Why Some Products Have Soul and Others Don't with Mike Laut

Part 1: Building a Design Firm Around Craftsmanship and Longevity

Mike Laut, founder and president of Laut Design in Raleigh, shared how a freelance operation started from his college apartment at NC State grew into one of the region's leading industrial design firms. Throughout the conversation, Mike emphasized the value of craftsmanship, durability, and thoughtful design, drawing parallels between classic machine tools, family-owned manufacturers, and successful modern businesses. He discussed his passion for restoring vintage milling machines and lathes, believing that older equipment often embodies a level of quality, simplicity, and pride that is missing from many modern products. Mike also highlighted the importance of company culture, surrounding himself with talented people, and only working with clients who share similar values. His philosophy centers on creating products that solve real human problems while building a business designed to last for generations. 

Part 2: A Potential Industry Disruptor

After Mike's interview, Brent and Joris discussed the newly announced Formlabs large-format SLS printer, which dramatically increases build volume while entering the market at a price point far below traditional industrial powder-bed fusion systems. They explored how Formlabs is leveraging years of printing data, thermal monitoring, and software development to address some of the biggest challenges in SLS manufacturing, including print consistency and failure detection. While both hosts expressed excitement about the machine's potential to make industrial additive manufacturing more accessible, they also raised questions about first-generation reliability, material limitations, cooling times, and the long-term economics of Formlabs' powder ecosystem. The consensus was that the release could significantly disrupt established players such as HP, EOS, and Farsoon by lowering barriers to entry and making high-volume powder-bed printing attainable for smaller businesses, service bureaus, and healthcare applications such as prosthetics and orthotics. 

Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode.

Transcript

Welcome And A Big Teaser

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to season 13 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. This is where we connect with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists, and the vendors who help bring it all together. Our mission remains the same: to share stories, tips, and insights that help improve patient outcomes. Tune in and join the conversation. We're glad you're here and hope it's the highlight of your day.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Hi everyone, my name is Yoris Peels, and this is another edition of the Prosthetics and Athletics Podcast with Brent Wright. How are you doing, Brent?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Hey Yoris, I'm doing well, man. I don't know when this episode will go out, but something big happened today. We'll we'll get into it a little bit later after after our guest. But Form Labs released a massive machine, and uh I believe that uh it's a kind of one of those things where there's seismic activity within the regular OEMs of like, how are we now going to compete? And so I think this is what is going it what's gonna get interesting, but I think it's also gonna point towards materials. Like these machines are gonna eat materials like crazy. And so there's going to be a race of who whose material is gonna get eaten by this machine. So I think it's gonna be interesting. Look forward to talking with you a little bit more on that. But just did you have any thoughts on that real quick?

SPEAKER_03 1:23

No, let's get to it later. Let's get to it later. Let's go to our guest first. And I think I think we're gonna find a lot of time talking about the format stuff later. So who is on our show

Meet Mike Lott And His Shop

SPEAKER_03 1:31

today?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Okay, yeah. So we have Mike Lott on the show today. He is the president of Lott Design. It's an industrial design firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. But when I say industrial design, that really doesn't do it justice. There's so much more that happens. Industrial design, you can kind of think of people with sketchbooks and doing things, but he he's got such a neat shop. He has a love for old machines that he will bring up to the kind of the latest CNC stuff when I think of that. Like he loves well-built machines, and then he'll bring them kind of into this year or this generation, I guess you would say. He has an amazing staff, some of the best thinkers designers around. I've had the opportunity to work with a myriad of them. And then one of the neat things about his shop is just the thoughtfulness of not only how the shop is laid out, but the overall feel, for lack of a better term, like a vibe when you go in. The vibe is hey, we're at someplace serious where we're gonna get stuff done, but there's a calm professionalism that happens when you walk in. And all that starts with a great leader. And I think that uh also expresses who Mike is. So I'm really excited to dive into his company, how he uses some of the technology and just some of the things that uh some of the tenets, I guess, that he keeps to have this kind of growing and flourishing uh design firm here in Raleigh. Cool, man. I I I have a question.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Mike, welcome to the show, Mike. First of all.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm kind of shaking in my boots over here, having to live up to that intro, but I'll do my best.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

It's like I've never known to be that positive,

Restoring Old Lathes And Mills

SPEAKER_03 3:15

also. I don't know. Uh, I don't know what you've done. Uh no, but uh, and then the one question I I'm really intrigued by the restoring old machines thing. So, what what kind of machines do you restore? What are we talking like an old lathe or something like that, or like a radial arm, or what kind of stuff do you restore?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yes, to both. So I think in the same way that a lot of people would agree that classic cars have a soul that maybe modern cars don't tend to have as much of. I think the same applies when I realized that I just loved looking at being around operating some of this old world equipment. Uh, milling machines from the 1960s, we have a lathe from 1946 that's got a Navy production tag on it, which means that they didn't take the time to finish the aesthetics of it because they were just trying to get machines out the door to win the war. That sort of thing has so much more of a story to it, in my opinion, than you know, buying a brand new machine. And so, of course, they need they need some maintenance and some love. And, you know, in order to get high precision, you've got to do quite a bit. The other piece of it is we'll add digital readout and you know, motion controls and things that allow that to be more of a modern use machine. But man, do they look so much cooler and I just get so much more enjoyment out of laying hands on that than I do uh something with modern cheaper components.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

It's interesting to me that that these things, if we're looking at the milling machine as example, they're much more massive, fewer components, fewer different materials, and they're kind of built to last in a way that to technology today isn't. I have a series of articles on this the brittle spear, the idea that everything is is now more complicated, more parts, we're making better landfill, if you will, but it's all meant to last several years. And and and and we used to build things to last like a hundred years.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, no, no doubt about it. I mean, uh if you think about the fact that this thing's built like a rifle, and what I mean by that is that that was really the first mass production object where we needed interchangeable parts, again, uh ironically, to win a war. Uh, these things were previous to that handmade where every component was its individual uh handmade thing and you couldn't swap parts with a different, a different um assembly. And so they brought that same production mentality toward uh, you know, bridgeport milling machines and south bend lathes and you know, some of this older world do-all equipment and stuff like that. I I I love the fact that they kept it so simple because they needed to. I mean, that we just did not have the production technology we have today, or the speed, or the material supply, or and you know, fill in the blank. So they had to do what they could with what they had.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

And and I have this thing that's this is a very controversial opinion, but the the I think the it's more of like a thought experiment, actually. It's a fun opinion to start a local historian or something. But is that the because the Germans had the best tanks, they lost the Second World War? Because they made things with many more have better tolerances, more at parts, more complex parts, more complicated supply chain, and then they end up having five of the best tanks in the world, whereas the Americans and Russians would feel like 400 tanks up against them that were not as good, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah, that's a great, a great uh comment because I think uh so Anderil says this today. We can't win with blueprints. You know, you've got to get this thing to a point where it can ship and it's gotta be out there usable in the field, even if it's being you know perfected later. You're exactly right that our production ramped up to meet the the need. And I mean, again, I have a uh piece of equipment that proves that they just did not care and they didn't spend the time on polishing the castings and you know removing the burrs and rough edges because that didn't have anything to do with whether or not the lathe could produce parts on a battleship. So we just didn't spend time on that. And I I actually find that more interesting than a beautifully finished object, although I have an appreciation for that too. Um, a lot of my favorite collected objects have that story behind them, or they've got the tradesperson's initials engraved in them because it was their personal equipment out of their toolbox that they were proud of and had saved for and used every day.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Yeah, and I think it's really what's really cool actually is I think some of my favorite tool companies and Snap-on, not a huge Snap-on fan, but but but uh it's not that they're bad, but but like for example, Milwaukee went uh Milwaukee's also kind of dead and resurrected, but Milwaukee, Snap-on, but my favorite one of my favorite tool business is Mikito, for example. Makito was a repair business for 43 years. Right? And they repaired other people's tools. Now, because of Japan, they were there, it was a major restoration, they were importing tons and tons of stuff. And uh and they had both a German and American stuff, both ACDC stuff, all sorts of systems. And there was one guy uh in charge of like a little lab at a mind trying to trying to uh repair this stuff. And and that that became Makita. So they became the reason why Makita still makes indestructible drills and things like that is because they repaired them and they repaired all these motors uh for decades and decades. Uh so I think I think that there is something to be said about learning about design and learning about longevity and learning about uh how things work and how they break uh through repairing things as well. So that's that's also interesting.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, and I also think that that mentality I'm talking about, they just don't break. I mean, the that equipment has remained largely unchanged. I mean, if you go buy a new sharp milling machine, it is the exact same thing as that original Bridgeport design. I mean, it it some of the parts are even cast in a very similar mold. Uh and again, it's for a reason because it it it just works so well that it doesn't need to change. And I I I like that older aesthetic, you know, script cursive cast into the housing of the motor. Why it was from pride. I mean, they were putting their brand on it, their name, and you know, that I love that stuff. Again, I think it has a it has the soul that some other equipment just doesn't have.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Yeah. I think

