50cc of Greeven

     John Greeven, a former HP employee and current professor at Oregon State University, discusses his journey from the oil industry to additive manufacturing. He shares his experience working with 3D printing technology and its applications in various projects, including racing teams and land speed records. Greeven emphasizes the importance of a diverse team and a mindset that challenges traditional approaches. He also highlights the role of 3D printing in optimizing designs and achieving better results. In this conversation, John Greeven discusses the importance of leveraging existing ideas and using AI as a helpful tool. He also shares his experience in managing early adopters and the challenges that come with implementing new technology. The conversation touches on the value of personal networking and the benefits of partnerships between universities and businesses. John emphasizes the need for continuous learning and exploration of AI tools. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the potential of additive manufacturing in different industries and the importance of diversity in engineering teams.

• Diverse teams yield better results in projects involving additive manufacturing.
• A mindset that challenges traditional approaches is crucial for innovation.
• 3D printing technology allows for the optimization of designs and the achievement of better results.
• Practical experience and experiential learning are essential for students entering the industry.
• The use of different 3D printing technologies depends on the specific requirements of the project.
• John Greeven's experience in the oil industry and additive manufacturing has shaped his approach to problem-solving and project management. Leverage existing ideas and build upon them to create something better.
• AI tools can save time and provide valuable insights.
• Managing early adopters requires addressing challenges and finding opportunities for improvement.
• Personal networking is crucial for professional growth and collaboration.
• Partnerships between universities and businesses can benefit both parties and enhance the preparation of future employees.
• Continuous learning and exploration of AI tools are essential in the innovation space.
• Additive manufacturing has the potential to revolutionize various industries.
• Diversity in engineering teams leads to a more creative and effective problem-solving process.

Transcript

EP10
[00:00:00] Hello everyone. And welcome again to the next episode of the AM Insider podcast. I am one of your hosts, Dustin Klemken. And today I am looking forward to this conversation. Justin, I don't know about you, but I haven't talked to this person for quite a few months, maybe even years at this point. So I'm really excited to learn more about what he's been up to.
Yeah, it's, it's been a little while since I've spoken to her, I guess. But what I will say is that we, we both used to work with him and if I had a question, he was one of the people that I would go to, to get advice from and learn from, so hopefully we can share all this information today with the audience and it'll, it'll, it's going to be a really good one.
But. You know, with that being said it's going to be a little bit different avenue as opposed to, you know, not talking about a specific machine, but how parts could apply into automotive or a motorcycle and how 3d printing can help with that. So [00:01:00] hopefully we'll learn a little bit more.
Yeah. Yeah, I was going to just say this, this is a person that is rather hard to come by from what I've experienced where he can go from zero knowing nothing to becoming the expert pretty quickly because of his ability to ask really good questions and have really good discussions and debates and inquiring about why is that the way it is and have you concerted doing this way or that way.
And I think because of his ability to. Ask those questions in a very nonjudgmental way, he's able to really make some progress into whatever he decides to touch on, which I think will be interesting to break down with him today to kind of figure out some of the advancements that he's done recently.
Yeah. And I think that's a good point to bring in our guests today. And our, our guest today is John Grievan. So welcome to the show, John, how are you doing? Thank you. Great to be here. Yeah. Could you give us a little bit of background of, of your journey? I mean, you've been [00:02:00] in additive, you've now you're at a Oregon state university, but prior to that, what were you doing?
Just give us a little bit. Well, let's see how far back do we go? I've been on the planet a while. Let's see, I. Came out of school with a master's degree in petroleum engineering, which is sort of a mechanical engineering thing, but it was called that, and I went into that industry. I went to work for Flumberger,
which was a petroleum services company, you know, worked in offshore rigs and worked on land as well and would visit wells that were in, in the process of being drilled and exploring.
One of the fun things was I was the first person to figure out whether there was. Hydrocarbons present in the well that was being drilled because I was the one that was using the sensors to go figure that out. And then, of course, provide that as a service to the, to the oil company. It was a fun adventure that took me to semiconductors in Silicon Valley did that for quite some time.
And then I was recruited to some work in Corvallis for HP. [00:03:00] And the emerging inkjet business that's happened in around 93 or 94 and that was a great ride because that business just exploded. So it was a good place to be for a long time, got to work at a number of different businesses within HP, not just inkjet.
But a lot of the spinoffs associated with inkjet, and even things that were not so much inkjet related, because of course HP has a lot of technologies. And then the last thing I worked on, which brings us more to the present, or the near term is I worked for the 3D printing business. As you guys well know, HP invented an industrial 3D printing technology which sort of advanced the state of the art to a point where There are a number of customers who do things with 3D printing technology in production, as opposed to for prototyping, which is where 3D printing has lived for so long.
And then as I started looking ahead at the possibility of retiring somebody, I had been volunteering at the local university, Oregon State University, at the College of Engineering. A number of their racing [00:04:00] teams. You know, I have a background in motor sports, been racing a long time, and so I was attracted to what they were doing.
Formula, SAE is one of the racing teams. SAE Baja, which is an off-road, four wheel drive buggy kind of thing. Those all have inter national and international competition and working with them on 3D printing to help them in their development. There were a number of 3D printed parts that actually wound up in those vehicles.
Some of them would be used to in turn create parts, like we would make 3D printed molds, and then they would make parts for the final production for the vehicle itself. And so I did that for a number of years, and at some point, somebody said to me, Hey, so would you want to teach a class? And I thought, that's the craziest thing I ever heard.
