EP 13: Why the Best Additive Strategies Start with "Why"

What separates successful additive manufacturing programs from expensive experiments? According to John Kawola, it starts with a simple question: Why?

In this episode of The Additive Advantage Podcast, Shon Anderson sits down with John Kawola, CEO of Boston Micro Fabrication (BMF), to discuss nearly three decades of lessons learned from the evolution of additive manufacturing. From his early days at Z Corp to leadership roles at Ultimaker and BMF, John has witnessed the industry's transformation from rapid prototyping to production-ready manufacturing.

The conversation explores why the most successful additive initiatives begin with a clearly defined business problem, how companies can avoid common adoption pitfalls, and what it really takes to move from promising pilot projects to repeatable production outcomes. John also shares his perspective on industry consolidation, the changing dynamics between OEMs and distribution channels, the growing importance of application engineering, and why expertise often matters more than equipment.

Whether you're evaluating additive manufacturing for the first time or looking to scale an existing program, this episode offers practical insights into technology selection, materials, quality systems, workforce development, and the organizational discipline required to turn additive manufacturing into measurable business value.

About the Show
The Additive Advantage Podcast explores what it really takes to turn additive manufacturing into a scalable, performance-driven business capability. Hosted by Dani Mason and Shon Anderson, the show features real conversations with leaders accountable for outcomes — not hype.

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About the Hosts
Hosted by Dani Mason and Shon Anderson, industry leaders with deep experience in technology and additive manufacturing.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I I think uh to to the one point I made is uh at least with yourself when you're looking at what your goals are, like why? Like why why do you think you need to think about an alternative manufacturing technology? Is it is it a time to market? Is it uh flexibility? Is it uh even is it I can't make the part another way? Instead of just like, hey, we should look into this. Like there should be a real driver behind that. And then once you understand why, then you can start to z, you know, zero in on um, you know, what are what are potentially some of the choices that are out there?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome to the Additive Advantage Podcast, the show for leaders responsible for making innovation deliver. I'm Danny Mason, joined by my co-host Sean Anderson. Together, we explore how organizations build additive manufacturing as a strategic, scalable capability with measurable business impact. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

For today's show, we're joined by one of the most experienced voices in additive, John Koala, CEO of Boston Microfabrication. John has spent about three decades in this industry from his early days at Z Corp to leadership roles with Ultimaker, now obviously BMF. And in this conversation, we explore how the landscape has changed from a pure prototyping focus to more of a production focus, what industry consolidation means both for customers and the other players and vendors in the industry, and why application engineering remains one of the biggest challenges in scaling additive. We also take a look at what separates successful production deployments from expensive experiments. Whether you're evaluating additive for the first time or trying to scale an existing program, John's Perspective offers practical lessons on technology adoption, business model, materials, talent, and where the industry is going next and why that's good for you as a customer. Welcome to another episode of the Additive Advantage podcast. Sean Anderson here, and a treat today. We've got John Koala with us. Most people probably know him today as CEO of BMF, but a long history in our industry and a lot of exciting things outside our industry. John, what would you want our listeners to know about you before we dive in?

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Thanks, Sean. It's it's fun to be here. So yeah, I've been in 3D printing and additive manufacturing since 1997, so almost almost 30 years. And uh had the pleasure of being involved with a company called Z Corp, which is one of the early, early 3D printing companies way back when, and have seen the the industry evolve over the years, have been involved in some some other companies since, either as an operator or uh investor or a or a board member. Um and uh for the last six and a half years, I've been involved with a company called BMF, which is also Boston Microfabrication, which is a 3D printing additive technology company, hardware and software typically focus on very high precision. And when we mean high precision, we generally mean sort of customers who care about sort of tens of microns. And those parts tend to also be small. So a lot of our businesses in medical device, electronics, photonics, and uh seeing lots of things. I it's it's been a it's been a great ride seeing uh the industry evolve from 25 years ago where the killer app was prototyping and often concept modeling, which which I point out is still the killer app in a in a lot of ways. And it's still it maybe it's taken for granted, but the fact that you can have a machine in your office or your lab and have a part in a couple hours for five bucks is incredibly valuable because before that people would carve things out of wood or they'd send it to the CNC shop down the street and it would take two weeks and then it would come back and then it'll be wrong. And so I think 3D printing already had that first wave of really being disruptive and helping engineers design things. And now it's it, and that's so that's still the case. That's still sort of the base of where this all is. But then I think with improvements in machines and materials and software and everything else, it's it's sort of creeping, creeping into manufacturing. Uh, and there's been some real big wins, and then there's some some, you know, places where it's still short. But I think uh, you know, that here in 2026, I think this industry, from a customer point of view, I mean the technology's never been better. The choices, choices that people can can utilize uh for for their companies uh are much wider than they ever were. And so uh and I think it's an exciting time.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Agreed. A little bit, a little bit out of left field, but I'm curious since it's fresh, your thoughts on the Stratasys acquisition of Mark Ford from yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Yeah. So I think one of the challenges, I think the good thing, the good thing that's happened over the last 10 or 15 years is that the the range of technologies and the power of all these technologies has has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And the dollars being spent by customers, whether they're buying machines or software materials or parts, is has not gone down. That continues to go up. And now this industry, lots of different industry reports, but people say it's $20 billion or some number like that. And years ago it was a billion, right? So is it 20, 20? It's probably 20 times bigger than it was 15 years ago. So that's all a positive. I think one of the challenges, and you often get this with technology disruption, is there's a whole bunch of technologies that came into the market, um, new companies that came into the market starting about like 2013, 2013. There was a whole bunch of new companies. Mark Forge was one of them, desktop metal, form labs, carbon.

