Additive Hype vs. Additive Reality

Carl (00:00):

Solutionology is about being unyielding, with perseverance to get to the solution.

Speaker 2 (00:06):

To not give up, and to constantly drive for better. So even when we deliver 100%, I want to deliver 110 next time.

Brian (00:12):

And for me, the constraints of that project are the most important, because that’s what drives us to a solution. It’s all about painting a picture and getting all the details in.

Carl (00:20):

How do we develop a tool that helps share our journey, educate others, and bring more light to the realities of additive manufacturing? The Solutionology podcast. Welcome to the Solutionology podcast, number eight. And this is a good one. Well, the last one was a good one too, but this one’s a really good one, because we’ve got a really interesting guest on this event. It’s different than all the other guests that we’ve had.

Brian (00:50):

So what’s neat about it is Kyle is in the trenches with us. Like DI Labs, Kyle and Extol do 3D printing services, but they go beyond services, and they’re doing product development. And we get to hear a little bit of a different story from DI Labs, but hearing Kyle’s side of the story as an alternative.

Carl (01:11):

Yeah, so it’s really interesting. Extol is a… If you don’t know who they are, they’re a business that’s been around for over 35 years, and they’ve always been making plastics processing equipment for manufacturing lines. And they got into additive manufacturing a number of years ago, and now they also provide that as a service.

(01:33):

So you could almost think of them as a competitor of ours. They’re probably more complimentary. But the reason that we had him on is that they approach things from a very technical mindset, and that’s where, Brian, you were talking about, different story but from a similar perspective as DI Labs. So it allows us to… We’re asking Kyle some questions, he’s asking us questions, and we’re sharing about additive manufacturing from the perspective of a service provider.

Brian (02:05):

So thanks for joining our podcast. Hope you enjoy Kyle’s story. We’ll be talking about hype versus-

Carl (02:12):

Versus reality.

Brian (02:13):

Hype versus reality on today’s podcast.

Carl (02:16):

Extol is a premier additive manufacturing and plastic processing equipment manufacturer. I think I’ve got that right. Is that right, Kyle?

Kyle Harvey (02:17):

Right on.

Carl (02:28):

And Kyle runs the additive business. Obviously, Kyle, you’re a thought leader in the industry, you’re sharing a lot of great content on LinkedIn, and I really look forward to the conversation that we’ll have today talking about this hype versus reality. And just being honest, just laying it on the table, we’ve had a lot of conversation that’s been fun up until now, and I look forward to this. So Kyle, if you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself and just talking a little bit about what you do at Extol and in the business.

Kyle Harvey (03:00):

Yeah, great. My pleasure to be here, and excited to join you guys for this conversation and share some things that I think the industry needs to hear. And the more that we can get this message out there, the more successful the industry as a whole is going to be. So my name’s Kyle Harvey. I run our additive business unit at Extol. We do a few different things at Extol. Additive manufacturing service is one of those, but also have a long history in custom automation and plastic assembly technology as well.

(03:30):

And so, we’ve been serving customers from a variety of industries, automotive, life sciences, consumer products, for over 35 years. And the thing they all have in common is they’re developing and manufacturing plastic products. And so, that’s the perspective that we have on the additive industry, is serving those customers. And I get to wake up every day thinking about not only how to grow that business.

(03:56):

But we launched that business to progress the additive manufacturing industry. We saw there are some gaps in the current approach, and so using our experience in manufacturing to really push things along and bring some of the vision to life for what this industry can be and how useful additive can be in product development and manufacturing.

Carl (04:21):

Well, it’s really neat to think about the fact that you started in true manufacturing and then added additive manufacturing, which is also true manufacturing. Whereas a lot of the companies that are out there that are providing additive services, they’re probably more on the starting with additive and not really starting with the manufacturing. Or if they have, they don’t necessarily apply manufacturing fundamentals to the way they 3D print. And I think that’s one thing that, looking at Extol from the outside, one thing that has been somewhat obvious is the technical approach that you take with a business and the types of projects that you embark on. It’s not just 3D printing, and it truly is additive manufacturing.