You know, I don't remember thermodynamics enough well enough to teach it or anything like that. But that's not what they had in mind. They had in mind doing a capstone class. And I was like, well, what exactly is that? Well capstone is a requirement for probably most engineers as seniors all around [00:05:00] the country.
Where they essentially participate in a year long project with other students, and it's intended to be something that is similar to what they might experience if they go work in industry, which is what most of them are going to go do. So we can talk more about Capstone, but I think you probably want to talk more about 3D printing.
Well, we can talk about both. I think they, they cross over in your recent journey, right? Sure. Well, all of these kids that I mentioned, and these racing team for using. Extensively the use of HP 3D printing technology. During their winter term, winter quarter. It's really when a lot of these teams are building their next vehicle, they have to build one every year. And so that's the fabrication period and there are a number of weeks during that term when I show up with garbage bags full of 3D printed parts for all sorts of things. And there's such great use case examples that come out of that work that we probably want to document, do a better job of [00:06:00] letting people know how these clever students are using this technology.
And I think you hit the nail on the head right there. Cause to me, the show really isn't necessarily about 3d printing, but more so it's about what kind of people are attracted or involved with 3d printing and really what kind of mindset that they have and it's really a innovative mindset because 3d.
Printing is just one tool amongst monks, many, and it just so happens to be able to do all these different geometries and materials and stuff like that. But it's really what, what you can manifest as a result of it. Well, that's an interesting perspective and that's, that's perhaps something I would like to share.
So these students came to knowing that I had this offer for them to use or have access to this wonderful technology from HP and they came to it. Having many of them, most of them even 3D printing experience, but with little home printers, filament, you know, FDM printers. And so they had a, a preconceived notion about what 3D [00:07:00] printing was.
And, and so they had access to another one and they were thinking, assuming that it was similar. And of course we know that they couldn't be more wrong, right? The technology is quite different. And so, As they, I would encourage
them initially. It's like, well, you know, just make something. I'll make you something.
Try it out. And they would always come back, you know, with their eyes wide open, like, Oh my God, this is nothing like what I do at home. It's so much better, right? In strength and in other characteristics. And so then they're, then they're hooked, right? And then they start doing more and more with it. And then they're able to have more advanced conversations with me about the kinds of things they can and can't do.
More precisely, all the things they can do that they didn't think they could because all they had was the experience of using FDM at home. Yeah, so that's a really fun journey. And so they, they wind up doing more and more and more. And that's why I wind up with garbage bags full of, you know, parts coming during that period of time.
Literally garbage bags, large bags of all kinds of stuff and both parts [00:08:00] that end up in the vehicle as final parts, as well as parts that are used in the fabrication process for something complex, like an aerodynamic element. Cool. And so with the students starting with desktop printers or home printers, I mean, I came from a university, so I can fully understand, like, you, you kind of hit this roadblock.
It's like, all right, I can design these things and I know it can print it, but it's not very useful to me. Right. And until they start to test and perform and. In areas where they couldn't think that they could do it before. But then you said something interesting. It's like, Oh, what can I do with it? So, I mean, it's like any technology.
You kind of have to push the limits of each 1. what was some of the more interesting discoveries to the students? Like, obviously, strength is. Probably a little bit different or delamination is a little bit different between MJF and some fuse filament type process. But what, what was their biggest discovery in my, in your opinion?
Well, biggest is hard because I have to think about that, but I'll give you an [00:09:00] example that isn't about, Oh, it's, it's wrong or, or, you know, I can, I can print things that are disconvenient. The race car, let's use the formula SAE car has a very complicated arrow packet. So, lots of wings and winglets all over the place.
And if we use the example of a small winglet near the nose, that's there more to guide the air as it makes it back to, say, a larger wing at the rear these winglets are perhaps, you know, six inches in length and they are mounted in Where they need to be, according to the modeling, and that modeling would have it mount on a, say, a compound curvature, you know, kind of imagine the nose of the vehicle being a compound surface surface.
And so this, this winglet has to mount on a non flat face. And so what they do is they create a part in CAD that perfectly fits that space. And put that as an insert inside the winglet, which is made out of carbon [00:10:00] fiber, which, by the way, has been molded in a 3D printed cell, right? And so in a mold and then that face that mounts onto the vehicle, you hot, melt, press fit threaded insert, metal threaded insert, so that the thing just basically bolts on perfectly onto that compound surface.
So it's, it's, you know, in terms of rapid development of a final part. It's fantastic, right? Save them countless hours of sitting and forming and machining or, you know, super simple. It's in CAD already, you 3D print it, and you're done. That's a great example. There's another example I like to cite, which has to do with the formula of, sorry, the Baja SAE vehicle.
So it's a little one person off road buggy that competes nationally in the SAE competition. And they have to make a chassis that meets certain specifications and that chassis is designed in CAD, of course but then when you actually make it, it's not quite the [00:11:00] same because they're doing all this welding and so on.
And so what they, what they have invented Invented? That's not an exaggeration. They invented a procedure, a process, for digging up that taffy with all the tubes nicely coped and fitted and ready to go and not a single weld in the thing. Right? On a, on a, on a basically a welding table. Perforated. So the whole thing is basically the entire chassis is jigged and ready to go.
And because they're using jig poles with 3D printed blocks that have, let's say, an angled hole passing through to hold a tube, basically holding all the tubing in exactly, or almost exactly the same location as they were in CAD. And then when they weld it up, The final result is close to that. Why is that important?