SPEAKER_03 5:27

We were in that bucket.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Yeah, uh, B9. Uh BMF started a few years after that, but there was there was a whole wave of that. And uh so the positive of that is it's new technology. It's it's pushing the envelope, it's making things better, it's it's making things faster and it's making parts more functional. Like that's that's the big positive. I think the the uh the the downside potentially, well, it it's being realized now is the market got pretty crowded if you're a vendor. Again, for you, if you're a customer, it's fine. As long as you could sort through all the choices out there, it's wonderful, right? But if you were a vendor providing services or technology, it got pretty crowded. And uh and when it gets crowded, it puts price pressure and uh and then there was uh you know a wave of investment capital, which, you know, is not a bad thing, but uh, you know, they expect returns. And so the industry from a technology vendor point of view is going through a little bit of a reckoning now where uh, you know, companies are struggling to make money, they are uh struggling to grow, you know, beyond that that that initial burst that they have. And it's all settling out now. And so unfortunately, there'll be some custom companies that go away. And uh, and if you are a company like Stratasys or some one of the larger ones, it's an opportunity. I mean, you could pick up, pick up the good things that are out there and then try to integrate them and hopefully continue those to advance those technologies forward. But it's a it's a bit of a bumpy road right now for technology vendors because that sort of shakeout is happening.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

That's I think a a well-rounded perspective. I'm curious about, you know, you've been in businesses that were heavily distribution driven, thinking back to you know, Ultimaker as an example, et cetera. And then you've been in and run companies that are much more direct to customer B2B focused. Give me your thoughts on based on where the industry is today and what customers need today. What, if you could start from scratch, and which is a little unfair when you ask a CEO of a company that question, but if you could start from scratch when you think about business models, go-to-market models, et cetera, what what suits the context?

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah, the um so if you if you're if you boil it down a little bit to the choice between like selling direct versus selling through distribution, there's a number of factors there, and I've been through this a couple of times. There's actually, this again dates me how old I am, but this there was a there was a Harvard business uh case study 20 something years ago when we were at Z Corp and we we were trying to decide between do we sell direct or do we sell through distribution? And at the time, our product was about $50 or $60,000. And we were not a big company, we didn't have a lot of capital. And uh, we had to make a choice. Are we gonna sell direct or are we gonna sell through distribution? And there's pros and cons with each. When you're selling direct, you the the pro is you're probably much more engaged with the customer. You can, you know, probably have more control over what's going on, but it's expensive. You know, you gotta pay your sales team and to be able to reach around the world quickly, it's hard to do, right? Um, so essentially we, Z Corp, we actually moved it to a distribution model. And so we moved to selling because because what we found is we were selling direct in the US. We had a couple of guys, you know, driving around and we and then we, it wasn't strategic. It was just we didn't have the money. We hired resellers in Europe and Asia. And it worked really well. So this again, this goes back to 20 plus years. And so then we switched everything to distribution. And that and that worked pretty well. And it worked well because the price point was a comfort point for the the channel. The channel was historically people who also sold CAD software or printers and plotters, so they were, you know, hopefully visiting the same types of customers. That that worked really well. And uh, when you get into a much more, I'd say, advanced or technical or even expensive product where the sales process is longer and there's more hoops to jump through and more benchmarks to make or more tests to be run, I think that becomes more challenging with distribution, unless you have very specialized distributors who know how to do that. So BMF, with BMF, we sell primarily direct in the big markets like the US. Uh, we have a big organization in China, uh, in Western Europe. And we sell in resellers, we we do have some resellers, but again, this is not strategic. It's just we can't afford to have a person in Australia. So we have a reseller in Australia and we have a reseller in India. And so we have places where we can't practically sell. So we've chosen to have both of those models. And then, you know, I think the opportunity and the challenge with selling through distribution is for resellers, is hope hopefully you you have a channel out there that's well suited for what you're selling. Because in a perfect world, what you what you'd like, you'd you'd like to have resellers who are selling something that's maybe adjacent to what your product is. They're already visiting all the customers you'd like to get. They already know them all. Like that's what you want. If it's uh if that channel isn't ready-made for that, then you're then you're starting from scratch and and trying to, it's much more education. So in the early days of of additive manufacturing, and still pretty much true, a lot of the channel were the CAD, the CAD Vars, which was perfect, right? Because they had already sold them Autodesk or SOLIDWORKS or other products, and they knew that a 3D printer offering was a nice uh sort of adder to that.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yes, interesting when you think back to the, I'll call it, you know, innovation plus capital-fueled explosion that happened. You had so many companies pursuing largely the same channel and it just getting mind share. And B9, very similar to the situation you described with BMF, where the vast majority of our business is direct. Certain countries where, you know, for import export and and local support, et cetera, we have we have resellers, one or two vertical resellers in the US. But, you know, I think it was to your point about his hard time to be a vendor when, you know, so many new products being introduced and hard for the OEMs to get mind share in the channel. Now that that is shaking out and the field is narrowing a bit, what do you, if you look into your crystal ball? Because everybody knows everybody expects CEOs to have a crystal ball right in your pocket, what do you think the the additive channel world looks like over the next five years as you see the consolidation or in some cases just elimination of some of the players in the market?

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Yeah, I mean, it's I I I mentioned before that the the technology landscape got crowded, but then it also became crowded for the channel. So it so one of the reasons we chose to go direct, primary reason we chose to direct go direct in in the United States, for example, is you know, our product is sort of starts at $150,000. It's a technical sale, it takes a long time. We're gonna end up doing a lot of the the sales work ourselves with our engineers. But that was one reason that we didn't go through channel. The other reason is the channel was crowded, right? Because they sold a whole bunch of different products. And to your point, uh Sean, about you know, a shelf space. So I think that the challenge, you know, I've never been a reseller, but you know, I can sympathize with some of their challenges. Their challenges are products become commodity or a little bit more commodity. They're facing competition, not just from other brands, but from the reseller across town who's selling the same thing they're selling, right? So that's um, you know, that's that's a challenge. Um, I think margins have been compressed for a bunch of bunch of resellers. And so I think the the the best of the resellers in any industry, I think, uh, are the ones who have have adapted over time. And and to believe that you can sell the same thing for 20 years is is probably not right. That you have to hopefully try to have their own crystal ball to try to bet on, okay, we think this is an emerging technology. Hopefully we can sell that. We're not gonna sell that anymore. So I think the most successful resellers are the ones who's who've you know ridden the waves that they could wait ride, but know that there's that's not gonna go forever and they have to jump on something else. Interestingly, though, I you know, I I used to think when there was only a a handful of 3D printer resellers, uh 3D 3D printing vendors, so this goes back 20 years. I used to think, and maybe it was bravado on my point, my part, that the OEMs had all the power. And uh because it's I still believe that was true. So because there was only a few of us. We all had exclusive contracts and we could we could add resellers or fire resellers. I actually think that's flipped now, where I think a lot of the resellers have much more of the power because there's so many choices and they can pick and choose and they can start to push back on exclusivity, you know. Um, and uh so I think that dynamic changed over the last five, six, seven years, where I think if you have a a strong distribution company, you have more choices now and you have more leverage potentially over, you know, the products that you sell.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yeah, it's interesting how that changes over time. One of the other dynamics that I see happening that I I've been dying to get your input on is, you know, in the heyday of all the spacks and all the money flowing, these companies were doing a whole lot of what I would call application engineering for free. And there was support flowing to the channel to make that happen. And now you've seen that significantly dry up. So is that who should step in and fill that role? I mean, you have OEMs, the largest of which aren't profitable today and have had to cut significantly to try and get to profitability or cash neutrality. You've got in what I see is this network of channel partners who, you know, promotions aren't what they used to be, discounts aren't what they used to be. You know, where where does that application engineering help come from in the world we live in today to help customers succeed with this technology?