Kyle Harvey (05:11):

Yeah. Usually there’s some involvement we have to have in the front end of design of interacting with the customer to figure out how do we create a product that meets their needs. We like to differentiate between rapid prototyping being the old game, where the end was a part, to now, with additive manufacturing, digital manufacturing, we need to get to a product, the full solution. And that can even be for functional prototyping. So there’s a lot of DFAM work that happens on the front end of things, but the backend of printing and product assembly, finishing processes and all that, that we need to get to that final product.

Brian (05:52):

So when you started, you shared that you saw a gap, Extol saw a gap in the industry, and that was your approach to try to fill that gap. Could you describe your approach to how you fill that gap and what gap you saw?

Kyle Harvey (06:08):

Yeah. The gap really came out of our experience in talking to customers. For a long time, we’ve used 3D printing internally for prototyping, like many others. And about five years ago, we launched a product that was our own industrial product with 10 end-use printed components on it. And that really opened our eyes because we displaced about 10 low-volume injection molds.

(06:31):

And so started talking to our customers about what opportunities they saw. And across the board, we heard they’re using 3D printing for prototyping today, but they see potential and end-use components or even functional prototypes and bridge production, but they didn’t have a partner to help them get there. So they saw the hype in the industry, and describe it that way, but not a real game plan of how do they make it real in their business.

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]And so we jumped in to collaborate with those customers and add new customers to our business by helping them solve that gap. And we do that today by, every single project, leaning into fundamentals of product development manufacturing. What are the requirements? What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? And then, and only then, do we create the solution to the problem.

(07:30):

And so, such a simple, simple process. But that’s something, for instance, you don’t get with an online quoting tool. And so, for example, we purposely don’t have an online quoting tool because we engage in every project like it needs a full solution, and we need to understand fully the requirements before we jump into it. So that’s the why and I guess the how of how we approach different projects.

Brian (08:00):

So it’s neat to hear the gap is the perceived value and approach to use additive to solve the problem. And the way that it’s used oftentimes a day is with such a short perspective that it’s just overvaluing it on the front end because we’re using it for low value opportunities. And then, in reality, it’s really a business, it’s a transformation that has to occur in the business to get the total value out of using additive in a big way, rather than a small way.

Kyle Harvey (08:30):

Yeah, definitely.

Carl (08:32):

So what year did Extol start additive manufacturing as a service?

Kyle Harvey (08:39):

So we started offering it outside in 2019, three years ago.

Carl (08:45):

Okay. So was it easy?

Kyle Harvey (08:47):

Very difficult. Like I said, we had been running some printers in-house for a little bit, but made a big step-up into industrial printing technology. And I think, like everyone figures out, it’s easy on paper. The hype in the industry is buy a printer, push print, and catch the money as it prints out. That’s the marketing message.

(09:15):

And I think as we can both share some war stories from that, not quite that easy. And not just the operation of the equipment, but then finding the applications. How do you do the hard work to find and develop the right applications with customers and actually create value once you have the equipment? There’s a technical operating, but there’s the business side of it too, where you got to be able to marry both together.

Carl (09:46):

Yeah. I had to say that our experience is probably real similar to yours, extremely difficult to get started in. And it’s gotten different over the years. I’d say it’s maybe gotten easier because we’re more familiar with what to expect. But if you were to zoom out, it probably isn’t all that much easier. It’s just different hard, rather than the same hard.

(10:09):

And it’s interesting to think about that. And we’re experienced, and obviously you and your team are experienced in manufacturing, but it’s interesting to think about that, and then hear some of the hype that you hear. We just came off Formnext, the biggest additive event globally. And a ton of press, a ton of marketing splashes and a lot of new equipment. New equipment, new technologies. But it’s interesting, there’s a lot of hype this year. I didn’t see a whole lot of transformational or fundamentally new technologies. But there’s definitely a lot of news.

Kyle Harvey (10:53):

I think I didn’t get the chance to make the trip myself. And so, like many of us, I think we were just watching the LinkedIn feed to see what big announcements are rolling out. Can certainly get a feel from the different announcements and things. But yeah, it seems like whether it’s Rapid or Formnext, there’s a hype cycle annually, or a couple times a year, that everyone goes through, right?

Carl (11:22):

Yeah. And it’s interesting because, and I’m sure that you all have experienced this as well, we’ve jumped on some technologies that were launched new to the market. We tend to be early adopters. We feel like the adoption of new technology is important from a learning aspect and also an exploration.

