Beyond Vision: The Art of 3D Printing with Jacob Ayers

Navigating a world not designed for you can be a daunting challenge, but imagine turning that challenge into a beacon of innovation and hope. That's precisely what Jacob Ayers from Wurth Additive Group has done with his inspiring journey through legal blindness and into the heart of 3D printing. As a guest on our show, Jacob offers not only a window into his world shaped by rod-cone dystrophy but also how he's leveraging additive manufacturing to push the boundaries of accessibility in everything from tactile education tools to museum exhibits.

With each story and discussion, the power of an inclusive approach to technology and design becomes undeniable. Join us as we uncover how Jacob's commitment to 3D printing is catalyzing social change, from transforming employment prospects for those with visual impairments to the careful orchestration of museum spaces that invite all visitors to engage with history. His insights provide a roadmap for those looking to merge art with practical application, whether it's in the delicate intricacies of prosthetic development or the robust world of CAD modeling. This season's narrative is a testament to the impact that a single individual's vision can have on a community and industry at large.

However, with great power comes great responsibility, and in the world of 3D printing, that means addressing the elephant in the room—safety and sustainability. We round off the season with a crucial conversation on the environmental implications of photopolymers and the industry's duty to protect both consumers and our planet. Jacob's expertise shines as we tackle the importance of regulations and the collective effort required to ensure a future where technology continues to serve humanity without compromising our well-being. Tune in for a journey where every chapter weaves together the threads of empathy, innovation, and responsibility, crafting a narrative that not only informs but inspires action.

This episode is brought to you by Advanced 3D.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Season 8 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. This is where we chat with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists and the vendors who make it all happen. Our goal To share stories, tips and insights that ultimately help our patients get the best possible outcomes. Tune in and join the conversation. We are thrilled you are here and hope it is the highlight of your day.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Hello everyone, my name is Joris Peebles and this is another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast with Brent Wright. How are you doing, brent?

Speaker 1: 0:39

Hey, I'm doing well, Joris. It's a little bit of a bittersweet week because my son's team lost in the second round of the state playoffs, but that means they sure have a lot more time for other things.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Oh no, does that mean you're going to have to continue to work?

Speaker 1: 0:58

No, I can't just like I might have to go to some trade shows now or pick up some speaking gigs or something.

Speaker 2: 1:08

No more checking out the Gulfstream catalog.

Speaker 1: 1:10

That's right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Oh, too bad, man. I'm sorry. I know how much you're into this baseball stuff. I'm sorry they lost you. No, it's all right.

Speaker 1: 1:20

It's good, and his summer season it's good, and, uh, his summer season that's uh. So that in the us at least, there's the high school season, which is it's fun, um season, uh, you know, you're, you're representing your school, and all that. It's not necessarily the best baseball, um. And then when summer comes around, that's when it gets a little bit more highly competitive, where you get some of these guys that are, you know, these teams that are just loaded, you know, with some of the best of the best players in the States. So it's pretty neat.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Okay, cool man, Good stuff, Good stuff. So this episode is sponsored. And who did we find to sponsor this episode? Brian.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Well, believe it or not, we've got Advanced 3D sponsoring this.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Wow, I've heard of them before.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Yes, I'm a part of it, along with Paul and Tyler, and our whole goal is to really get people buying into some of the additive manufacturing things. We believe that additive manufacturing gives great patient outcomes and we're willing to come alongside of you in any area that you are in.

Speaker 1: 2:33

So, if you've never scanned before to, if you're 3D printing some but you're not into the definitive space, or you need some help with either design or training to design, there's a whole myriad of things that we can do, really from a to z, and we'd love to help you in your journey okay, that sounds absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 2: 2:54

All right, so who's on the show today?

Speaker 1: 2:56

well, this one's going to be a fun one. Um, we've got jacob ayers on the show today, okay, uh, he is a lead technician at Worth Additive Group and I'm really looking forward to diving into his story on how he actually got into additive manufacturing and then even some of the hobby projects that he does or is involved in. He does some pretty cool things with additive manufacturing and art, and then on the Worth side it is more production and parts and reverse engineering and everything in between. So he knows a lot about a bunch of different types of processes in additive manufacturing and so it's going to be a fun discussion.

Speaker 2: 3:49

These Worth guys have their claws all into you, brent. What is this? So welcome to the show, jacob. Thanks for having me. Guys. So, first off, how did you get involved with 3D printing? Then that's the first question. Well, first of all, how did you get involved with 3d printing? Then uh is the first question.

Speaker 3: 4:07

Then uh to you um, well, so the the back story that you have to have since we're not on camera and you may not have seen me bopping around a trade show is that I am legally blind bop around with a cane, wear funky colored glasses, all kinds of stuff, been that way since birth.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Is there also an illegally blind? It was like kind of like that sounds even more kind of hardcore.

Speaker 3: 4:31

Well, you know, illegally blind. You know it, it, it, it may. It may be better to say that Cause, like you know, it's like there's a definition of legally blind. Legally blind is a 2200, in both eyes corrected and my vision sets somewhere in between you can drive and legally blind. So it's this gray functional area.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Okay, and is that something that you were born with? Did it happen degeneratively? Was it an accident?