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Yeah, it's a it's a great question because regardless of of your gross margin as a as a vendor, um, you might have a very good gross margin. But if your cost of sale is so high because you got to do benchmark, benchmark, benchmark, you know, test, test, test. I think each each each OEM has to make their own judgment about, you know, should we charge the customer for this? Should we chop sort of NRE in terms of uh development funds? Or we or do we do it ourselves? Right. And I think that's a I don't I don't know if there's one right answer there. I think each each OEM has to, it's it's it's a judgment call. And you're making the judgment call like this is going to be worth it, because we're hopefully not just gonna get that first, you know, first sale, but it's a continued sale or it opens up a market. You know, well, I haven't I've seen that the the OEMs generally are best suited versus the channel, in my opinion, of doing the applications engineering if it if it's associated with materials or um, you know, hitting specific uh tolerances. This is the sort of the world that I live in at BMF. Like people come to that, come to us because they really care about the tolerance. And so, and then often we have to prove that yes, we can do that, but also the materials are good enough. And yes, this will work from their application. We we generally don't go down the path, though, of doing, I'll call it functional testing or environmental testing. Because I think, yeah, we'll do basic things. Um, you know, when we have biocompatible materials, then we we we test all those. But at the end of the day, the the customer themselves have their own need in terms of how strong the part needs to be or you know, what temperature it needs to operate in, that we don't have a lot of visibility to. So all we can do is uh they can tell us what they're gonna do, and we can make the best part we can make for them and then put it putting putting it on them to do the testing. And that we found that generally works. It also, you know, sorts out who's serious and who's not serious and are they willing to invest in in trying to get this to work. What has helped us as a company, and it's probably true for you as well, Sean, our technology is used a lot in in engineering and development, yeah, primarily. And then some things are crossing over into production applications. And in almost every single uh case where it's crossed over into production applications, the customer at least had one machine. So they were, they were buying it, they bought it, they started using it, they started testing it, they started understanding what it could do and not do. And uh and it they were able to do that because while we're expensive, we're not a million dollars. You know, we're uh $150,000. And so if we were a million dollars, they wouldn't do that. I don't, I don't think, in my opinion. And so that's what that's I think what has made it hard for some of the the companies that entered the market that were production only, because for anybody to commit that amount of capital, they needed to feel like it was really gonna work. And that's that's a long road. So our experience has been the the success stories in production are people who brought a machine in, bought it, tested it, tested it, tried to get it into production. And worst case, it doesn't work for production, but they use it for prototyping and they're happy.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, it meant the business case they originally invested in around.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Yep. Right. Yep. And so I think that's that's part of the challenge. But when you get into the the actual application where people need a certain temperature or a certain humidity or a certain dielectric constant, or you know, what whatever all these things need to be, we've we tend to try to push that off to the customer. Because if they're serious about it, then they'll do the testing. And and it's at the end of the day, it's gonna be their testing that matters. Even if we did all the testing, they would probably do it, do it again, right? Because they're not gonna trust, they're they're not gonna be able to use our data to validate their process. They're gonna have to do it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Yeah, especially when you think about a production application where they're placing the bet that, hey, this product, if we get a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, whatever the number is in the field, right, it's gonna perform the way a traditionally manufactured part would have performed. And that's that's a big bet to make based on a, you know, a data sheet that any OEM sends out with a with a set of materials because to your point, and I think this is what what I see customers underestimate oftentimes. And since we're both mechanical engineers, I'm gonna pick on them a little bit. But, you know, you'll be talking to a customer and they'll say, Well, we make this out of Delrin today. You know, that's what we're looking at. It's Delrin. What do you have this like Delrin? Well, which property? Delrin has, you know, I we could talk about 50 different attributes, right? And oftentimes that material got chosen by an engineer just because he was he or she was familiar with it, or they designed a similar product and they use it in that, you know, product. And so, hey, I think it'll work here, not because it had a shore hardness of X or a heat deflection temperature of Y. And so you're you're dealing it with you know, this design context that sometimes even your customer doesn't really know. And I think that decision to say, Mr. Customer, if you think it's worth, you know, going down this path, here's the investment you need to make, and letting them carry that water, I think there's a lot of wisdom that others could learn from there.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Yeah. And then all the materials have, you know, six, eight, ten different mechanical properties, you know. And uh, we've found that usually for the application, they only really care about one or two things because depending on what it's going to be used for. So, so that's usually what we try to ask. Like, what are you gonna what do you care about? Do you care about you know bending strength? Do you care about comp, you know, what do you hardness? What like what's the most important thing here? And it helps them, I think, also think about being open to the materials that are not Delrin. So because especially when we're, I mean, we both operate in a in a in a business where the materials that we offer are are photopolymers or thermosets. And most people are using in in historically in engineering are using thermoplastics. And so we try to be upfront to say, well, we we have some materials that approximate, we believe, you know, what you want to achieve. But at the end of the day, you're gonna have to test it to see if it works.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah. Well, let's get into the conversation a little bit around, you know, applications. I'm interested. You mentioned obviously people tend to start with, hey, how do we use this in prototyping, engineering, maybe doing some short run stuff. But you're seeing some customers now bridge that over into production applications. What is it that you see in common about the customers that do that or maybe the applications that succeed in making the leap to production uh in a general sense? And then I do want to get into that more specifically around the world BMF plays in of this, you know, tens of microns space. But I'm interested, you know, what you see in a general sense first.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Yeah. So I think uh in a general sense, and this applies, I think, across the industry, is that the the driver, there's got to be some driver that's pushing the the company to think about an alternative manufacturing process. Like there's something. I mean, when we think about, you know, some of the things happening in the in the sort of defense industry or the you know repair process. Part industry, you know, for uh metal parts for defense or repair uh repair, what's the driver there? I think the driver there is speed. Like how fast can they get this big metal part that is normally cast and normally takes, you know, 18 weeks. I think the big driver there is is is speed. In in our world, the world that we live in, a lot of the driver is around things getting smaller. And so our our our company really exists because there's a lot in a lot of different industries, there's a there's a driver for things to get smaller. So in medical device, there's just an overall trend to make the uh the procedure less invasive or to make the implant smaller so it has you know less of a chance for for infection. So there's always this can we make it smaller? And uh in electronics is just physics. When when things go from 5G to 6G to 7G to 8G, the antenna actually just has to get smaller. Like that's just a fact. And so what that driver then forces the engineers to think about, oh, okay, well, if the in if the antenna has to get smaller, the packaging has to get smaller, oh, how do we make it? And so th those are the outside drivers that are are that that we see that are forcing people to at least consider it for production. And then they have to go back and check to check all the boxes. Is the materials good enough? Can we get repeatable parts? Does do the economics make sense? But if you don't have that that initial outside driver, then it it doesn't happen and it doesn't make sense to happen, to be, to be honest. You know, they should use conventional manufacturing methods that are proven and much, you know, could be considered over risk.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah. It's interesting how, and I'm guessing you guys have maybe had a similar conversation with different customers, but sometimes the right answer is get a better or closer vendor for your traditional manufacturing process instead of using additive. And I think, again, back in the lots of capital, lots of innovation, there were companies that are like, wow, we need to figure out how to use this additive manufacturing thing. And so we're the there were some, you know, message in a bottle type projects. It's like we're gonna throw a an engineering wish in this bottle and throw it into the ocean of additive and see if it floats to somebody that can help us. You know, that I don't see that happening these days nearly as much.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Um not as much. Now, I mean, I think I think the undercurrent still, though, is it as I said when we opened up this conversation, like for for any engineering or product organization making it something, making a product, it absolutely makes sense to have 3D printer. You know, for prototyping development, short run testing. We do, you know, we do a lot of we have we have more cases of people needing uh and these aren't I I'm not gonna say they're production parts because they're not production parts, but they're sort of bridge parts where they need 5,000. And we're like, five, what do you need 5,000 for? Because they're gonna do testing. And I was like, well, but these aren't production parts. So yeah, but it it we're able to test what we want to test. Yep. And we're not gonna, and we might change our mind on the on the based on the testing, and therefore we we don't want to go to tooling. And so that it's like those things are home runs. Like people are like, yeah, you know, we're we're gonna do those things. It's when they get to that final step where they say, okay, now we're we need to make, you know, we want to make sure this is exactly the material we want, and we're and the volumes are at a at a level that justify tooling. But, you know, I think there's still, you know, we see a lot of business for us, and I assume a lot of other uh people who are in this space are doing, again, I'm not gonna call it production, but it's sort of in between where it's beyond prototyping, but they they want thousands.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yeah. Yeah. And that's to your point from early in the conversation, the technology's good enough today, and most of it fast enough today that, you know, it used to be if you needed more than 10, maybe we should call somebody. You know, today, if you needed a thousand, that's not not a big hurdle. Right. I'm curious to go back to something you mentioned a little while ago as we think about these applications that can make the leap into more of a production mindset. And you mentioned, you know, BMF, of course, you guys play in the world where tolerance is vital. If the tolerance doesn't matter, probably those folks aren't on the phone with one of your sales guys, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