Well, you know, you want to make things accurately, but the super important part is that all of their suspension modeling, the only dynamic modeling that they've [00:12:00] done about how exactly the car is going to perform,
particularly all the suspension travel and so on. And, and any torsional flex that you get in the taffy will be the real life build.
It will be much closer to that model simply because you made the taffy. Very, very accurately. And they, they've proven this to themselves, you know, because they've done this a couple of years in a row now, development time and accuracy. I mean, it's just, they don't figure these things out until they try and then they do them and they're like, Oh my God, this is a competitive advantage.
Right? Right. It's fun to see all of that happen. Yeah. Yeah. I can say from my own experience that if I could have printed welding fixtures when I was doing our welding class, when I was a student a long time ago, and we had a big welding table, like you're saying, it has all the holes in it and you can post things up, but you know, you're like using magnets and some other clamps to like hold things together.
And things just move. It's rather different from the welding process itself will cause things to shift. But if you're holding things rigidly enough, they tend to stay. Yeah. [00:13:00] Yeah. Awesome. The next thing. So you, you mentioned that, so you were, when you were talking about the foils and stuff like that, I'm assuming that was the SAE formula car?
Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . Then you mentioned a little bit about the, the buggies, Mm-Hmm. . But you've also recently worked on a motorbike, correct? Yeah, that's right. So this actually was a personal project I had starting in 2018 or 17, I guess. Just something I thought it would be fun to do. You know, I grew up knowing and hearing about the Bonneville Salt Flats and all these wild, you know, exotic vehicles that people would ride there, you know, rocket cars and people going hundreds of miles an hour.
Of course, I grew up in Florida, so, you know, that was just a faraway thing that you read about and, you know, you didn't really ever think you'd see it. So, of course, living on the West Coast, I was like, you know, This might be fun to go see. It might be fun to just be a spectator and go to one of these events, which I was planning to do in 2018.
This is 2017, of course. And, You know, soon after thinking that, I thought, well, I [00:14:00] wonder if it would be possible to participate in some way, which is, I don't know, I bought the rule book to the event and realized that there were a lot of expensive things you could do, like rocket cars and things like that, but there were also some really inexpensive things you could do, sort of at the low end of the spectrum with motorcycles, and in particular, 50cc
motorcycles, which is the lowest category which are what mopeds are, by the way.
And so, my son and I took a moped, essentially, or not really a moped, it's a little motorcycle, but moped sized. And we took it and we participate it. We had no illusions of setting land speed records with it. We were just going to participate. And so we, of course, hot rodded it a little bit. We wound up going about 75 miles an hour.
The record in that class was 83 and same. So we were well off the record. But we had a ball. Run in the morning, you know, have some competitive runs in the morning, and then we put the bike away, and we walk around and watch everybody else do their thing, you know so it was fun, and we did it for several days, and that was an adventure, and it was kind of a one and [00:15:00] done, you know, budget list kind of thing, but of course, on the drive home, the engineer brain keeps going, oh, you know, if we improve this, we improve that, maybe we'd be a little faster, maybe we could be competitive, and, you know, Long and short of it is I kept working on the bike over time, right?
And so the bike got faster and faster. And then fast forward to having this opportunity to teach our capstone class two years ago. I got to see what that was about and how projects come from all over the place. They come from industry. They come from research that's being done at the university.
And they come from competitions that are available around the world. And all of those things spawn projects inside the university during these capstone classes. And so after a year of that, I'm preparing for the next year, which is this past academic year. And I, I was discussing the possibility with my cohort of, of instructors.
Hey, you know, what if we had a motorcycle? You know, team in one of these. So we decided to do that, run it as an [00:16:00] experiment, you know, and so we formed a team where I recruited 5 2 computer science and we ran the project and, you know, things were wildly successful. In May, we went to the El Mirage event.
Run by the Southern California Timing Association, which is an organization that's been running these events for 75 years or something like that. Places like Bonneville and El Mirage. El Mirage is a dry lake bed in Southern California in the Mojave Desert outside of LA. We went down there kind of as a trial run, like, well, let's see, you know, we've, we've done a really good job.
The students had developed an aerodynamics package, basically improved bearings. The computer science students took on more of an electrical design component, doing data logging, trying to figure out all sorts of things about how the bike is performing so that they could then inform how to adjust the bike to go a little faster.
And as a team, they did a fantastic job. We went down there. The record for reasons that I don't understand the history of was 70 miles an hour. And we went 87. 766 [00:17:00] miles an hour. Wow. So we crushed it. Wow. So the students were just, you know, wow, it was fantastic. You know, they were just, they couldn't believe it.
We're going to do great. We're going to go to Bonneville Salt Flats, which is the big show. So we just got back from Bonneville this past week. And and we set a land speed record there. It was a 21 year old record that had been set that I guess nobody had been able to break ever since that was done.
And We exceeded the record as 83. 981, and we went 85. 158. Wow. Which actually, we went faster earlier in the week, but, oh, long story, we had to do it again, you know? So, we ended up setting record speeds four times before it actually stuck. One of the things that's important, and this brings us back to the central point, which is 3D printing, is an absolutely vital and key component in the motorcycle is the intake manifold.
You know, this is the part that is responsible for funneling air into the engine, right? The carburetor sits [00:18:00] on the intake manifold, and the intake manifold sits on the engine and feeds whatever's coming in, air and fuel, you know, to that engine. And you're trying to absolutely maximize how much air and fuel you're getting into it, because, of course, that's how you make power.
