The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast is a deep dive into what 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing mean for prosthetics and orthotics. We’re Brent and Joris both passionate about 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing. We’re on a journey together to explore the digitization of prostheses and orthoses together. Join us! Have a question, suggestion or guest for us? Reach out. Or have a listen to the podcast here. The Prosthetic and Orthotic field is experiencing a revolution where manufacturing is being digitized. 3D scanning, CAD software, machine learning, automation software, apps, the internet, new materials and Additive Manufacturing are all impactful in and of themselves. These developments are now, in concert, collectively reshaping orthotics and prosthetics right now. We want to be on the cutting edge of these developments and understand them as they happen. We’ve decided to do a podcast to learn, understand and explore the revolution in prosthetics and orthotics.
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
Mastering the Art of Additive Manufacturing with Grant Michel
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Join us on an additive journey, exploring the present and the future of 3D printing through the eyes of Grant Michael of Worth Additive Group as he builds his way from a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic to a broad knowledge-base of 3D scanners. He guides a path through our industry into the promising future for additive technologies, especially as it pertains to the orthotic and prosthetic profession. Be prepared, the future may not be what you think!
But more than a glimpse of things to come, this episode is a lesson in the nuts and bolts of 3D. From the appropriateness of starting small with 3D projects, to the learning that happens on the way from idea to object, we go there. We then move and groove with the motion capture of 3D scanning, taking you through the marker dance that results in the reverse engineering that can make the production of a figurine as literal as that of a Hugme pillow. This is your after-school elective shot that will lead you to the sweet zone of 3D production.
We wrap up with a discussion about how to maximise the technology’s huge potential. Learn about the surprisingly little-used world of metal printers, find out how to choose the right contract manufacturing partner with expertise in quality control and understanding materials, and discover how networking is your secret weapon. Towards the end of the episode, we help you understand more about the intricacies of FDM metal printing, as well as the importance of working with service providers.
Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode.
Hi everyone, my name is Yoris Pils and this is another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast with Brent Ryan. How are you doing, Brent?
Speaker 2Hey, yoris, doing well, doing well. I had a question for you. Ot World is coming up. Is that a show that you go to or you have been to?
Speaker 1Never. I have no idea what OT World is. No idea whatsoever.
Speaker 2I love that. So OT World apparently is well, not, apparently it is one of the largest shows for anything that has to do on the medical side of things, specifically orthotics, prosthetics or even activity specific devices, wheelchairs and and the like. So that is, that is. So. It's in Germany, which is, I know know, your favorite place for things to be.
Speaker 1Hello Germany, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, lots of places.
Speaker 2So this one is in Leipzig, Okay.
Speaker 1Leipzig is pretty as well, nice.
Speaker 2But they have like 20,000 visitors, 500 exhibitors, a bunch of speakers, a lot of friends of the show. That have been on the show, are going to be there, but it's pretty much anything that has to do with rehab. So, um, you know, one of these days I do want to get there, but, uh, it's not going to happen this year.
Speaker 2So anyway, I just thought you might. You might find that interesting as well as you perused. So to to all those that are going to ot world, best of luck and also reach out to us if you see some pretty cool stuff totally, totally.
Speaker 1I agree, I agree. I think that's nice and yeah, so for the show, first of all, we have a sponsor. Right, it's called advanced 3d. Do you know anything about advanced 3d?
Speaker 2well, yes, advanced 3d uh, I'm involved in it and along with Paul and Tyler, and we focus on the orthotic and prosthetic field to really get people up and going and 3D printing thing in your life or you're scanning and you're doing some design, but you want to maybe go into the definitive prosthetic orthotic device manufacturing, we can help with that and so, yeah, and it's really neat to see all this stuff coming into play, especially with some of the stuff like what you've talked about and we really are fans of. There are these flexible TPU style devices that actually move and move with the patient.
Speaker 1Okay, that's super cool dude, that's super super nice and I agree completely with you. Okay, so who's on the show?
