the company in 2013 for $403M. Sales were disappointing so there was a changeup in leadership, with Pettis leaving and they've become much more about additive manufacturing than a company built to appeal to makers. And yet the opportunity to own that market is still there. This was also an era of Kickstarter campaigns. Plenty of 3D printing companies launched through kickstarter including some to take PLA (a biodegradable filament) and ABS materials to the next level. The ExtrusionBot, the MagicBox, the ProtoPlant, the Protopasta, Mixture, Plybot, Robo3D, Mantis, and so many more.  Meanwhile, 3D printing was in the news. 2011 saw the University of Southhampton design a 3d printed aircraft. Ecologic printing cars, and practically every other car company following suit that they were fabricating prototypes with 3d printers, even full cars that ran. Some on their own, some accidentally when parts are published in .stl files online violating various patents.  Ultimaker was another RepRap company that came out of the early Darwin reviews. Martijn Elserman, Erik de Bruin, and Siert Wijnia who couldn't get the Darwin to work so they designed a new printer and took it to market. After a few iterations, they came up with the Ultimaker 2 and have since been growing and releasing new printers  A few years later, a team of Chinese makers, Jack Chen, Huilin Liu, Jingke Tang, Danjun Ao, and Dr. Shengui Chen took the RepRap designs and started a company to manufacturing (Do It Yourself) kits called Creality. They have maintained the open source manifesto of 3D printing that they inherited from RepRap and developed version after version, even raising over $33M to develop the Ender6 on Kickstarter in 2018, then building a new factory and now have the capacity to ship well over half a million printers a year. The future of 3D Printing We can now buy 3D printing pens, over 170 3D Printer manufacturers including 3D systems, Stratasys, and Ceality but also down-market solutions like Fusion3, Formlabs, Desktop Metal, Prusa, and Voxel8. There's also a RecycleBot concept and additional patents expiring every year.  There is little doubt that at some point, instead of driving to Home Depot to get screws or basic parts, we'll print them. Need a new auger for the snow blower? Just print it. Cover on the weed eater break?  Print it. Need a dracolich mini for the next Dungeons and Dragons game? Print it. Need a new pinky toe. OK, maybe that's a bit far. Or is it? In 2015, Swedish Cellink releases bio-ink made from seaweed and algae, which could be used to print cartilage and later released the INKREDIBLE 3D printer for bio printing. The market in 2020 was valued at $13.78 billion with 2.1 million printers shipped. That's expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21% for the next few years. But a lot of that is healthcare, automotive, aerospace, and prototyping still. Apple made the personal computer simple and elegant. But no Apple has emerged for 3D printing. Instead it still feels like the Apple II era, where there are 3D printers in a lot of schools and many offer classes on generating files and printing.  3D printers are certainly great for prototypers and additive manufacturing. They're great for hobbyists, which we call makers these days. But there will be a time when there is a printer in most homes, the way we have electricity, televisions, phones, and other critical technologies. But there are a few things that have to happen first, to make the printers easier to use. These include: Every printer needs to automatically level. This is one of the biggest reasons jobs fail and new users become frustrated. More consistent filament. Spools are still all just a little bit different. Printers need sensors in the extruder that detect if a job should be paused because the filament is jammed, humid, or caught. This adds the ability to potentially resume print jobs and waste less filament and time. Automated slicing in the printer microcode that senses the filament and slices. Better system boards (e.g. there's a tool called Klipper that moves the math from the system board on a Creality Ender 3 to a Raspberry Pi). Cameras on the printer should watch jobs and use TinyML to determine if they are going to fail as early as possible to halt printing so it can start over. Most of the consumer solutions don't have great support. Maybe users are limited to calling a place in a foreign country where support hours don't make sense for them or maybe the products are just too much of a hacker/maker/hobbyist solution. There needs to be an option for color printing. This could be a really expensive sprayer or ink like inkjet printers use at first We love to paint minis we make for Dungeons and Dragons but could get amazingly accurate resolutions to create amazing things with automated coloring.  For a real game changer, the RecycleBot concept needs to be merged with the printer. Imagine if we dropped our plastics into a recycling bin that 3D printers of the world used to create filament. This would help reduce the amount of plastics used in the world in general. And when combined with less moving around of cheap plastic goods that could be printed at home, this also means less energy consumed by transporting goods. The 3D printing technology is still a generation or two away from getting truly mass-marketed. Most hobbyists don't necessarily think of building an elegant, easy-to-use solution because they are so experienced it's hard to understand what the barriers of entry are for any old person. But the company who finally manages to crack that nut might just be the next Apple, Microsoft, or Google of the world.

Special guest Troy Jensen, Senior Research Analyst with Lake Street Capital Markets, joins Alex and Danny for a closer look at some of the biggest publicly listed 3d printing companies. In this episode Alex, Danny, and Troy discuss the hostile takeover attempt of Stratasys by Nano Dimension, 3D Systems' performance and valuation, Desktop Metal versus Markforged, Velo3D's point of difference. They then take a look at the services companies such as Protolabs, Xometry, and Fathom. A recent VC financing for Makerverse is also covered, as well as notable acquisitions by Stratasys and Nexa3D. With the recent release of numerous additive manufacturing market reports, Alex, Danny and Troy reflect on this fresh dataset as it relates to investor appetite within the 3D printing industry. This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice. 

Additive manufacturing's largest trade show, Formnext, returned to its pre-pandemic strength in 2022. In this episode, Peter Zelinski describes trends from the show floor (including 3D printing with ceramics, anticipating robot automation, and a pivot away from support structures) while Stephanie Hendrixson shares observations found in social media.   This episode is brought to you by PTXPO.   Mentioned in this episode: Pete's post-show report on Formnext 2022 Videos filmed at the show: Wasp 3D printing with clay An example of a part made with EOS's Autodesk plugin for optimizing supports Metrom's high-speed parallel kinematic 3D printing platform How Duplex 3D prints a kayak paddle from two directions at once Advances in binder jetting from GE Additive Rivelin and robots for machining metal 3D printed parts Nexa3D ceramics Nanoe RF material Our episode of The Cool Parts Show featuring Lithoz 3D printed ceramic Grob Liquid Metal Printing system KraussMaffei's powerPrint and precisionPrint machines Pokémon hunting for robots Prusa's Automated Farm System Enlarg3D bike ramp in use Desktop Metal's Forust system for 3D printed wood Axtra3D's X1 and Revox X1 3D printers combining DLP and stereolithography Chromatic 3D's trampoline with printed elastic springs and our previous story on the company Parts printed from polySpectra COR resin and other odd-looking parts created using Metafold 3D software Formnext Forum Austin (August 28-30, 2023)