And having access. 3D printing made our development and we try a lot of different states and optimization to the point where we actually were able to. A lot of air and fuel, more than we thought even possible because of this ability to prototype. And actually, I use it as a final part. I have no need to make something else.
The nylon that we've been using, PA 12, is very resistant to the conditions that are presented. A lot of vibrations. Fair amount of stress and all of the fuels we're using exotic fuels like methanol and nim methanol, nitromethane, methanol, methanol mixes. That's, you know, we're chasing horsepower, right?
And the nylons fine. It just holds up and, and and [00:19:00] did a great job, but absolutely key component. You can, you can agree right? Yeah. And did you use multiple different printing technologies for the development process? We did some home printing, you know, filament stuff, just to kind of get the shape, right.
But it's not going to be up to, you know, a lot of these materials that you select are going to be vulnerable to cracking or to incompatibilities with the things that they're exposed to. We're running a two stroke motorcycle, which means we also blend synthetic oil with the fuel. So you've got the fuel, you've got synthetic oils that are present, it has to be reliable.
The last thing you want is something failing, not only because you're in competition, and then you don't make your goals, but also because of the potential for hazard, right? If you let things out that shouldn't be out, and they catch fire, that's bad. To me, the big thing though, is using the right tool for the right job at the right time, you know, cause there, there's absolutely some technologies that make the most sense because you can get something really quickly in your hands.
That's relatively cheap as well [00:20:00] to say yay or nay, does this design make sense? Yes or no. And so to me, it's not about one technology being superior to another. It's more about using it where it makes sense. Like you're not going to make. You're probably not going to make CNC parts for your first iteration of a product, you know?
And so it's about knowing what tools make the most sense at the right time. Well, you, I, from my perspective, you have a lot of latitude in terms of using a variety of 3d printing technologies when you're interested in it, when you then move to function I think you really need to be careful about whether you're going to use a 3d printing technology at all.
Exactly. And then if you feel like you can't, then you move to something like, I don't know, CNC machining of a metal part or something like that, right? But what's interesting about the PA 12 that we've been using is it's sort of a one stop shop. For a lot of things that we've done, it does all of those things.
And so I don't have to do it any other way and sort of [00:21:00] migrate from one thing to another. It is what I need, right? So, so with the parts, you didn't have to do any post machining or anything of that nature? Nope. Nope. I mean, initially with some of the initial parts, the CAD wasn't very good and there were
some little sharp edges and things that, you know, got left as vestiges in the CAD itself.
And so just for testing purposes, we might take a Dremel and kind of grind that down. But then once the CAD was refined yeah, there was nice and smooth and that's what you want on the interior surfaces. Okay. So my next question is, is, so you crushed the record in California, right? And then it was a few miles over the record, if I remember the numbers correctly and salt flats, what.
What are you able to talk about? What got you guys such a big game? You know, if you're, if you're beating by 10 miles plus per hour, like, what did you do to make that? Right? Well, you know, these things are a package, right? There's a lot of things that [00:22:00] contribute to it. And unless we take the time to Unravel each of them one at a time.
It's hard to put a Pareto onto which thing had the most contribution, which was the second, which was the third. Because there are sort of a combinational effect. That said we did, we did exceed the record at the Bonneville salt plant by less than 2 miles an hour. Okay. It wasn't the same as an El Mirage where we crested by, was it 17 or more than 17 miles an hour?
I think they just, that venue hadn't been as competitive over the years. But. People come from all over the world to Bonneville Cell Flats, and so the number was higher. Plus it was higher altitude, so it was a harder challenge. In the end, we went a little bit slower at the Bonneville Cell Flats as we should.
In fact, I, we predicted we were going to go slower still. But I guess we made improvements in the interim between the two competitions that gave us a little more. Aerodynamics is generally the number one Pareto item. The slipperier [00:23:00] you are through the air, the better you're going to achieve a top speed, right?
And I would say propulsion is probably the second Pareto item. How much power can you actually make? And each of those is complicated, right? Aerodynamics isn't just about the fairings. It's about the rider and the position of the rider and your ability to have the rider side as much as possible behind the fairing.
You know, it's all about frontal area in the end, right? And motorcycles are actually pretty terrible through the, through the air. They're, they're, They're fairly short, and shortness from front to back you know, has a really negative
impact on you. You want to be long and thin, like a rocket. That's, that's how you get through the air most efficiently.
So water cycles generally do very poorly. And so you have to try to optimize that. And I wanted to say, well, it's a low hanging fruit. The thing's so terrible that, you know, anything you do is going to make it better. Well, there's some fruit to that. But you know, that, that was, well, that's how it all turned out.
So all's well that ends well. It's really helped the [00:24:00] students tremendously, right? They not only learned a lot about 3D printing technology, but they've had a full year of well, they call it experiential learning, right? This is basically practical experience similar to what they're going to see an industry when they go, right?
They're going to work on a team. They're going to have objectives for that team. They're going to have a boss. There are a lot of constraints that they have to work with and the better prepared and experience that they arrive at that final first job the better, right? And that's, that's the goal here.
And if there's a bonus where you set a record along the way, all the better. Right. So, so I want to double click on that for a second. Had they had a course like this before you started working with them? And were they working on land speed records like that before? Yes and no is the answer. So capstone has existed as a concept, not at least 20 years.
