3DPOD: Insight from 3D Printing Pros

Mark Abshire has had a very long history in 3D printing. Beginning as a Rapid Prototyping manager at Texas Instruments, he was one of the first users of stereolithography in the world. He later on went to perform applications engineering at 3D Systems before joining Sony for its foray into 3D printing. Later, he worked for DSM Somos. Mark is a wealth of information on 3D printing and has a deep lo...

Paul D’Urso is a pioneering surgeon and entrepreneur. As founder of Anatomics , he’s been an instrumental figure in developing 3D printed implants of all kinds. In this episode of the 3DPOD, Paul gives us a candid look at the opportunities, challenges and recent past of 3D printed implants. This is a great episode dealing with innovation, implants, medical 3D printing and more.

Previous guest Duann Scott is back to discuss some new ventures and projects he’s involved with, including MIT’s xPRO course on additive . What is covered, what do you learn, and for whom is the course? We also talk about 3MF, artificial intelligence, and lots of other subjects. An entertaining episode that you should enjoy as much as we did making it.

Today we interview Max Bogue, co-host of the 3DPOD. He tells us how he went from the genesis of the idea for a 3D printing pen to creating the product to founding the company 3Doodler . As major moments in his story, Max points to saying no to huge opportunities, having dogs in the office, and visiting factories. What follows is a great story and a lot of very practical advice, including good pate...

Chris Tuck is an entrepreneur and Nottingham University professor playing an outsized role in commercializing and researching new 3D printing technologies. He’s made a number of breakthroughs in binder jet, as well as founded Added Scientific and Reactive Fusion . While Added Scientific is a consultancy that can help you create your very own binder jet technology, material or production proc...

Before starting Loci Robotics , Max Heres had a storied history beginning with the study of polymer physics before working as a graduate research assistant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and going on to large-format 3D printing startup Local Motors. His deep experience in this technology led him to come up with a company that makes robotic arm-based polymer 3D printers. We end up taking a fascin...

Hunma Khan founded Astro Mechanical Testing Lab to create a testing and qualification lab specific to Additive Manufacturing. Her customers are most of the notable firms in New Space, defense and government that work in 3D printing. That kind of success did not come overnight though. Humna spent years at SpaceX, NASA JPL and at the US Air Force. In this episode of the 3DPOD, Humna tells us of her...

Ian Yang is the founder of Gantri , a startup which uses desktop 3D printers to make lamps . We love Gantri because it deploys 3D printing for consumer products and is one of very few firms to do so. Gantri is pushing our technology into your living room and bedroom. So, how does the company manage to do that? We follow the company’s path, software, and design sensibility. We look at how the...

Frank Herzog, alongside his wife, commercialized Concept Laser. The firm was later sold to GE to become the core of GE Additive, and Frank stuck around to build out GE’s operations in Lichtenfels. Later, Frank and Co. started an R&D center, a seed capital fund and a Venture Capital firm all united under the HZG Group . Frank tells us his extraordinary tale of family and entrepreneurship....

Meld is one of the most exciting metal 3D printing startups out there. Its additive friction stir deposition is a solid-state process that can print very large metal parts that no other technology can without the use of a chamber. On this episode of the 3DPOD, we have a veteran guest returning. Tim Bell, Chief Operating Officer at MELD Manufacturing Corporation, returns to us to explain the techno...

Ben Schrauwen was a Professor of Machine Learning who also had a few startups under his belt when joined Autodesk and worked on the CAD giant’s 3D printing software. He then started Oqton, a software firm later sold to 3D Systems. In this episode of the 3DPOD, Ben goes into depth with us to explain machine learning, AI and the opportunities there. I really enjoyed his explanations of machine...

Scott Volk has deep experience in additive and, over the decades, he’s stood at the forefront of polymer and metal implementations, working for such firms as Incodema3D and GPI Prototype. Upon leaving Keselowski Advanced Manufacturing, where he served as Vice President of Business Development & Strategy, in 2022, Scott’s a free agent via his own firm, Advanced Additive Innovations...