Speaker 2today man Grant Michael, here today with us. He's a channel manager at Worth Additive Group and this group is a very tight-knit group but highly highly experienced. I've known Grant for going on four plus years now and we're going to talk about some of the things that you're excited about, which is scanning. He has a vast amount of experience in different scanners, which scanners work in which environments, and the thing that I really appreciate about Grant is his ability to think about how 3D printing can fit into whatever industry we're talking about, whether it's the prosthetic and orthotic side of things or on even, like automotive stuff, aerospace. He grew up in and around the field. I think he said he was handling the SLA stuff and powder stuff early on because his parents actually owned a contract manufacturing firm. So I'm really excited to dive into his journey into additive manufacturing and maybe get him also to talk into the crystal ball a little bit to see what he thinks is coming around. So, grant, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3Thank you, guys. It's great to be on here. Like I said, I'm really passionate about this stuff anything digitizing and how to make parts reality. I've done a lot, like you said. So, yeah, just ask me anything. I know a little bit of something, or I got a guy.
Speaker 2It's always good to have a guy right, so tell us a little bit about how you actually landed in the additive manufacturing space.
Speaker 3So how I actually got into 3D printing was in high school. My dad and I built one of the first MakerBot kits Thing-O-Matics. He got it and it was just a box full of wooden parts. It took a week to build and he just kind of sicked me onto the printer and just said build this for me. And so I did. It took a long time.
Speaker 3As a high school student, I think this is right when the Thing-O-Matic came out to be honest, can't even remember the year that was now, maybe 2010-ish so built that had a successful Yoda head that was the Benchy of the time and also had a weird kit that would allow you to do conveyor belt printing. So you'd print not only one Yoda head but it would move over and print the next Yoda head. So that was great until the third Yoda head would print and it would be over and print the next Yoda head. So that was great. Until the third year that I had would print and it would be uncalibrated and you would get Getty in your box of parts the next morning. So I did that for a little bit of time and then completely put away the 3D printers and went off to college.
Speaker 3So during that time my dad kind of went crazy. He ended up buying like five more printers, since during the daytime he actually ran a company that made acoustical devices and engineered microphones for a lot of the top Fortune 500 companies hundred companies. So he got really deep into additive manufacturing, especially into the fixture realm, went away into college and kind of didn't think about 3D printing. I actually wanted to do other things outside of 3D printing. I could probably have cared less for 3D printing during that time of my life. So can you tell us a little bit?
Speaker 2about going off to college, Because it wasn't just your normal college experience that you would have right.
Speaker 3Yeah. So, um, originally, uh, people would think nowadays that, uh, what school of engineering did I go to? And actually I didn't go to any engineering school. I actually went to a um international relations uh department of uh Indiana university in Indianapolis.
Speaker 3Um, I did that for a while and while and got a scholarship to go study in China for a few years and continued on that track of wanting to do something international, maybe work for the government as a clerical agent of some sort, the guy that stamps the visas when you enter a country or, you know, embassy officer. So that was kind of what I uh set my heart out to. And uh, um, things kind of took a turn, uh, when I took got out of college. When I found out, my dad um went a little crazy. He didn't have just five thingamatics, but he had a couple million dollars worth of industrial grade 3D printers and he was trying to figure out what to do with all of it. But in that time I ended up just kind of getting exposed more internationally and just making friends across the ocean and from Malaysia to Indonesia to Germany, and so it kind of really kind of also helped set my track for what I will do later in additive as well.
Speaker 2That's really cool. So I mean having that experience, like the worldwide experience. Do you feel that that also kind of correlates to what you're seeing as far as trending goes in the additive manufacturing world? You know we hear that the world is flat. Information is available literally if you have one of your a phone and you know so, a Wi-Fi connection. Do you feel that also is the case for additive manufacturing?