Repair Culture And Durable Tool Brands

SPEAKER_03 9:00

it's also kind of purpose-built in a very, very different kind of way to be repairable, for example, or to be other things. If you look at like, for example, and and that that there's a philosophy around that, like Festool or Festo, it used to be Festo, and now there's another festo, Festool, which makes really great tools if you're uh if you're like uh uh a woodworker, especially. You know, they got started by repairing to other people's tools again, just like these other companies. Plein, uh, the the they also were a workshop where literally I don't know if it's a real story, but like the one guy came in with a pair of lineman's pliers, he repaired one part, and then the other guy came back and he repaired the other part of the lineman's pliers. That's how Klein was bought. And they make these indestructible things or these kind of because that's why they got started, but also that that forms a whole philosophy. Like Festa has this whole philosophy where everything works with a vacuum cleaner to to to to to to to filter and get rid of all the your waste and dust and stuff. And Klein is kind of still that kind of it's kind of the indestructible tool. If you want something, if you're working with electricity uh, you know, 30 feet up, you want a Klein tool, still probably to this very day. So I think it does really kind of inform these brands of being meant much more than, for example, a lot of other brands which are very broken, kind of you know, delayed landfill stuff.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yeah, so we've been really fortunate to have a few customers in the tool category while we're talking about that topic. One of them that really stands out is channel lock. So they're based in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and it's multi-generational, family-owned, you know, still family-owned. And as part of the project we did with them, we've made several visits to their facility, and I'll never forget the first one where their conference room and all of their buildings are constantly shaking, rattling. And the reason becomes obvious when you go tour production where these enormous drop forges are slamming metal into shape to forge their pliers, which again, the design of those pliers is pretty much unchanged since the very beginning. Like they have a they have a history wall that shows some of the original pliers all the way to today, and it's actually quite boring because they haven't changed hardly at all, uh, which is a good thing. And their approach to who they hire, what equipment they have, the quality control that they put into place, it shows, you know, so obviously. And when we design modern tools that are new, not for a brand like that one, and I'll leave some of our other customers nameless, they are so worried about the cost of goods. And I mean, down to the penny that, you know, the the quality is almost a secondary exploration as opposed to the the business case. And you need to have both. But I think that people were just okay focusing on quality and letting the business part handle itself to a degree. And today I think it's flipped.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

Yeah. And I I think I think what's interesting is like channel or it's too bad I didn't mention them like or organic glass, but that's another insanely if you think about the stuff they've been through in that that that that the history of that family throughout the years. Also, like Fine is another example, they make drills for metal and stuff. Uh, Vera and Bihar are maybe like more like known high-hand tool brands, these are all family-owned businesses, which considering a lot of them go back a hundred years or more, that's actually crazy to think you could go through all that upheaval and uh the craziness from you know the invasions first off of the Japanese and Korean goods, and then later on Taiwanese goods, and then now Chinese goods, and then still maintain identity and a product that you can make in America or Germany or wherever, uh still do a call. Is it different working for a client like that? You said cost was different.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

I'll tell you what, the pride, the pride is there. I mean, even for our team. Like the DeArment brothers, for example, have this banner to uphold that their family has held onto through that entire time, as you said. And as you also know, channel lock is like the kleenex of pliers. You you say, hand me, hand me those channel locks, you don't say hand me those sliding jaw pliers, right? So they invented a category and are still known as the name of that type of product today, even though there's, you know, hundreds probably of companies that produce sliding, sliding locking pliers. So I I really enjoy being a part of any any client relationship where you know that pride is inbuilt within their team. And of course, it's contagious among our team also. And it affects the work. I mean, we're we're more proud of what we did because we had that that undercurrent all the way through the project. I I think that that that also resonates. Another customer of ours, Beretta, which is uh I'm I'm not gonna claim this because I need to verify it, but it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, uh privately held companies in the world. Uh they're on their, I want to say eighth generation. One of the oldest.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

One of the old Zillogen is older. Did you know that? The Zillogen, the maker of the maker of the what is the the drum kit uh things. They've been back hundreds and hundreds of years. Breta's super old company.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

1526, they were founded and they're getting ready to celebrate, you know, this massive anniversary milestone in 2026. Uh so there again, you know, they told us about that from the very beginning of our collaboration, and we've all kind of been working toward it. It's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

I would like to get a little bit to just lot. I mean, so it sounds like like the the company that the companies that you work with, you know, have a lot of pride and such, but you've been building something at Lot for a while that will hopefully go on for a long, long time and building a foundation there. Can you share a little bit about the history of Lot

Growing A Design Firm Without Debt

SPEAKER_02 14:25

and uh where you've been and kind of where you're going?

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah, of course. So Lout Design was founded out of my crappy college apartment while I was at NC State in the design school there, which that environment being at that design school was probably one of the best periods of my entire life. I I soaked up every aspect of what it was to be at, I think, any design school, just the culture of, you know, this is what you went to college for. It's so different, I think, than so many different majors. And it definitely lit a fire under me. And I dove as deep as I think you one could have done into design history, design thinking, all of the technical skills, learning how to do perspective sketching. Like I looked I knew how to draw, I was an art kid in high school, and then learned all that over again when I went to design school because it's a different approach. I lost my security deposit for my apartment because I had a lathe on my carpet and had shavings and had a replaceable carpet when I left. I saved up a bunch of money while I was freelancing during design school. And instead of being a waiter or a barista or something, I figured, you know, trying to do freelance projects in the field that I was trying to build a career in made a lot more sense. So that in combination with the fact that this is back in 2007 when the economy was terrible and we were all getting ready to graduate to, you know, very little opportunity. I'm looking around me, you know, thinking, here's all these people, several more talented than I was, that are gonna go move back in with their parents or they're gonna work at Walmart or whatever just to make ends meet. You know, what a what a shame. And so I thought, hey, if I'm busier than I can handle doing freelance work, uh, which was, you know, pretty successful, why don't I enlist a few of these people to help me? And that way I don't have to say no. And so I did, and that turned into, you know, fast forwarding through a ton. Uh, hired my first two full-time employees while I was in grad school, which is one of the scariest things I've ever done. Uh, outgrew my two-car garage, which I had purpose built and bought for the business at the time, pretty much built, lived above the business in a starter house, signed a lease for a place that was smaller than and more expensive than my mortgage to be able to have more room for the business and outgrew it pretty quickly, rented some more space bigger and bigger on still, bought a building in 2015. Uh, and I remember walking in thinking, we're gonna have to find a tenant. You know, we'll never fill all this room. And within a year, I'm looking around and like we're we're about to burst at the seams. And then COVID hits, right? So we're we're packed like sardines into in this the studio and prototyping shop. Uh and so in 2020, when no one was buying more square footage, we bought a 12,000 square foot building that we're still in today in Raleigh that's really served us very well. So through that whole history, we've added capability, we've added equipment. One of the ways we did it, which I'll I'll be ever thankful for, we have no debt. We never financed any of that. We we bought it as we could afford it. And so it really helped us do a lot in the later years when, again, if you invest in a bridgeport milling machine, you only have to do that once. And one of the things I found, you can find that equipment used for its weight and scrap metal because there's so few people that really know what it is, how to use it, or they have the motivation or the business case to use it. It's not hard to find, which is, you know, great for us, but sad in general. But I think the most important headline around the team that we've built at Lout is the team. I mean, the the people are absolutely phenomenal. And the team that we have held on to through that period, I'm also I'm so proud of what they've done that I could never have done. We've got a person who's about to hit 15 years. We're in our 19th year as a firm. And to have a college friend of mine uh hang around for that amount of time, build a career, put that amount of trust in me, the rest of our leadership, become part of our leadership, you know, it gives me chills thinking about it.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

And was it I mean, I hear there's things like buying a building, buying tools. I mean, you could have had a l uh, you know, less, you know, asset more asset light strategy, rented stuff. You know, was it always the idea to build something permanent? Or did like at every step be permanent up to that step?