So, and obviously production repeatability is huge when you when you're talking about making a part that you're actually going to send to your, you know, the customer's customer. What does that look like for you guys when you, you know, a lot of your machines operate in a world where the old engineering thing of, you know, plus or minus five thousand. I mean, BMFs, I don't even know if I don't do you guys even make a product that's that loose? I don't think you do. What does production repeatability look like? And how do you cross those hurdles when you're living in this kind of like plus or minus 10 microns, not plus or minus 10 thou world?

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Well, I mean, our machines are designed for that, right? So our printers are designed to be able to make parts in that sort of pocket of plus or minus 10 microns or plus or minus 20 microns. And then you need the inspection equipment that is not calipers. Calipers won't work. So, you know, you need a a you know, a Keon scanner or or something like that. And um, but you know, fortunately our our our product is our our platform is is sort of robust enough and repeatable enough that you know we can dial in certain tolerances and then when we make you know a hundred parts at a time at a certain build, then we don't have to inspect them all, right? You know, we inspect you know the middle and the outsides, and then we if if there's a there's a confidence level that and that gets built. But that that's true for any manufacturing process. You d you dial whether it's molding or machining or stamping or you you dial it in, you uh probably in the beginning you inspect everyone to make sure, and then you you gain a confidence like, well, I don't have to inspect everyone. I have to do every day or every batch or every build or something like that. And so yeah, we just do it at a at a sort of tight level of tolerance. And uh and we recognize every day that's why we're in business. Like, because if we didn't do that, we wouldn't be competitive. We wouldn't have a portion of the market that we can try to play in and and have some advantage because there's lots of great solutions out there uh that are less expensive than ours and and they that work work perfectly fine and can hold the plus or minus five foul. And that and for lots of applications, that's fine. And so we we sort of embrace when people give us those tolerances because that's why we exist. And if they weren't giving us that, they wouldn't be calling us to your point.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah. Similarly, at you know, at B9, we've had to just condition our, you know, from the sales team, the solutions engineers, and our our product engineering team, like other than our jewelry business, which is you know a piece of the company that it's where we got started and continues on. But a lot of the other things we do around aerospace, med device, et cetera, like the reason they're calling us is probably because the other guys couldn't hit the mark. And so, you know, we ha we have to pick up the phone, you know, metaphorically, knowing we're talking to an engineer that, you know, is on strike two, uh, and maybe vendor two or three. And, you know, we we joke that, you know, we aspire to have a marketing budget someday that would get people to call us first, but we're, you know, typically after the other guys strike out a couple of times, we get that call. I'm guessing some of your sales team experiences similar things.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we they call us and then they go away and they come back a year later.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