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is "How Academia Shapes Manufacturing". Our guest is John Hart (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajhart/), Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director at the Center for Advanced Production Technologies at MIT. In this conversation, we talk about John's research on micro and nanotechnology and material science, which universities and colleges that teach manufacturing, the role of MIT in this ecosystem, and why now is a key moment in manufacturing history. If you like this show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/). If you like this episode, you might also like Episode 92 on Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/92). Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (https://trondundheim.com/) and presented by Tulip (https://tulip.co/). Follow the podcast on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/75424477/). Trond's Takeaway: There has never been a more interesting time to be in manufacturing or to watch manufacturing. The tremendous breakthroughs that we are about to witness have been made possible by a confluence of emerging technologies and startup innovations, as well as a growing awareness of the importance of building human-centric technologies. We are indeed at a crossroads with profound challenges in the growing talent shortage, the need for workforce training, an aging industrial base, and the demands for manufacturing competency from the wider innovation ecosystem. We have to make progress fast, and innovations are just maturing to be able to do so at the scale and pace required. It will, again, be amazing to watch the manufacturing industry. Parts of it will perhaps, again, become the industry of industries. Transcript: TROND: Welcome to another episode of the Augmented Podcast. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What's next in the digital factory, and who is leading the change? And what are the skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is How Academia Shapes Manufacturing. Our guest is John Hart, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director at the Center for Advanced Production Technologies at MIT. In this conversation, we talk about John's research on micro and nanotechnology and material science, which universities and colleges that teach manufacturing, the role of MIT in this ecosystem, and why now is a key moment in manufacturing history. Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, for process engineers, and for shop floor operators hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip. John, how are you? Welcome. JOHN: I'm well, Trond. Great to see you. Thank you for having me. TROND: Well, I'm excited to have you talking about...well, hopefully, a lot of different things, but how academia gets to shape manufacturing, this fascinating venture that is manufacturing. But you yourself, John, you grew up in Michigan, is that right? You were close to this from an early age. JOHN: I was close to it. Yeah, I grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan, a suburb north of Detroit. If you know the Detroit Metro area, there are the mile roads, and the Detroit River is sort of Zero Mile. And I grew up between 14 and 15 Mile Roads, so in the hotbed of the good, old U.S. auto industry. TROND: Well, exactly. Because looking a little bit at your background here, you spent quite a few years as a summer intern at General Motors before you got yourself to...or actually perhaps in the beginning, in your undergrad years from UMichigan, is that right? JOHN: I did. After my first year at UofM, I worked as a summer intern at GM and went back a few years in a row in different roles in different areas. And honestly, when I decided to pursue a graduate degree and ended up at MIT, I thought I might just get my master's and go back and work in the auto industry, but things changed, and here we are today. TROND: Well, here we are today. You got yourself an undergrad from UMichigan. And you worked there for a little while, I believe, but then came to MIT with a master's, Ph.D. This is way back. But you won the prize for the best doctoral thesis in micro and nanotechnology. So that set you off on the path to rediscover nanomaterials, I guess. JOHN: Yeah, well, it's a really maybe exotic combination of topics. My master's thesis was on precision machine design, the design of these large mechanical couplings for industrial robots. And then, for my Ph.D., with the same advisor, I worked on carbon nanotube synthesis. But there you have the dipoles of manufacturing research, materials, processing, and mechanical design that have shaped how I've taken things forward since then. TROND: Well, but it is in these unique combinations that innovation starts to occur, right? JOHN: Yeah, exactly, combining different topics. And that's one reason I love manufacturing is that it is the union of materials processing, and automation, and software, and now also getting more interested in the organizational workforce aspects. It's a very rich, multidisciplinary layered topic. TROND: Yeah. And we'll explore this both from the organizational angle, and, indeed, I'm super interested in this material angle on things because it seems to me like you're exploring the very, very small nanostructures, but then you're then printing them on the very large canvas. So you're exploring materials from one extreme to the other. JOHN: Yeah. Well, it depends on your objective and what topic you're working on. There are cases in our research where we need to understand the formation of materials, not quite from the atom up but from the nanoscale or microscale up. And there are cases where we more or less abstract or coarse grain those link scales and focus on macroscale properties. TROND: Well, and then you also focus quite a bit on teaching. I noticed that you actually launched the first massive online course on manufacturing processes, and hopefully, we'll get to this a little bit as well. JOHN: Sure. TROND: But teaching and basically working on the next generation of manufacturers, whether they be the engineers or really anybody else, has certainly been one of the big challenges in manufacturing really forever. What is it that fascinates you so much about teaching this to a grander audience than the usual university audience? JOHN: Well, first, I'll say I believe that the top priority of universities, including in the area of manufacturing, is to educate future leaders and engineers. That said, the number of people we educate on our campus is a small fraction of those who could really benefit from what we teach and the way we teach. And that's not just geographically, but it's also in terms of their role in the workforce. So I believe manufacturing education should address all levels of the workforce. And to get at your question more directly, when I came to MIT, I was asked to take over our core undergraduate manufacturing class in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. And as I learned to teach the class for myself, I was intrigued by this emerging trend of digital learning, and this was 2015, 2016. And I was able to get some funding from MIT internally to create an online version of the course that would be offered free to the world, and probably 100,000 People have taken it so far. And it's been a great experience and evidence of how there is very broad interest in manufacturing really across the world. TROND: 100,000 people have taken this course. JOHN: Yeah. Well, I'll say 100,000 people have signed up for the course. This is the classic trade-off with online courses. It doesn't mean 100,000 people complete the course. It means that number signs up and hopefully took something away from it. It also speaks to the flexibility. You can sign up for a course and maybe just listen to one lecture, but if you take something valuable away from it, that's great. TROND: So I wanted to talk a little bit about how academia shapes manufacturing. And I know that there are, you know, you and I work at MIT, and you've had experiences obviously at University of Michigan. But there are other manufacturing centers and institutes all around the world. Could you lay out this landscape a little bit for us so that we get a sense of where the excellent centers of manufacturing are located? I mean, one structure, just to pick that, is manufacturing institutes, and I know that's sort of dear to your heart for a couple of different reasons that we'll get into. But what are some of the centers beyond MIT where there is activity that is organized in a way that really is something to focus on? JOHN: First, I think of in the U.S., Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Michigan, Stanford, places that have defined manufacturing centers or have a body of work that relates to manufacturing that I would say there's a critical mass of faculty, and students, and affiliation with industry. Also, Penn State in the area of additive manufacturing and product design. It's hard to be comprehensive. I don't want to forget anyone big, but that's a sample of some of the notable ones. Internationally, a lot of activity in Europe; I admire the University of Cambridge, the Institute for Manufacturing there, where manufacturing is more or less a department, or it's within the Department of Engineering, which is analogous to what we would say is a school or college of engineering here in the U.S. And they have a broad set of activities that have been there for decades focused on manufacturing at the IFM. TROND: And if you think about the best schools to get educated in this topic, is it necessarily only the top brands? I mean, certainly, they have different roles. So when it comes to undergrads or even shorter, or I guess even community colleges have a really fundamental role in the formation of this sector, can you talk a little bit about that? JOHN: Oh, for sure. When you think of manufacturing education, we must think of the full stack of institutions that educate the workforce, from vocational institutions to community colleges where the student's goal may just be to complete a vocational program or complete a two-year degree and then exit the workforce, all the way to the four-year degrees, advanced degrees, and executive education. And given how manufacturing is paramount in the workforce and the economy, we need to educate folks at all those levels. But by far, the largest number of people are at those vocational community college levels and then to the bachelor's level. So I have a Ph.D. I love to mentor Ph.D. students. But that's a small fraction of the manufacturing workforce. TROND: What about in the U.S. setting? There's something called the Manufacturing USA, and there are these institutes that have sponsorship from various government agencies, most of them through the Department of Defense. But there's also a bunch at the Department of Energy and one, I guess, from the Department of Commerce. What is the role of basically government-sponsored sort of research and innovation activities in this field? It would strike me, I guess, that historically, it's quite important. JOHN: Certainly. You're alluding to the manufacturing innovation institutes, the MIIs that were started during President Obama's administration. Actually, MIT's work, the Production in the Innovation Economy study, and the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, which emerged from that, was key in scoping the MIIs, and now there are 16 or so around the country. It's one example of public-private partnership. Public-private partnership is key to cultivating interest in manufacturing and also providing resources for technology translation and commercialization. I think the MIIs have had a great impact on awareness of manufacturing, on R&D, and really applied research in some critical technology areas. But it's only a small part of what we need to do to regrow and expand our industrial base in the U.S. TROND: So I want to move us shortly to MIT to discuss both your own research activity and how extensively you are now aiming to take a more organizing role to kind of get more out of all of the exciting work that's happening at MIT. But before that, I just spotted perhaps an older project of yours that I thought was extremely cool. You were once called a nanoartist, and you had this NanoArt Nanobliss gallery with visualizations. You previously mentioned Obama. I believe you made a NanoArt structure called Nanobama or something of that sort. How did this come about? And, again, I mean, I'm guessing this just sort of testifies to your interest in science communication as much as in the depths of science, which we'll get into in a moment. JOHN: You got it. The inspiration was how do we communicate what we're doing in the lab to broader audiences just to make them aware of what's happening in new technology, new materials? In that case, it was nanotechnology. If you don't mind, I'll tell you a bit more of the story. When I was an assistant professor at Michigan, we were doing a lot of work on carbon nanotube manufacturing, which was a follow-on from my graduate work at MIT. And I admired President Obama, or he was a presidential candidate at that time. And without implying a political inclination, I somehow put together the words nano and Obama in my mind. TROND: [laughs] JOHN: And I said, wow, it would be cool to have a Nanobama. So one thing led to another, and I actually worked with some students in my group to fabricate these little portraits out of