Speaker 3The world's not flat, it's round. There's lots of people on the world and everyone's a lot closer than you think, even if they're in Tokyo. Many times I ran into someone that was from a different country and we passed through Haneda International Airport and say, hey, can't believe we saw each other. So the world's a lot smaller than we think. That's true for additive, I think. A lot smaller than we think. Um, that's true for additive, I think. A lot of times in 3d printing, especially in the service bureau, and just people with printers, in general, we think only to our neighbors next to us, um, just within a hundred mile radius. But it's really interesting to see what people are doing in Japan, in China, in Germany, and realize, holy cow, there's a lot of smart people in the world, a lot smarter than just the people I can reach in a hundred mile radius.
Speaker 2So let's talk a little bit about you know I want to hear about your experience with your dad's company and then you really diving into some of these machines. I mean, that was very early on. Talk about some of the pains and then some of the wins that come along with it. Just be open and honest with us as far as. Should somebody go out and buy or invest a bunch of money in these printers, or is there some other ways to still be involved in that and use the technology to your advantage, but not necessarily have the capital intensiveintensive investment.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's a really in-depth question and I got a pretty straight answer for this, so I'll tell it into my story. So after college I mentioned, I found out my dad bought millions of dollars for 3D printers, for example, two M280s. Those are metal 3D printers from Germany, a P395, a Fortis and a few other SLI machines from Asia as well. And what he would tell people and myself all the time is that this technology is on the bleeding edge because your pocketbook was always bleeding, which is not true nowadays. It can be true depending on what I'll mention a little bit later about having good support network. But at that time it's not just the technology that was hard. There was not a lot of people that you can fill a stadium with in the US that knew how to run this stuff. Even the OEMs were just blazing trails where they never knew what all the applications you could do. It was really disruptive technology but at the same time we just didn't have enough people in the industry that just had common sense at the same time. So I got into it Immediately. I did not run the industrial printers, I cleaned the floors. I taught a lot of makerspace programs. Teaching around Indiana Probably taught a couple hundred no, a couple thousand students on how to 3D print. My family used to make their own desktop 3D printers. That was only in the state of Indiana. We'd run 3D printing summer camps so I got really.
Speaker 3Actually some of my best knowledge today did not come from when he had industrial printers. A lot of my best knowledge today that supports my route is teaching kids second grade to high school how to 3D print and use, for example, like Tinkercad, and just seeing that moment when a student realized, ah, I kind of messed up, well, let me change this design a little bit more and let me try again. So and got to see all sorts of crazy stuff print and different orientations, which you know, some adults might be a little bit too scared to do and they might go too conservative. But kids don't go conservative. If they want to print a pile of spaghetti and that's actually what they designed a spaghetti or weird geometries and shapes, they're going to do it and you're just going to let them do it so that they get that aha moment if it works or not. To kind of go into those questions earlier, that was in the bleeding edge of the technology I was going to do it again with the same resources, I wouldn't just jump into industrial 3D printers.
Speaker 3I think a lot of people they want to go straight to industrial 3D printers because it's fancy and they might have seen some really nice sales samples. There's plenty of good sales samples if you go to Rapid or you go to some of the other shows I'm blinking on the one in Germany. That's really common. But what they kind of forget is there's a lot of skill that goes into it.
Speaker 3So, um, after or not, I kind of recommend to those starting now to work with partners, um service bureaus. Um, they already made the capital investment into acquiring these such machines, um, they've already proven out some case studies themselves to make sure that they don't break bank on their own. So, after or not, those are pretty wise decisions is to kind of experiment with a service bureau and really kind of make friends with people like Brent. Because it's really expensive to have every single piece of technology. It's not possible I can't have an HP at the same time of having a metal printer at the same time as having an industrial SLA printer. At that point you become too diluted in your knowledge base.
Speaker 2Interesting, yeah, and I think that's great, and I think one of the things that's interesting for you too is that you really have focused on some of the reverse engineering side of things and the design for things. Can you share just a little bit about that, you know, and why you kind of taken that strategy?
Speaker 3Yeah. So there was a time that I left the family's nest of 3D printing. I wanted to see the world beyond Indianapolis and Indiana, and so I joined a very prominent 3D scanning company called Shining 3D. At the time they hired me to do more industrial 3D printing, but they were setting up an office with an industrial lab for all the safety procedures for metal printing and during my wait they said why don't you try working with 3D scanners? It's like great. It's like here's some metrology scanners Great, what's metrology? And so I quickly learned all my necessary skills on the metrology side, before I actually got into more of reverse gearing.