SPEAKER_01 18:37

I think it taught me that it was becoming permanent. I mean, I really would not have told you I'm gonna start a design firm. And in fact, at this point, the largest one, the largest industrial design firm in our region, to be sure, uh, certainly in Raleigh. I don't know that I I knew really knew that plan, but once I realized it was working, I mean, it w it's one of the most fun things that I've ever experienced. So, I mean, that part helped quite a bit. Uh, I think that the the permanency started to come in when I realized that I needed to buy a tractor to move these things. I needed to later uh we invested in an old military vehicle uh and a forklift that I bought with the building as as a term I negotiated in the deal. Um it all starts to feel quite real, though, when you've got people looking at you for the the health of their career, their family's, you know, bills, their college tuition bill, or whatever it is. Like they they trust me. And my job

Values That Shape Client Work

SPEAKER_01 19:35

becomes about delivering on the promise of the fact that we don't have to go get real jobs. We we get to do this. And so I'm very protective of our who we work with. We have on our conference room, our big conference room, we have a couple of rooms now, but um, the big one says only work with people you'd invite over for a meal. And in sticking with the core values we put in place, which sounds very cliche, as soon as I started to not treat that as a cliche and really lean into it and really use them, everything started to take off because everyone

Why 3D Printers Still Feel Disposable

SPEAKER_01 20:05

knew who we were and and it was easier to get aligned with it.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Okay. And and what do you think of 3D printers as tools, like as in just as a user, I think, uh of 3D printers? Because the those are, you know, much flimsier devices, more kind of a little bit rickety.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah. Uh today, and I don't like this, but today I think they're disposable. We have probably gone through 15 of them. I think we probably have seven or eight in service now. As you know from the industry, they are constant maintenance, they are constant calibration. Uh, it is still, even with some of the amazing uh advancements in that technology in the last even two years, it's gotten so much better to treat it like a microwave where you know hit start and walk away, expecting probably that your part will be done as it should be when you come back. That, as you know, has not been that way through the the history of that technology. With that said, we use that technology literally every day. FDM, SLA, SLS, there's all sorts of photoresin technology that we use. There, there's vendors that have equipment that we don't have Brent among them. Uh so yeah, it's essential to our business. Uh I I want to see that technology get, you know, permanent. And what I mean by permanent is the the equipment, the machinery really worth investing heavily in again.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

And if you would look at something like a printer, pick any printer really like and you would want to make it like a more of a permanent, more of that machine tool printer, what would you do or what would that thing look like?

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah. So a a good example of that there was a company in Raleigh called Fusion 3. And we bought a bunch of their equipment because back when all the enclosures and the chassis of these printers were made of bent sheet metal or even printed components themselves, they were making them out of 8020 aluminum extrusion, you know, much beefier, a much more rigid object. And as soon as I saw that, I thought that if we're going to spend money, like let's buy something good. And then we found out through using it that these Spectra, basically fishing line, these braided lines that ran the drive systems just kept failing. And, you know, all these the the chassis was good, but that's where it ended. And, you know, just a horrible maintenance experience with those. And they've changed a lot since then. You know, it's nothing against their business. But it it kind of taught me that, you know, we really can't find a a heavy-duty production version of a piece of equipment like that unless you're getting into something the size of, you know, a uh a full house machining center, and and that's just not practical for for most small businesses.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Yeah, there are some people that do like kind of more, but the the like robot factory in Italy makes kind of more of a steel frame, more robust thing. There's kind of some more kind of it's interesting that the like for some of that kind of more heavy-duty design philosophy, kind of Prusa, I don't know if you, you know, like the Prusa core systems or something like that, that's much more kind of like that kind of, you know, built for repair at least. There is quite a bit of plastic on it, right, as well. But it is kind of like also trying to, through, through kind of a bit of heft, trying to solve a lot of these problems. But I think and it's it really strikes me that that's an opportunity for someone as well to make like kind of a really heavy duty, really accurate, you know, just uh put you know, linear rails everywhere, you know, just make it very, very heavy heavy duty. And they haven't niche people that have done it, but nobody's really made it successful to make a really super accuratized system of this kind of heavy duty.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Yeah, and I like how a lot of these brands, Prusa among them, even bamboo, like it's not inaccessible to modify, change, repair, replace. And it makes sense because they're user-based, they're tinkerers. I mean, they are as tinkery as it gets. And, you know, that maker mentality of one of the first things you print on your printer are, you know, new accessories and parts for your printer. Like that, that I love that. I mean, that sort of like meta making, setting up your workshop for an optimized production workflow. That's a fancy way of saying, you know, making stuff for making that those communities do a good job paying attention to what the users are doing, and then they implement those changes into the next version. So, you know, even though I'm not seeing a Bridgeport-esque standard machine out there, uh, I do think we're headed the right direction. I like I love that uh everything about that

Human-Centered Design For Prosthetics

SPEAKER_01 24:15

maker culture uh is is as it should be.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

Yeah. And and and another thing is like if we look at the prosthetics market, are there things out there where you're like, oh my, oh, I'd love to redesign that. If somebody would just come to me for making a brace or something like that have you thought of that that market and saying, oh wow, that would be a product I would love to get, like, you know, have a client for.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's, you know, I I want to be careful about what I say here though, too, because part of being a good designer is being what we call human-centered, meaning the person who is the authority on what that should be will never be me. It's gonna be the end user because they know every day what it's like to use the legacy device that's not good enough. It won't be because of the reasons I think, it will be because they know from use what it should be. So, you know, that front-end research, if we were to take on a project like that, and we've done some things in that category. It's really important to not speed through that front-end part, you know, sharpen the axe before we chop down the tree by listening truly and and considering like, all right, here's what I'm hearing. That's the duct tape that I'm seeing. Here's the part they modified, or the complaint that they have. You know, let me talk to a series of users and see if there's a common thread or, you know, some patterns that we can pick up. And then the other piece of that industry that's, you know, special and and near and dear to me. My dad is a foot and ankle surgeon. And so I've grown up my whole life around orthotics and uh a lot of the external fixation devices and the hardware uh centered around his specialty. Um there's there's some pretty cool stuff happening, as you both know, in that category. I I think of it a little bit like, you know, when NASA goes to the moon, they don't use a DeWalt drill. I mean, I do it, you know, here at home, but they have their own specialty equipment optimized and specialized for exactly its purpose, for their purpose. And I think that's what I really like about the prosthetics industry is you you've fed you find things in that industry you don't find anywhere else.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

Well, this is a good thing. I think actually the funny thing about uh sorry, sorry, the funny thing about the drill thing was that it used to be I think it used to be a drill made by Stanley, actually, which sounds really funny. And and then later on it was like uh it was like they have this pistol grip tool, which is like this completely insanely purpose-made thing that has like all of the functions in it, like it's made in like 60s or something, and there's all the functions in it that we see now on emerging power tools like brushless and and uh uh and kind of variable speed and all this kind of stuff. So so it's actually kind of interesting that they yeah, they they first did go to a tool company and develop it. I think it was Stanley or something like that. Uh and then and then later they went to like some defense contractor or science uh place to make it. So it's also the evolving landscape, I think, of this kind of place. Whereas NASA does use Snap-on, by the way, a lot. And they do use a lot of the same tools. But anyway, so so Mike, thank you so much for your time here. It was wonderful for to learn about your business and and the way you look at these machines, these old machines and new machines and things like that. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah, of course. I appreciate you guys having me. It's been been fun. I love I'll talk tools any day of the week. So have a great day.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

And we're gonna talk about some more machines, actually.