carbon nanotubes representing Shepard Fairey's portrait of Obama that was used widely during that first presidential campaign. And I just posted it online, I think one day after the election, and it took off. It went viral, so to say, and was featured as Nature's Image of the Year. It was printed on the newspapers you used to get as you walk onto the subway in the morning around the world. There was a company that would syndicate this stuff, and they just sent it around. So it got a lot of attention. And it showed me the power of an image in communicating something. And, of course, President Obama, that was a historic election. The play on words was exciting, and also the fact that it was a little bit intriguing science and technology that was nano was interesting. And one more thing, a colleague of mine at Michigan then was working in the White House, and he said, "Hey, can you send us a Nanobama?" So I made this frame with a little piece of the real material, and a picture of it from the microscope sent it to Washington. I didn't hear anything about it until I got a call from the White House asking me to declare the value for the President's tax return because he decided to keep it; I kid you not. And then, after Obama left office, I was with my family at a bookstore in Wellesley, and I saw the book, the retrospective book of Pete Souza, the White House photographer. And I opened up the book, and I see a picture of Obama and John Boehner in the Oval Office in the middle of this book. And right on the doorframe is the Nanobama. So it actually made it to the White House, which was a pretty awesome feeling. TROND: It must be an awesome feeling, and, again, I think that, especially in this field of manufacturing which is so challenged at times, right? And people are talking about how these factories are greedy, or is this a great job, or whatnot. And there have been all of these historical moments. But then there is also this fascination around the topic of certainly of technologies and the excitement around it. Why don't we continue a little bit on this strand before we get into sort of the overall role of MIT? I'm really curious about how your research has evolved. So generally, I get that you're combining these nanostructures with manufacturing and materials research, and certainly, you have applied it to additive manufacturing. How would you say that your research has evolved over these years? What are the things that you have been doing? I've picked up on a few things that I definitely wanted to cover. I mean, certainly, you've been working on this industrialization of 3D printing, both as a research area and as a commercial area. Carbon nanotubes must have been kind of where you started. I'm curious where that work is going. And then I saw that very recently, with a student, you've been doing some work that I'm personally very enthused about, which is a plant-derived composite that might replace, hopefully, plastics with sort of a hardness and stiffness that is somewhere at the boundary between conventional plastics and metals. I mean, for me, I don't quite see how all of these things are intimately connected. Where do you go for, you know, where's my next proposal here, and where's my next patent? JOHN: They aren't necessarily closely connected. But I like to say that the themes are typically one or more of materials, manufacturing, and mechanical systems or automation. And what I love about manufacturing, especially in the materials domain, is to control a process, to understand a process, and then to do something new, you need to investigate its fundamentals. And sometimes, you need to design a new instrument or machine to get the job done. So our work is often problem-inspired or opportunity-inspired. Like, the cellulose work that you mentioned recently was actually sponsored by a large consumer products company interested in a more sustainable composite material that could be used in packaging. And we looked at potential routes to formulating different materials, and we landed on cellulose. And then, we developed a formulation, a mixture of cellulose nanocrystals and polymers that ended up having exciting mechanical properties, particularly very high hardness, and toughness, more so than existing polymers. And another unifying theme is scalability. It's important not to worry too much about scalability in the early stage of research, and there's lots of amazing research that's just for science. But we like to do things that we hope will be scalable one day, so choosing ingredients that would be cost-effective or using techniques that could be industrialized, even if the techniques look very different in the lab. And maybe I've lacked to give a precise definition or focus, but I think it's also indicative of the broad span of manufacturing. And manufacturing has many, many dimensions beyond the ones that we work on in my lab at MIT. TROND: Well, you kind of answered a question that I was going to ask, too, which is it doesn't seem like you start in a linear fashion, you know, in other words, you start with some sort of basic problem that everybody in their literature has established and then you move to this, that, or the other. Sometimes it comes from a company. The challenge comes from a company, but you formulate the solution completely. It seems to me that students also have lots of ideas and kind of formulate projects. Talk to me a little bit about this process of where the problem comes from versus where the solution and impact comes from because you seem to...sometimes the output truly is just, you know, like, in this case, art or a physical prototype, and you're sort of happy with that outcome. Other times, you're actually delivering something into, presumably, eventually, an assembly line. JOHN: Yeah. And we work as hard as we can on technology translation, both in terms of the knowledge that we publish but also in terms of the steps that we take to spin technology out. You're right; the early stage is very important. And I like to often see the early stage as a collaboration between myself and the researchers. And in many cases, the core idea we end up pursuing comes largely from the research or the research team. In many cases, it might be seeded by the interest of a sponsor or an idea I have, and then we work together on actually figuring out what's the approach, what are the outcomes, and what's the path to success. MID-ROLL AD: In the new book from Wiley, Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations, serial startup founder Dr. Natan Linder and futurist podcaster Dr. Trond Arne Undheim deliver an urgent and incisive exploration of when, how, and why to augment your workforce with technology, and how to do it in a way that scales, maintains innovation, and allows the organization to thrive. The key thing is to prioritize humans over machines. Here's what Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, says about the book: "Augmented Lean is an important puzzle piece in the fourth industrial revolution." Find out more on www.augmentedlean.com, and pick up the book in a bookstore near you. TROND: You have commercialized at least two ventures together with others at MIT and external people as well that I know about for sure. I wanted to just briefly mention both Desktop Metal and VulcanForms. Let's perhaps cover Desktop Metal first, so that's a 3D printing company. Tell me how that got started and what your role was there. JOHN: So I was very fortunate to be a member of the founding team of Desktop Metal. So there were seven co-founders, and we launched the company in early fall of 2015. And Ric Fulop, who's the lead founder and CEO, approached me at that time, and he heard that I was interested in working on 3D printing and, of course, knew a bit about my background in manufacturing and machine design and asked me to jump on board. And funny story, how just connections persist over the years; I actually knew Ric when I was a grad student because I was doing my carbon nanotube work using the space of now my colleague, Yet-Ming Chiang. And at that time, Yet and Ric were launching A123 Systems, a successful battery company. So that was a reason why I think Ric knew to get in touch with me when he heard about me. And serendipity was a great experience. TROND: Serendipity when you are in the right places, right? If you're hanging around Yet-Ming Chang, yeah, that's right, very special serendipity. Tell me a little bit about VulcanForms. Until very recently, you couldn't talk so much about it. Nowadays, you did go out in New York Times. I've read that piece. So there is a little bit more detail around it. Let me ask a very basic and perhaps dumb question, large-scale metal 3D printing, what's the big deal there? I thought didn't Desktop Metal do 3D printing? So it's kind of a dumb question. Why is there a second company? Is there really such a variety? I think that the regular person just thinks 3D printing is 3D printing. JOHN: 3D printing is a broad and deep subject. Like, first of all, 3D printing processes exist for polymers, for metals, for many other materials. And there are even several 3D printing technologies for metals. I'll tell the origin story for VulcanForms quickly if that's okay, and then get back to the question. So when I came to MIT as faculty in 2013, I had been a professor at Michigan for a few years. And I landed, and one of the topics I thought of looking into was 3D printing. I was actually asked by a colleague to teach a class not on 3D printing, but I was able to propose the topic. And in that class, there were many incredible students. One of them, named Martin, stuck around at MIT after finishing his master's in manufacturing, and we ended up comparing notes and launching VulcanForms in 2015, a little bit before Desktop Metal came to be, but not that long before. And we stayed quiet for seven years. We raised our seed round a couple of years ago. And the focus of the company is number one, laser-based metal additive manufacturing. And second, while we've built our own additive technology, we're a manufacturing company. So we produce parts at scale, and that is a real need and has been a barrier to growth of the additive industry. There's so much interest and uptake in additive. But the ability to achieve high-quality production using additive as the formative step in the process at scale has largely been untouched. So from the early days, we thought that we could approach the market with that plan to become a manufacturing company. TROND: Staying quiet for seven years that can't have been [laughs] particularly easy. JOHN: Yeah, it's not easy, but it's very, very worth it because we got to focus. And also, there are different boundary conditions that allow you to keep your head down and get work done, and one of them is having great and patient investors who believe in your approach and who see the progress behind the curtain. And as a result, we felt we would hold off launch. And we were fortunate to get picked up by the New York Times earlier this summer. And now we're excited to talk about what we do. TROND: Yeah, that article did hint a little bit at what your printers can print that others cannot and kind of at what scale. Can you give some examples of the kinds of things that you are now contracted to print or are perhaps already printing? JOHN: So the company is focused on a variety of industries, generally industries where high-value metal parts are difficult to manufacture and where there is a real pent-up need for more agile, high-value manufacturing medical devices such as medical implants, semiconductor components, not microchips but cooling devices for various computer systems. We have a lot of business in the aerospace and defense area, working with several of the defense primes, both on additive parts and on machining, honestly. The company, as described in the New York Times article, we acquired a machine shop in Newburyport, Massachusetts, earlier this year. And that was twofold, one because in order to deliver finished parts, you need to often integrate additive with machining. So it's not just 3D printing; it's building a stack of software and physical processes to create a finished part. Second, advanced machining is also a digital manufacturing technology, and as a company, we're very interested in applying our capabilities as a digital manufacturing organization to the area of CNC machining as well. TROND: So, taking that experience then from these two companies and your vast interest and research area plus your interest in communication, what is it that you're now focused on at MIT more largely? That's another kind of secret that's slowly being let out. But you have had this notion and have shared this with me and others, obviously. There was a seminar open to whoever was invited, I think, but not a full public launch. Manufacturing at MIT has historically been quite important, but you think that there's even more, to be done. You lined up a couple of the projects, but there are many more things that MIT has done. Could you maybe just briefly address the role of MIT historically in influencing manufacturing? And what else is it that you now want to accomplish? JOHN: Yeah, for sure. And since I came to MIT nine years ago, I've learned of the incredibly rich history that the institute has in manufacturing, both on the technology side, you know, in the mid-1950s, building among the first CNC machines, ultimately transformed commercial aviation in 1980 building one of the first 3D printers in