Speaker 3But at that time in my life I really learned just how to scan. Not even thinking about how to reverse gear and how to 3D print Sorry, just for metrologies. I just learned how to scan and what is the best strategy for scanning, because that's a skill set on its own. Forget about just figuring out how to reverse engineer something and how to do metrology to figure out if your parts actually inspect.
Speaker 3There's a little bit of an art skill that goes into scanning and getting the right way, and I think you know that too, brent. It's, uh, it's. It can be fun. It could be like painting, but there can also be some frustrating strategies that once you get it, it's like oh man, I'm going to do this from now on for all these parts. Um, so that really did help kind of start my journey into. My next passion was reverse engineering, which only really began during COVID. So only through 2019 did I really start getting to scanning. In 2020 is when I really went into the deep end of trying to use scan data for conversion to step file or using design intent to think about how to turn scan to a usable file type.
Speaker 2Yeah, so that's super cool. Can you give some examples for our listeners of how scanning can go sideways, like you know we talked so many times about and you kind of alluded to it? There is a little bit of a trick to it, but if you to me, you know the more clean data that you have, the better output that you're potentially going to have as well. But you know you have the scaling issues. You have inches, millimeters, meters, centimeters, exports, those sorts of things and those things. Even though it seems mundane and not important, can you just share with our listeners, like how important that foundational data is and maybe how to avoid some of the pitfalls when you're looking at getting into scanning?
Marker Usage and Design Optimization Strategies
Speaker 3Yeah. So, like I said, I actually for the first part of my career at the scanner company, I just focused on how to scan correctly. I always joke. I actually went over to China for like a month just to scan a room full of objects and I remember my colleague would come in and he would say this is bad scan data, do it again, delete it. And I would do it again and again until lunch comes, and then we eat our lunch and then go back and scan more objects and save it and he would grade me on my scans. So, um, a lot of it at that time was a lot of strategy, for example. Um, some people hate the thing about using markers.
Speaker 3For example, for some people that don't know what markers are, it's what the scanner can see in order to figure out where it is in physical space. So some scanners don't actually work on caring about what your part is. It looks at where the markers are relative to the scanner and it just so happens your part's there and it adds more data and more data and more data. So sometimes you have to think about how many markers do you put on an object, how far apart the markers are? Are they random? Did you accidentally make a line of markers where they were too repeatable in pattern? Did you accidentally make a line of markers where they were too repeatable in pattern? So I've come up with a lot of little tips and tricks for that. I always joke when I put my markers. It's always Boy Scouts. Three fingers across is how far you should put a marker between a space in order to successfully have good scan data.
Speaker 3And then the other part of it is where do you begin to scan an object? In some cases people have really large objects that I deal with, where they're going to scan a car and they start scanning the front of the car and then they go towards the back of the car and then they don't realize there's something that happens in scanning that really kind of hurts. But it's not only in scanning but it's in measuring in general where you have stacking error. So if you take your foot and you put your foot in front of your front and then you do that and walk across a football field, how accurate is that to measure a football field? Right, you have some type of volumetric, you have some type of error that happens.
Speaker 3So the same thing involves in scanning. It's a measuring unit. We're measuring things. It just so happens to look like your part. So instead of measuring from one side to the other, a lot of times I kind of teach people to start from the middle and to help scan in the middle and think about scanning it as a spider web. Start from the middle, work way out and then fill in all the gaps. So there's some strategy there, before you even start to use the data.
Speaker 2Do you find that to be the case also for because I know you've done some body stuff are there some tricks to that for body scans, whether it be, say, a face or an arm or a leg?