(11:41):

As we try and uncover different ways to apply additive manufacturing, we’ve got to understand what different solutions are available. And oftentimes, at these events like Formnext, you hear all this great news about faster technologies, that’s cheaper, that’s easier to work with. And actually, you said it really well, it’s like plugging the machine in, hit print, and just watch the money flow.

(12:06):

And it’s funny because I don’t think that we’ve ever had a great experience adopting a new technology. In most cases, we’ve had pieces of equipment, and it doesn’t matter what you spend on them, how many figures are there, but we’ll get pieces of equipment in that we adopt as an early adopter, and those things may not run for a year. They may not run for 18 months before we finally get the bugs worked out and getting them operating in a stable manner. And that’s some of the war stories that you kind of mentioned that nobody really talks about, that goes on behind the scenes, that make what we do every day a reality.

Kyle Harvey (12:47):

Yeah, I think those get left out. And at the same time those are getting left out, the message is being sold to maybe people who… We can all think of those startup companies or people with that great application, and maybe those things are being left out and those companies are also giving out cost estimates and things of, “Here you can make this part for pennies on the dollar,” and setting up value propositions without the real story of what does it take to make that part. And often, printing, maybe in those cases people do have the costing right for the printing, but there’s the stuff that has to happen before that and after that. And you need that whole picture to know what’s the value proposition for an application.

Brian (13:38):

It almost breaks out into two segments, where you’re managing the thoughtful and efficient operation of additive manufacturing equipment, and then the thoughtful and efficient operation of managing a digital design. And the equipment manufacturers just marry that all together as a big soup. It all just happens. But in reality, those are two enormous beasts that we have to wrangle through our clients internally to make the whole system work.

Kyle Harvey (14:10):

Yeah, that’s a great insight. On my team, I have both the operations side and the sales and application side. And Brian, you just gave me a new picture of wrestling both those beasts at the same time. Thank you. It explains a lot, actually.

Carl (14:29):

You’re not alone.

Brian (14:33):

Have there been any recent thinking about new equipment? Has there been any recent experiences that you’ve had with equipment where, new to using it, you onboard it, and you experienced that for the first time? What’s that like from your perspective?

Kyle Harvey (14:48):

Yeah. I mean, if I can paint it with a bit of a broad brush, I would say that a lot of the printer manufacturers are not coming with knowing what it’s like to operate in a manufacturing environment. And so, that’s one of the biggest things that we struggle with. Downtime in a manufacturing environment is purely unacceptable. And it happens, for sure. So what do you do when it happens? Well, you identify and containment plan, then you find the root cause, and then you fix the root cause permanently, so it never happens again.

(15:27):

And so those things of maybe seeing some issues or bugs and not being able to identify those root causes or saying, “Hey, let us know next time it breaks, because it looks like the next print ran fine.” It’s like, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. This can’t happen again.” And so, I think those are some of the challenges of maybe people coming from the even large companies trying to get that type of understanding into their team. Carl, I’ve heard you talk before about printers being released as software development and not hardware, right?

Carl (16:16):

Yeah.

Kyle Harvey (16:18):

So I guess similarly with that, of we’ve got to get it right. As manufacturers operating this equipment, we have to be up, and we can’t have downtime.

Carl (16:33):

The other big thing that we face, and it’s as egregious as downtime, and that’s scrap. And any other traditional manufacturing method, if you told them the type of scrap rates that we have, they’d throw up. And that’s a significant portion of the costs that we experience that, again, nobody talks about. Part of it is downtime and the other part of it is scrap. And you talk to some of the equipment manufacturers and you get a lot of the same stories. “Well, print it again and see if that happens again.” And here you are, you’re just throwing away materials, and time, and all of that.

Kyle Harvey (17:15):

Yeah. And that’s cost, right? And ultimately, to have a sustainable business, somebody has to pay for that. And in application-to-application, where additive is an expensive process, we need to minimize costs in order to compete on applications, or make 3D printing a win for different applications. Those costs impact the cost to our customer. They might not see it, or like it, or expect it, which is part of the problem. Those costs aren’t in the hyped cost, but they’re real. And so, when it comes to cost of producing an additive manufactured part, those are real considerations that come out in the economics.