the world, and so on. But not only that, but also, historic accomplishments in the social sciences, understanding the globalization of manufacturing, you know, what delineated the U.S. versus the Japanese auto industry in the 1980s. What is the intrinsic role of manufacturing in innovation, the production, and innovation economy led by my colleague Suzanne Berger in around 2010. And then broader than manufacturing, though, the work of the future study just a couple of years ago looking at the connection between technology and work. So looking at all those accomplishments and understanding the present moment that we're in, which I can also reflect on later, I've been exploring how to create a new presence for manufacturing at MIT. And the term manufacturing at MIT is more or less a placeholder representing the community of faculty and students across disciplines, both technology and social sciences, that touch on all the dimensions of manufacturing. So as we've returned from Zoom life to more in-person life, I've been making my way around campus and building a team of folks, faculty advisors, external advisors, industry partners, and so on to hopefully put forward a new center at MIT that has a focus on manufacturing across the disciplines. And this is not to replace existing activities but just to augment those activities and bring industry together with us to support research, to lean deeply into workforce training programs, to collaborate with public organizations at the state and federal level and internationally, and also hope to cultivate more entrepreneurship. Because my experience, fortunate experience as an entrepreneur over the past several years tells me that there's opportunity for more new companies that contribute to the future of manufacturing, whether they're manufacturing companies actually making stuff, whether they be software and services companies. Or perhaps the biggest need is hardware companies for whom manufacturing is a route to success. So you may not be manufacturing something yourself, or you may not be manufacturing goods for others, but understanding manufacturing and scaling a process is really key. And that intellectual DNA of manufacturing is more cross-disciplinary than ever. And I've observed over my nine years at MIT how there's just more engagement in manufacturing as a discipline, as this cross-disciplinary theme. And that's an area where I feel such a center can really play a role by adding something to the intellectual community across the institute. TROND: There are so many things that come to mind when you produce this narrative because, I guess, on the one hand, manufacturing is a little bit of everything. On the other hand, it is clearly very delineated because it's all about making things and making them at scale. And there's a whole industry, but, of course, every industry almost has a manufacturing arm. How do you delineate the subject of manufacturing? And I'm sort of curious, you know, at MIT, if you use a broad church definition, almost everybody there contributes to manufacturing. So that would be both a challenge and an opportunity, I guess. JOHN: Yeah, you're exactly right. So, first, within MIT, we have many collaborations with different departments and other research centers. And the nature of the collaboration depends on what the focus is. Second, when it comes to interfacing with industry, I've come to look at industry as kind of a grid where you could say the columns are the end users, say, aviation and space or consumer or construction. And then, the horizontal lines in the grid are technologies, robotics and automation, 3D printing, software and IT, et cetera. And getting a little bit in the weeds of the organization here, so first, we're working on launching a flagship industry consortium, or we're recruiting flagship industry partners for a new center. And those will be companies, world-leading manufacturing companies across the grid. Second, we will operate consortia in different technology in industry areas that may be located within our center that may be in collaboration with others around MIT to really drive focus. And when industry comes and interacts with us, I want them to understand how their business fits into the broader spectrum. And we find particularly in the work related to 3D printing that companies appreciate being connected with peers across the value chain. They say 3D printing is materials at the frontend and finished parts at the backend, and there are some machines and software, and so on. When you bring companies together across their value chain, across their supply chain, under the umbrella of an academic organization with this sort of problem-solving mindset, we find that that can be valuable to the companies that we partner with. TROND: And, John, there's obviously a scale at MIT that's hard to replicate for any university or school just because there are so many people involved in technical innovation. But on the other hand, I would say there has been a sense that other sectors if you could call them that, have always been moving much faster than manufacturing. And, you know, okay, fine, there are industrial revolutions, but the ones we talk about now as industrial revolutions are more, you know, they are maybe on the software side and stuff, but that the core of manufacturing it may be because of its inherent nature. It's complex; it's about physical infrastructure, at least a lot of it still. So it's hard to innovate in that sector. Would you say that one of the ambitions you have with this manufacturing at MIT initiative is to speed up that innovation? And if so, what are the mechanisms that would bring manufacturing as a whole, I guess, on an even faster sort of clip? JOHN: First, if I look within MIT, we see the opportunity to combine the physical side, the mechanical engineering, the material science, with the digital side, with software, and controls, and computation. And that's an area where it's clear that new technologies can be de-risked, can be scaled more quickly. And it really requires this symbiosis of the physical processes and the digital intelligence. Second, I think we can do better research. I can do better research by understanding where the big problems and opportunities are. And by connecting closely with industry, forming networks with various stakeholders, we can define better problems that we can ask our students to solve. And third, I've noticed, especially over the past year with all the geopolitical discussions and the imperative for sustainability, that we're at a time where there's this alignment between industry and government and the investment community and manufacturing, physical manufacturing, physical industry is vital. We can't do enough there to catch up, to grow. And I think that's a real opportune moment to recognize that while I think the pendulum has swung to the digital world and software over the past 10, 20 years, life has changed for the better in so many ways. We have to focus on the physical world now, especially to address the climate crisis, and also think of how we can improve economic equality across our communities, how we can provide better job opportunities, how we can deliver education to individuals who don't have the opportunity to go to university or don't have the resources to travel, all those things. So that's another reason why, one, I see manufacturing as this rich, cross-disciplinary topic that I can file a patent and write some exciting papers and graduate with a Ph.D., but it means so much more to feel technology at scale. And second, you need the intersection of these disciplines to understand not just technology but organizations and human dynamics to create change and create positive impact. TROND: So I realized that we're going to have to cover... there are so many other questions I have for you is what I'm trying to say here. But my last question in this round, I think, is going to be one on...we briefly mentioned, or you briefly talked about augmentation. And you know that I have a special interest; obviously, the topic of the podcast and the title is augmentation. So there is something here about the tension, perhaps between augmentation and automation. How do you see that tension or the relationship between working from the human-centric perspective that technologies are in service to perhaps augment people and processes versus this automation perspective which maybe takes, and I'm paraphrasing here, a little bit more of an efficiency approach and tries to go for machine scale first and then just adjust everything later? How do you see those two things now, as perhaps, you know, manufacturing is coming into another kind of growth moment? JOHN: If I understood you correctly, I don't think they're mutually exclusive, right? Certainly -- TROND: No. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. JOHN: Certainly, manufacturing will become more automated in places where automation makes sense. Certainly, automation is challenging to implement to scale, to get right. But in some cases, the driver to more efficient technology-first manufacturing is automation. In other cases, and hand in hand with that, human workers and businesses, organizations can only become more effective and efficient, working in synergy with data and automation. I'll use the example of someone overseeing a 3D printer, a state-of-the-art 3D printer, and watching the screens to make sure everything is going well and doing a better job by being presented with information that shows, hey, this might be a problem, or there are no problems here, but being empowered to make that data-driven decision. And also, from my work outside of MIT, we find that folks who do best operating that advanced equipment with digital data might have a machining background. They might also have a passion for gaming on the side. So they might be used to sensing and responding to dynamic digital events. And that's another comment on skills evolving in the workforce too. TROND: Well, I mean, one thing that is for certain is that if MIT gets its act together on manufacturing, things will happen. I trust that we're going to have to come back and talk about a lot of emerging projects here in the coming years if you get people lined up. So very exciting. Thank you for speaking to me. Is there sort of a challenge that you want out there to the community when it comes to how, you know, not just academics can contribute to shaping manufacturing but how we all should think of these manufacturing challenges? Is it something that we should leave to experts right now because it's so complicated? Or are there ways that the broader interested public can get engaged in this problem? Is it possible to engage, and where should one engage? JOHN: That's a great question. First, to the general public, I'd say stop and think about what manufacturing means to you, or find one of your favorite things and look up how it's manufactured. Imagine the life, the journey of the product as it comes to your door. And second, I'd say the area where most of us can make an impact is in education and learning and contributing to our communities. Perhaps if you're an engineer working somewhere, you might want to teach at a community college one night a week if you have time in a future semester or explore ways that you can bring new knowledge, new technology to your organization if it makes sense. TROND: Exciting challenges. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit of what you're up to with us, John. JOHN: Thank you, Trond. TROND: You have just listened to another episode of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was How Academia Shapes Manufacturing. Our guest was John Hart, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director at the Center for Advanced Production Technologies at MIT. In this conversation, we talk about John's research on micro and nanotechnology and material science, which universities and colleges that teach manufacturing, the role of MIT in this ecosystem, and why now is a key moment in manufacturing history. My takeaway is that there has never been a more interesting time to be in manufacturing or to watch manufacturing. The tremendous breakthroughs that we are about to witness have been made possible by a confluence of emerging technologies and startup innovations, as well as a growing awareness of the importance of building human-centric technologies. We are indeed at a crossroads with profound challenges in the growing talent shortage, the need for workforce training, an aging industrial base, and the demands for manufacturing competency from the wider innovation ecosystem. We have to make progress fast, and innovations are just maturing to be able to do so at the scale and pace required. It will, again, be amazing to watch the manufacturing industry. Parts of it will perhaps, again, become the industry of industries. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 92 on Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes, and if so, do let us know by messaging us. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented Podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operation platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or a logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring, and you can find Tulip at tulip.co. To find us on social media is easy; we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube. Augmented — industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. Special Guest: John Hart.