Martin Eichenhofer took his research from ETH Zurich and turned it into an exciting startup, 9T Labs , which hopes to make its two step carbon fiber 3D printing technique suitable for large-scale volume production of programmable carbon fiber components. Carbon fiber and other CFRP parts could replace metal, make elements lighter, and represent a new method for altering the form factor of many obj...

Matt Smith started his firm TCPoly while he was a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He parlayed this small business into manufacturing filament that is thermally, but not electrically conductive conductive. With a thermal conductivity of 6 W/m-K, TCPoly filament can be used to create structures with properties that other parts simply cannot have. TCPoly has expanded to manufacture...

As Head of Business Development, Marketing and Sales, Ole von Seelen has been helping trinckle 3D grow in the 3D printing space for years now. Starting out as a package for managing online services, the firm expanded to become a productivity software until pivoting again to become a customization software vendor. Now armed with investment from the HZG Group , it wants to accelerate its growth into...

Samantha Snabes, co-founder of re:3D, is extremely humble, but as we dive into her story in this episode of the 3DPOD, we learn just how exciting, fascinating and fun her life has truly been. It is a story of high-speed entrepreneurship for good. Max and I are swept away by her story and that of re:3D , which has brought a family of large- and medium-format 3D printers to life. re:3D’s Gigab...

David Moodie is a New Zealand-based product designer who took a tumble down the 3D printing rabbit hole. After meeting the world’s nicest venture capital fund, a fanciful client project morphed into a startup, dubbed Foundry Lab . The firm’s metal casting technology is a potentially very exciting one. Speeding up the die casting process is something of which others have steered clear....

Slant 3D CEO Gabe Bentz only wanted to design and market 3D printed parts, but found existing service bureaus too expensive. So, he made a pivot and Slant 3D deployed the world’s largest 3D printer farm . The company now uses desktop 3D printers to make products at scale. This is a potentially very disruptive strategy for the additive manufacturing industry. In this episode of the 3DPOD, Gab...

In this episode of the 3DPOD, we speak to Dr. Steven Kurtz , director of the Implant Research Center at Drexel University’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems and also acts as an implant consultant. We have a great conversation about the PAEK family of high-performance polymers, including PEKK and PEEK, for use in the body. Dr. Kurtz also discusses the opportunities for...

Coming from the world of gaming, Lars Brubaker started MatterHackers to take part in the 3D printing revolution. Due to his background, he has good war stories: trying to find filament when no one was selling it, except a single individual in New Zealand, or seeking out customer service on some of the first consumer 3D printers. Lars also tells us about building companies: what kind of values, met...

Fergal Coulter, a postdoctoral research fellow at ETH Zurich, is one of the most interesting scientists working in 3D printing today. His work spans from 3D printing on balloon shapes to heart valves, electro active actuators, prosthesis, 3D printing bacteria and much more. You can check out his research on his website and his YouTube channel . Now, Fergal is working on an eight-axis 3D printer wh...

Bob Markley, Executive Vice President at additive manufacturing provider ADDMAN Group , has had an eventful journey in 3D printing. In this episode of the 3DPOD, he discusses the route to starting a 3D printing service with one machine and trying to grow it. Now, he’s a part of the fast-expanding ADDMAN empire. What does it take to run a service today? Where are the opportunities and what sh...

Maxi Strixner has worked in engineering positions and leading firms such as EOS, AMCM, AP Works and now The Exploration Company. We talk to him about designing for additive, engineering for additive and what it takes to be an engineer in additive manufacturing. We also discuss new space, aviation, racing cars, automotive, generative design, optimization and much much more. Really exciting look at...

In this week’s episode of the 3DPOD, we have Paul Gradl, a principal engineer in the Combustion Devices Design and Development Branch at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. This is an episode that we’ve been looking forward to for months. We wanted to have Paul on because he wrote and cowrote a couple of papers which we love, including “ Metal additive manufacturing in aerospace:...

Prior to establishing precision metal 3D printing firm Holo, Inc. , Arian Aghababaie founded a firm dedicated to building a digital light processing (DLP) 3D printer. That startup was quickly acquired by Autodesk, leading to the CAD software giant’s Spark / Ember 3D printer, a DLP machine that was widely used. Later on, he spun out the printer technology to form Holo, which uses what I refer...