Brian (18:11):

Yeah. And with new equipment. That’s the biggest blind spot that we have. It was just over a year ago, Carl and I visited an OEM. We were looking at a new piece of equipment that they’re releasing. And the message that we got out of that is that our equipment doesn’t have downtime, it doesn’t have issues, and the defect rate is virtually zero. And this sort of message is being portrayed out to the industry. And for those of us who are in it, it’s like, “Well, that’s impossible. You’re talking about something that doesn’t exist, like a car that never breaks.” So it’s like, at some point, we’ve got to right size the conversation, and talk about the reality, and not be in this blue sky mode of hopes and dreams.

Kyle Harvey (18:56):

Yeah. For sure.

Carl (18:58):

It’s like you want to ask, “How many of these do I need to have in order to have one that runs?”

Brian (19:03):

Better have three or four. Yeah.

Kyle Harvey (19:08):

We need the lemon law or something like that.

Carl (19:11):

You’ve made some interesting comments. I always appreciate your thoughtful posts on LinkedIn, in particular, Kyle. You’re oftentimes raising questions that others aren’t talking about or presenting thoughts in different ways, and I’ve really appreciated that. It helps me put some of my own thoughts into context and also challenge some of the status quo.

(19:38):

But one of the posts that you made here, maybe a month ago or so, was talking about how you’ll run into projects where you’ll have a competitor that quotes a project under your costs, and you just don’t understand how that’s possible. And if that’s the thing that’s most important to that project for the customer, then that’s where they should go.

(19:59):

But we see that quite a bit, where I’m not sure that there’s a full understanding of the cost, or the quality is so low, and the poor quality just gets passed along, that you get what comes out of the printer basically. But that’s something that we continue to scratch our heads with, is just how people are able to make… How businesses that are running additive as a service are able to make that work, because it doesn’t make sense from some of the examples that we see out there.

Kyle Harvey (20:29):

It’s puzzling. And one of the explanations that I’ve come to understand is, a lot of times that we see that, it’s from companies who aren’t even printing the parts they’re selling, and so they’re using excess capacity in the market to fill printers, and just consolidating demand, and then shifting it off to whoever is going to run it.

(20:58):

And so, if I order a part from that service one day, I might get it from manufacturer A, and the next time I order the same part from the same service, it might be manufactured by manufacturer B. And what’s the quality difference going to be in between those two? I don’t know. But I’ve got two cheap parts, I just don’t know if any are good. And so, yeah, that’s the best that I can compare. I wonder if it’s overcapacitization in the market is what’s behind a lot of that.

Carl (21:32):

You have to wonder that our businesses are so capital intensive, that having idle equipment, and you mentioned this with downtime, it’s expensive. And you have to wonder, there’s news out there, there’s been a lot of news here lately about Fast Radius and having them file bankruptcy. And there’s a lot of questions of are they the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. And is there other issues coming?

(21:59):

And maybe there are other issues coming. I don’t see a fundamental flaw in additive manufacturing in our industry. But there is an excess capacity, and my hope is that that doesn’t result in a race to the bottom, so that companies can just fill their machines. I know that’s an area that we’ve talked about, and we just won’t participate in, because it’s not productive.

Kyle Harvey (22:23):

Yeah. And I try to remind myself too, running our business, just because someone else is willing to do it doesn’t mean it’s good business. So one after another of us following someone off a cliff doesn’t help the industry at all. So yeah, it’s hard to understand decisions some people make sometimes, but all we can focus on is delivering value to our customers.

Carl (22:53):

Yeah. So about Fast Radius. And there’s a lot of different theories out there about what drove them to the place that they’re in. What’s your perspective on that, Kyle?

Kyle Harvey (23:06):

Yeah, I don’t have any inside knowledge or anything, but watching what has happened across the industry as a whole, they’re not the only ones that have suffered some big loss in value after IPOs early this year. There’s a Crunchbase article out there outlining six companies that went public in this year or last, sorry, I think it’s 2021 and 2020, that have really significantly declined in value.

(23:40):

And the question is, like you were saying earlier, is it a decrease in value relating to additive manufacturing? Or is it figuring out that the hype or maybe the vision those companies were portraying doesn’t have a lot of intrinsic value underneath of it? And so, that’s my observation of being in this market and seeing, we’re in a capital industry. It takes money and capital to launch these businesses, and support customers, and make them go.