Speaker 3: 5:02

It is all genetics.

Speaker 3: 5:10

All right were born with that it happened degeneratively was an accident. What happened? It is all genetics, all right, and and did it kind of? Did your eyesight degrade or did it just where you're just? This is your eyesight. Yeah, so I I have a. I have an eye condition called rod cone dystrophy. That is a. It's a. It's a degenerative eye condition, that's a type of macular degeneration and basically what it is is like when you're born, you have a deficiency of rods and cones on your retina. So a normal person has billions and billions and billions of rods and cones which perceive your light and your color, and I have hundreds of millions to maybe a couple billion, and it just slowly fades away over time.

Speaker 2: 5:50

And did you kind of feel, kind of like, especially kind of cursed? Did you feel like certain things you couldn't do growing up, that kind of thing? Was it difficult?

Speaker 3: 5:58

I think I was blessed in the fact that my parents raised me as if I didn't have a disability. The only time that it really kind of clicked in that this was like a big deal problem was like 14, 15 years old when, like other people, are getting learner's permits and starting to drive. That was the only time where it's just like, oh, this is actually going to be a thing that affects my life long term.

Speaker 3: 6:25

So that's kind of when I took a lot of things seriously. From a skills perspective, I should have been using a cane from birth or being a toddler, but it was never made available to me because no one really knew that that was a thing that I needed. So I crashed a lot as a kid but 14, 15, started learning all that and, yeah, I don't really feel bad about it Never really have. The only time I'm resentful about it is if I have to take, like a city bus or something and it's raining and I see all these people in cars passing by me.

Speaker 2: 7:05

That's my, that's my only resentful moment okay, okay, all right, you should move to europe.

Speaker 3: 7:09

Like no one has a car, I know I've been to germany once and, uh, I've seen the light.

Speaker 2: 7:16

I think I think you're super. I think one thing about blind people is it makes I think you guys are super brave, because I would just be very, very kind of timid, I think. Think, and and about going out in the world and navigating the world and things like getting on a bus, like, like you don't know what's going to happen, maybe it doesn't work. You know, I would think I would be really terrified of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 7:35

Yeah, you know the the the thing with that is, uh, I think you have to. You have to build a certain level of uh, of confidence in yourself and just be willing to go out and try it. And there's an organization called the National Federation of the Blind that does a lot of government advocacy work and training programs and stuff for people and they have a saying for um, how they teach cane travel, which is a orientation, mobility. They have a, they have a, they have a slogan that they like to say um is uh, they teach a philosophy of structured discovery. So, you know, you may not get it right the first time, but you're going to learn things as you go. Okay, all right that seems like.

Speaker 2: 8:24

That seems like it seems like. It seems like a generally a good idea. Generally structural discovery seems like a really yeah a good idea. Everyone should adopt that philosophy and then the other thing is I don't know how to act around wine. People really well do it, you know. Should I really go out of my way to accommodate you? Should I completely ignore it? What is the right way? What makes you feel the most comfortable?

Speaker 3: 8:45

I would say the most important thing to do, especially if you're worried about it. If you can read the situation and things obviously seem kind of normal. Most people when they meet me, that's not the first thing they pick up on Initially, after two or three minutes of talking and figuring out body language and stuff. Yeah, they figure it out, but uh, the the big thing would be to just just ask somebody like what they need. They would they would rather you ask them awkwardly, loom and stare and or ask somebody with you, um, you know, do they need help? That's, that would be, that would be the the number one thing. Um, my big pet peeve at trade shows is, uh, you know, everybody's got a badge that's got their name on it big old letters can't read their names.

Speaker 3: 9:38

They'll walk up like hey jacob, how you doing. Shake my hand. I just like I have no idea who you are, who you work for.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Oh no, tell me who you are In terms of, like, your career prospects. Did that really kind of influence you a lot? Or were you just like, no, no, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do and I'll end up wherever I end up? Or did you really have to like kind of plan and say, okay, I can't do this? Or did you really have to like kind of plan and say, okay, I can't do this?

Speaker 3: 10:06

I can't do that. Well, I would say in high school I had some really good mentors that have kind of been in the game of like teaching people and guiding people long term. So I feel like I was set up for success from that perspective and like it's interesting that that the disability like kind of guided like part of the career path as a means to get into things and then finally eventually like transferred away from that Cause. It's like the what, what I did, um, my, my, my initial interest in printing came from a from an accessibility perspective. Um, when I was in when, when you're, when you're a blind high school student, you get pulled into all kinds of weird stuff from like usability, testing of software and devices or like public tours for museums or stuff, and you start to look at the world differently through the eyes of like user experience. And I got real interested in that and how I could explore that. So when I was going to school, I started going to school for mechanical engineering technology and I knew I didn't have a lot of financial aid to like finish the thing out and decide I'm like okay, I'm going to go and find some niche thing and like really learn how to do it to like a basic degree and uh, hope I can find someone to pay me to do it and the accessibility stuff from like a consulting perspective kind of paid a little bit of the bills.