Formlabs Drops A Bigger SLS

SPEAKER_03 27:15

So if you're into that, you're you're you're gonna have a great episode here because we're gonna talk about one of the most exciting things to happen in 3D printing in a while, and it's a new release of the Form Labs machine, uh, new Form Labs machine. So, Brent, what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Well, I tell you what, this this form lab stuff is is pretty interesting, and I and I think it is worth talking about. Now, with that being said, you know, and let's just take into to context of you know, it is a new machine. Uh, yes, there's a lot of data that has gone into it. It's a much bigger machine. You know, you go from say the Form Lab's Fuse One is an eight-liter machine to a machine that's 61.5 liters, you're gonna have some thermal challenges.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

And it's a V1 of the product. Yep. It took them four years, I think, to get going from launching the product to getting it to a point where people were semi-okay with it, I think.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Well, and it that's what it took to get from the announcer of the fuse one too, right? Because that was like 2018. Yeah, something. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 28:16

And then 21 or something that actually like release released it. So so okay, so first off, if you haven't been paying attention, form labs, well, a couple things happened. There's a technological laser powder bed fusion, which is great if you want 10,000 or something in 24 hours, essentially. Machines used to, there's big machines for several hundred thousand dollars. Entry level used to be 150k. There's the gold standard is used to be AOS, it's a German company. There's a Chinese company called Farsun that makes kind of credible systems, generally a little bit cheaper than the the German ones. And of course, along comes HP, coming with this MGF technology that's big in prosthetics and that makes a several hundred thousand dollar machine that's very productive. Then you had these Sinteret machines, then all of a sudden Form Labs comes along with like this, you know, 16,000 and later it was it became 40, 50 or whatever. And FormLabs went did well making these accessible desktop machines, but they're quite small. And basically they don't really use the main advantage of laser powder diffusion, which is to make a lot of something. And because it basically, over a powder cake over a loose powder, 40 micron or so, polyamide 11, PA11, PA12 powder, usually because the processing window is very, very narrow, the laser or the inkjet head goes over it, and you you you harden the stuff you need to leave the other stuff behind, and then you make a powder cake. And then you have to take the cake out of the machine, blast it, clean it, and then you can reuse the powder for a limited amount of time. So powder reuse is important. Uh, how much stuff you can pack in the machine is important, the build size, of course, is important, and the cost of the powder and the cost of the machine. Right? The cost of powder used to be, in the good old days, 90 bucks uh uh a kilo or something like that. And now it's for some applications, some powders again $25 a kilo. Right? So it's things are going really good if you're a user of this technology like Brent is. Um, what happened then is HP came up with a machine that's $60,000 for the machine plus then the post-processing equipment, right? Uh, or the stuff you really need. Now Fortn Labs came up with a machine that's kind of the build volume size at least of some of these formerly entry-level machines, 150, 300k, whatever. And that costs 84,000 just for the machine, right? Only for the machine. And I don't know, but what do you think of it?

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Are you excited? I am excited. So, but I will say, like, I've got, you know, we run the 580s, we have a 4210, we run a modified DTM with EOS components. We have super cool, dude. I'd love that. I mean, two fuse ones, and then but here's here's where I think when I say it is like I you know, I took Reddit's amazing as far as like getting information. I don't know where these people get their information, but like as I was sleuthing around, finding out, hey, what is this gonna be, and then just some of the things that I know and being at some of Max's talks. I mean, even at AMS, Max was like, we are releasing four new products, and uh, you know, and then he had his like little overlay chart and all that stuff, and I was like, There's gotta be a big SLS in there somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

And so Brent predicted this a couple days before he put out a post on LinkedIn, and he literally said that they were gonna do this. So I think that's really cool that you do this, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

So, but here is where I think things get interesting. Like when you look at the build of the unit, it is for lack of a better term, I would say like prosumer-ish, right? It's not like a heavy-duty far soon, like pick, you know, we have a 6,500-pound forklift, and the the the back end of the forklift comes up when we try to go pick that thing up. Like, that's not happening with the the the fuse. Agreed. You know, so we're not talking about machines that are going to be here 50 years from now, like the far soon could be, or like what we're doing with the DTM and upfitting the the inside. That's not a knock on on form labs. It's just it is what it is. But where I think they got things right, and I saw this happening like two, three years ago, and we actually had dinner with um one of the guys at

Thermal Control And Smarter Failure Handling

SPEAKER_02 32:05

AMS two years ago or three years ago. The thermal aspect of any of the powder bed stuff, including metals and powder, that is the key. You have to know what these machines are doing and be able to make real-time decisions on how to make adjustments during this specific style print. And I think this is where Form Labs has gone 100% right because now they have literally probably thousands, hundreds of thousands of builds of data with camera data, temperature data, all this. And you feed that into an AI model, which I believe they've done, and you now have an idea of truly what happens when lasers hit specific powders at a specific height, at a specific resolution, at a specific density. And now you create an ecosystem that adjusts on the fly, so to speak. Uh and maybe that's not exactly what's happening, but even in the video that they showed, it's like, hey, if one of your parts gets out of spec, we just kind of delete it off the I like that.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

That is a nice feature, dude.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

And then and then it just keeps going. That way, yeah. I mean, on some of these the machine, and I'll call them dumb machines that we have. I mean, it'll keep on centering powder in that spot, it will lift it off the powder, and then all of a sudden you've got uh you know a crashed part, and that part's been dragging all over the part bed. Next next morning you come in and I mean there's nothing that's usable.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

And so the fact that you have to understand people who don't have this thing, it's quite a very kind of down-to-earth experience every once in a while where you come and the whole build is two centimeters to the left in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Or completely up out of the, you know, attached to the roller and in your you know, your discard powder side of things. I mean, it's a complete if you think spider web like on a FDM or the bird's nest or whatever, it's it's a thousand times worse and a thousand times more expensive on an SLS printer.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

And so I I think that's and they have these nine independent kind of heating zones, which they try to then kind of like manage better than other people. That sounds like a sensible feature. Sounds like a way for them to control. But you're right. I think I think the the Achilles heel of this is did they go too big and too quickly, right? Did they go for something that is too where because uh for the people at home, uh there's differences in the build volume, but there's a couple things. So because you're you're trying to glue together a powder essentially using heat, the young's modulus or the performance of your part under any kind of means, really, mechanical stress, impact, whatever, right, will differ, right? As you print it, how you build it up, and also where in the build volume it is and how it's oriented. So if you have the same little cylinder shape or something, or a bench here, whatever, and it's out to the corner, it may turn out differently or it may perform differently. So it looks kind of the same, but it will perform differently than the one in the center. And over time, like if you're doing something like a fatigue, like a cycle kind of uh cyclical loading and unloading of pressure on that thing. So that's the kind of stuff you guys like to do in OMP a lot. Then you may see that degraded different arcs. Um, so that's not constant. So that makes it really difficult if you want to implement something like hinges or some kind of valve or some kind of something that is especially under fatigue or cyclical loading, that kind of stuff. I mean that that stuff is really hard for us. So so what Brent was saying before, that controlling of the heat thing is not just like, oh yeah, of course that makes sense. That really affects you if you're gonna be doing stuff that needs to work in the real world. So I think I think that that that that that you know the idea that having the nine zones there, that sounds really sensible, but can they get that under control? And yeah, how long are the teething issues going to last? Because you know, I tell my customers always never buy anyone's first machine. You know, that the with us, it's always it's really hard to make a the uh a 3D printer. We talk about machine tools and stuff like that. You can QA a machine tool quite easily by checking if everything's in spec or in the right place or the right tolerance and that kind of thing. And this becomes a little bit or a lot more difficult with a printer. Uh uh so so so uh what are some other features you like or don't like?

SPEAKER_02 36:10

Yeah, I mean I th so I think the other thing that's interesting is they chose to go with a 120-watt fiber laser, which you know, I love the idea of the fiber laser, but that means that you are saying you are not going to print true white powder. Like it's going to have to have a lot.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

Or do they find another way to do that? But yeah, we that was the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

It's everything's gonna be gray, right? Yeah, yeah. So the physics are physics, right? So you you you've got to figure out how to absorb that energy, and you're just not going to get that out of a 120-watt fiber.

