Conflux is one of the 3D printing startups that I’m the most excited about. With $6 million in recent funding , the company is using its own methods, designs, and expertise to 3D print heat exchangers. Speaking to Conflux CEO Michael Fuller , we learn that the company now wants to advance the manufacturing of heat exchangers before industrializing it. He hopes to make heat exchangers that can outperform conventional counterparts by a significant margin. Lower mass, higher performance with costs ...
Dec 27, 2021•42 min
Fabric8Labs is a startup that has turned to lithography and chip manufacturing processes to develop a unique 3D printing technology. Their method uses thin film and electroplating to produce very fine parts from copper. The team is very ambitious. We speak to CEO Jeff Herman and Director of Product Ian Winfield about their prospects. This is a startup that wants to grow big and its team thinks that their technology will give them enormous potential. We discuss funding, applications, and how to w...
Dec 20, 2021•42 min
Danish AM Hub is a national 3D printing group that organizes a large meet-up with the goal of educating and aiding its members in all things 3D printing. Several places in the world are trying to do something similar to become the Silicon Valley of 3D printing. I really think that Denmark is doing this correctly . The Hub is very professional and has succeeded in uniting a lot of the additive manufacturing (AM) efforts in that country. We talk to CEO Frank Rosengreen Lorenzen about how the Hub d...
Dec 13, 2021•49 min
Senior vice president of Strategic Growth at Stratasys , Pat Carey talks to us about the company’s new product portfolio . What does it mean for partners and customers that the company now has many technologies and not just two? And how did they manage to train all of their people on stereolithography , digital light processing and selective absorption fusion (SAF)? What does SAF mean anyway? What can it really change in manufacturing? Pat also discusses Stratasys’s vertical and applications foc...
Dec 06, 2021•35 min
Upon the heels of a third-place win for Alpine F1’s Fernando Alonso at the Formula One Qatar Grand Prix, we’ve published this podcast episode with Pat Warner, Advanced Digital Manufacturing Manager for the Alpine F1 Team . Pat is a true 3D printing pioneer. He started as a machinist and was lucky that his local village of Enstone in England had an F1 team in it. Pat got to play with one of the first 3D printers in the U.K. and use it for wind tunnel models and features on cars. He developed mate...
Nov 23, 2021•50 min
Mahendran Reddy is the Business Development Director for NAMIC . NAMIC is Singapore’s 3D printing promotion and coordination organization. I think it’s a remarkably effective one at that. We spoke to him to find out how Singapore was going about promoting the city state for 3D printing. What support can I have when I come to Singapore as an entrepreneur? Why is Singapore a good place to set up my Asian headquarters? What startups are already there? These are some of the things we discussed, we h...
Nov 01, 2021•42 min
Frank Piller is one of the leading voices in mass customisation. He’s a Professor at RWTH Aachen University and has written and done a lot of research into mass customisation. He’s the co-author of Leading Mass Customization and Personalization: How to profit from customization in e-commerce and beyond which you can download for free here . He’s also one of the researchers behind “ Surviving on the long tail: An empirical investigation of business model elements for mass customization ” and has ...
Oct 25, 2021•52 min
Dr. Jason Jones was an AM researcher on a project that expanded in scope and got very complicated. Miraculously it resulted in a company called Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies . This firm makes print heads and equipment that turns CNC machines into DED machines. The company’s machines are used to make parts, repair parts and add new material to older parts. They also have inspection heads to enable parts to be build right and checked the first time. I really think that Hybrid is an amazing com...
Oct 21, 2021•44 min
Xometry ( Nasdaq: XMTR ) is a fast growing and, now, publicly-traded marketplace for manufacturing services. We talk to CEO Randy Altschuler, who came from finance to build and grow companies. What exactly is the role of Xometry? How does it aim to grow and scale up even more? What markets is it expanding into? How does it ensure that good manufacturing partners make parts well? How does it control for quality and determine price? How is it expanding and what applications and technologies is it ...
Oct 04, 2021
In this episode of the 3DPOD, we talk to Mandaná “Mandy” Moshiri, Technology Manager at the LEGO Group. Far from the maddening crowds, the hype, and the promises of 3D printing, she and her colleagues are using additive at the famous toy block-maker. What technologies does LEGO use? What future additive processes is Mandy excited about? What is holding 3D printing back and what are its advantages? Mandy details how LEGO is using it for mold tooling and conformal cooling molds. How do you innovat...