But uh, expensive we'll get it done with somebody else and then they figure out.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

I think it's something that that B9 does well, that that almost all the other OEMs, including BMF, to be honest, is you guys are are flexible enough to to do custom implementations, I'll call it. You know, uh customize the software or or work with a we're work with a uh a client around a certain installation that meets certain requirements that are not standard. And I think that's been an advantage for you guys because most of the OEMs don't do that, including we don't do it very well. So, because it requires uh, you know, uh an organization that that uh is set up that way. So I think that's that's an advantage that you guys have.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Well, similar to you guys' commitment around accuracy and tight tolerances, I mean, we're we're not as far on that end as you guys are, but we have viewed this, you know, not only willingness to adapt the technology to the application, but you know, frankly, ability to do that well as kind of what how we keep, you know, our niche carved out. And it's been a good, I think, value add for us and for our customers. I'm curious, you know, you've mentioned a few times, John, obviously you, you know, like BMF, your printers are designed when somebody brings up this plus or minus 20 micron, whatever, you guys don't blink because your stuff's designed to play there from a hardware standpoint. Talk to me a little bit about from a when you get beyond the hardware and in the materials and software side of the equation, what what it takes to really make that entire workflow perform. Again, thinking about somebody who wanted to move toward production.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah, because they are all tied to it's not just the as you know, it's not just the hardware. I mean, we need we need to have the hardware be solid and that the machine tolerances themselves are plus or minus one micron. So it's it's sort of very tight, I'll call it, from a hardware point of view. But um, we're also do dealing with, you know, photopolymers that uh you're you're imaging with light and there's heat and they shrink. And it's so you got all those things happening at the same time. We also stitch. So to be able to uh, you know, if you have a part that's bigger than our than our zone, you have to be able to put it together. And so, yeah, all those things are are pretty critical to get to the the end part that you want. When you when you get to a more of a production environment, it's just uh making sure that's uh just dialed in, right? That that the machine is dialed in, that the software settings have been validated and are are being used over and over again, that you're paying attention to the materials, that uh, you know, making sure you have you know good, fresh materials and they uh they don't age over time. So there's a bunch of factors there when you're trying to get to repeatability. And uh, you know, whether it's a project that we've done or some of our customers have done, it just requires a little bit of a thoughtful quality control program, which is again, maybe not inspecting every part, but just knowing what you need to check, you know, knowing, you know, what sampling are you inspecting, what uh how often should you change the materials. When you get into somewhat regulated environments like uh like medical device, you you absolutely have to write all that stuff down because it's being required as part of the the product. And so and it's being required because it if the the whole thing is if something goes wrong, they're gonna come back and they're gonna ask you for it. And so you need to do it, but doing it also helps you make a better product. So it's not just make work because the regulations say you have to do these things. I think our experience is in in a in a lot of cases, some of these regulations and and and quality control programs are having the QMS in place makes your ability to helps you make the product or the the program successful.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

I'm curious, you know, touching on that QMS and kind of after the print, those after-the-print steps. And clearly you guys are keyed into, you know, you have to be able to come up with a a QAQC approach that doesn't require 100% inspection, or usually the financials won't survive, you know, ongoing 100% inspection, unless the part is really, really expensive to make. We've seen, and you joked about the calipers, although we've seen that so many times. Like somebody wants a, you know, a tolerance on the part way less than the tolerance on their craftsman dial calipers or their Harbor Freight digital calipers. And I think up until the last, I'm gonna say last two or three years, I saw a lot of reluctance from customers to invest in that if it, you know, keynts, Midatoyo, whatever kind of you know, optical inspection equipment that you mentioned earlier, because I think they were so used to being sold that 3D printing was a genie. I just rubbed the printer, the parts fall out, they're perfect. Well, that's what the sales guy told me. I I'm seeing that change. Tell me what you're seeing. And again, I'm interested because you guys live in this hyper tight tolerance end of the of the world. What are you seeing about customer attitudes to post-printing inspection and having to invest? You know, it's not just I got to buy this $150,000 machine. I'm gonna need the right equipment on the back end. What is that changing? What do you see?

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Yeah, I think it's I think it's changing with more education and the people who have been around additive for if if they've been exposed to it in any way over the last five or 10 years, they understand that you've got to take it out of the printer. They understand that you have to rinse it off. They understand you might have a post-cure. Um, they understand uh, you know, there may be support structures that need to be removed too. And so I think as as as the the greater community of people working in this space have been exposed to all these things over the years, there's more education. But you're right. I mean, there's people who have not done this before and they walk in and they go, and and you show them, well, here's we're gonna print them, and then we're gonna show you all the other steps, and they're like, oh, okay, you know, all this, this kind of stuff in terms of post-processing and inspection and curing. Uh, this is true for whether you're doing photopolymers or whether you're doing thermoplastics or whether you're doing metal, or there's always there's always a level of post-processing or post-curing or centering or something that has to happen. Interestingly, though, I think that's in the in the media, in the short to medium term, I think those are the areas that can be automated the easiest versus the printer itself. You know, we have a a couple programs where, and again, a lot of this is not when I when I say automation, I don't mean sophisticated robotics. I I tend to to mean, you know, you you start you you you do a a project and then over the course of a few weeks, you realize you you figured out just significantly better ways to inspect or to post cure or to uh yes, printing it this way is faster, but if you print it this way, there's no supports. And so therefore the net benefit is we're gonna print it this way. So a lot of it's that's learning. I mean, we we've also found the use of fixturing for quality control. So like go go no go type fixturing is really valuable, but you're not gonna figure that out until you start making the part.