SPEAKER_03 36:41

Maybe they're doing beam shaping. I don't know. They could do beam shaping. No, they could they could have some hatching. I I know, I understand. But I'd like to think there's a thing around that, a strategy around that. I'd like to think a lot of people just don't care what color the thing is, so whatever gray is good, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Yeah, I I don't disagree with you there. And and and you're not buying this for white parts, you're buying this to do big parts. Yeah. I think the other thing is, I mean, so it's in the video, and it's not super clear. They're like, well, you get into the build in 24 hours, but then you're like, okay, so I look at some of these print times, and some of them are, you know, 41 hours for a dense build or whatever. And so it's like, are you true? Is does that include cooling? Does it not? I don't know. But it it to that same point, I was talking to uh somebody that was early on in the powderbed fusion. I'm not gonna say the company, but they said that you know, if your PA12 parts are thick enough, you can literally unpack them hot. Like they would just turn the build unit over and and pour them out and blast them off, and then they would they would kind of spec them out there, and they were fine. Now, on you're not gonna want to do that on your thin, thin wall parts or whatever.

Materials Choices And The True Price

SPEAKER_02 37:50

So maybe you can get into it, but it's gonna be blazing hot. I mean, PA12, PA12 is very forgiving, though. And and that's the other thing to say about this is while they say, hey, open materials is coming, or ships with open materials, and yeah, did you find that? Because that to me is the biggest question. Only PA 12. I can't use PA twelve. And and like so that doesn't do anything for me, but that doesn't mean that you can't build an electronic enclosure with PA twelve.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Or a prototype part or anything.

SPEAKER_03 38:20

Did they just go for PA twelve because everyone has it?

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Kind of like I think it's I would love to see a low-hanging fruit, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Okay, because the thing is if I'm just start starting off as a company, if I would just be like, oh, the the the guy would just have one. Right? If I wanted just one SLS printer, I would be like, and I could only use one material, then I would probably have PA11, right? You know, you know what I mean? If I would just like if the guy's like, no, you need one material, I was like, well then PA11, right? That could do me for the prototype and everything, it'd be a little bit more expensive, but okay, you know? And and it's also bio-based, you know, it's Arcama, real sound stuff, so that could be nice for customers. We can make a helmet or recycle thing, you know what I mean? It's nice, and a lot more mechanical parts, a lot more stronger parts, and we could do all the stuff the PA 12 does, you know? So and and then my problem would be I'd be like, oh, wait a minute, I need to go to the guy with the paint shop and say, hey, dude, um, you know, Bob, uh, these things are gonna come out great. Is that gonna be a problem for you? You know? And if he says, no, no, white is gonna save us a ton of time, then maybe I go for like a you know, white thing. But but but or maybe he says, hey, we just can't paint everything if you do like that. I don't know how that works. But you know, that that kind of thing, I don't know. I I would really like more more focus on PA11 just because it enables so many more like technical parts.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

Yeah. I mean the thing about PA11 is the the particle size is so much smaller, and PA11 gets everywhere and into all the mechanical aspects of your machine, and you it could become a mechanical uh Yeah, your vacuum cleaner also loves PA11, yeah. Nightmare. Yeah, yeah. So you know, I think I think it's a good move. I think I think it's a move that's gonna shake a lot of things up.

HP Versus Formlabs And Market Shockwaves

SPEAKER_02 39:58

And and guess who is meeting right now, right now in Barcelona? I don't know. I don't know. HP executives. They're they are they are when I say scramble mode, and I'm sure it's the same thing's gonna be with 100% they knew that it was coming, but I don't know that they would have known all the all the the the price stuff, but you you now have something like PA twelve is no longer special, right? So are you gonna buy a half a million dollar machine that has less throughput, is uh you know potentially slower, uh-huh. Um, or are you gonna buy an eighty-five thousand dollar machine uh to to run PA twelve if only if all you're doing is running PA twelve.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

So like Yeah, I I think it's it's it's it's interesting to me if we're who depending on who I am, and the the two features I really love about this machine that we don't know if they're gonna be real, right, is one is it fits through a center door. I think that's a smart thing because that means that you can use it in different parts of a school building or university building. That's right. Mechanical engineering faculty is gonna all of a sudden be like, oh wow, we can actually buy a bigger printer because it doesn't want to fit. So that's good. Pay attention to form factor. And the other thing I like a lot is is the five-round, five-minute turnaround times, right? Now, the thing I don't like about it is it's 84k. We don't know how much the peripherals are. So that to me is is di formula has always been quite you know very honest compared to a lot of competitors on their marketing, and this is a bit feels a bit disingenuous. Um uh not telling us about the peripherals. It's not like they don't know.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

Well, but what what did what did HP do? They said, oh, we released a $60,000 machine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:34

Yeah. But it comes with the peripherals for $60. It's the whole thing for $60K. That's why this thing is amazing.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

What? With uh the powder recycling and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 41:43

Unpacking station and the other thing, yeah. Okay. So that's why the price is amazing on the HP machine. That's why and I asked I asked a guy. I asked a guy on the ball.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

They think it's gonna be 60, 60k by the end of 2007, 27.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

I don't know, but but the thing is that to me is a price, it's a price for the whole unit, and that's more honest, I think. But anyways, so the the interesting thing is now we have two very different choices, right? So, first off, we don't know if the foremost machine A is gonna work well, B, we don't know if it's gonna be as reliable, right? Gonna be we don't know if it's gonna be as reliable or as industrial as this other equipment. It may need a lot more servicing or it may not work for as long or as intensively. That's another thing. But it seems like it's smartly designed to be everyone's kind of Model T, you know? So if you're gonna get a first uh part of a fusion machine, it may be this one or it may be the HP one now. So they've kind of made the their own markets more accessible on both both ends. And then the the question to me is like, what system do I trust more? And the cool thing now is even like we don't have to be locked or anything, but we could be uh a medium, small to medium business. We could say, you know what, I'm gonna buy a form of machine and I'm gonna buy an HP machine, I'm gonna try both of them. No? Yeah. You could really do that, right? Because you wouldn't have to buy that peripheral, a lot of that peripheral stuff twice.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah, like the blasting and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

Yeah, exactly. You just buy one blasting cabinet, and then uh if you know you're gonna do patterb effusion anyway, right? So instead of buying that forsune machine, which is like, oh, it's Chinese, I don't know, you know, and we know the flights are they're like P4, whatever that's all right. Um, but instead of doing that, now I'm gonna wait, I have two American companies where I can call them up and complain to them in person, or I have a local reseller in the case of HP, Bulb, I know him, because he serves as my uh inkjet printer or whatever, and uh, and I can call them, right? And I'll buy both of them for a hundred and for under 200k, I'll buy both of them. And then I can test them. That's what I would do is if if if if if and I'll see how the service is, I'll see how the consumables work, I'll see how the pricing is, you know. So that to me is really exciting. If you're like gonna start like a service. And and I think this is really exciting for universities, you know, for the kind of the design departments or designers or architects, people like that. I think this is really exciting. Now, I think you should really think about it because we we make often when we're talking about LPBF, we make a lot of vacuum cleaner jokes, but you know, it's like a friend, you know, it's not exactly stuff I want to put in an office office, right? Right, right. Uh so I think I think the market became more accessible. And I and I think both choices now seem much more likely to happen and likely to to reinforce each other, right? And it's to the detriment of first soon. Also, like hey, Sinter it is they're kind of like in a bad place right now, right? Yeah. Because it's like the unwind of the right.

SPEAKER_02 44:17

The Rays, right? Rays 3D.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

They just also that I don't see them I don't see either one of them surviving or something to be honest. And I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Or they're gonna have to slash their price big time. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 44:27

But but even then, but even then it's like Yeah. And then uh so so the other thing I th I think is is a different modality. And I think uh and and that to me depends on the material thing. So it depends we know that the MGF system is supposed to the 1200 is supposed to only have one material. And we also know that it's kind of the the the universe there is more limited, right, in materials. So the prices could be higher or could be lower depending on the recycle, the refresh rate, and the the purchase price of the powder, which we'll have to see if that changes, because like for example, foreign labs has volume pricing, for example, for the resin printer. Do they will they have this as well for these, you know? Would HP at one point? And then the other thing is like we don't know if Forum Labs to me makes a system open that you can actually kind of put any material in it, I think it could be a real winner. If they don't do it and they're greedy short term by having this high margin material, then I don't think it'll it'll it'll make as big an impact as it could. But they could disrupt the whole market if they just say 84k, you know, preferably because the thing is if we know the price of them, if we know the price of the consumables they've been charging for other printers and we're just gonna make them a little bit more expensive, then the thing is gonna be 120k or something like that, right? And then it becomes like a question of I'm getting two HP systems for one of these fully loaded uh form lab systems. Right, right. And then I'm like, oh, I don't know, maybe I could do that. And then it becomes a game of questions of like calculating how much your powder you're gonna use. And then of course, I would maybe be tempted to get the the the form lab set up if uh their powder costs were lower or the open material thing meant that I was paying half and the powder instead of like 50 bucks a kilo, I'd be paying 25, right?