Sep 30, 2021
Steve Grundahl started Midwest Prototyping in the very early days of 3D printing. On this episode of the 3DPOD, he tells us about how he got financing, how he grew his business. what technologies and applications he relied on, and how he kept growing. Steve also tells us why he opted to sell his firm now and how the future of Midwest Prototyping under the umbrella of Prototek will look. As well as sharing his entrepreneurial journey, Steve imparts a lot of wisdom. There are anecdotes, but ones t...
Sep 06, 2021•45 min
A 3D printing double unicorn , Formlabs is one of the most talked about and followed startups out there. The firm pioneered desktop stereolithography and the professional desktop segment and now has released an entry level powder bed fusion machine , as well. We speak to founder and CEO Max Lobovsky about the early days of Formlabs. How did the company get funding? Well, it started with an overheard story and a tweet . Max goes on to talk about why Formlabs made some of the choices it did and ho...
Sep 01, 2021•41 min
Luis Baldez is Senior Manager of Market Development for HP , but he’s also the Executive Director of the 3MF Consortium . 3MF is trying to get the 3D printing industry to ditch the much maligned STL file format for something better. The team wants to establish .3MF as a new standard to get more accurate files that can convey more information. If we want to produce colorful or gradient parts, or multiple materials in a single part, then we will need better ways of describing them. STL also doesn’...
Aug 23, 2021•41 min
MeaTech 3D ( NasdaqCM: MITC ) is the Israeli startup rocket ship that is aiming to commercialize and industrialize 3D printed meat . Ethical meat uses fewer resources, less water, less land and creates many fewer emissions than regular meat does. But can this development actually work at scale? How much will it cost? And how do you make 3D printed meat? We look into the future and at the possible disruption that 3D printed meat may bring together with co-founder Omri Schanin....
Aug 17, 2021•41 min
Jochen Loock has trained over 1000 professionals in Additive Manufacturing through the Additive Academy at Fraunhofer Research Institution for Additive Manufacturing Technologies (IAPT). He now performs business development with automotive companies for the prestigious German research institute. Jochen has been instrumental in several groundbreaking 3D printing projects for end-use automotive components. He has helped car companies adopt 3D printing and industrialize it for parts that could be o...
Aug 10, 2021•46 min
Carlos Zwikker has long been involved with AM. He was a great influence on Shapeways when it started and has advised many other firms, as well. Previously at Electrolux and Philips, Carlos now deploys his expertise and talents at AM-FLOW . AM-FLOW is a company that uses machine vision and machine learning to automate 3D printing . AM-FLOW’s solutions automatically detect and identify parts so they can be routed, compared, picked and put in the right boxes. Together with its partners, the firm wa...
Aug 03, 2021•46 min
Julien Cohen worked for Stratasys Direct and Eaton in Application Development before joining 3DEO . He takes us through what application engineering is and how it helps customers. We also have a lively discussion about the relative merits of various technologies and approaches. Additionally, he explains 3DEO’s unique binder jetting technology and how the company is using it for serial production in 3D printing. We talk about future scenarios in manufacturing and what will power the 3D printing. ...
Jul 26, 2021•40 min
Jason Fullmer is the COO of Formlabs . We spoke to him about the company’s global supply chain, including sourcing, interruptions, reverse logistics, shipping, quality assurance, quality management and many more topics. Operations and supply chain are super important to businesses, but we often overlook this importance and focus on the more obvious sides of a businesses, such as their marketing or strategies. A good idea is nothing without execution and excellence in operations. We hope that a l...
Jul 19, 2021•34 min
Gordon Styles is a true 3D printing pioneer. He bought a stereolithography machine very early and built the UK’s biggest service bureau off of it. After selling said business, he moved to China to start Star Rapid , a leading 3D printing and low-volume manufacturing service. Gordon tells about the very early days of the 3D printing industry. He also discusses entrepreneurship, building a business, marketing, doing business in China, 3D printing, CNC and many other subjects. Gordon is very frank ...
Jul 12, 2021•43 min
Nadav Goshen is the CEO of MakerBot . He talks to us about how the firm has developed from a scrappy startup to a part of Stratasys , including Makerbot’s identity and role. We discuss the education market, the business of catering to engineers, and Makerbot’s offering. We also get into manufacturing with clusters of desktop 3D printers and the future of 3D printing. Nadav explains what his vision is for the future and if the consumer 3D printing revolution will happen after all. We really liked...