I don't really have the history to say for sure, but I know they've been doing it at this university for 2025 years. And it, I think it comes from a recognition that [00:25:00] universities need to give their students some practical experience or they'll arrive very cold at their first job in industry.
Right? And that's really where the, I think the genesis is. And as far as setting records, you know, they're, they have There are a number of activities that students can do, both at the club, university club level, as well as in their capstones, if they're engineers that involve competition. You know, whether it's launching rockets, you know, I have a rocket team in my class that is designing a very complex liquid fueled rocket with the goal of getting to the Kármán line.
The Kármán line is 100 kilometers from the surface of the Earth and is considered the edge of space. So there that's a competition of sorts. And we have these formula cars and the off road Baja SAE and now we have a motorcycle team. So there's a wide variety of things that students can participate in.
And yeah, it's new, I guess, land speed racing for sure. But they hadn't been doing land speed racing in the [00:26:00] past before you were there? Not at the university level. I did, I have found evidence that there are at least three other universities that have dipped their toe into this space. The Ohio State University has an electric motorcycle team the Southern Utah University developed an electric motorcycle several years ago.
They're no longer working on that. You see, Irvine has a small team. Running a vintage push rod motorcycle, motorcycle, and I've had a chance to meet most of those teams, you know, just because I learned about them and when looking for them. And even saw some of the match competitions. But I'm trying to see if it generates some interest.
This turns out to be a very inexpensive way to run a very real world project. You know, being a scooter and fairly inexpensive to begin with it really can operate on a fairly low budget. And yet be in service of a large number of students. I mentioned all the business school students and liberal arts [00:27:00] students and so on.
So, in total, the team was around 50. And so if you look at it from a dollar spent and, and students, you know, served it's actually a really good price. So I'm trying to make that visible to other universities and see if they might want to, you know, enter into something like this. Because I think it's good value for money.
And really the reason for my questions is if they had been doing it before and not progressing with the land speed record what changed and what, what's different. And I guess what I've seen over the years is if you're using 3d printing or not. It's more of a mindset of how you actually get there and approach the problem.
And so, although additive manufacturing can certainly help enable new and different outcomes, I think what's even more important is that mindset and of how to approach the problem that you did. Well, we get very much entrenched in how we think. Yeah. I know how to do this. I've done this before. I'm going to do the same way again.
And I think that's what needs to, that's the [00:28:00] chip that needs to be flipped in your brain. It's like, well, this is the way I've done it before. I wonder if there's a better way, right? It's not that much of a threat. Many of us think that way anyway but that's, that's super important, right? Learning how to do things another way.
And that's, that's what a lot of this provided to these students. They thought they knew 3d printing. Oh, well it turns out there are other options. Exactly. Well, you had mentioned they have to get practical experience. And I, I know from firsthand experience working with you at HP that you're very good at like, Oh, well, who's the person you can connect all the dots and push people to, to, to find the answers.
So, I mean, A lot of times from my experience at the university, the professors get the credit. And I know from you personally, you're guiding them and they're doing all of the work. You're just really kind of pushing them to, to expand for sure, for sure. No, this is all about them, right? I'm the facilitator.
And and yeah, I have a lot of experience. I have a lot of breadth, [00:29:00] you know, I don't consider myself someone who has a lot of depth in any one field, but I have a tremendous breadth and I, I can bring that to bear in the way that you described, for example, it's like, well, I think I know how this could work, but I'm going to go talk to an expert and then I get their opinion and get the actual truth of it, or the best known way to do something.
And if you do that enough times, you aggregate a pretty nice solution, right? And that's what happened in this case. I've surrounded myself with other HP folks both who are still working at HP and recent retirees you know, brilliant individuals who have helped guide these, this team as well, right?
So I'm, I'm sort of facilitating them in the matter as well. I would expect no less from you. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm working with one guy who, you know, he has over a hundred patents. Right. And he, and other places, I mean, the guy's brilliant. Right. And so there's not much you can throw at him that he wasn't, he isn't going to have a great idea about.
Something that you mentioned at the very [00:30:00] beginning about your, your work history that I, I don't know if Dustin, you knew that or not, but you both worked in the oil industry prior to that. Yeah. Eventually making, making. I remember that. It's a great place to start. It's a very adventure prone kind of industry.
It's pure exploration. Yep. Awesome. So we need to start looking for more talent through the oil industry. Well, I don't know. So what's next? I've recruited 11 students 10 for my capstone class, and then there's a graduate student who wants to be a part of the team on a volunteer basis. This grad student and one other are both women who are going to participate in the team as pilots or riders.
One will probably settle in to be our test rider, and then the other, our actual competition rider. But I think they're going to share the responsibilities. We'll see how all that plays out. And you know, so part of the magic here, if we spray a little bit away from technology is diversity and not just gender diversity, but [00:31:00] just every diversity you can imagine.
Right? So, differing backgrounds, different cultures, different educational experiences, engineers, non engineers women, men you know everything you can imagine. You bring that to bear on one objective, which in this case is to make the school motorcycle faster and set, you know, additional land speed record and you're, I mean, this has been researched diversity of team, that structure yields better results.
Right? That's just you can form a team out of, let's say, 10 mechanical engineers and you're probably do a fine job, but, I'd wager a fair amount of money that you would do better if you had different kinds of engineers working on the project. Maybe even some non engineers, maybe even some, you know, kind of kooky thinkers that are just very orthogonal in terms of how they process information.