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Well, I and with that, let's be honest here. The play is not the machine, they're not making much money on this machine. That that machine costs a lot. The play is we have 62 liters of material that gets used every single time. We are a material supplier, and that's and that's really what it comes down to. Same with HP. I mean, but HP makes money off their machines for sure, but they make a whole lot of money off of maintenance and powder. And what they want is that recurring revenue, the maintenance and powder. And that's what this is. How are we going to make the most amount of money? We're gonna sell a ton of powder.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

Yeah. But that to me is the the the the the the yeah, that would be the key, the the mistake to make. So we all know that a uh foreign labs is doing a IPO, right? That's all clear. If you didn't know already, there was like a press release where they mentioned they're a long they're they've been profitable for two years and their margins were strong or something like that. It was like stuff where it's like, oh, okay, guys, why are you telling us that? You know, it's like Ford telling you, like, we're doing really well financially when they release a new uh lightning or whatever, you know. That no, it doesn't make sense unless you're doing an IPO. So it does their IPO. Anything, any kind of momentum leading up into the IPO is really important. And any kind of momentum in sales is really important. But to me, if they really wanted a home run, they'd make it open and they would let people really use this and really kind of uh you know focus on getting this into the like maybe a million or so factories, offices of makers, offices of designers worldwide that that exist, right? So that to me is a huge opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

And I'd be so worried that Chinese guy would like screw me. Do you think people want it open though? Like you know, we talk about HP. I mean, that thing's as closed as closed can be. And but people are doing them like crazy. Like supposedly, like last quarter was their largest quarter they've ever had on record because people are printing the mess out of drones. And so it's like, do people care that it's closed?

SPEAKER_03 47:56

No, I think I think the thing is to me, um, I think that's the key of winning in this market. Most people, so so most people will like imagine two things. I would want one of these from my design office. I'm Mr. Law here. Uh most of the thing I'm gonna care either one of three things material-wise. Either one, I want the most materials because I do a lot of crazy stuff. Let's say I'm more of an engineering office that makes stuff for SBIR or stuff, you know, whatever. And I know I'm gonna have to do Illuminate or all sorts of crazy stuff. Then I'm like, okay, which one has the parameters that I can adjust? Right? Let's say if I'm like the inventor. If I'm like the design prototyper office person, then I just want a thing that works, right? Well, I want a Nespresso machine. This is the reason why you have Nespresso machines in everyone's office. It's horrible coffee, it's too expensive, but there's no cleanup, right? I just want stuff that works. Right, right. And then then a PA 12, it uh I'm I'm paying a lot for my powder. It doesn't really matter as long as well, it can't be idle for two days and that one day we're doing the big project for BMW, right? You can't, you know. And then the third thing is people like you who are doing production, and you're gonna want at one point, you're gonna be like, oh wow, I'm paying a lot. Just throw away, you know, just for the people home again, it depends a lot on what powder you use, what the refresh rate is, and what your packing density is and what kind of parts you print, but and the material. But typically, well, we always say that you maybe throw away half your powder. Could be, it depends on a lot of things, right? But typically you will reuse some of it, but you end up throwing away really perfectly good nylon PA12, P11 uh powder. And you know, that hurts. That hurts like that's a physical kind of bottom line thing you're just shuffling into some recycling dude's uh container, right? And that like really physically hurts. Like I've talked to people that are really like on a on a kind of emotional level, service bureau are annoyed by this. And you're gonna think about the refresh rate, you're gonna think about that uh that money you pay every every month to that uh thing. And you have to understand that there's service bureaus that pay millions or so in some very few cases, tens of millions of dollars a month in in these kinds of powders, right? Metal and polymer. So, so so for them, it this is a huge thing. And for you know, I think for for for you know for you as a service business brand, you're very quickly gonna be like, uh, so can I open this up? Can I hack it? Does it work, you know?

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 50:00

So so I think those three modalities, and I think with the Horn Lamps and also the 1200, you could win for all three of those customers. You could make it more open so they could the right guy could maybe pay you or maybe get a developer's kit to play with it, right? And you just make sure that that he knows that he's voiced every warranty ever, and but he can do with it. And I think, but that would mean just like you say, they need to make money on the machine, because otherwise they're not gonna want to do that. The second thing is I think there's gonna be people that are design offices or the prototyping offices at Rebulk or Nike or whatever, they're just gonna have one of these things and they're gonna run it forever, right? And they'll pay the the the material and they'll be the most profitable customer in the world. And I think there's a way to make them happy with the same machine as well. And then there's also a way to use this to make you happy because I think I think imagine that you could use an HP machine for three different, four different colors that you don't really use that much, like a black or like a PAGF, right? Or uh some kind of like uh fire retardant, whatever, right? Imagine you could have that on standby. That may even make sense for you to buy that machine, have it on standby for that kind of type of powder, just because um, you know, just in order for you to be able to switch quickly and take those orders and take that volume in, just to so people know to to switch from one material to another, a lot of times they don't let you, or it's really complicated, or you have to kind of take uh some parts of the machine apart, suck everything out with a vacuum cleaner, and then and then it's really annoying. Or like literally they'll tell you, like, no, you can't do that material. So to me, just having that on standby, you know, having three or four of these HP machines, the cheaper ones, just standing there with materials you don't use often, that could be a really tempting thing.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:31

And I think both these machines could win. But to me, the the secret is having the open parameter set available to some users and having open materials. But as you say, if they go the way that you that you think they're going, like this whole like, we're just gonna make, you know, it's it's kind of like an espresso machine, we'll sell you the cups. Yeah, and uh, then I don't think either one of these things is gonna is gonna be as as successful as it can be.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Well, and when you look take a look at the the actual use case scenarios, so you had I think there were three auditive, which talked about small parts and that sort of thing. Then you had uh the drone company that they were able to uh do the drone, and then you had the red flyer uh whatever, the bicycle thing, where they were just they were mocking it up, right? So it was like, hey, we used a big volume to mock up instead of welding a frame and all that stuff. So that was interesting, but it's not an un-used product.

SPEAKER_03 52:20

The thing is anybody's ever done that, by the way. They got like a Peloton bicycle thing. It's like it's I'm gonna use this machine. When's the prototype gonna be ready? Okay, well, it's Monday now, Bosch. Well, uh Saturday?

SPEAKER_02 52:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Like, yeah, we need we need this electric bike tomorrow. Tomorrow. It's gonna take a week, maybe eight days. They also had the Tesla thing that was in there that did these body clips out of but again, why there is no world where PA 12 works for body clips. I'm sorry. Like you just are not going to do PA12 body clips. And so this is I guess mark this down. Let's see, June 9th. Do not buy a Tesla so from the from from four months ago to for for a while because they're putting PA 12 body clips on it. It just makes zero sense. So I love the idea of hey, production whatever, but production clips at a PA12

What It Changes For O&P Labs

SPEAKER_02 53:15

ain't no way, man. I can't hear it. But anyway, I I think it's a great move, like a super affordable. I mean, I've had people texting me all morning, like, hey, if finally we've got something that we can actually not hack up a prosthesis or orthosis, we can build the whole thing in one unit. And I I think it's uh for the O and P industry itself, I think this build volume works, this price point works, and now there's an opportunity to really gain. And I think that's where uh while I love the sixty thousand dollar machine, it's too small. Like you can foot phothosis, maybe a couple pediatric stuff, but maybe even some upper extremity arm stuff, but you're not fitting prosthetic sockets in it. And so are you gonna get one? Are you are you excited? I got one I'm not do wait, do wait. Oh, wait, do wait wait for the form labs, you mean?