SPEAKER_03 35:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Usually. You know, you you're inspecting it, inspecting it, and then you really realize like, well, why don't we just why don't we just make some gauges here and then it'll be way faster. And so uh those are I think those are areas that uh are more ripe for automation. And uh and there will need to be that to because otherwise the the the uh the cost and the labor, the labor cost primarily of doing a lot of that post-processing, depending on where you are in the world, uh, could be prohibitive.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Well, and I know so it's interesting to me if in my mind, if the glue that holds all this together is this expertise around all these topics from the application engineering on the front end to QAQC processes on the back end, it's got to come from somewhere. Now, the you know, you see the big companies and a lot of them have been automotive in aerospace, but whether you're Ford, BMW, whoever, that yes, they put a team of 10 engineers on figuring out this additive thing 20 years ago, and they are, you know, on the cutting edge of what they can do. They've got 3D printed parts on cars, et cetera. But when you think about the distribution of manufacturing companies, it really is this bell curve where of the very large ones who can afford that kind of investment, there aren't very many globally. The majority of companies are this big hump under the middle of that curve who don't, you know, can't afford to put 10 engineers on this for 10 years before they get, you know, real production applications. And as in my mind, you know, everybody's like, well, you know, I want to see these printers get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Like, what if I could get a printer for a thousand dollars that would do all this stuff? Well, that would be cool. Where would the application engineering and implementation support come from? Because there's not a high enough percentage of a thousand dollars. You know, if if the thing fell out of the sky and mythically landed in a box, a thousand dollars won't cover that. So you talk about, come all the way back to this full circle business model thought process around, well, even if your gross margins were 100%, if if the customer wants to buy a thousand dollar piece of equipment, there's not enough money in there to cover helping them figure it out. So you have to, you know, I think when you look at what's going on in the market, you know, obviously Chinese companies have done really, really well. You talk about that 150k price point, but you guys came out with a new product earlier this year that was, I'll just call it more accessible from a financial standpoint, certainly not trying to produce a thousand dollar printer, but but make lowering that barrier to entry. What do you think customers should expect? I mean, at what point do the industry and the customers kind of have to say, you know, here's what we can both live with that's a win-win, where we can afford to give you the support and expertise you need, but you have some choice and you don't feel like you're being held hostage and being charged, you know, whatever two OEMs agreed to charge you. What how do we come to a happy resolution of that?

SPEAKER_02 38:41

It's a hard one because, right? I mean, we're all as as vendors, we're trying to be competitive, we're trying to get the business, we're trying to, and so so what does that mean? We're, you know, maybe we're we're lowering price, maybe we're giving away too much stuff, and uh, because we're all trying to survive to a certain certain extent. And uh, and if we were all, if we all got together in a room and said we're not gonna do that anymore and we're gonna raise pricing, I think that's sort of illegal. So you can't do that. So uh so it a lot of it's just sort of the market. In some ways, you know, I think this expertise gap has been the big opportunity for service bureaus. That's why service bureaus thrive or or can thrive, depending on the technology they choose and the markets they serve, because that's all they do, right? I mean, they have that, they they've invested in the equipment, they invested in maybe multiple different types of equipment, they've invested in the post-processing, and the and the customers maybe not, the end customers maybe not, they're they're outsourcing it, right? They're outsourcing the use of that technology and they're and they have to pay a fee for that, right? So they're not gonna get it for free. They're gonna pay, pay the cost of the part. But I think that the service bureau sector has has continued to be vital through all this. I mean, there were there were there were there were lots of people over the last 20 years who said, oh, the service bureaus are gonna go away because now you know companies can have their own printer, right? And they don't have to have a big sophisticated room and they don't need to have nitrogen. And then as it then, even as the price went down even further to, you know, when I when Z Corp came out 25 years ago, we were the lowest priced thing on the market. It was like 50 or 60,000 bucks. And then there were other competitors in that price category. And then 10 years later comes the desktop wave. And so lots of people wrote off the service bureaus to say, well, you know, everybody's just gonna make these parts themselves. And it didn't, that didn't happen at all. And so I think it it just it it further entrenched the technology across prototyping all the way to up into production. And uh, you know, when you get into real sophisticated technologies, metal, and you know, these are, you know, lots of companies don't want to do that and want to outsource that and they and they pay for that. And that's and and so it it it's uh that gap right now has kept, in my view, kept service bureaus being a vital part of what's going on out there.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Agreed. And it's I mean, at the end of the day, some of that comes back to a talent decision, right? Like, can we, as a company, whether you are an OEM, whether you are a channel partner, whether you are an end customer, can we attract the kind of talent and retain the kind of talent and provide a career path and all those things for the type of talent we need to make that play work internally? Yeah. And I know we've seen in our customer base a lot of people have really underestimated that because oftentimes that talent or that, you know, man or woman who needs to come in and and run that additive piece, it's a different skill set. And we have had some customers who've really recognized that. We did a a big project for Thermo Fisher where we helped write job descriptions of the technicians they needed to hire. And, you know, they recognize, hey, this isn't this isn't exactly like the rest of our workforce. Now that doesn't mean, you know, that you need people with a third arm, but you know, there are differences there. And I and I think people sometimes underestimate the human side of it.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Yeah, it's interesting. I've seen uh a couple sort of skirmishes with about labor and uh and skill set over the years where companies would assume that they would uh bring in a printer and the engineers would just run it and you know and everything would be fine. And were a lot of these engineers fully capable of running it? Sure. Did their did they want their boss, did their boss want them goofing around with the 3D printer three hours a day? Absolutely not, right? Like so they we had this uh issue at uh when I was at Ultimaker some years ago. There's a big question about basically how many, how many dials can you turn? And so there's a there's a camp that just wants to press the green button, and there's a camp that wanted to have all the dials, right? And we had plenty of customers at this at the senior level wanted, no, I do not want all the dials because it just means my guys will be goofing around with that all day and they're not doing their job, and which is a valid point, right? And so I think it depends on the you know the the organization and what they expect their their engineers to be doing during the day. Are they designing and thinking about the next thing or are they goofing around with a 3D printer? And there's a there's a balance there. And I think the companies who do it right, you know, choose the right printers for the the people that they have, or they they uh if it requires more expertise and then they hire a technician, right? Who maybe is the is the provider for the for the office or the team. But that that can be somewhat complicated.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Yeah, we've we've seen, and you know, I got a real life example of this. I won't say their name because I don't want to embarrass them, but you know, invested in some of our technology, having a lot of success, like, okay, we're gonna take this similar to a story you shared, like, hey, let's see if we can take this into production. Hey, this is working great. You know, and we we I will say from our side, we tried to sell them some services to help that happen. They're like, no, no, no, this is working great. We got it. And then a few months later, they're like, Well, turns out it only works great when when a team of engineers is doing this. I know you guys have told us you've got these things in production where it's, you know, production technicians. Okay, we uncle, how do we do that? This, right? Because when we pull our engineers off this, you know, we lose control of the process. And it was a just a, you know, going back to things you said earlier, John, a lack of precise documentation around some of those, you know, what we would call production processes that the engineers in their mind, well, I don't need to document this. This is just how I do it. Well, if you're going to hand it over to a to a technician, you need a thoroughly documented workflow. It was more about documentation and training than it was about, you know, can a technician actually do it or not. But we see those things happen on a somewhat regular basis. One of the other things I'd I'd love to get your thoughts on is big change in the industry is we saw a ton of the big material companies come in, you know, the BASFs and all kind of anyone who's anyone, Mitsubishi Chemical, you know, a lot of others made big investments. And since then, they've all kind of pulled back. What's your take on where that leaves the industry in terms of both OEMs and customers? And because in my mind, it's kind of like you shared, you didn't use these exact words, but the hardware is already good enough. You know, I I can't think of very many things that now it might mean you need to buy a BMF, right? If you really need, if you really need that Nats eyelash tolerance, you might have to, you know, maybe you can't use a uh $4,000 printer, maybe you need the $50,000 printer, but there's hardware that can do it. The materials seem to be the gap on a number of applications. And how do we how do we get across that without investment from all these these big players?