(24:16):

But we’ve got to do it sustainably. If we’re… Any business, if you’re pricing things under costs, you’re in trouble in the long term. It’s not going to make sense in the long term. And so, yeah, I don’t know if there’s a fundamental problem to additive manufacturing. I don’t think there is. But I think there might be some business models out there and some uses of additive manufacturing that haven’t come to fruition, like people who have hyped them do.

Carl (24:50):

Yeah, I think it’s an education issue, actually, because the hype has created unreal expectations. And it’s like there’s this knowledge gap. I remember, it was probably 2021, we had an opportunity to work on a project that was in the aerospace industry. It was a very large project. And the customer came to us. They were actually a Fast Radius customer, so this is a little edgy.

(25:21):

So they were a Fast Radius customer, and they said, “Look, we’re not getting very good quality from them, and they ship us the bad parts too. So we get good parts and we get bad parts. And we have our…” I think they said their yield was something like 50%. It was really, really bad. 50% of the parts weren’t any good. And so, they came to us and said, “Look, we need more responsiveness. We need to get a higher yield. And we also need to see if we can lower prices.”

(25:51):

We investigated that. The request really didn’t make any sense, and we wanted to understand the project before pressing it too hard. But at the end, they were sincere. They said, “I want less scrap, I want to pay less per parts, and I want it to come out faster.” And that, to me, it’s like there’s just a huge gap in what reality is, what it takes to run the equipment, run it successfully, and what people believe.

(26:19):

And I think a lot of that’s born from the printer manufacturers. And the rest of it is carried out by some of us. We’re probably all guilty of it to certain degrees, because we want additive to be successful. And I think there’s some of us that are less sustainable than others, and they’re more for the quick returns rather than for a sustainable business.

Kyle Harvey (26:42):

Yeah. It’s easy to dangle the candy, right? I mean, look at any of our own marketing and promotion that we put out there. What do we put out? We don’t put out the boring parts, we put out the sexy DFAM parts that are latticed and all that. And it’s like, that catches people’s attention. But how do you visually tell a story about business model innovation? I mean, it’s a lot harder to get attention and to get eyeballs on it. And especially as engineers, I consider myself a recovering engineer. And I’m an engineer by training, but we’re trained to solve the technical portions of problems and not always the user desirability portion of problems or the business viability portion of problems.

Carl (27:36):

That’s why you’re a recovering engineer, by the way, because you can do those other things.

Kyle Harvey (27:41):

I try.

Brian (27:44):

We’re at a really interesting place with additive, and I think the example that you brought up about having a client come to us and saying, “I want less scrap, I want to pay less, and I want higher volumes.” And we’re at this place where programs and projects are making a transition from legacy manufacturing or other high volume manufacturing methods and making a switch to additive, but the bridge was never built. Someone’s just carrying it across by hand. And that’s where we’re missing a key piece of the puzzle as we’re trying to serve clients. And clients are trying to bring on additive in-house.

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]But it’s more than just running equipment. It’s about making everything marry in just the right way. If you want lower prices and you want lower scrap, well, we can do that, but we’ve got to have a dedicated design program for your product, so from the very beginning, it’s additive and it isn’t some conversion project that you’re trying to save money on halfway through your program. So I think that’s one of the most challenging messages to get all the way upstream within organizations that we deal with, that it isn’t a project issue. We’ve got to start from scratch. If you want to see value, we got to start from scratch.

Kyle Harvey (28:55):

One of the ways I described it is don’t ask what you can make with additive manufacturing, right? Ask what additive manufacturing can do for your business. And again, as engineers, we approach that with the first one is our first instinct. And so, yeah, you got to zoom back. Because that’s the only chance that you can get to that business model innovation.

(29:18):

And really, what does reduced costs really mean? Because it’s usually not reduce the piece price, if you really zoom back. And so, the more things, like you said, Brian, okay, now we can get design on the table, or not just changing the design, but handling the CAD and all of that on the table. The more things you can get onto that table is, how we often describe it, now, the more levers you have to pull and actually reduce cost overall, for the whole project.

Brian (29:52):

It takes the whole team to be on board and it’s a slow transition.

Kyle Harvey (29:58):

Yeah. And cross-functional teams is another thing we talk about a lot. Almost all 3D printing initiatives inside of organizations that I’ve seen are engineering driven. And so, how do you get product development people involved? How do you get salespeople involved? How do you get finance or business leadership involved and really start to see the whole portfolio come together?