WebsiteDentist on Demand Social MediaFacebook | YouTube | LinkedIn | InstagramTyle McClendonLinkedInMarc Wagner LinkedInNo Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinventionby Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer,Bob Piercy - host- phone - 780-965-2232- email - rhpiercy@me.com - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpiercy/- Website - https://robertpiercy.com- Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BobPiercyCoTravelPocast

Every year, 15 Million trees are cut down to produce paper, build homes, and make furniture. From this, millions of tons of wood waste are generated annually. A portion of this waste is recovered and sold to downstream markets to make particle board or wood pellets for energy. The remaining sawdust is either burned - contributing to air pollution - or sent to landfill. Though biodegradable, sawdust can be harmful to the environment in large quantities when landfilled. As it decomposes, sawdust releases high concentrations of lignin and fatty acids, which can contaminate water supplies, potentially poisoning wildlife and micro-organisms. We speak with Andrew Jeffery, Co-founder of Forust, by Desktop Metal,  uses the power of high-speed, high-resolution 3D printing to give a new life to a discarded resource - creating strong, beautiful and carbon-friendly wood products from wood waste. For each tree saved, we reduce the CO2 footprint by a metric ton over the tree's life. Learn more in our next episode.Mentions:Virginia San FratelloRonald Raelhttps://www.forust.com/https://www.mindfulbusinessespodcast.com/