Speaker 3: 12:08

And I got to go to a conference that was focused on tactile accessibility, and tactile accessibility can be anything from 2D line, 2.5d line images to actual, like you know images to actual, like you know, 3d models of stuff that are designed with the intent of like being touched for, uh, for use in you know, education, museums, public spaces, whatever conveying, like thoughtfully conveying information through design.

Speaker 3: 12:39

And uh, there was this guy there that was a retired architect that had a design firm that specialized in access for buildings and he kept talking about all this stuff you could do with printing. I think he had a Connex machine or something at the time from Stratasys, and I got to go to this dinner as like an 18-year-old where I listened to this guy just blab on and on and on for hours about everything you could do for printing and I'm just like this is what I want to do. So I built a career off a two-hour conversation that I got to eavesdrop on and have not had the opportunity to meet said guy, since I've met some of his employees and shared that story.

Speaker 2: 13:26

So that's uh kind of interesting, because it's interesting that that's it, because one of the biggest 3d printing projects in uh kind of infrastructure is this thing. The deutsche band did that the railway um yeah, I'm familiar with kind of projects.

Speaker 3: 13:40

Yeah, uh, that's amazing. Right hats off to the guys at trinkle that uh actually figured out how to automate yeah the cad for braille because, uh, as someone that's spent a lot of time doing it over the years, it is a pain in the butt yeah, exactly so.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Trinkle is a customization software and they made a way yeah, so braille to Braille text or text to Braille, curved on a particular surface or made to match a particular surface. Right, yeah, and a particular STL. So it could be a metal printing file or it could also be a polymer printing file, depending on the application. And that was printed in Constellium. It's like an aluminum and they printed. I don't think it's really public aluminum and they're printed. I don't think it's really public. They don't really say but um, I'm guessing it would maybe be this ahead cp material. It was done by cfk, a service bureau and a finishing uh company in germany. I think it's like 30 000 components or something like that.

Speaker 2: 14:37

Yeah, it's so we're talking like all across the, yeah, all across the railway system in germany. They figured out that the cheapest way to do this and still I don't understand how it is with powder but fusion, but the cheapest way to do this was to make curved little add-on pieces. They put on handrails and so on top of every like rail they have, or many of the rails they have, there's like this little braille part that tells you where it's going and stuff like that. And they did this all across the uh, but thousands and thousands of polymer parts as well. So they're using 3D printing for that tactile thing you talked about, but also at a really, really big scale.

Speaker 3: 15:09

Yeah, it's an excellent use case for it and it's like accessibility is terribly expensive, as is just because the, you know, there's not the consumer base to drive like R&D, like there is for an iPhone or something. So that's all a very interesting thing, and the fact that they were able to make it an economical thing to do is very impressive.

Speaker 2: 15:40

And what kind of projects like that. So you got into this from that perspective. But when did you get to do stuff like that? Was it much later? The Indiana?

Speaker 3: 15:48

side and I was looking for a place. That was, you know, publicly saying they were doing things with printing and, uh, that I could potentially get like an internship or something out. And I had, you know, obviously, like I said, I had a big interest in museums, really interested in like the cultural heritage side of things, and I found the CEO of the field museum's email address online a guy's name is Richard, and on a Saturday afternoon I wrote this long winded email of you know I'm a crazy college kid, I have this interest in this, I know you're doing this, my interests are doing it from like an accessibility perspective, Cause you know, you guys obviously really don't have anything for this. Would you be interested? And 20 minutes later I got an email back saying, yeah, can you come by on Monday. So I became best friends with the CEO of the Field Museum and that turned into a two-year-long adventure where I worked with an anthropologist, a conservator, jp Brown, and then a couple people in their exhibitions department and then their education department. So fooling around as an intern and kind of paid contractor and stuff for a little bit, doing a whole bunch of different projects, kind of paid contractor and stuff for a little bit, doing a whole bunch of different projects. So we made stuff for exhibitions, stuff that was just for conservation, tour-related things and kind of pounded in a design philosophy that I'm thrilled to say exists today.

Speaker 3: 17:45

The two years that I was there at the beginning everybody was real apprehensive about it. They're like we've tried accessibility projects in the past. There was no ROI on that. We didn't do it right, didn't know what we were doing, all kinds of excuses as to why they really didn't want to do it, and by the time I left they had there was a kind of a change in the design loft there where it went from.

Speaker 3: 18:17

You know, we don't want to do that. How can we make exhibits like semi hands-on and accessible? And then five years later they went through a bunch of exhibition redesigns on a lot of the bigger public items and now there are tons of touchable things. And I met the one I go and visit every couple years just to kind of see what they're working on and they had I was talking with their exhibitions director and he's like he's like, yeah, he's like everybody's like real apprehensive about this, but he's like he was a, you know, 19, 20, 21 year old kid like actually made a lasting impression, that's like changed the course of design here at like a major institution.

Speaker 2: 19:04

And do you have any kind of imagine I wanted to like do that to my office or my museum or something? Are there any rules or any kind of guidelines or any kind of thing?