Carl (30:32):

And that’s hard to do. That’s probably the biggest challenge that we face is that’s hard to do by the time that they’re requesting a quote for a project. Because we’re talking about things that are so far upstream, it’s like we had to be to their two year younger selves in order to get to that conversation.

(30:49):

So there’s a tremendous opportunity for education where we are right now to get the opportunities that’ll come out in three to five years, or two to five years. It sounds painfully long, but that’s what it takes in order to get those paradigm shifts in your process and your development, is we got to start right now for projects that we’re going to launch 18 months from now.

Kyle Harvey (31:09):

Yeah. And the hardest part of that is convincing the customer it’s worth their time right now. Because it sounds like you guys see the same problem we do of customers maybe have been working on a project for a year or two and then come to us at the finish line and ask how much it’s going to cost to make it. And all the engineering is done. And we get to, in some cases, be the bearer of bad news and say, “Hey, let’s re-look at this design. Because we can get to where you want to go, but we need to revisit some things.”

Carl (31:43):

How often when you get those… I hate to say that we’re real similar. But for the times that you get those types of projects, how often are you successful in converting that opportunity into a transformation, rather than a price quote?

Kyle Harvey (32:01):

We’re not as successful as often as I would like. I would say, at that point, it has been rare, not zero, but for a project to fully go after that, if we get involved that late. The earlier that we can get involved, the better, and the higher the success rate.

Carl (32:24):

Yeah. We see the exact same thing. In fact, their chances are so slim at that stage that you’re competing against a legacy. Really, the legacy thought process is your competitor, and it’s too late to shift oftentimes. A lot of educating to do.

Kyle Harvey (32:44):

Yeah, and how do we… It feels like we’re up against the $100 million hype machine, with way bigger education budgets than ours, that are sharing the hype about things. And then, in some ways, it feels like we’re yelling into the ocean a little bit with the message of what it really takes to do additive manufacturing. Any ideas for that? How do we get the right message out there, wider and faster?

Brian (33:17):

I think it’s really hard to, or it can be really challenging to put yourself in the right perspective, thinking about a product lifecycle and communicating to others where they are within that product lifecycle. If they’re a new product development or if they’re actively launching, painting that picture so they can see themselves on the map, and then communicating.

(33:39):

It’s like, “If you’re here, these are the things that we can support you with, but you don’t want to go in a particular direction that would make you start over, unless you’re in for that.” But really, you need to be thinking about this on a leadership standpoint. As you’re starting a new initiative, this is what your roadmap looks like, and if you’re interested in additive, it’s got to be a day one approach. So there’s so many visuals that are missed, that could really align and get teams to see.

Carl (34:12):

I agree with that. And I think an area that we can leverage those types of visuals is to the hype machine, to the equipment manufacturers. And some of us have some real pressure that we can put on big companies because we’re strong players in the industry, or we’re advocates for additive manufacturing. And I don’t think we push hard enough. We don’t have the visuals, as you were saying, Brian.

(34:37):

But I don’t think we push hard enough on the equipment suppliers. And I think we underappreciate the leverage that we have to help influence equipment manufacturers. And oftentimes, to me, it’s pretty frustrating because I feel like sometimes we’re the squeaky wheels, and the feedback that we sometimes get from some of those manufacturers, you can imagine their names, “Well, we don’t hear that from anybody else. What’s your problem, DI Labs? Come on. That can’t be true.”

Kyle Harvey (35:08):

They’re probably hearing it from us. I can tell you that.

Carl (35:12):

And so, I think we’ve got, especially if we come together, that’s one thing I really appreciate about you joining us on this podcast, because it’s like, okay, and maybe this is the start of something, where we can put our collaborative weight together and start to send that education message both upstream, to our suppliers, and also out stream, to the market, because it’s really important.

(35:37):

And if we do that really well, we’ll have an outcome that is successful for us all, which is for additive to be successfully adopted for these transformational projects. It’s not going to happen if we have failures and people see the bad side of it. It’s only going to happen if we succeed. And it’s creating the visuals, it’s the educating. And I think it’s really pushing upstream to our suppliers. You know who you are, out there.