Speaker 3So I'm going to go and say the opposite thing. So instead of starting from the middle, you have to start from the head. So in these strategies you think that, unlike an object, an object is rigid. It doesn't move. Unless you go to lunch and someone moves the part, Nothing's going to happen to that part. But when you scan a person, you have to think what part of their body moves the most. Their face is going to move head, and then the head relative to the shoulders, and then work your way down until you have the rest of the body and you try to move as quick as you can. Usually some people are very methodical about scanning and usually the more methodical you are, the worse the scan comes out. The more methodical you are, the worse the scan comes out. Um, you know, time is not um. The time is your enemy in scanning people, Um, so you try to work as fast as you can, Um there are some of the overlap stuff.
Speaker 2Um, do you, do you try to minimize the amount of overlap or do you try to get more overlap?
Speaker 3You know, I will try to minimize the amount of overlap in scanning a body due to the fact that if you scan the same area twice and part of that area moved a little bit, what data is correct? Was the first data correct or the second area was correct? So often or not, you try to think about localizing different limbs and then when you finish with that area, you don't come back to that area. So those are some of those strategies when you're scanning people.
Speaker 3I'm not as professional as you, brent. I'm not from the field of prosthetics and orthotics and you have some different challenges than what we normally deal with scanning, like automotive parts and giant electric motors and toilet seats. It's fun when you get some of those things. I've had a toilet shipped to my address to go scan it. But people scanning is a different strategy altogether, even from scanning an adult to someone that's actually suffering during the scanning, maybe due to burns, um. And then, maybe the hardest of all, scans an infant, um to get an infant to play nicely, and in those cases there's even strategies that are just unique to scanning infants compared to scanning an adult or um a breed like um a child.
Speaker 1And and and you know, you know I like the fact that you've had so much experience. You've been here from like the beginning to really advance things. Is there like kind of a special learning mindset? Do you just have to pray that everything works, or what do you think is really like the way to keep learning?
Speaker 3So this is something I always have to think about the process designing towards the process. You know a lot of people will give me a part and say, can you print it? And I'll say, yes, I can print it, but how much time do you want me to spend on the secondary processes After or not? I can design a part where it just pops off the bed and I can put it in an application. Some parts, if I just took as is from a different manufacturing process and put it on an FDM printer, I might have those nasty supports I have to remove and they're not so nasty. You just take some wire snippets or little pliers and pull them out and all that. And some people have some fancier multi-head printers where they're using soluble materials. I know some people are using a pla for ptg as like support removal, um, since they don't like each other, they don't bond together.
Speaker 3So, um, designing is a big part of what I think about when I send a part to a printer. I think about design intent all the time and what features really matter. What things do I have to like, what features have to die on the hill? And even to this day, although I've been an additive for a while. I always have some sort of design guide in front of me to kind of remind me of well, I need to think about this when I have this type of overhang, or maybe in order to make this hole appear in the middle of an object that has no support. I got to do these types of strategies.
Speaker 3Same thing for SLS. There's a lot of things you have to think about um compared to SLS, compared to MJF Um. In some cases, I think strategy is slightly different, but they're pretty much similar. Um. You just have to have a good understanding of what you want your part to be and how much, how little, you want to clean your part. At the end of the day, I think the best way to teach you, if you need to optimize your design is how much would you want to do this part if you had to do 10,000 parts? And then, at the end of 10,000 parts, were you sick of dealing with 10,000 parts? I think in those cases you need to change your design.
Speaker 2Yeah, I hear you Now. You're the one that I think that turned me on to tree supports, right? I?
Speaker 3don't know. I talk about tree supports a lot. I think you might have gotten that from someone else. I think tree supports are just so cool anyway, so I'm pretty sure you figured that out on your own. I'm always surprised by how easy tree supports work and how clean they go off of. There's linear supports which are just like back and forth, like think if you were like had rows of lines. I always I've been moving away from those because those are kind of nasty to remove. It's a little bit more not so clean breakaway. But tree support is always changing how I design. Some of the things I would have not done I'm now achieving with using tree supports and doing some really awkward balancing the part onto the bed with the tree and it looks like it's going to fall off at any moment. But there's some strategy to it. I have some ratios I'm thinking about in the background to make sure it's balanced.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I love tree support, specifically for TPU. I think it really separates well, and so for those that are in the prosthetic and orthotic industry, really separates well. And so for those that are in the prosthetic and orthotic industry, and if you have not investigated tree supports, I would highly suggest that, because they just work and they break away so nice and just the way they cover more of a pinpoint area, they don't seem to scar the parts as much. What would you say are some of the reasons that you use it?