SPEAKER_02 45:28

What's the Yeah, this I mean, this was uh I mean another thing that I mean, similar to the sort of the the venture capital wave that happened and all these new hardware companies came into the space. A lot of the big uh, you know, uh plastics companies and and chemical companies came into the space, you know, starting 10 years ago. It used to be, so you go back, you know, again, I go back to my Z Corp days 20 years ago, all the all the OEMs, Stratasys and 3D systems and others, we all had our own little material science departments. They weren't very big. And we all made our own stuff. And we all had the customers buy from us. And uh and and in the short run, that was a great business model. So uh, but I mean, if we were honest with ourselves, you know, at Z Corp, we had a few you know, we had some people and Stratasys had some people and and 3D systems and some other companies all had people. But these were not the the the best, arguably the best talent out there in in plastics engineering, you know. And the reason was is because we all had closed systems. And so when those guys called up to want to participate, we told them to go away. And so, you know, they all showed up, okay. Can we do a joint? No, no, so yeah. And so in the short run, that served us pretty well. What I had what happened, which was I think again, I think a positive, is these these as as systems became more open, open source or open materials or whatever you call it, that opened opened the door for the big companies to come in and invest. And now that these are you know multi-billion dollar chemical companies who supply plastic pellets by the train load to you know all the industries we know of. And a bunch of them jumped in and said, okay, we'll have a 3D printing business. Um, and I think they did that for two reasons. One is I think some of their customers asked them to do that. Like, hey, we're, you know, they think about their big OEM customers said, well, maybe we'll be 3D printing someday and we would offer you to be one, they asked them for that. And two, it was a hedge against, well, maybe, maybe it's true everything will be 3D printed in the world and we're gonna miss it if we're not in it. And so a bunch of them got in. And I think I think that was it was positive for for a number of years because I think it it definitely pushed the envelope in terms of uh the quality of the materials. Um if you had asked me uh six or seven years ago, could you do functional photopolymer? I mean, you you live in that world, I live in that world, functional photo, I would have said SLA. No, no, I don't think so. Um but the all that that collective group of companies all push that that envelope, and now you have flame-retardant materials and tough materials and you know, biocompatible, you have all this range of materials. I think the challenge, what what happened in the last two or three years is all these big companies realized, at least in the short run, it's not a billion-dollar business for them. You know, it it might be a hundred million dollar business for them, which in uh in the world we play in, we'd be like, well, that would be great. But if you're DuPont, like, yeah, they're not doing that. So I think that's what's happened in terms of as it's scaling back. And unfortunately, you know, it's I have to admit, it has probably slowed the the collective advancement of materials development. And it it may fall back on the equipment OEMs to really push that envelope. Now I think Stratasys is maybe trying to take advantage, you know, Stratasys has invested in and uh brought on uh some of these uh groups, you know, BASF and uh a couple others. And and so I think they're gonna try to use that and leverage that and push that. But I think, you know, I I had hoped, and maybe you had hoped, that uh the the photopolymer world would continue to expand and therefore would help our business push along. And I think that's that has cooled off a bit.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Yeah, agreed. Well, this has been a it's been a fantastic conversation. I've got one last question that I want to hit you with. And it's it's in some ways maybe a little bit of a gotcha, but it's really about how do we help our listeners, you know, where the rubber meets the road. And that question is if you were a manufacturing leader, John, and you just listened to this podcast and you just absorb this perspective and some of the some of the best practices, and you said, okay, I get it now. And you're tasked to go implement additive in a production context, what would be your first move based on some of the insights that you think came out of our conversation?

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Yeah, I I think uh to to the one point I made is uh at least with yourself, when you're looking at what your goals are, like why? Like why, why do you think you need to think about an alternative manufacturing technology? Is it is it time to market? Is it uh flexibility? Is it uh even is it I can't make the part another way? Instead of just like, hey, we should look into this. Like there should be a real driver behind that. And then once you understand why, then you can start to you know zero in on um, you know, what are what are potentially some of the choices that are out there and you know, talk to the the the eager salespeople that are out there and uh get samples and uh try to become as educated as possible. One of the one of the challenges in I think in in manufacturing discrete products, as good as some of the support groups are and and amug and all these other things, generally companies don't talk to each other because they're not supposed to. They can't, well, you know, which is a valid reason. So it means uh there's lots of companies who are doing probably amazing things with additive in production that people don't know about. And that's just that's just life. But if you're thinking about incorporating these technologies, clearly understanding why and then understanding, trying to understand can can this can can additive make a difference? And if the answer is no, the answer's no, right? But I think there are lots of cases where it can, where whether it's geometry or whether it's time or whether it's flexibility, then uh there's some amazing technologies out there, whether it's plastic or metal, that can do these things now that they couldn't do five years ago.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