SPEAKER_03 54:06

Yeah, well, either one, either one.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

No, so I I I definitely won't be getting the the HP. It's too too small. And you know, we already run a 4210, so there's really no unless you want dual tone, there's really no way, no, no reason for us to do that. On the form labs side of things, V1 is always tough, man. You know, and the the idea of the open materials, I I think that there's a lot of things that they've got right, but again, we I'd want to run our nitro material, the PK5000, in this machine. And who knows how much how much the open material license would be for this thing because they they're they're counting on you to buy the powder from them. And so I'm sure it's going to be significant, which is a bummer.

SPEAKER_03 54:48

Yeah, because that they make you this is actually the funniest thing in the world. Like the first time I uh ALES did this, you should do this, and they made you pay like uh you know the machine's like 300k, and they made you pay a hundred thousand to use other people's materials. Uh happily, other people are a little bit cheaper, but there's this is actually the weirdest thing in the world that the this printer vendors in in the powder bed world that they in some cases, if they let you put other material on it, you have to pay them for the the the pleasure of of doing that. So I mean different talking about.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

If you're in my spot, yours, where you know that we you know we run the the 580s, we have a 4210, we run the DTM, we have two fuses, I have two 403s, two 252s, and a 396. Oh my god. Just waiting to be plugged in. Do you think do you do you think this fits in in that ecosystem? Or do you just keep on plugging the ones that I have in and and run them?

SPEAKER_03 55:39

I think I think multiple more maintenance engineers fit in your ecosystem. We we print stuff occasionally, we do maintenance all the time. That's it. Oh my goodness, dude. It's like warned you up by the oh goodness, but anyway, but um, but um yeah, I don't know. I think I think I think the the one scenario I could make sense uh in doing is okay, we're first wait six months, you know, uh go to some AMU, go to some events, find people who have them, and find out what they think of it. That's that's my advice to everyone with any machine, any new machine, especially a new architecture like this one, like you know, a fuse one plus or something, that'll be fine. Uh or a fuse one, whatever like a little evolutionary step is gonna be fine. But like this new build volume, new architecture, new machine, I would wait like a half year day. That's uh my advice to everyone. And the second thing, yeah, the only thing I could really find it working with is if yeah, if you could have like imagine you could have a small PK machine. Now you'd want to use a lot of PK, right? Wouldn't you? But a small, you know, GF black or something, you know? GF impact modified, GF or glass fiber filled, you know, polyproll, right? Something like that. Or glass fiber filled PA 12, you know, that kind of thing. There's something that you wouldn't want to use, but one of your best customers has, or you or if you use it, it's it's that one guy that uh always wants stuff overnight, you know? For that kind of use, I really like it. But that's only if it's open materials and only if the tweakability of the parameters is such that you can actually make, you know, that one weird material run on it. And then I I think it would make sense for someone like you. Now, I'm just wondering if this makes sense for the prosthetics community at large, again, with a six-month wait period. It's something that you could afford to invest in, I think, if you're even if you're a relatively small shop. Should you? Well, it depends on what you want to make. I still think that if you're making sockets, and if that's your dream, then material extrusion will get is always gonna be cheaper, right? If you're making like a lot of small parts, like a little if you were making some kind of hand brace, this to me depends. If you're in the hand brace business and you make a lot of custom hand braces or something like that for climbers or whatever, I don't know, right? Then and and you're making like, you know, dozens or something like that a day of these things, then this could be a really exciting technology. But then again, you're gonna run into like like what Brent says, like PA12 stuff is gonna be maybe not the ultimate thing for P for a hand brace. It's probably maybe not the nice material. And you are gonna invest for that kind of application, you are gonna have to invest some more post-processing equipment. You are gonna have to uh uh want something else to make that smoother, to make that skin contact a little less abrasive to me, you know, I think. Um so you know, to me, it's a yeah, it's an it's I don't know if this is gonna make sense for the individual practitioner, but it could very well, especially if they trust form labs that they've been using maybe the fuses for a long while, they maybe have a uh 4L or one of the larger kind of industrial systems, if they trust that ecosystem, this could be a really great thing. But again, this could also just be a great solution for every university in America, you know, to get their first SLS system to to to to print lots of stuff for students.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

So, you know. Well, and I I th I think that's uh a very interesting thing. I don't know if you saw the the the data, but uh 60% of all SLS installs are form labs branded. And why why is that? It's because they're affordable. And so uh and then guess what? These people in schools go work for companies and they some of them don't want to use some of these legacy systems. They're like, why am I out here tweaking this, tweaking that? I want a push-button thing. I want it to work just like the machine that I had in school. Well, what'd you have in school? Well, I had a form labs. Okay, let's buy a form labs. That's that's how the conversation goes. And and because it's reasonably cost effective, it's a lot easier to have that conversation than to be like, okay, let's go spend a half a million, three-quarters of a million dollars for one HP machine.

SPEAKER_03 59:16

Yeah, so so making it in the university space could be very interesting to for the university kind of one-up each other to have it in a um uh you know, have it as a as a you know, we're more advanced than the other university because we have Powder Fusion, that could be really interesting. Uh if they don't hick up too much. The thing is, is it gonna be the software should be simple enough, but are they gonna trust students with it? You know, that's the other question. Are they gonna the problem with this, of course, is you're you're unpacking a build with other people's stuff in it. So either it's gonna be Sarah who manages the lab that deals with that, which is it could be annoying, or you know, are they gonna feel that the the that students working at a blasting cabinet could be a nice thing? But that university market's traditionally been really huge. Like Stratasys for most of his lifetime sold most of its machines into universities, like thousands of them. Every mechanical engineering unit needed like an SST or whatever. So that's a super valid strategy for for for a lot of people. And again, I think this effect of educating the next generation is is really very, very uh present. And then the other thing I think I think that's interesting is is is is to see if if this just makes the market a lot bigger, if this causes a lot more interesting people to to to to to run these machines and to opt for this technology, but because there's so much going on now all of a sudden. Mm-hmm. That to me is is I think has a really interesting kind of weight to it. Now, whether it's relevant for for you know for for the OMP individual practitioner today, I don't know. Six months, we'll have to we'll we'll revisit this, I think, because then we'll either you know everybody will start to buy them or they're it'll it'll won't work, right? And then the third thing I think is is is definitely going to be relevant for the OMP market going forward, because this is gonna cause a lot of really exciting things to happen. Uh and to me it's really exciting because there's a price war going on in print services in China at the moment. It's really kind of uh in China they have this thing where they fund companies for a certain extent, and then you have to kind of be the national champion or the regional champion, and then they'll kind of m uh fund you a lot more than other people. And that in in some network type businesses like a 3D printing service, this means essentially that the big player is gonna kill all the other ones. Whereas in other businesses, maybe you you're a regional hamburger trainer or whatever. So in this sense, there's a big price war going on where at the moment it's cheaper to get stuff uh in China uh for only the Chinese market, by the way, made. Uh it's cheaper to have it made than to make it using a machine, right? This is gonna end at one point when the the winner anoints themselves. But this means that the the Chinese players in the market, like for our students are not immediately gonna be, oh my god, we're gonna make so much money from having a entry-level machine. They're gonna really think that that that the you know working for the car companies on production is really gonna be their own only viable strategy forward, right? And the only way they'll be judged to be the winners of their space again. So there could be actually really crazily a unique point in time where American companies, in this case, both of these American companies, HP makes in Singapore and mixed machines of Singapore, I'm pretty sure this one is as well, the 1200, I'm not 100% sure. And then and then Form Labs, of course, makes in China. So there's these two American companies could actually kind of make a lot of progress in this entry-level pandemic fusion space without too much new competition. I expect that if there's a some laser engineer mechatronics and with his mechatronics and software buddies wanting to get into the printing space, wanting to make an entry-level machine in China, they'll probably go for titanium when they'll go for a metal printer, which is pretty much the same idea, a little bit harder. So I think to me, this gives a unique kind of runway for foreign labs and HP to battle it out and hopefully make the market bigger. So that to me is is is really exciting. And I and I really see that there there could be like one one item I'm really excited about is like, for example, over-the-counter hearing aids. Could conceivably in a local scenario for rally or a part of rally or whatever, you could make an OTC hearing aid or a you know, uh hearing protection for construction workers or the best headphones kind of thing. You could make a company now that makes these custom fit patterbit fusion um uh ear things, whatever which one, uh whether for hearing protection or hearing aids or or headphones, and you could in a reliable way produce these uh up to quite a scale by yourself just with a uh a let's say a hundred thousand dollar investment. That to me is a really exciting thing because it does a little bit differently than the we're seeing hundreds and hundreds of businesses sprout up around material extrusion. Also many, there's some in like mouth guards here and there, and and there's some businesses around you know, kind of a low-cost service brother, some businesses based on kind of like the cheap powder effusion, but not that many. And this this like the validation of having the both these players in the market and these both these products could really see people, one, you know, open more services, more products, and two, like see inventors, like some inventor Jane could invent a startup that makes better hearing protection. She could offer that, you know, to local construction crews and then you know make a really good business of it in a really kind of affordable way. So I th I I think this is this is really uh you know, this really kind of makes that possible in a way that, you know, Jane's first thing is never gonna be she goes to the bank with a cool product, say, hey, I need a quarter of a million dollars or three-quarters of a million dollars to equip my service. You know, that's never gonna work. Uh, but maybe for 100K she could have that save, or her business partners could have that saved, and that could really make a um uh really, you know, make their business really worthwhile. So we're seeing a similar thing happen in the one-click metal machines, these is $100,000, $150,000 metal printers that also people are buying one, two, three, four of these just out of their own money and out of their own profits. And that's not something we saw happen with the big metal machines. It was all bank VC money that went into that. So I think it could be really exciting times.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