Kyle Harvey (36:09):

Yeah. And I’ve even, of late, had some really encouraging conversations on that front. A lot of the printer companies are hardware centric, hardware sales focused. And so, the switch to being more adoption focused really takes out some of the unintended consequences of being a hardware focused company, I guess, being worried about getting the next printer place, not worried about, is the application successful. Because we all know applications beget applications, the ones that are successful, especially in organizations.

(36:47):

And I think far too often right now in the industry, we’ve all experienced it of a printer gets placed, and it sits, or that first project that they thought was going to be successful, and then it’s crickets. And instead of somebody, maybe even if they are intending to bring equipment in-house in the long term, like a customer of either of ours, working with someone like Extol or DI Labs to learn the technology, get parts through it, and then, eventually, if you decide you want to bite it off and bring it in-house, then do it. But be application focused.

(37:27):

And so, not only customer of ours can benefit from that, but I think some printer manufacturers are hopefully coming around on that. And not just the sexy applications, either. There’s a lot of boring ones, that are low-hanging fruit, that help us grease the skids, get the reps in, and build the muscle that’s needed to actually launch those transformational applications.

(37:53):

Because those are high risk, high reward applications. They take collaboration, like we’ve been talking about, from the beginning to end of projects. And so, those are the ones that everyone gets excited about. Those are the ones that have potential to change the world, for sure. But it’d be like jumping in a marathon without any training, going right into that. It’s like, “Hey, let’s run a 5K first. Let’s do that together.”

Carl (38:22):

I agree with you. We’ve seen some of the same evolution of equipment suppliers more focused on adoption rather than unit sales. So that’s good. I think that’ll be a positive change for the industry, for sure.

Brian (38:38):

Kyle, do you have a piece of advice for someone who’s starting a program with additive, anywhere along the line, and focused on learning what’s required to be successful?

Kyle Harvey (38:52):

Yeah. My first piece of advice is know the value proposition for your application from the very beginning. Know what cost target makes sense for you to print the part versus manufacture it, maybe a traditional way, if that’s what you’re looking at. And it takes work to do that, and it’s cheap to do that. It takes work, but it’s all on paper, very often. And so, no engineering is done.

(39:22):

And if you can start there now, you can win. And we teach that in our DFAM workshops, and it’s usually an aha moment for people, that it’s an easy… It’s simple, but it’s not easy to get to that. But if you can do that, your success rate goes through the roof. Because then you either kill it right away or you know now the development gap that you need to close in order to make it successful. So that’d be my piece of advice that’s universally applicable across the board.

Brian (39:57):

So for your DFAM workshops, is that something that we can sign up for on your site? Or how do we do that if I wanted to attend one of your courses?

Kyle Harvey (40:07):

So we’re doing that at Extol, once a quarter right now. We’re talking about doing it remotely or online. So we’ll see. Maybe we can talk about that, some collaboration there. That’d be interesting.

Brian (40:24):

So you do that at site, where engineers can play with parts, and they can talk to you directly, and understand the impact of designing for additive, and what comes out on the backside?

Kyle Harvey (40:34):

Yeah. We get about 20 people that come to Extol for the day. And part of that’s a tour of Extol, actually seeing the equipment. But we find that that goes a long way with people understanding what it takes as well. We get a lot of people that come there thinking that they’re interested in buying equipment, and then, after spending the day with us, realize… I’ll send you some parts, right? Let’s start with that. But yeah, we cover a whole variety of topics in that. But, yeah.

Brian (41:07):

That sounds like fun. I want to go.

Kyle Harvey (41:11):

So what piece of advice would you guys give to someone?

Carl (41:14):

I think from my standpoint, it’s really trying to identify what problem you’re trying to solve. And sometimes, folks will come with additive in mind because they want… It’s like a solution looking for a problem. And in a lot of cases, that’s not going to be successful. And it’s not dissimilar from what you said, Kyle, but it’s really understanding what is your purpose, what’s the scope, and what are you trying to achieve, and how do you see additive doing that?

(41:45):

And in some cases, in a lot of cases, additive is a great solution to solve that problem. But if you’re looking for something shiny, it’s probably not the best solution unless you’ve got a business model transformation that you’re doing, where you need a tool that can’t be served with other… Can’t be substituted with other existing tools that are out there. But additive is like any other manufacturing tool, like injection molding. And you typically don’t go to an injection molding house and say, “Hey, look. I think injection molding can solve a problem. I want to understand it, so I can use it.” It’s just a tool that solves the problem.