Outstanding. Thank you for that. John, this has been a it's been a great time. Always appreciate your perspective as we've gotten to know each other over the last few years and you know, your ability to translate lessons learned from, you know, what'd you say, almost 30 years in this space to the reality of what people are working with today. We'll look forward to hearing from you again and catching up with you in the future. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. You bet.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

It was a great conversation. It's always wonderful to talk to someone that has seen this evolution and not just over the past couple years. And one thing that really struck me is how much you talked about you need a driver for additive manufacturing. I thought that was a unique perspective, and I'd love to get your take on it and share maybe how that differs from some of the other conversations we've had.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

Well, you can look at this through a lot of lenses. And I think John's point was you need a why if you're a company and you're going to undertake, you know, exploring additive or using additive. And it's got to be more specific than, hey, this technology seems pretty good. We should find a way to use this, right? If you don't have a clear mission in mind, it's difficult to measure success. And I think his point when you look at the true cost, not just the hardware, software, and materials piece, but you know, the entire production workflow, the human resources associated, et cetera, if you're not measuring that against the size of the pain that drove you to go down that road, it's difficult to know if you were successful or not. Seems a little bit obvious, but I will tell you that is a that has been a recurring theme of all the the guests that we've interviewed when you look at, you know, what does it take to do the entire production workflow from the human resources, if there's production equipment, inspection equipment, all of these things. And I'd like to assure you in the audience, this is not Danny and me stuffing the ballot box, encouraging people to talk about this. I think it what you're hearing is from folks who've helped companies have to wrestle their way through this to success. Here are things people forget to think about. So don't be one of those people and take those costs into account. You know, never forget that it isn't just a can we do this with additive, it's should we do this with additive. You know, John, there were comments multiple times about you might just need a better vendor. It's your traditional manufacturing method, right? Additive is not the answer to every pain point, but remembering what that driver is and then sizing and judging your investment against that original, you know, pain or opportunity is so key.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

Mm-hmm. I I want to double-click on that because a lot of companies are trying to figure out where do I invest in AM? How do I do it successfully? And he brought up the point that the machine is not only not the whole part, it's maybe not even the most important part. And to your point, it's not that these themes are novel, but we aren't bringing them up. Customers are bringing them up, which tells me that they're pretty critical for making good investments. Can you unpack that a little bit in terms of what people should be thinking about when deciding where and how to invest in additive?

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Well, I think it comes back to, you know, again, I'll I'll go all the way back to the driver, right? What problem are we trying to solve? And then what would success look like? If you can define those two things, then it gets relatively easy to say what are our technology choices, you know, who are our potential vendors or partners that we might leverage to do this. And then, you know, again, when you look at, and Danny, you know, because we've had customers who've needed help with this, not just who's gonna print the parts. And is it, you know, John and I talked a little bit about you've got customers that might succeed when their engineers are running the process, but when it comes time to hand it off to the folks on the factory floor, results are much less successful. And really thinking through what are we gonna have to do to have the right training, the right documentation, all of the things it takes to make this succeed in a factory environment, if you're wanting to go to production, rather than just, hey, let's throw that new engineering hire. He came out fresh out of college, right? He probably knows how to run a 3D printer. Let's throw him at this or her at this and see what happens. Having a solid investment thesis for the whole production workflow is vital. Or, and I I really think, you know, when I I've because I've heard this from, you know, CEOs like John, I've heard this from some of the high-level folks, you know, all the way back to your conversation with Paul Chabala. I think this is just Sean's distillation here. When we look at how these conversations get off track, where you have an executive who says, Hey, we need to look for opportunities to leverage additive or we need to shorten up our supply chain, we need to get out of this, you know, tons of inventory, high MOQ, lots of cash tied up. Inevitably, a technical professional gets involved. That person then proceeds to start slicing and dicing and figuring out how to solve the problem. At the end of the day, when the I'll call it true up happens of, well, what did we invest in total and what results did we get? I think that the loss of shared vision for how big is this problem we're trying to solve, and how much are we willing to expend in terms of, you know, capital, talent, et cetera, organizational capacity to solve it. I think when the handoff happens on the front end, between that handoff happening and the true-up on the back end, the driver gets lost and the why gets lost. And that's why when the true-up happens, oftentimes folks are are not pleased with how that turns out. I'm just gonna, I I can't do anything but say it out loud. It's so important that you're working with a partner that understands what the whole production workflow takes. And, you know, John did a great job of bringing up the importance of the application engineering. Yes. And we, you know, we had some interesting conversation about where's that expertise gonna come from? You know, sourcing a piece of equipment, no different than traditional manufacturing. If you have an engineer, you're gonna stand up a new line, milling, molding, whatever it might be. You get your engineers to spec out some equipment, talk to some vendors, you know, maybe bring back a couple of options. But who are the people that are gonna have to own that and operate that equipment and bring that to life later? And where are they in the conversation, especially when you're talking about a relatively new thing like additive? I just think there's so many lessons to be learned there. And again, the fact that it comes up over and over and over tells you this is a it's a watch out.

SPEAKER_01 57:20

Absolutely. What a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 57:23

A big thank you to John Koala for joining us on the Additive Advantage podcast and sharing those insights from his three decades in this industry. One of my big takeaways is that additive adoption at scale successfully is not just about the printer. It's about understanding the business problem you're trying to solve, whether that's speed, flexibility, miniaturization, supply chain issues. The organizations getting the greatest results are the ones that start with the application and then work backward to nail down the technology around hardware, software, and materials. As additive continues to mature, the winners won't simply be the companies with the newest hardware. And we are seeing that in the industry. They'll be the companies that develop the expertise, the processes, the quality systems, and the organizational capabilities required to take those technologies and turn them into repeatable business outcomes. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a colleague, and join us next time as we continue to explore the people, technologies, and strategies shaping the future of advanced manufacturing.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

And you can follow us on Apple or Spotify or watch this episode on YouTube at the Additive Advantage Podcast. If you enjoyed it, leave us a five star review on Spotify or Apple, and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for all the updates on our latest episodes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.