Jul 05, 2021•42 min
Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi author who is passionate about privacy, digital rights, makers, internet freedom, copyright and, also, 3D printing. In this talk, although we do get the distinct feeling that Cory is now mega-passionate about internet rights and less so about our industry, Cory gives us good tips on how to foster collaborative, open learning communities and make sure that open stays open. We also get a zoomed in and zoomed out view of the future and the battle for online rights. We real...
Jun 28, 2021•49 min
Kenneth Jiang’s The Spaghetti Detective uses machine learning and vision to analyze your FDM prints . Relying on Octoprint, the tool looks at your 3D printer to determine whether or not it is printing spaghetti. We manage to belatedly ask Kenneth what causes spaghetti, but most of the podcast is us brainstorming with Kenneth about all of the types of things his tool can do. Machine learning and machine vision will play an important part in 3D printing, but we have very few actual practical worki...
Jun 21, 2021•44 min
Olaf Diegel is a professor at the University of Auckland who specializes in all aspects of design for additive manufacturing (DfAM). He also 3D prints guitars , other instruments , and eyeballs to try to fool Apple’s facial recognition software . Olaf’s lab sometimes builds heat exchangers along with all sorts of other parts . We have a conversation with him mostly about DfAM, including the software toolchain, AMF, nTopology , Fusion360 , and more. We had a fun but valuable conversation with Ola...
Jun 14, 2021•42 min
This time on the 3DPOD, we get to chat with Major Travis Tubbs of the U.S. Space Force . Surprisingly, a lot of the conversation was about plants, but we also discussed satellites, farming from space, farming in space, terraforming planets, 3D scanning plants, and a lot more. We were also super curious about the brand new U.S. Space Force. We asked questions about what it’s like working there and being part of such a new service. Due to Major Tubbs’s extensive research, we get to bounce all over...
Jun 07, 2021•43 min
Clement Moreau founded Sculpteo and led the 3D print service for ten years before selling it to BASF . In this episode, we follow his journey, discuss what made Sculpteo successful, and how the company changed along with its market. We hear of an initial consumer focus that was replaced by one focusing on European businesses. Now, as a part of BASF , how will Sculpteo fair? And what is Sculpteo’s role in BASF’s 3D printing expansion? Clement is open and direct and tells us about finding investor...
May 31, 2021•38 min
In this episode, Max and I fall all over ourselves to ask questions of Douglas Hofmann, Principal Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) . We also listen intently as Doug explains the ins and outs of bulk metallic glasses (aka “amorphous metals”) and why one would use these materials. With high wear and chemical resistance amorphous metals can be used for gearboxes that do not require lubrication, handy if you’re on Mars and the nearest Jiffy Lube is 319 million kilometers away. We al...
May 24, 2021•44 min
I’m unabashedly a Domin fanboy . The UK-based company makes high-performance hydraulic valves in Poland using powder bed fusion. These optimized products are high value and outperform traditionally manufactured systems in many metrics. It seems that the valve world is ripe for digitization and may forever be changed via 3D printing. Domin CEO Marcus Pont shimmers with ambition and has a lot of wise and insightful things to say on this podcast. We cover numerous subjects and I think that there ar...
May 17, 2021•49 min
Byron Kennedy is the CEO of SPEE3D , an Australian firm that develops cold spray metal 3D printing. After a successful exit in powertrain components, he and his business partner Steven Camilleri were exploring 3D printing and new technologies. They found an existing 30-year-old technology, cold spray, and decided to make it additive. The result is a machine capable of producing 30 tonnes of metal parts a year at extremely low-cost points per part. Byron talks us through the technology and applic...
May 10, 2021•42 min
This episode is a blast, as we descend into the mayhem that was the early days of MolyWorks . A team that tries to make a gas atomizer on a founder’s lawn inside a shipping container and survives is a lucky one indeed. And now, years later, Chris Eonta’s company is more mature and shipping its Greyhound containerized atomization facilities worldwide. These can turn scrap into low-cost, high-performance metal powders for powder bed fusion. You can also use them to recycle scrap or to turn failed ...
May 03, 2021•38 min
Jeff Mize is a veteran entrepreneur who sold his firm NAVTEQ to Nokia for $8.1 billion and his Climate Corporation to Monsanto for $1.1 billion. He now heads up PostProcess Technologies. There, Jeff wants to help 3D printed goods become a reality through a number of post-processing solutions. With a variety of technologies with exciting names, Post Process helps remove SLA supports, de-powder SLS builds, and surface finish parts. We talked about Jeff’s goals for the company and how he sees the i...
Apr 26, 2021•47 min