And they make all kinds of suggestions and some of them might be silly, but some of them may in turn [00:32:00] spawn even better ideas, right? And that's how that works. So diversity is, is a huge contributing factor here that's kind of hidden, actually. Yeah, how so with the writers, do all of them have experience or is this like you're learning as as going along or no for writing that?
So that's a really important aspect. You know, there's safety involved and so on. So I did not have sufficiently experienced students on the team this year. And so I rode the bike. But this coming year, I found these two women and they have a tremendous amount of experience. These are two individuals who have You know, basically grew up on motorcycles, right?
When their family, they go riding, you know, dirt riding, street riding. I mean, arguably they might have more experience than I do even. So anyway, that's, that's the reason that now they've been selected and recruited for this purpose. Awesome. So how do you feel like the experience going through HP and the 3d printing side has applied to [00:33:00] what you're doing now?
I mean, obviously you mentioned you encourage the use of the parts and stuff like that, but what do you feel like you're bringing from your experience prior to OSU to, to now? Working in the 3d printing phase, As I did, working with early
adopters of this technology I think I got very much trained, without even realizing it, into always considering what is possible.
Right. Or, or, or at least starting from the point of view of, well, this is interesting and this could work this way. Are there any other ways this might work? Right? How do we push everything around us, all these tools, including 3D printing, to do things that we hadn't considered before? But, you know, you have a tendency to just make assumptions and you don't even realize you're making them.
And so I, I guess I grew up in that environment over the last 10 years. Questioning. Right. And pushing technology and so I think I brought that to the team like, oh, [00:34:00] yeah, that's a great idea. I wonder if there's any Googling on this, you know, how have other people done it? Are there any other ideas out there?
And, and invariably, you know, something a little better comes up, right? So maybe that as a concept. And I might just add, you know, this plays into the mindset that I was kind of getting at, you know, to me, the people who are the most successful who use ad who happened to use additive manufacturing are the ones who have that mindset that say, okay, I'm You can make it this way, and everyone's always done it that way, but how else could it possibly exist?
And by going through that exercise, you can come up with some very creative approaches. And luckily, we now have tools where you can actually manifest those things. Yeah, and I don't want to take away from anyone's, you know, success or creativity, but You know, there are about 8 billion people on this planet and it often happens that someone else has already thought of what you're thinking about or something really similar and they've come up with some ideas [00:35:00] already, so go fishing for it, and maybe you can even build on their idea and make yours even just a little bit better, right?
That's another place to go looking at, and AI has been super helpful recently, right? Yeah. With your experience when you were at HP, you know, what were, I don't know if I even know what your progression was within 3d. I mean, I just remember you being a customer success manager and you'd done some other roles.
What were those roles and what were those challenges that you experienced in that? So ahead of working for 3d or, or during the 3d experience during the 3d experience. Oh, okay. I think my role was really viewed more as business
development. And it took the form of managing early adopters, large, you know, strategic early adopters through the technology.
And. Anybody who's an early adopter has experience, has had experience in being around that knows that, you know, you're going to run into issues. [00:36:00] You're going to, you're going to come into it thinking you have this wonderful technology that you've gotten access to and you do, but there are also, it's going to be lumpy, right?
It's not perfect yet. And that's the trade off that a big company might make when they make a commitment like that. And so managing that through the. The challenges will make their opportunity larger. It makes us as the provider of that technology better, because we figure out all the little things that it needs to be where it needs to be improved and then you move more into a phase of.
How do I help this this customer this strategic alliance to grow and prosper, right? Where are the opportunities? So it's a very creative space about, well, you thought you were going to do this with it and you are, what else can you do with it? Right? Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And the more you do it, the more you are able to bring to that conversation because you acquire more experience via working with all of these different strategic partners, right? And so it kind of builds on itself, kind of [00:37:00] snowballs. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good information for anybody on any technology.
Right. It's like, it's always a little bumpier than you always expect it to be from the beginning, no matter what it is. But when you, you put in the work and you figure it out, then, then there's so much more possibility than what you started with. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, and the early adopter winds up with an advantage because they, they're well versed in the technology from the point of it being 90 percent ready for prime time all the way out to 100%.
And so when the next person, let's say their competitor gets a chance to use the technology when it's at 100 percent ready, this other person has a year or two head start. Right. And so. That's a trade off that I think a strategic partner makes when they decide to join an alliance like that. And with your experience prior inkjet.
What, what exactly did you kind of do in [00:38:00] that field? I, I, I, I was hired into R& D. So we were developing the technology for the next generation of printers. I did that for some time. And then I moved into something that's called writing systems, which is sort of a internally developed field of expertise, which I think more broadly might be called systems engineering, where you are
familiar with a number of the technologies as they come together, and there's optimization at that level.
I did it mostly because I knew that was a desirable. Career path inside. It was a way to Let's see more and experience more inside the company. And for example, it was principal reason why I was able to go to work for HP and Spain. I spent three years working there as a writing systems engineer.
And so that's, that's why I chose sort of that direction because I wanted to do things like that. Awesome. And since you've been into, well, Well, at OSU, are you still [00:39:00] following other technologies? Are you just using what you've learned from in the past? Or what are you looking at as far as the field of additive?
Are you, are you paying attention like, Oh, maybe this printer will do this for us? Well, we are there, there are some options inside the university alternative 3d printing technologies. They tend to be older machines that have been donated and as such, they tend to be unreliable and they're not well cared for, right?