Kyle Harvey (42:27):

We teach a four-step process of the discover, define, develop, and deliver. And the first two, if you go back to design thinking, the first two are define the problem, and then create the solution are the second two. And so, I mean, interesting that both of our recommendations are tips there, said the same thing in a little bit different way.

(42:50):

I mean, it is the fundamentals, right? I mean, that’s what I bring it back to, is it’s a shiny, new technology, but we can’t skip the fundamentals of product development and manufacturing. It just won’t work. And I think a lot of what we’ve seen in the industry are people trying to skirt the fundamentals, or they’re just not fundamentally sound.

Carl (43:13):

And I’d say that’s what we see. And even on the product development side, you mentioned a four-step process. We also have a four-step process. I kind of want to hug you right now, Kyle.

Kyle Harvey (43:20):

We can high five at least.

Carl (43:24):

Yes. We also have a four-step process, which is real similar, just different words. Concept, validation, scale, and launch. And I would imagine a lot of the same steps that we have built into those four phases are similar to yours. And it’s really forcing people to start at the right end of the funnel and not start at the finish line. And oftentimes, everyone wants to start at the finish line because it looks easy and it’s fun, but you got to do the work first.

Kyle Harvey (43:54):

Yeah. And I get frustrated myself sometimes when I’m talking about this because I feel like I’m dissuading people from using additive manufacturing. Do you ever feel that way? It feels like we have to bring a counter message to the hype that’s in the industry or maybe be the true speakers or the level setters, I guess, of that. And all we can hope is that people find value in the genuineness of it. And eventually, people figure it out. I mean, that’s the thing, right? If they go down the path of additive, eventually, they realize the realistic expectations of it.

Carl (44:39):

It’s just a long journey. It’s just a long journey.

Brian (44:44):

Speaking of journey, Kyle, what’s your vision for what’s to come? What’s happening in the next five years, from your perspective?

Kyle Harvey (44:53):

I think there’s some really exciting applications. Carl, you hinted at a lot of them earlier. Over the next three to five years, the foundation has been put in place for a lot of these to really go, but it’s going to take real hard work and, I think, collaboration with people who know additive manufacturing, like Extol, like DI Labs, to bring those to reality.

(45:21):

And so, I’m excited about, as I mentioned, some of the equipment manufacturers tweaking their approach a little bit to be more application centric and help those go, and connect a lot of those transformational applications with the right partners as well. Because you started out saying Extol and DI Labs are complementary in so many ways, and an application that Extol can really help be successful is, in some of them, are probably a little bit different than what you guys can really help be successful.

(45:58):

And so, that’s what I see. The groundwork has been laid. A lot of the technology and foundation is there. Now, are we going to do it the right way? And that’s going to either… Either this industry is going to take off and we’re going to make these fringe applications successful that are struggling a little bit today. Or do we get the black eye, the label in the industry that it never lived up to the hype? I think we can do it. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and some changes along the way.

Brian (46:42):

I agree.

Carl (46:43):

Well, we can definitely do it if we collaborate.

Kyle Harvey (46:46):

Yeah.

Carl (46:48):

Well, Kyle, really appreciate you accepting our invitation. It’s been a true pleasure to have this conversation with you today. I hope it’s not the first, but an early conversation of many. Really respect the way that you run that business unit at Extol and how you’re advocating for and educating for additive manufacturing. It’s definitely something that we all need to be doing more of. And so, really appreciate everything that you’re doing for the industry. And this has been a ton of fun having this conversation, talking about the realities. And look forward to working more with you and your team as we work towards the same eventual outcome.

Kyle Harvey (47:35):

Yeah, it’s been my pleasure and a lot of fun too. And yeah, I think we got to keep at it, right? We need to keep encouraging each other. And any one of us at any point probably gets a little bit discouraged, but keep fighting the good fight.

Carl (47:52):

Right on. Well, on that, I think we need to do another virtual high five.

Kyle Harvey (47:56):

All right. Brian, you too, this time.

Carl (47:56):

All right.

Brian (48:03):

Thanks, Kyle.

Carl (48:04):

Yeah, thanks Kyle.

Kyle Harvey (48:05):

All right. Good job, guys.

Carl (48:06):

Thanks so much.