Sina AmiriZentistVP of RevenueLinkedIn | TwitterBob Piercy - host- phone - 780-965-2232- email - rhpiercy@me.com - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpiercy/- Website - https://robertpiercy.com- Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BobPiercyCoTravelPocast

Additive manufacturing contains more than 3D printing, but even this term carries multiple meanings. 3D printing might mean extruding plastic, or depositing binder into metal, or melting material with lasers, or any number of other things. In this episode, Stephanie Hendrixson and Peter Zelinski try to stump each other with some unusual 3D printing processes and consider whether the "Seven Families of Additive Manufacturing Technologies" are still relevant 10 years after they were created.   This episode is brought to you by the Additive Manufacturing Conference at IMTS.   Mentioned in this episode: Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 101 Meld Manufacturing's solid-state process based on friction stir welding Grid Logic's multimaterial powder bed technology Fabrisonic's Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing and application examples More on Massivit's Gel Dispensing Printing and how it can be applied for Cast In Motion, a way of quickly producing tooling for composites Moldjet process, as described in a video from Tritone A downloadable and printable version of ASTM's 7 Families of Additive Manufacturing Cold spray 3D printing from Spee3D Vatless vat photopolymerization from BCN3D Metal FFF options from Rapidia, Markforged, Desktop Metal and BASF Want to weigh in? Find us on LinkedIn

Have you got your limited edition VFTB shirt featuring the triathlon of dental lab? Click here to get a Race For the Future 8.0 VFTB shirt raising money for The Foundation For Dental Technology featuring art by Mackenzie Mayer ORDER BEFORE MAY 28, 2022 (https://bonfire.com/race-for-the-future-80-vftb-shirt) Participate or Cheer on the racers in Chicago at the Race For the Future 8.0 August 28, 2022 (https://dentallabfoundation.org/news-events/race-for-the-future/) We are STILL bringing y'all amazing Texas size recordings from the DLAT conference from last April. This week doesn't disappoint as we had 3 amazing conversations with 3 amazing people. First up is Kevin Dillion, the National Sales Manager for the Lab division for Desktop Health (https://www.desktophealth.com/). Kevin talks about the printers, the resins, and why they bought some labs to help labs. Then we chat with the then president of the ORG (Orthodontic Resource Group) (https://orthodonticresource.com/), Lance Dowdle. Lance talks about what's going on in the Ortho industry and what the ORG is doing to bring even more professionalism to the profession. We wrap up the whole conference with Samantha Grayson, who is one of those inspiring and enthusiastic removable technicians that talks about the passion and desire to get on the board to give back. Whip Mix (https://whipmix.com/) is very excited to bring you the PRO 4K large format 3D printer from Asiga. It's ideal for printing any kind of model, dentures, splints, surgical guides, impression trays and more. The Asiga Pro 4K DLP printer (https://whipmix.com/products/asiga-pro-4k/) is priced at under $25,000, has a large build plate and is available in both 65µm and resolution versions. For information about the Asiga Pro 4K, visit www.whipmix.com. Did you know that most inLab MCX5 users that have ordered burs from Gro3X once, keep on ordering Gro3X burs over and over again? Because Gro3X (https://www.gro3x.com/) burs are engineered by some of the folks who have been providing burs to some of the largest US production labs for years. Did you also know, that most Roland and DGShape users have no idea what they are missing out? To give Roland and DGSHAPE users the opportunity to find out for themselves how good Gro3X burs work also for their machines, Gro3X is now offering a BUY 3, GET 2 BURS FREE special. This is exclusively for Voices From The Bench listeners. Simply go to the Gro3X website at gro3x.com (https://www.gro3x.com/) click on burs (https://www.gro3x.com/collections/mill), then select Roland & DGSHAPE. Add five burs of your choice to your cart, click on CHECK-OUT, enter discount code B3G2Burs and check out. Special Guests: Kevin Dillon, Lance Dowdle, and Samantha Grayson.