Speaker 3Well, in FDM. It's not like SLS or MJF where you have powder supporting. You know the part during the printing you get some really complicated shapes and it's like how the hell am I going to support all this stuff? And in those cases when it looks very bleak, turn on tree support. Um, that's kind of been my catch is, just turn on the tree support. Um, that's pretty cool. I haven't tried doing tree support with tpu as much. Um, I have been getting into doing smoothing with tpu with, like heat guns. I've been using a lot of heat gun in order to make it nice and glossy. That's been. My thing is I'll print a lot of lattice structures in TPU and I'll just use heat guns. It's kind of like a craft skill to do, cause you can really ruin your print if you overheat certain areas, but if you do it right it will look very smooth oh that's, that's super cool and that's good for a lot of people to know as well.
Speaker 2I want to dive into a little bit into the metal side of things because I know when I came up and visited you've got the kind of the fdm markge side of the metal side of things but then also some of the the powder based or powder bed fusion type of things, and I know there's different, different machines and different styles. But can you share with us a little bit about how the FDM metal stuff works and then maybe and then talk about SLS stuff and green state and all that stuff, because a lot of that stuff is over my head. But I think that there is a lot of interest in the orthotic and prosthetic field to create custom some things right that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get out of, say a nylon or a thermoplastic part.
Design Considerations for FDM Metal Printing
Speaker 3Sure, and those two categories of metal printing are kind of unique. Some of the parts I would print on an FDM printer style would be something I would not print with a powder system and vice versa. Um, a lot of times I tell people if you're going to do FDM metal and there's quite a few different brands as well Um, I think our European friends can, um, enjoy more BASF um stuff. Um, they have some cool stuff. Markforged makes it a little bit easier, but there's a few others as well. Um, they have some cool stuff. Markforged makes it a little bit easier, but there's a few others as well. Um, but it all comes down to the same exact thing.
Speaker 3Um, some parts, we really designed the part for the centering application. So imagine you print this waxy material that went through an extruder. Um, you have to figure out how to support that part during the centering process, which is burning away whatever's left that's not metal and then centering the part. So if you had an extreme overhang during that process, that part will fall over in the oven and it will not look so good. Same thing think about strategy guides and often or not, we can use other industries to tell us how to design for that. So FDM metal any type kind of goes with MEMS metal injection molded parts. So if you look at how you design for MEMS, that's exactly how you design for any FDM style metal printing parts, because the weakness is the centering oven. You have to design for centering. Same thing for, like, binder jetting metal too.
Speaker 3You can make lots of parts, especially small parts, kind of mass produced. But you have to think about the design. How does that not only fit for your end use design, but design through the process. So I think those are kind of some of my favorite styles. To begin with, they are kind of expensive if you just want one part. To be honest, the most expensive part of that process is not printing. Printing is pretty straightforward. The most expensive part of that process is having an oven running for 30 hours with three phase and using argon gas in order to inert the environment and having all that stuff come together. So if you only print one part, that's a good way to make a $400 part um even the smallest part.
Speaker 3But if you can fill it up, as you know, with 20 parts, then you, you know, amortize that across 20 parts at cost of,200 to $400,. Unfortunately, depending on your location, not everyone can have the same price of electricity and gas.
Speaker 2That's an interesting thought. Can you just help me understand it too? You're saying that when you're sintering all this, you're putting in some sort of whack, waxy substance. So you're, you're, you're going to have some pretty significant shrink, Is that? Is that right?