Speaker 3: 19:11

things I think you should, we should stick to if we do that so in in the museum world, the conservators and the curators dictate the show. Like you know, exhibitions makes what they want to tell a story. But when it comes to actually like working with artifacts and stuff, the conservators are the people that you have to win over and teach them how the technology works. So you know you can't like if you're a 3D scanning person, you can't go in and like pepper something with AESA. You know you got to come up with real creative ways to do lighting and all of that. Your lighting methods have to be in such a way that maybe there's some material in this that degrades faster if it's exposed to a high intensity of light. That would make your scanning process work really well but be bad for the object. There's all kinds of little considerations.

Speaker 3: 20:07

So it's like communication is the big thing, but we got to do so many cool things Got to 3D scan and CT scan like mummies and stuff. The coolest like 3D printing project we did was we we had a CT scan of like a Peruvian mummy and the inside of this it was like a three-year-old kid that was like a thousand years old or something, and inside the pelvis of the mummy was three stone toys that have never been seen. You know, since it was buried was buried and with the ct scan segmentation uh, you know, when you're when you're scanning dead things, you can bump the radiation levels up real high because you're not going to kill anything and get really high resolution. So we were able to extract high resolution models of these stone toys and then actually like print physical models of them so it's like you could see them, feel and touch them.

Speaker 1: 21:12

I think this might have been the first discussion of uh peruvian mummies on the orthotics and prosthetics podcast. Is that, yeah, right?

Speaker 3: 21:21

well, you know, you know the funny thing about about mummies is, uh, that I never expected I would learn. We got to. We got to de-coffin a mummy on the morning news one time with like 10 TV cameras watching because they were going to do like restoration work on it. And Egyptian mummies, you know, smell like pine resin, like incredibly well preserved Peruvian mummies, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:50

They wrapped you up and threw you in the ground did you, uh ct scan any mummies with a prosthesis or adaptive device? Sometimes I see a lot of those, like some hand prostheses or what have you that are, you know, a thousand or fifteen hundred years old? I?

Speaker 3: 22:08

would? I would have to ask so like a year or two before I was there, they got a mobile CT scanner that was in like a semi truck.

Speaker 1: 22:16

Okay.

Speaker 3: 22:16

And they scanned like 20 or 30 mummies. Oh, wow. Ironically, the one in particular that we opened up when they did the whole TV broadcast thing. It had been, I think, it came from the Art Institute in Chicago and they had displayed it upright for like half a century before they gave it to the museum in like the 1960s and the when they tipped it upright, the you know the knees broke. So, gotcha, don't, don't store your mummy's vertical bad idea professional tip of the day rotate your mummy's dude.

Speaker 2: 22:59

Okay, very good. Um so, jacob, uh, so tell us a little bit more about like I so, so you did that. How did you get involved, like birth and more like the additive stuff you guys are doing right now?

Speaker 3: 23:08

um, so the the the-between of that and worth um and piggybacking back up on the on the fun of disability is uh, there is a very high unemployment rate for people who are blind and visually impaired. Globally it's like 70% like unemployment rate. It's insane. Um and so after being at the field museum uh, field museum uh, the thing that kept me there was school and, because I had a place to stay ran out of money and so I had to move home. Never finished that degree and, uh, spent like nine to ten months looking for a job, couldn't find one, because when you have Indiana School for the Blind on your resume, no matter how indiscriminate people say they are on their hiring and screening processes, they tend to throw it away unless it's really exceptional and at the time it was not exceptional of a resume.

Speaker 3: 24:12

And so after that I had a professor at Butler University that I was working with long-term and we had this idea of continuing the work we did at the museum at the School for the Blind, because there's obviously a direct correlation, direct use case, it all matches up. We had a lot of success there. So we pitched it to the superintendent later that year and what went from something where we thought they're like oh yeah, we'll do it, but you'll have to fundraise for a couple of years and all that went to. No, I don't know if we can do that. We can hire you part-time and see where things go if you bring your own equipment in. So we started like a Fab Lab, makerspace Internal Service Bureau thing within the state of Indiana at the School for the Blind, and that program consumed five and a half years, uh, between the field museum and worth, and we I made basically what, what became like an apprentice program for, uh, the kids that really didn't fit in.

Speaker 3: 25:29

Uh, a lot of my kids weren't academic kids. There's a subset that they in the education system they refer to as, like life skill students, where they're non-academic but they're going to have, like you know, some level of independent living. And so me and my group of minions, we made it where they would come in and do a kind of an apprenticeship where one or two semesters they'd come in, we'd figure out what they were good at, based on, like, their skill set. And you know, like I had a kid that was deafblind. I had a kid that had decent vision but couldn't read or do math. I had, you know the whole gamut of like visual disability and autism, combined with my own, which was a, which was a very interesting, interesting adventure.

Speaker 3: 26:18

But we figured out what the kid was like, really good at doing and what's interested in, focused on that for a semester or two and then they became a paid employee of the lab, coming in either doing design work, doing running machines, fixing machines, post-processing, you name it. We did a little bit of everything and what it ended up being was a basically like an internal service design group for like teachers. So if a teacher said, hey, I want to show a kid what a German U-boat submarine looks like, can you make me one? It's like, yeah, yeah, we can do that. And then it would be a game of either scour the Internet for the model or make one, and at the time there was just enough out there in like 2015 to start accomplishing that, and then we'd make custom things as necessary. But it started as two machines that I brought from home in a closet and gained traction, got some money, took my machines home, had five machines, and then we had 10 machines, and then we had 10 machines and then we had 15 machines.