Please register for Jack's webinar on March 23rd, 2022, or visit the link to watch the recording afterwards.  Register for Jack's Webinar / or watch recording"The Key To Consistency, Advanced Accuracy with 3D Printing"Website:Absolute Dental ServicesSocial Media Links:LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | YouTubeAs discussed on the show Jack uses the 3Shape Automate sw to use AI to design his Night Guards.https://www.3shape.com/en/press/2021/meet-3shape-automate-worlds-first-ai-powered-design-service-for-labshttps://www.3shape.com/en/services/automateJack Marrano LinkedInBob Piercy - host- phone - 780-965-2232- email - rhpiercy@me.com - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpiercy/- Website - https://robertpiercy.com- Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BobPiercyCoTravelPocast

Desktop Metal (DM) designs and markets 3D printing systems. The recent earnings report indicated -$0.12 in EPS and $56.68M in revenue. Co-founder and CEO, Ric Fulop, weighs in on other earnings highlights such as fourth quarter revenue being up 123% sequentially from the third quarter in 2021. What is next for Desktop Metal (DM)? Tune in for the full discussion.

Jonathan Heiliger, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, talks about how the startup ecosystem has changed, and explains why founders DO/DON'T need to be in Silicon Valley. Jonathan also sheds light on the problem of matchmaking. He proposes solutions for ensuring that founders meet and partner with investors who are fit for them.In this episode, you'll learn:4:27 A lot has changed in the startup ecosystem but Silicon Valley hasn't lost its culture of supporting people.16:05 What founders should expect when they work with investors and partners who run a concentrated portfolio.24:28 Diversity in technology hubs is critical to maximizing the technology revolution's potentialNon-profit organization that Jonathan is passionate about: VC OpenDoorAbout Guest SpeakerJonathan Heiliger is a General Partner at Vertex Ventures. Jonathan currently serves on the board of directors of Webmonsters, in addition to Vertex portfolio companies PerimeterX, CloudAcademy, and SpaceIQ. He has individually invested in and actively helped several companies, including Cloudera, Coravin, Diffbot, Dropbox, Square, and ThousandEyes.Prior to founding Vertex Ventures, Jonathan started the seed practice at North Bridge Venture Partners where he was General Partner (2012- 2014) and led global infrastructure, site architecture, and internal systems at Facebook  (2007- 2012). Previously, Jonathan held executive engineering roles at Wal-Mart and Danger (acquired by Microsoft), was COO for Loudcloud (Opsware), and co-founder and CTO of GlobalCenter.Fun fact: Jonathan started rebelling against his parents when he was nine years old by staying up all night to game, hack, and program a new computer.About Vertex VenturesVertex Ventures is a global network of operator-investors who manage portfolios in the U.S., China, Israel, India and Southeast Asia. Vertex is a trusted partner to some of the world's most enterprising founders who seek to disrupt large markets. The firm supports entrepreneurs with unmatched operating experience and deep access to the capital, talent, partners and customers they need to build truly global businesses. Its portfolio includes LaunchDarkly, PerimeterX, Very Good Security (VGS), Desktop Metal, testlio, and many more.Subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode that will drop next Tuesday. Follow Us:  Twitter | Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook

In the beginning of 2021 a company, Desktop Metal acquired EnvisionTec, a company credited with the development of Digital Light Projection (DLP) 3D printing and  almost 20 years of  research, development, and experience bringing both 3D printers and resins to market in the Additive Manufacturing industry.   Through this acquisition Desktop Health was born. I was excited to be able to catch up with Michael Jafar, President and CEO of the newly formed Desktop Health to discuss the direction of this new company and the waves they are making in the dental industry.  Michael and Desktop Health are focused on changing how 3D printing works in dentistry.  Taking 3D printing from a behind the scenes technology printing support materials such as models and trays to manufacturing end use products starting with removable dentures made possible by Flexcera.  Desktop Health is also making news when it acquired its first fully functioning dental lab.  A decision Desktop Health is confident will help increase the speed of innovation, adaptation and level of ​satisfaction for dentist, lab and patient.These were just a few of the topics we touched on in today's conversation.I thank Mike for his time and look forward to speaking with him again.Desktop HealthWhat makes Flexcera so Special?Bob Piercy - host- phone - 780-965-2232- email - rhpiercy@me.com - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpiercy/- Website - https://robertpiercy.com- Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BobPiercyCoTravelPocast

About Jonah MyerbergJonah Myerberg is a Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Desktop Metal where he is responsible for leading the technical direction of Desktop Metal's 3D printing solutions.Prior to joining Desktop Metal in 2015, Myerberg held senior positions with a variety of organizations focused on high performance battery development, including Renovo Auto and Boston Impact, which he founded, and A123Systems. At A123Systems, Myerberg established and led the motorsports business unit which focused on the development of high-performance batteries. His products were adopted by the majority of Formula One teams including McLaren, Force India, Mercedes Benz, RedBull and other high profile motorsports teams like the Porsche 919 team which won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2015 and 2016. He was also a race engineer for Porsche on the 919 team and for Mahindra Racing on their Formula E team.  Myerberg earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University and his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing from Johns Hopkins University. About Desktop MetalDesktop Metal, Inc., based in Burlington, Massachusetts, is accelerating the transformation of manufacturing with an expansive portfolio of 3D printing solutions, from rapid prototyping to mass production. Founded in 2015 by leaders in advanced manufacturing, metallurgy, and robotics, the company is addressing the unmet challenges of speed, cost, and quality to make additive manufacturing an essential tool for engineers and manufacturers around the world. Desktop Metal was selected as one of the world's 30 most promising Technology Pioneers by the World Economic Forum, named to MIT Technology Review's list of 50 Smartest Companies, and the 2021 winner of Fast Company's Innovation by Design Award in materials.https://www.desktopmetal.com

Ric Fulop is the Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM), a leader in mass production and turnkey additive manufacturing solutions. DM is changing the game in 3D printing with printers that can print a variety of metals, carbon fibers, wood composites, and more. The convo is short and fast-paced - Ric is a really busy guy. But its rife with a ton of advice to young entrepreneurs on how to pick a market problem to solve. Lessons learned from his previous company, A123 Systems, a battery company that also went public, yielded his repeated advice: High margins, recurring revenue, low account concentration. He also references Carlota Perez, an economist at LSE, whose work talks about technological breakthroughs and how they transition from installation to deployment phases. It's really valuable stuff. We also talk about how he formed A123 by licensing a technology from MIT, how he runs DM, and much more. Enjoy! More about Ric Prior to founding Desktop Metal in October 2015, Ric was a General Partner at North Bridge, a VC fund with $3 billion under management, for five years following a fifteen- year career as an entrepreneur. Ric is the founder of six technology companies, including A123 Systems, Boston's largest IPO in the past decade and one of the world's largest automotive lithium ion suppliers with revenue exceeding $500M in 2016. At North Bridge, Ric led the software and 3D investing practices and was an early stage investor and board member in Dyn (acquired by Oracle for $600 million), Onshape, MarkForged, Salsify, Lytro and Gridco. Ric is a former Board Member of the Electric Drive Transportation Association and holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School where he was a Sloan Fellow. More about Desktop Metal Founded in 2015 by leaders in advanced manufacturing, materials science, and robotics, the company is addressing the unmet challenges of speed, cost, and quality to make metal 3D printing an essential tool for engineers and manufacturers around the world. With solutions for every stage of the manufacturing process - from prototyping and pilot runs to mass production and aftermarket parts - we are reinventing the way engineering teams produce metal and composite parts across a wide range of applications and industries. Learn more about DM on their website and follow Ric on Twitter. Join the Bountiful community today and realize your power to save the world. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn if you haven't already.