Speaker 3Yeah, and, and there's some um programs. Mark Forge has one where we'll figure out the shrinkage for different materials. Um, there's other companies that do the same thing. I know if you made your own FDM metal printer which you could take like a Creality I've seen people take Creality printers and Prusa printers Excuse me, prusa if I said the name wrong those you could upgrade them in order to do the metal printing and then send them out. But there is that waxy stuff that's in there. It will always shrink. So maybe the first time you design a part and it comes back and if it's not the right size, maybe bill in for a little bit of process control and feedback where you might change this shape or size of your part depending on how bad shrinkage is in certain areas.
Speaker 2Wow, yeah, I was. I think I was talking to a Mark forged guy and he was like they have their software dialed in to where I think he said something, dialed in to where I think you said something. The size of your fist really is in the wheelhouse of the FDM style metal side of things With that. Is it as strong as, say, a CNC part?
Speaker 3It's different, it's lightweighted, it has infill, just like a plastic part. So you're not going to ever have the same strength as the one-to-one but you're going to trade off with a one-to-one part with a lighter part, software. But I don't deem myself as a true engineer that can optimize topology of your part, to say that in a factor of safety, of whatever this can happen. But there's software to help kind of guide that and that changes design and show how much thicknesses you need or how much you need to add to the part or subtract from the part and after or not you're trying to reduce the weight of that part. So you have to always think about testing. No matter what type of part you print, you should always test that part for the strength.
Speaker 3Don't design something flimsy. And design really does help. Having ribs on a part really does strengthen parts up. Having fillets and chamfers, those help with like stress relieving, um, maybe cracks. That could happen even in process or after process. So design really does do a big part to aid the strength of the part okay now with some of the.
Speaker 2So not not the binder jetting style, but like the direct metal, laser centering and that sort of thing. Do you also have to go through a heat treating process with those, or do they come out finished?
Speaker 3So, um, those styles of printers are my favorite. Um, I got into it cause the family, but, um, we do that at work. Here too, we have one called the Kurtzursa, but we do have to do that. Sometimes Depends on the metal. Some metals like a 316 stainless steel, we can just cut it off the build plate and at that point we could be done. And at that point we could be done. Cobalt chrome should definitely be heat treated, because it's really interesting if you cut off a part that's made out of cobalt chrome off a-inch steel plate in 17-4 and just bend it out of the machine. This is like 10 years ago. So some metals need heat treating and stress relieving. Some metals don't. It goes back into what are you trying to do? What metals are you using? 17-4 has a lot of stress built up, so you should definitely heat treat it and remove the stress before you use a bandsaw and cut the part off okay, so you do that while it's still attached to the the build plate oh you have.
Speaker 3Otherwise your part just like booms upwards.
Speaker 2That's just man. That seems to be a learning curve that I'm really not interested in being involved in.
Maximizing Additive Manufacturing Potential
Speaker 3It's I joke about it it's knowing Metalurgy at the same time as knowing design, at the same time as understanding how not to blow yourself up in safety, um, which we deal with safety. We actually sell safety equipment. Um, we like that part of metal printing, um. So, with all that sounds like a big uh, a big note for everyone don't get into metal printing. It's a, it's a mess. But I think what you really have to think about in metal printing is my earlier message work with someone with a metal printer. They'd probably love your business, um, because they've already made the investment. They probably already have something that's keeping their printer pretty busy, but they would love to put something else on their build plate in order to keep it busy, cause you might need the technology, but you might not be able to run the technology a hundred percent or whatever utilization rate everyone wants it to be at.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think that's a great you know example, not only for the metal side of things but for, you know, even the thermoplastic side of things. Don't don't run out and go buy a powder bed fusion and drop $500,000 or or whatever on it. Look for somebody and and invest in yourself right To to actually design for it. And I I just saw a statistic recently that there's 40. So the of all the metal machines that are running in the world, they're only running about 60% capacity. So there's 40% of capacity where you can get onto a metal machine without having the investment of buying a metal machine, and so I think that was interesting.