Speaker 3: 27:52

And 2015 is right around the time that I met Grant that was on your other podcast a few weeks ago, and we had similar interests and nerdy ambitions, and so our timelines followed each other to here and when he was working at Shining in 2019, his first day on the job, they knew that he had worked with like some education people and they were like well, we know you've done this. Do you know any schools that we could give a bunch of printers to this? Do you know any schools that we could give a bunch of printers to uh? Because they had a shining 3d, had an end of life product called uh, the einstart. That was a entry-level school fdm machine, and they had 225 of them in a warehouse, um that was in california and they could either e-cycle them, which was going to cost them a lot of money, or they could just pay to ship them to somebody.

Speaker 3: 28:39

So Grant was in China at the time and he called me on WeChat at like two o'clock in the morning, eastern time and he's just like pick up the phone, jacob, pick up the phone. I got like o'clock in the morning, eastern time and he's just like pick up the phone, check. I pick up the phone. I got like the craziest opportunity in the world for you. How would you like 225 printers and grant and I had this grand vision of building out this little program to be like a real hub for making uh, making technicians that know the world need it.

Speaker 3: 29:14

But uh, we're not necessarily the direct skillset that they thought. Uh, we had a presentation that we'd do frequently at things that we called uh, looking for technicians in all the wrong places where it's like focused on you know the the odd beneficial skillsets of? Uh, you know the odd beneficial skill sets of you know a hyper-autistic person or a visually impaired person. But, long story short, in 2019, I ended up with 225 printers and a 3,000-square-foot lab in a basement and we got 80 of them set up and ran production. And when we got all those machines, we uh went begging our other friends at other places and, uh, I had a really good relationship with Polymaker and uh I talked them into giving me, uh, half a ton of their poly smooth material. Uh, I asked for six tons uh and got a half a ton. So I think I think I did really well on uh on that.

Speaker 3: 30:18

And so we ran that for a year and then, uh, right before COVID happened, um, I needed a, I needed a bump in pay in the state of Indiana because I didn't have the degree. Uh, wasn't able to do it.

Speaker 2: 30:39

So that's when I jumped ship and came to Worth. Okay, that's cool.

Speaker 3: 30:41

And what do you do at Worth at the moment? So I work on our product development team doing R&D related activities. So we've had a lot of kind of hype around our digital inventory services project, which is a basically a digital extension of like supply chain management software. So if you've got a, if you've got a part that you know it could be like a low cost item item but costs you a lot to source like that's a great case for digital inventory of having it on demand where it can just be pulled down from the cloud and executed through like your normal systems. So that's been a lot of what I've been working on in the background for like the past three years. So I do that and a lot of stuff with photopolymers I have. I have drank the photopolymer Kool-Aid and I'm in deep I do a lot of process development and like application engineering around that.

Speaker 2: 31:50

So okay, that's cool, I think. I think. Well, first of all, I, I think you know, let's talk about the cad thing first, because that's a lot of like what our viewers are going to be listeners, are going to be really interested in. And so you know, if you get started with cad, you know you want to do it just for the printing part. You know, are there any tips? What would your like guide guide be in that sense?

Speaker 3: 32:10

So when I was working as a teacher, my favorite thing to do with a student whenever we got to the point where it's like, okay, it's time to learn CAD, I would do a one-hour exercise with them with Fusion 360, where we would go through modeling a Lego brick.

Speaker 3: 32:33

I'd go online, pull a generic 2D drawing that gave all the dimensions, taught them how to roughly read the drawing and then convert the ideas in the drawing to something that you could actually do in Fusion. So it was a simple, relatable thing that could walk you through how to sketch, how to extrude, how to cut things, and at the end of the hour you had something you could print. We'd print it and then the next day you know they'd come in, they'd have two bricks and purposely didn't talk about tolerancing. So now you have, you're like, awesome, I made two Lego bricks but they don't fit together. It's like, oh well, okay, well, now we need to talk about the next step in this process. It's like what is tolerancing, what's and how does this like play into what you do in a really simple, like approachable way and that made for some very dangerous high school kids okay, I love that idea, though to start simple, start in a relatable way.

Speaker 2: 33:37

I love that very much.

Speaker 3: 33:38

it was a. It was a very simple, intuitive way to teach a lot of really high level concepts, um, in a way that like bundled it all together, because it's like CAD traditionally. You know, if you're going to do it as a profession, they teach you how to sketch first and that's all you do for a month, and then they take you out of AutoCAD, they move you into like Inventor or Fusion or SolidWorks and everything's like progressively built on there. So it's like it's like, if you're going to be an engineer or drafter, that's definitely the route to go, but if you're just doing it to do it, or you're doing it for artistic purposes or whatever, it's like having a simple project that can take you through a lot of different things. I think is a is a good way to approach it and you want to make it something that's like that that you're really interested in and like invested in. You know, if you don't care about it, you're not going to get anything out of it and I think that's pretty, pretty amazing too.