Adaptive 3D is an innovative company that partnered with Desktop Metal and UT Dallas. Walter Voit discusses the innovation behind microarchitecture within material manufacturing and how partnerships in Richardson, Texas, have created a thriving innovation ecosystem. Innovating 3D Printing and University Research At Adaptive 3D, Walter focuses on using 3D printing to produce additive materials. […]

Who's to blame for a 3D print-related disaster in the Olympics? And what's the implication for additive manufacturing's reputation? Also, Desktop Metal grows (again) and we dive deeper into the hobby vs. professional printer debate.  Have a story about a failed 3D print? Share it with us at tbrown@goengineer.com or treid@goengineer.com.  Thanks for listening!

Bryan has easily been one of the most active investment bankers within the digital industrial ecosystem, and he kicks off the discussion outlining why he believes Desktop Metal's SPAC in late 2020 was the catalyst that set off the record level of dry powder in the capital markets to target the digital manufacturing ecosystem. He walks us through how 8 months after Desktop Metal's SPAC there have been 61 transactions and ~$7B in transaction volume; which is on par for the entire history of investment in this category. Of those 61 deals, 22 deals and $5B were in public equity (SPACS, Follow-ons, IPOs), 22 deals and $1.3B were in M&A, and 17 deals and $420M were in private markets. We then discuss why we both feel this current flurry of manufacturing investment activity both is not a bubble and is structurally very different than the digital manufacturing wave of 2013-2014 (3D Systems, Stratasys, Protolabs, etc.), and how SPACs specifically have re-emerged in the capital markets to fill a growth-stage investment gap that existed in this category. Finally, we wrap up with a ‘What's hot and what's hype?' section on innovation trends Bryan is seeing in the market.

We catch up on the latest news - Markforged's IPO, another Desktop Metal acquisition spree, and an important warning from the Pentagon regarding cybersecurity. We want to hear from you! Please rate and review the show, let us know what you think! 

Elon Musk impersonators steal $2 million from the bitcoin curious. Hoarding hurts Walmart results (WMT) as it CUTS prices to grow its food business. Cullen/Frost Bankers (CFR) AB Mendez on expanding in Texas and profiting from the paycheck protection program (PPP). Trouble in SPAC land, an SEC investigation and ephemeral business strategies of electric vehicle maker Canoo (GOEV). And acquisition after acquisition strategy of 3D printing company Desktop Metal (DM). The Drill Down with Cory Johnson offers a daily look at the business stories behind stocks on the move. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is part II of my interview with Chris DeMuth Jr, co-founder and hedge fund manager at Rangeley Capital. Chris is also the author of Sifting the World. He writes about SPAC, value, arbitrage, and event-driven top-performing ideas. Although Chris is a highly experienced investor the interview is geared towards the SPAC market. This is currently a major focus of Chris and it shows in this interview. We talk about Churchill Capital IV, Bridgetown Holdings, Pershing Square Holdings, Virgin Galactic, Desktop Metal and other SPACs.You can find Chris and Sifting The World here:https://seekingalpha.com/author/chris...​ or on Twitter here:https://twitter.com/ChrisDeMuthJr

This is part I of my interview with Chris DeMuth Jr, co-founder and hedge fund manager at Rangeley Capital. Chris is also the author of Sifting the World. He writes about SPAC, value, arbitrage, and event-driven top-performing ideas. Although Chris is a highly experienced investor the interview is geared towards the SPAC market. This is currently a major focus of Chris and it shows in this interview. I had so much to ask him the interview ran quite long. We talk about Churchill Capital IV, Bridgetown Holdings, Pershing Square Holdings, Virgin Galactic, Desktop Metal and other SPACs I'll post part II of the interview imminently.You can find Chris and Sifting The World here:https://seekingalpha.com/author/chris...​ or on Twitter here:https://twitter.com/ChrisDeMuthJr

Desktop Metal's had no shortage of investor interest in its business during in its half-decade existence. To date, the metal 3D printing company has raised $430 million, becoming one of the fastest U.S. companies to achieve unicorn status in the process. Today it also became the latest in a recent string of firms to announce […]

This week's show is a follow up of a recent episode we did about 3D printing. A lot of the listeners were interested in learning more about the overall tools and techniques of 3D printing. Andy Roberts, Vice President, inventor, and lead developer of Live Parts™ at Desktop Metal, joins us to discuss 3D printing […]

This week's guest on The Killer Innovations Show has innovation experience in a variety of different industries. Jonah Myerberg is the CTO at Desktop Metal, a company that specializes in metal and carbon fiber 3D printing technology. We will discuss 3D printing and the COVID-19 innovations that Desktop Metal is doing during this pandemic. Jonah's […]

Meet the 3D printing company that might totally change how we manufacture, design, and even develop products. When you hear the words 3D printing, what do you imagine? Do you think about those cheesy, plastic parts? Desktop Metal has raised $270M to change all that. Unlike other metal 3D printers, which are ridiculously expensive, incredibly dangerous, and slow, their first product is a machine that will print metal parts on the desktop. And they're about to launch a new production-level machine that will pump out parts as fast as using traditional manufacturing processes like casting and machining. The CEO Ric Fulop is an old buddy of mine from my days at MIT, so when I was visiting Boston a few weeks ago, I went to go visit and get a tour. And I sat down with Ric and two of his executives, Chief Technology Officer Jonah Meyerberg and Senior Software Engineer Andy Roberts, to learn more. We nerd out on their technology and what it means for the future of manufacturing. But what I was especially curious about is how metal 3D printing will change the game around what we make, and the way we design and innovate in the future. If you've been skeptical about additive manufacturing until now, this episode will change your mind. Links and social handles: Website: http://desktopmetal.com On Twitter: @DesktopMetal, @ricfulop Video of Live Parts growth example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38yW6D4MtFg   For more information, bios, and links, check out the show notes at http://makeitinla.org/desktopmetal.