They're just, they're a little, they're industrial machines and, you know, they, they need some knowledge. You don't just, they're not photocopiers just set up in the corner and just run. So there's that. There's a new innovation center that's being built now under construction which will have silicon fab and some innovation spaces.
And we are going to place an HP 3d printer in one of those spaces. And so, I think the university is kind of doubling down on, okay, we want to do more of this technology. And I think their longer term plan would be [00:40:00] to put other technologies, other 3D printing technologies in that space as well. Do you think you'll go above the 50 cc engine size at some point?
You know, I'd rather not. I'd like to try to keep the speeds under 100 miles an hour. It's a little alarming for people who aren't familiar with motor sports, you know, they just, they get scared by the numbers and I don't think it's necessary. I think engineers can learn just about everything that you might learn in a project or a team that goes.
300 miles an hour. As you in this program where you're only going 85 miles an hour, right? And so, no, it's the short answer. I don't think so. Now, there's a potential to do that with the electric bike. And so we'll have to try and see just
how small a class might exist. And as aerodynamics improve, we are going to go faster.
And it's conceivable we could go 100 miles an hour, certainly 90. Because that's not very far away because aerodynamics, there's a lot of magic there. [00:41:00] I'm expecting over a hundred since you said you're setting the bar.
That's great. And so. With with an electric bike in mind, there will probably be a whole host of different challenges and maybe a different need of of students. Yeah, absolutely. The makeup of the team still needs to be diverse, not just in across engineering, but across non engineering as well. But certainly the waiting would be different, right?
You'd probably need to have some. A number of electrical engineers probably some industrial engineers. I mean, yeah, it'll be a different. Yeah, I'm thinking more opportunity for printed parts since it's not as hot and different things to deal with. So absolutely. Absolutely. No. And again, there's really 2 giant opportunities.
1 is to make final part. Where they can fit and be used and also to make parts that help you make other parts, right? Like molds and things like that. And they like to make a lot of these things out of carbon fiber and so on. So whereas the 3D printed part might be functionally equivalent it might weigh more than, say, a really [00:42:00] thin winglet made out of carbon fiber, right?
And so, while you could do both, one's a little better, right? So. A lot of these categories depend on weight, mass, mass of the vehicle is super important. John, have you ever considered You know, I, I think it makes a lot of sense to have kind of a, a target focused project like that with a milestone. And I think it's really cool.
You guys broke a record, which is great. I'm kind of wondering, cause I've heard other universities in the past where they'll partner with local businesses to try to solve some. Maybe engineering or business related problem that requires, you know, some kind of mechanical design or something like that.
Have you ever considered working with a local business to try to help them solve some kind of problem in that way? Absolutely. And what you've touched on is actually the core of what Capstone is. Most, by far, the majority of projects that exist inside these Capstone classes are exactly as you described.
A local company or [00:43:00] regional company comes to the university and says, hey, we got this project. We'd love for some students to work on. It's something we really want to do, but we've never really had the resources to do it. It's sort of lower priority. Perfect project for students, right? And it also gives the opportunity for the company to sort of.
Interview over a period of a year, a group of students that they might actually hire a few from. Right? And sometimes companies will assign a junior level manager or somebody with aspirations of becoming a manager at their company to manage the student team. Right? Give them some opportunities as well.
But, yeah, they come in, they pay tasks, they, they, they sponsor these projects and the students. You know, do their best to, to fulfill those requirements. So there's really 3 kinds of projects. There's those that are industry sponsored. There's research sponsored. So there's probably a university professor somewhere that's running a research program, and they sure would love some help with, you know, having students create a machine to do something for them.
So they'll sponsor a project. And then the 3rd category is these [00:44:00] competitions that exist. All kinds of competitions. Rockets, airplanes, you know, vehicles.
Great. Are there questions you have for Dustin or I that, you know, we haven't talked in a while. So, well maybe it's more of a comment. It would be, it's really cool that you guys have delved into this. I think partnerships with universities are obviously common, but perhaps not as common as they ought to be.
I think it gives our industry a chance to influence what universities are doing, and then thereby preparing their future employees in a better way. So that when they arrive, you know, it all fits better. Right? And those partnerships are things that you have to manage over a long period of time. Right? So, it's good to try to maintain them and foster them, inject them with new things.
All of those things. Right? But I think there's a lot to be gained for everyone, for all parties to, to foster that kind of relationship. Yeah. Absolutely. So one of the questions we've been [00:45:00] asking our guests, and it's been really interesting to hear their responses, John, is if you had to point to one resource that you find as being really helpful, maybe it's a magazine that you read, maybe it's a email you subscribe to, or a Website that you look at, or maybe a course that you've gone through, is there anything that kind of comes to mind that you think everyone should know about working in, say, the innovation space?
Wow, you know, I don't have an immediate answer that is a thing, but I have a different answer. I value you can nod your head. Probably when you hear it, I value tremendously personal networking. Okay. And it's the reasons that we had touched on already earlier in this session. You know, it often comes down to who you know, when you're trying to make something happen.
You can't be everything to every situation. You can't be, you can be an expert of all kinds, but you just can't be everything. And so how do you become [00:46:00] closer to everything? Well, you rely on your friends, right? You rely on the colleagues that you've made, your network. And it, and it's a range of networks, right?