Speaker 1: 34:41

and I think one thing that I think is, uh, very cool is the idea of an assembly. Right, so it's not just one piece, but you're actually putting two pieces together and seeing how they interact. And I think that's good for our listeners, too. To think about, especially when it comes to the prosthetic things is the reality is, you're not just making just the piece that interacts with the patient or the socket, you've also got other things valves, distal ends, that sort of thing and so if you can combine those things of the idea of, okay, what is tolerance, what is assembly, that sort of thing and you can loop that into a learning adventure, you're going to be much better off than just focusing on one part of the design process.

Speaker 2: 35:32

Yeah, that's a really really good point as well. I think that's great. And how about if you're inventing something like imagine you're inventing a product? I mean, there's different ways of doing it. You could just sketch it first, prototype it like okay, there's friends of mine that start in lego this is kind of funny that you mentioned it or start on paper and they they just get to the most adjacent 3d printer they have, so so it's probably FDM, right, material Extrusion, and then they prototype and they iterate right. And there's other people that start kind of like with the requirements with the end product, and they start like there. And there's other people that start with just the requirements of the part. What would you recommend? What kind of approaches would you recommend for most people if you want to like really invent something new?

Speaker 3: 36:16

if you want to like really invent something new, I I would say that I would start with the simplest medium possible. You know, if that's a paper folded model, a sketch, a cardboard model, lego, you know, whatever clay, I, I would start there before you get like hyper technical. Because it's like when you, when you go into the weeds of like something being like really thought out, it's like you can at least in my personal experience, it's like I will, I will crash and burn and make no progress. It's like I think you should just jump into it and just start tinkering and molding and, you know, figure out if what you want is like really what you think it is. And it's like I have.

Speaker 3: 37:06

I have times when I cad, you know I'll I'll come home from work with just some wild idea in my head. I'm like, oh, I wonder if this would work. And you know I'm a terrible sketch artist, I don't really work well with clay. But it's like I understand Fusion 360 really well and I'll sit down and CAD and you know, even if it's not going to go anywhere, I'll just like try and mock the idea out like real quick and that's my sketchbook. When you go into my Fusion 360, like personal account. There's all kinds of crazy ideas. That never went anywhere. But because I sat down and, you know, put the 30 minutes to an hour of thought into it, of like how it might work, it changed into something else and then I pulled on that information at a later point in time, something else and then I pulled on that information at a later point in time.

Speaker 3: 37:57

So I had a a brief year where I took some studio art classes at like a community college and anyone that's going to college for like engineering or anything like that, I highly recommend they take like a sketching class or a like 3D model, like sculpting class, because it changes the way you think.

Speaker 3: 38:19

Because in a studio class it's not your typical three credit hour. You're there for, you know, an hour and a half twice a week. It's like a three credit hour studio class. You're in class six hours a week for that one class in terms of contact hours, and you can't sit there and plan out your project and then execute Like they teach you to. Just you know you've got a base set of requirements. Just jump into it and start figuring it out and they instill in you how to learn, to fail and keep moving and adapt, and I think that is one of the most important skills you can learn when you're trying to invent something. When you're trying to invent something, it's like if you learn that and you practice it, it's like you can do wild things when you actually want to use it.

Speaker 2: 39:18

Totally agree with you. I think it's wonderful advice just to fail faster and then keep on failing faster. I think it's really funny. I had an interview once with Scott Crump, right, the guy the founder of Stratasys and the inventor of material extrusion, like one of the main 3D printing processes, and I asked him like what if you had any tips for anyone, any kind of like philosophical life things, you know? And I was expecting this big old explanation, right, and the only thing he said is like, yeah, get up one more time than you fell down. And I was waiting for like more stuff or something, and that was it. It was just like no, no, it's just about getting up one more time. Then you fell down and that's it. And that's true for life in general, I think, but also just for inventing stuff or making stuff that's new.

Speaker 3: 39:59

Yeah, just keep on doing it and keep failing until you don't fail, right very, I think, refining period for me, because I had to learn to act as a consultant. And you know, like teachers were my customers and I had to learn how to talk to them who had no design experience, no manufacturing knowledge or anything, and extract information from them and pull it into something tangible. And you know, learning how to consult and then learning how to just execute on the process and figure it out was the big thing for me, like I think I racked up. A big thing for me, like I think I racked up. But by the time I left the school I had like 70 000 to like 100 000 like hours of fdm printing over that, like five and a half years, and so it's like I tried everything you could do with filament extrusion and so uh, okay, okay.

Speaker 2: 41:10

So then, given your experience with all these like so imagine I have a desktop printer, right, we have some general recommendations, right, we did some as well a long time ago and this uh podcast, what would be your general recommendation, like, for example, with regards like calibration or filament storage or stuff like that, or just, you know, generally 3d printing, kind of your, your kind of things you, you, you, you know, uh want people to do?