Speaker 2But I would say that that probably applies to some of the thermoplastic printers as well is there is a pretty significant amount of capacity that people have already made the investment in and you can kind of just piggyback off of that. And there's some some, some things that you definitely want to check into as far as how's, how's their quality, how do they handle the powder, how do they run their powder density, all that stuff. But there's going to be contract manufacturers out there that have excess capacity that can get you into this kind of cutting edge, bleeding edge technology, doing something that you've never done before, but letting you be successful as long as you know the design side.
Speaker 3Yeah, and I think the big takeaway, even on the scanning side, is you want to have an ally next to you. Some people want to buy a scanner all the time and they're getting inexpensive. But the real true cost is not the scanner. It's the true cost is learning and spending time to understand these softwares and it's not just buying a scanner, it's understanding the software design intent and you're going to spend the before you can actually use it. So it's always good to have an ally in that.
Speaker 3And uh, and those people, I think as you build up a relationship with them, they will realize that you're in it for the long run with them and they usually give pretty good price breaks as time goes on. It's like oh, you're a good customer, um, I'm gonna reward you because, um, you're keeping us pretty busy, um and so forth, especially like, um, even on additive side. Probably some service bureaus will not like me to say this, but if you tell them that the lead time is not tomorrow, you can get a better price on parts 100% yeah, so yeah, no, I think that's great.
Speaker 2Well, we've talked about a bunch of stuff. We didn't really get into what you do on a daily basis. Is there anything that we missed that you think our listeners would really benefit from Just some little nuggets of wisdom, some grant wisdom that we just didn't talk about?
Speaker 3It goes back to one big thing, and I'm going to repeat it again Make good allies with people that are in the industry of that field that you work with. I've been doing 3D printing and scanning for a while, but I'm not a really good resource when it comes to medical type printing or scanning, and I mentioned earlier, if I don't know something. I got a guy so often or not knowing people like Brent and asking Brent questions and I I probably annoy you sometimes during my drives say, hey, brent, what do you think of this and this? And uh, you've also kept me uh in a pretty good safe area for not getting uh in trouble. I would say, um, so it's really worth's really worth having experts. Like I said, there's places to get equipment from it.
Speaker 3But some other questions you should ask is how, if you acquire pieces of equipment from said value-added resellers or OEMs, ask another question how knowledgeable are they in your field? Do they know your pains? Do they know your expectations? Do they understand your customers as well? If those questions are not, those probably might be things to hit against them. So this is one of the reasons why I always like working with brent. He's, uh, he's been a pretty uh good resource in those areas, especially on our side. We always throw some crazy stuff at brent from the worth additive group when it comes to some random medical stuff that comes up well, and I and I think that I think it's so awesome that you share that it's.
Speaker 2additive manufacturing is amazing, but I would say, manufacturing the people that are in it and that are in the trenches are even more amazing. Right, and there's so many little niches and areas of knowledge where you can't know it all, but you can know a lot of people, and so that's one of the things that I always appreciate about Grant is he knows a lot of people and he knows enough to where he can connect you via an introduction, whether it's LinkedIn or email or what have you. But having the experience and kind of the scope of knowledge around what is possible, I think is so important and so, yeah, find somebody. There's nothing more. I mean, our good conversations are have somebody that you can kind of dream with and talk about the what-ifs and, oh, that is possible, and then go down that path. So I appreciate Grant being that type of person.
Speaker 3For me, I really appreciate you saying those things, brent. It means a lot. A lot of this stuff is we're figuring out as we're going and it's impossible to be a SME subject matter expert at everything, so but I can at least tell people where to avoid some pitfalls at least. Yeah, yeah Well, grant, thanks so much for being on the show today.
Speaker 2I know our listeners are going to get a lotfalls, at least, yeah, yeah. Well, grant, thanks so much for being on the show today. I know our listeners are going to get a lot out of this. We covered a ton and so, yeah, I just thank you so much for being on the show sharing your experience. Even though it's not in the orthotic prosthetic space, it is definitely important to our space because we borrow from so many other industries anyway to create some of this stuff. So, thank you, thank you and thank you for listening to the Prosthetics and Orthotics podcast, and a special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode. We will catch you on the next one.