I think, I think more than anything, and and I and you've seen it in AMS and we saw it. Max likes to push the envelope on the makers and trying to get the creativity out there. He believes that these machines should be a tool for creatives to give them an edge. And I think that is I think that's a really important aspect to have or a thought process to have in this, and in both ways. Like HP's doing it, but more in a corporate ish, corporate-ish way. And I don't know that that really would resonate with a maker style community, but maybe it will. Who knows? But the beauty is, is the stuff is becoming more and more accessible and it's working, you know. So it's you're not having to do these tweaks and like, oh my goodness, my build failed. You're probably as long as you stay within the parameters of all the OE what the OEMs say, you're probably going to have good parts come out on the other end. And I think that's exciting.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:51

Yeah, super good. And yeah, again, our advice I think is be wait a couple months, see what other people think, and then maybe look at investing because this could make uh LPBF uh quite accessible. Um And it's gonna be v one of the most exciting uh years in the LPBF industry. I think it it's up to like, for example, come back ALS. Does it now focus more on metal? You know, far soon? Is it gonna like just let this polymer side of the business kind of atrophy and not really spend too much more money on it? Or is it gonna really see value in pushing it forward? And are people gonna opt for these low-cost machines or are they just gonna keep building these much, much larger quad laser

Used Machines Leasing And Utilization

SPEAKER_03 1:06:25

things? So yeah, it's gonna be really exciting 12 months. It's gonna crush the used market, I can tell you that. That's oh yeah. We haven't talked about that. I was thinking about that on the phone the other day with a friend. It's uh so what do you think about that? Because because so just there is a used market, it's really good because like these AOS machines then last forever, and so you could buy uh you know systems with still several hundred thousand dollars, but like older, more productive, much bigger systems that you probably have to give some TLC to together to really work. I think that's a good point. I think I think that right that really could really be a bad news for the the secondhand people. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:58

Yeah, I mean, like like I'm just thinking in my situation, uh so I love the old machines and I'm gonna run them. You know, once you have the recipe right, they're gonna be very consistent for you every single time. Uh-huh. But if I had the choice of paying $100,000 for a used EOS that I'm gonna have to charge, you know, I'm gonna have to pay $20,000, $25,000 to get it transported and installed. Or do I get a brand new machine with a warranty with, you know, the largest probably user base and help, even though it might be via, you know, phone, internet, whatever, it's still probably gonna be better than what is available from all the OEMs, to be honest with you. But the uh the I'm gonna go new every single time.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:40

I'm not gonna buy an old machine. It's interesting. I still think that that somebody could still make money on it making proper DTM machines new, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:46

Well, and I love our DTM. And if if if yes 100%. But but here's the thing is while I love the the innards of it, and you know, you get the high power laser, all that stuff that this does not give, having the the thermal stuff controlled is so important, and you're just not getting that from any of these legacy machines.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:09

Yeah, I think it's a really good point, Brent. I th I think it could be a bit of a problematic thing for the used market. Do you think they're gonna offer these things for lease? Because I was just thinking about that. That is gonna be like a lease price on this. It would depend, of course. I mean, but we're talking like probably three, four thousand dollars a month. Well, how what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:25

Probably like four grand a month, something like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:28

For this?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:29

I think it'd be cheaper.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:29

I thought I think you could you could previously well at least uh uh pre I looked at one point at leasing like a P100 or something. This is like a machine that's like double the price of this thing. Yeah, okay. Maybe with everything, it's a couple grand a month. Yeah, with everything. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:41

I mean, you're looking, I I'm just thinking about like some of the stuff that we have done. For every every $100,000, I think it ends up being like $1,300, $1,400 a month, something like that. So at $200,000, yeah, you you'd be sub three and you're ready to go, but you're not outfitting a whole nother, you not have to bring $240 in, you don't have to bring three phase in. Like, you know, we have I mean, for for what we have with the bashies that we have, I mean, we probably have fifty, seventy-five, hundred thousand dollars in just the upfit side of things, so we the rooms get cooled and the power and all that stuff. Like, it's it's no joke.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:21

So yeah, but I like to say, imagine Jane, she invents something like a new type of glasses, but she makes a special like sunglasses for skiers or something. I don't know. She has that thing, she prototypes it with you guys, whatever, right? And then at one point, she could for three, four grand a month get all the equipment she needs to do her in-house production to get her to that next phase and to prototype much faster, learn much quicker by having the machine in-house. And then she could get to, I don't know how many glasses you could make. You could make a quite a fair bit of glasses per month. Like if you just look at uh, you know, PA, hopefully 11, but PA 12, let's say, uh sunglass frames, you can get quite a lot out of the door with the with with with with either one of these machines. And I like it for her. Like for her, is this is a exciting bit for me is even if she would pay through the nose, like just the normal material costs, it's super gonna be okay because you can just sell these glasses for 200 bucks, 150. And and then the the weight of the material, you know, the problem with her is gonna be the scrap rate. Obviously, we know this about glasses. It's it's a very if you want to sort a glass, talk to one of us first. It's not as easy as it may look. Um, you know, but the scrap rate is gonna be very high. But even with that, and even paying the the OEM, let's say the normal prices, I think with one of these small machines, she could do a fair bit of production to get it to the stage where she could either, you know, outsource it to you or something like that, or just really kind of like uh uh uh you know invest in in doing a proper plant in her uh own office. So I think this is really exciting for me, this idea that it really we've gone through it being only for the brave, you know, or the foolhardy or both.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:46

Or the well-capitalized to it being something that an entrepreneur could do this and could do this to power their business rather than they that they have to do this or they have to bet the farm on this, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

100%. But I think and I think you and you glossed over it just a little bit. You have to have something to put in the machine, and that's still where the value is. Yeah. Is is the execution of the ideas.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:08

Yeah, yeah. And and and what and not just today. It's like think about it much more, urge people to do this. And I'm happy you call you call me on this because it's like it's like think of yourself as Southwest Airlines or EasyJet or some Orion Air, whatever, I don't know, wherever in the world you're from, your low-cost airline, it's about filling the plane. It's not about filling the plane on Monday from Baltimore to Washington, whatever. It's about filling every single airplane all the time. And that utilization and that throughput, that's where you get you make money from these things. Yeah, for a lot of people, like if you're Ford or something, having one of these to every once in a while print a little handle, door handle, that's okay. But for most businesses,

Final Takeaways And Wait To Buy

SPEAKER_03 1:11:40

this thing should always be moving. And the economics will only make sense if the thing is always moving.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:44

That's right. Yep, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:46

All right. So thank you for listening to us. We're very excited by this, as you probably could have noticed. We we we but we nerd out about this stuff a little bit. Uh a little bit. Um, and but a lot. A lot, maybe. But um, but I think we're uh I think you can see from this that we're excited about this. Don't rush and buy one of these yet, but this could mean very exciting things uh going forward for the next 12 months if this pans out for everyone. So thank you for listening to another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast with Brent Bright and Yoris Peels. Have a great day.