Speaker 3: 41:34

um, I would say, keep your material dry is probably the number one thing you can do to set yourself up for success. Uh, and just because you can print fast doesn't mean you should. You're going to find that you have the best results when you print slow. And it's like you know, slow has changed in the past 10 or 15 years. Slow used to be 30 millimeters a second to like 50 millimeters a second, and the new slow is a hundred millimeters a second, compared to the full blown bamboo speeds. Um, it's like you don't have to print fast. And it's like, when it comes to if you're making like art things and whatnot, it's like, yeah, it doesn't really matter, you're not really after like mechanical strength, but it's like if you're going to make an engineering part, you're going to actually use what you're designing. It's like you might not want to print it fast. You're probably going to get a lot better mechanical properties if you just print it slow.

Speaker 3: 42:46

That's uh, you know, like I think that's the dirty secret of like mark forged with their eiger slicer. It's like, yeah, it's a, it's a closed, proprietary slicer, it's a closed system, but uh, it just works. And it works because they print slow.

Speaker 2: 43:04

I love it. And then, and if you're talking about settings generally besides that, I mean, would you like there's some people that change settings a lot willy-nilly, would you like recommend that people don't change them a lot?

Speaker 3: 43:15

or are there any kind of settings you would recommend everyone do, or let's say, if you bought a bamboo machine, the only thing that I would change is there's a slicer setting to decrease retractions on infill passes. Make sure that that box is not checked and then enable Z-height or Z-hop.

Speaker 2: 43:50

That's my two big, you know, modern recommendations it's like that okay. Yeah, I think for everybody that doesn't know it doesn't know, bamboo labs, yeah, everybody's making kind of slightly better producer clones, and then bamboo labs came in there and kind of essentially wiped the floor with most people. I think, uh, by now, right exactly so it's like it's a it's.

Speaker 3: 44:07

It's a much different world than it was, you know, in 2013, when I had my plywood printer bot simple that had fishing line instead of proper timing belts. You know you had to. You had to really work for it 10, 15 years ago. It's like had to really work for it 10, 15 years ago.

Speaker 3: 44:30

It's like when I finally took the plunge on getting a couple of bamboo machines last year in the fall I remember texting my friend Grant I'm like this shouldn't be this easy. It's like if you buy a machine these days you really shouldn't have to have to tinker. It's like usually things go wrong with these machines when you start to tinker. It's like there's someone out there that has invested millions of dollars in getting it perfect and they're pretty damn close on that now?

Speaker 2: 45:02

And what about materials? I mean, one thing we did advise people to do before is like in the beginning, when you first get your printer start with simple objects, kind of like your Lego story, and also stay with like one color, one type of filament for a very long time. You know how. About now? You know now it's a bit different. Right Now we're talking about the beginning of this podcast a couple of years ago. Right, so now we're talking it's a bit of a different world. But would you recommend people like take only PETG filament or work with a whole bunch of library of filaments?

Speaker 3: 45:31

What would your advice be? There I would say that that is. That's a. I guess it depends on what you're doing, like for like stuff you're doing at home, like my home machines, I only run PLA or PETG. I don't run anything else. I don't have a need to go any higher than that. It's like.

Speaker 3: 45:54

It's like, yeah, it's, you know, if you have a home machine it's fun to print carbon fiber and all that, but it's like, do you really need to at the end of the day?

Speaker 3: 46:03

So I guess it's like, if you want to experiment and do a bunch of different things, the nice thing is people have made it much easier to swap hotends and nozzles and stuff where there's less potential for error. So if you're going to do a bunch of different things, potential for error. So if you're going to do a bunch of different things my advice would be to segregate things. You know, if you're going to print, you know anything 180 to 230 C, you have a nozzle set for that. If you're going to go higher than that, set for that. If you're going to go higher than that, you have a nozzle set for that and keep it. Uh, keep it segregated, cause that'll make it operationally easier for you. It's like when you make the transition between, like the lower temp stuff and the higher temp stuff. Uh, polymers do funky things when you shock them with like large amounts of heat when they're not supposed to, and then you get a jam and then you're not happy, um so okay, super cool.

Speaker 2: 47:13

Now let's talk a little bit about these resins, right, or the, the, these kind of like. We don't really discuss it. But hey, with these super cheap 200 like sla, dlp printers and and, of course, like the new form labs, update, which is like just a light years ahead kind of thing from them again on the high end, uh, um, uh side, you know there's a lot going on in the resident like. So where would you see that play a role for people like in, like inventing new things and using them in devices and stuff like that? So in.

Speaker 3: 47:48

In my personal opinion, I think that resin has the biggest potential in mass production of parts. Uh, the, the technology, I think in a lot of ways is is better suited for it, and and the printers have been good and they're they're getting better, but the, the thing that's that's changed is the um, the chemistry has caught up with the technology. Um, via you know the work that Liquite, uh, basf, loctite and all the other people that are starting to like come out of the woodwork and jump into the game. It's like there are real materials that have, you know, documented wear and all that now that you can actually put in application. And I think that the coolest thing about photopolymers is that you know, when we do material extrusion with, like FDM, you know we usually look at it like a one-to-one. It's like oh, I'm injection molding ABS, I'll print this out of ABS or whatever it's like with resin, you really get to pick the properties you want. Like you know, you may have like a group of resins that have, like overall, have similar properties, but are all just slightly different, and I think that's a very valuable thing that people don't quite understand yet. It's like you have to get yourself out of the reference material mindset and jump in.