Some people you kind of vaguely know, but you know what they do. And some people you've known for years, right? And you start thinking about whatever it is that you're challenged by. And you see if there's interest among this network to be a part of it somehow. And it's surprising how often people want to be a part of interesting things, right?
Even though they're very busy, right? And you can build something with that. So I think that's a resource. It's not going to be, like, mind blowing and a revelation to anyone. Because we all know that works. But it's super important. Super important. Yeah. I think that's, that's great advice. Right. I mean, and I think it's the one tool that everybody has that they don't leverage enough.
Yeah. Right. Because you, you go down a rabbit hole of like, Oh, I'm going to research this, but you're not always asking the people around you what [00:47:00] you don't even know what the right questions are to ask. You think, you know, but you don't write and somebody comes along and says, well, have you thought of it this way?
Oh my God. I hadn't. Right. And then I'll make a small mention by way of making it the answering the question a second way. And that is AI. I highly recommend that People start paying closer attention and actually start using, in a playful way, AI tools. There are a ton of them emerging. Yeah, there's the famous ones, PATTP and Copilot and so on.
But there are a ton of them. More than you know even exist. And they're getting more broadly known and understood. There's It's early in the technology. Clearly, there are issues, but there's a lot of goodness in those, and it'll save you time. I mean, a simple example is, you know, you want to try and find something, and you start Googling for it, and you do a Google after a Google
after a Google search and, you know, you finally get to the thing that you [00:48:00] were looking for.
Had some experience searching, which is a simple function, using, say, Copilot. Microsoft Copilot. And you get good at, it's like you get good at searching and using the right words and boolean searches and all the rest of it. You get good at using Copilot. You can do in one or two searches what it might have taken you 10 to do with Google.
In fact, they're trying to shift you in that direction anyway, right? So I highly recommend that people start becoming a little more versed in this area and it'll save you time. And always keep your eye open, because sometimes it invents stuff. It's not really true. But verify. Yep. You know, as Reagan used to say.
That's great. Yeah, no, I mean, I feel like I'm using it more and more, but, do think, yeah, I feel like I need to make a habit. You do, you do. Look, years ago, everything I worked on in terms of cars, I'm sorry, was based on using manuals, you know, printed manuals. [00:49:00] And then some of these printed manuals began appearing on the internet, so when I needed to do something, I'd go looking for the manual, right?
And I did that for the longest time, too long, because YouTube appeared, and the thing that I was trying to do, somebody already had a YouTube video on it. And here I was searching for the manual. Okay, well that's happening again, right? You're off searching for something when you could have just asked for it, right?
Yeah, to me, it's the next version of Google or just the internet search because it does save you a lot of time and brainstorming too. I use it a lot to say, you know, give me 10 topic ideas on. You know, 3d printing and oil and gas or something like that, or, Hey make an abstract for this or something like that.
And, and it's not that you're going to actually use that, but it, it helps shortcut some of the creative process for sure. Big time, big time. No, it's very useful. And, and maybe sometime you spend with it, it's just for fun. You know, try to, you know, I'll give you a one liner that, that actually tripped up [00:50:00] here recently.
I said, I said to it, give me well, I wonder what the question it was tell me about how elephants were used in the construction of the railroad across the American West in the 1800s. And it gave me a very nice dissertation about exactly how
that had happened. Completely invented. I actually spent the time to research what it said.
Completely invented. Elephants were never used in that way. As near as I could find. Elephants did occur in conjunction with the railroads. There was a famous Wooden bridge that was built across some valley or something and to promote it the train owner Put elephants on the train and they when they first went across the bridge with the train So the word elephant appeared in that context.
That's all that you needed to make up a story That's my theory of how that worked out So anyway, my point is you don't have to just like, you know, drill in and try to learn how to use this AI, you can have fun with it, just to see how, look, [00:51:00] there are now engineering positions that are posted that you can be hired into called prompt engineer.
So the prompt that you give is becoming a specialty, just like, you're better at Googling stuff than say your grandmother is probably, right? Because you just have gotten experience on just what words to use and Boolean searching methods and so on, right? It's the same thing. No, that's good. Was the story at least interesting?
Oh, it was great. Oh, no, listen. The AIs write good stories. They're well written. And they give you this impression like they're true as a result. It's impressive. Very impressive. It is. It is. Well, this has been a whole lot of fun, John. Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad we can do this again. Maybe we'll set another record and we'll have a chance to talk.
Yeah. Or we can just spread out to other things, right? We could really delve into the tons of applications and use cases that have existed, for example, in the formula SAE project we could bring graduate students in and say, Oh yeah, we did this this whole way. And then we decided to do it this way.
And this is why it's better. And [00:52:00] lots of fun cases. John, I might put a challenge out there to you since you're probably going to be doing this land speed record again and beating your own record. If we have you back on next year, which I think would be great, it'd be great to hear about you know, what you may have done different this time around versus last time around when it comes to.
Innovation or how you use technology or where you use technology or even just your observations about team creation and how, like you said, that diversity of team really impacts the, the creative process, because it'd be really cool to kind
of hear what that update and progression was like and what was different and how that resulted in different outcomes.
Yeah, I would love to talk about that. That would be great. That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, this, like I said, this was great and we look forward to definitely talking to you again and thank you so much for coming on and, and giving us more insight as to what you're doing now. And it's always a pleasure.
I feel like I've learned something, something new. That's great. [00:53:00] I look forward to talking to you guys again. Yeah. So this was been awesome and we want to thank everybody for listening today and join us next time on the AM insider podcast. Thank you.