Speaker 3: 49:33

But it's like the, the big thing that I drive home with people when you're looking at machines is you need to, you need to understand, like, what it takes to actually cure the material. You need to understand, like what it takes to actually cure the material. Like a $200 machine is not going to perform the same as a thousand dollar machine or a $5,000 machine or a hundred thousand dollar machine. It's like they may have similar dimensional accuracy, but the important thing is the energy and I don't think enough people talk about that. It's like irradiance, I think, is the most important thing, because if you don't have enough power to like cure your material, you know you're not going to get anywhere.

Speaker 3: 50:20

And I think, like on the hobbyist side there's you know there's millions of resin users now, but none of them actually know how to do it the right way. And if you had the approach of doing, if you knew what you were working with and the resin manufacturers would provide you with a little bit more information than they do on the lower end of things, people would be a lot more successful. It's like how the hobbyist community does things, where they'll do like a exposure test, and it's like, oh, you know, all the text and details of everything on this little sheet turned out great, my exposure is perfect. And then they start printing and they have like some kind of failure because, like, it's not actually like curing all the way like it's supposed to.

Speaker 3: 51:08

It looks visually good but it's not really there. It's like that's. That's one of my big like focus areas right now. It's like trying to trying to find a way to to teach people how to do that the right way, but also not get like slandered for just like, oh, you're an industry person you're just here to promote an agenda so, yeah, I think that's a great point you make.

Speaker 2: 51:34

I mean, I think I think the other thing like you kind of alluded to this as well is is is the rest of the thing. It's a process, right? So the printing is one part and then you've got to wash it, flash it, um, uh, maybe even hot cure, whatever there's. There's different steps depending on the resin, but it's doing all of these steps in the required times and the required intensities, required light. We're able like whatever, uh, that is the, the, that gets you the part, and if you do it right, you can get consistent properties. If you don't, or you do it unevenly, or you know, then you, your properties, are going to be all over the place, right?

Speaker 3: 52:04

Exactly, and it's like the thing that you fight with resin is that versus like other technologies is everything is in a constant state of degradation. Your light sources are diminishing in power output, your cleaning solvents are getting loaded with more and more things and it's like you have to pay a considerably higher amount of attention to process control. But if you pay attention to that process control, you can have crazy outputs. It's like if you look like the guys out in Utah at Merit 3D with all the photocentric, you know, massive LCD machines, machines it's like they've figured out a process. They're making it work.

Speaker 2: 52:52

Um, so you know, there's a wild amount of potential on that side and what other advice you have like for somebody coming into the resident world like, apart from, that's a process. I think it's good and it's multiple steps and process control. You know what kind of mindset you have to have to be successful in residence um, two things.

Speaker 3: 53:15

You, you can't think of things like fdm, where you're going to put it flat on the plate. That's going to lead to failure. Um, so you've got to. You've got to learn the, the physics of the process, of how things get peeled off and how things cure and all of that. But the other thing that I think is even more important is the safety side. It's like photopolymers, when they polymerize, produce a little bit of VOCs. Autopolymers, when they polymerize, produce a little bit of VOCs. Isopropyl alcohol produces a lot of VOCs.

Speaker 3: 53:52

So it's like doing this in your spare bedroom or office is not really the smartest thing unless you have the proper ventilation or filtration to take care of it. So be smart about how you do it. Research the safety on the industry side. Make sure you you know you're wearing the right gloves, you have a respirator. It's like things like that to you know, really protect yourself and set yourself up for long-term success. And it's like safety. Safety may be a scary thing and it may seem expensive, um, but in the grand scheme of things it's like you know you may only spend a couple hundred dollars to get what you need. But also like protect yourself. Because it's like when you look at um yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:42

No, I think that's a great point. I mean, there's a skin sensitization allergy issue which will build up over time. So you get a little drop there, a little drop there, and six years later you might get red every time somebody opens a resin printer. So we definitely know that's a problem, and there's also some materials out there that are carcinogenic. So I think that's another thing that we're like well, we know you need to be careful, and Like well, we know you need to be careful and you're right. Just, generally, a lot of that stuff we don't know.

Speaker 3: 55:07

Like we are the Canaries, exactly, and this is a coal mine Exactly Well, and the EPA is really cracking down on a lot of this. I went to a workshop put on by NIST. There's a group called the Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing Alliance where they're working on a lot of the standards development. They had someone from the EPA there talking about the regulatory side and it's like a lot of these formulations coming from overseas. Companies on the cheaper end of things have some very, very nasty toxic chemicals in them, um, and there are, you know, things in play right now between, like, amazon and the epa and lawyers and stuff to like start pulling these products and like banning them from import.

Speaker 2: 55:56

So yeah, I think that's a great point as well. A lot of residents we need to. That helps for safer residents and and really kind of go um, yeah, go on the side of safety here. Uh, just for also for you know, staff, people to work with you, stuff like that. Jacob, thank you so much for being on the the 3d pod today yeah, no problem.

Speaker 3: 56:12

Thank you guys for having me. This has been a lot of fun. I'd like to do it again perfect, perfect.

Speaker 2: 56:17

We'd love to have you again, thank you.