The Future of 3D Printing - Ep 3 | The Tech Between Us

Mouser EIT
That’s 3D Printed?
The Tech Between Us – Episode 3 (Subscriber)
11 minutes

Raymond Yin 
Additive manufacturing provides companies a response for part lead times, obsolescence, cost, and more. In this episode exclusively for subscribers, Mark Beatty, the founder and CEO of 3D Agility, shares his perspective on the advantages for companies.

How are the biggest connector companies, like the ones on Mouser’s line card, how are they dealing with replacing these ancient connector housings that - to your point earlier - that may not have volume enough to maintain tooling and things like that? How are they dealing with that?

Mark Beatty
I mean, from my knowledge, from the major players, the majority have projects and policy and process in place to explore additive. From my experience, from kind of the big ones, most are still deploying additive on the front end as a lever or a tool for their engineering teams around development and design and prototyping. 

I don't know how many have really dug into the backend. Because it's going to sound odd, Raymond, but really when you're in a big company like that, the biggest question is going to be what does your accounting model look like? So, it's great that you have the ability to fulfill that high mixed low volume, but inside that overhead that manufacturing variants, can you actually make money doing it? That's going to be a question for those large manufacturers. 

So, do they currently have the technology to do it? I would say yes. Is this of strategic interest for all of them? I don't know that. I can't say for sure, but that again is we've had some of those use cases where what's even crazier is that a part has been obsoleted, but the contact system still exists. So, you can still get all the metal components, which makes the solution very easy. You're really focused on the plastic housing, you're really focused on one piece of that assembly, which we can solve some of those solutions.

Raymond Yin
You just mentioned that that 3D printing is being used by these connector companies, engineers on the front end to do prototyping just like we do here. How far into that design cycle does that extend? In other words, how far into the prototyping and even pre-production does additive manufacturing go with some of these larger companies?

Mark Beatty 
Yeah, I think it's getting more and more because to release a brand new product line, depending on the technology behind it. Whether you're talking about power solutions or high speed solutions, all this buzz around AI. If you look at the investment, the capital investment, to get brand new molds, brand new assembly machines, brand new dies for stamping, it is a massive, massive capital investment. So I think where these companies are getting a little bit more creative, just walking this technology past design is like, okay, well let's for year one, let's see how much of the forecast is real. And what components can we keep in the additive space until we know that this thing is going to ramp or, in concert, as we build out the tool sets to fill that gap. So, I do see that there are definitely some product lines that have made that leap into early-stage production where they still remain in a 3D environment.

Raymond Yin
And that's interesting. Once again, we work with a lot of the larger connector companies here at Mouser. And I guess I just never really thought about what goes into some of these new product introductions. Hey, so-and-so has a brand-new connector. Here you go, you got the pins, you got the housings, whatnot. But really, like you said, this is a multi-year multimillion dollar investment that these guys have made in hopes that somebody will actually buy this thing.

Mark Beatty
Absolutely. And at the end of the day, we're human. So, we're making certain assumptions around the market. We're making certain assumptions around the adoption of the product. We're making certain assumptions around the customer, behind the customer. And many times, you're not right. You provide a forecast, you have a gut instinct on how some of these products will launch and the ultimate success of them, but many times you're not right. For a whole multitude of reasons. If additive can kind of de-risk some of these projects, and I know my old boss would kick me, but allow you to be wrong, be right, being wrong more - that's of interest. You kind of open that threshold for learning and you open that threshold for risk a little bit, where unfortunately there are multimillion dollar projects that never get off the ground because of X, Y, and Z. So, I think if you're thoughtful about how you deploy these assets, how these approaches, it really can unlock value throughout that lifecycle.

Raymond Yin
Okay, interesting. Now, if let's say one of our connector manufacturer partners uses additive manufacturing pre-production or early production, how much sooner could they potentially get to market using something like that? Rather than waiting for all their tooling and stamping and injection molding equipment to be set up? Any ideas on that?

Mark Beatty
I mean, it's usually weeks versus months. It depends on the scale of which the whole kind of assembly cycle looks like. So, the mold, the dies and the assembly equipment from previous experience, we had some assembly equipment take more than a year. Now you're still not getting around that piece of it. Additive is not going to assemble the part for you, but if you can reduce that mold design and that front end at least one piece of it, I would argue it's probably weeks versus months.

Raymond Yin 
So, it being just a part of the overall process for creating a full connector line.

Mark Beatty
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And like we talked about with metal, I mean, there's some companies out there really talking about high definition, high detail printing for metal, and some contacts are obviously way easier to print than others. It's still evolving. That side of it is still evolving.

Raymond Yin
Oh, interesting. I would've never thought that printing a connector contact would be easier than stamping it or molding it or anything like that. But it sounds like we're advanced far enough with additive manufacturing where that is the case now.

Mark Beatty 
Companies are super curious around that high detail, high definition of how exact can we make this technology? And you're right, I think the biggest question is economies of scale. If you can go out and get a die and you're printing or you're stamping millions of these things a day, you will never get the economies that you would against 3D printing. But if you need a handful or a couple hundred, it might be interesting.

Raymond Yin
Mark, is there anything else that our listeners or companies need to know as they move from potentially traditional manufacturing into the additive space?

Mark Beatty
My only piece of advice is really just to be curious, and if you find yourself with a bad taste in your mouth from maybe a previous project, continue to be curious … to understand what else is new and evolving that's out there. I think just like COVID - kind of on a doorstep of another amplifier, maybe we'll call it, with the tariffs that are coming in. It's another reason to say, okay, how could I be curious to deploy additive in a new and interesting way that will actually help me better service my customer, help me make more money, help me localize my supply chain. That's a big one. And when people talk about reshoring stuff and bringing stuff back to the United States, I think it's an amazing topic. But we also have to be honest, our supply chain in the United States looks very, very different than it did 20 or 30 years ago. So, when you think about the amount of companies that were here in the ‘80s and ‘90s, they're simply not here anymore. So, when you bring it back, it's most definitely going to look different. It has to look different. And then like we talked about at the beginning of the discussion, that talent piece is massive too. So, you have these dynamics of, okay, I'm curious to bring it back. What is my answer for talent? What is the technology that I have to deploy? Oh, and FYI, you can now make $18 an hour at McDonald's. How are you going to attract people to work on a factory floor. It's hard work.

It’s really hard work. So understanding those nuances of some of these changes is interesting, and that's something that we're very curious and we're very willing to help some of these companies talk through those opportunities.

Raymond Yin
Yeah, it's interesting. I was at an automation conference and a slide goes up and hey, 80% of the country would love to have more manufacturing in America. Once again, politics aside, great thing. And then the next slide goes across and it's like only 20% of the people who said yes would actually want to work in a factory. So, we need automation. We need things like additive manufacturing to kind of fill in those gaps.

Mark Beatty
It's certainly an opportunity to look at, and I think that's what we're seeing even through some of our partners is a resurgence in tech schools, which is amazing. You're seeing enrollment in a lot of those schools go up. You see kids really getting back into trades. And it's not like the jobs of the positions that our parents had. These are highly technical jobs working on robots and PLCs and 3D printers. So, the skillset is just very different. And I think that is 100% a big part of this equation is that as an OEM, you're not the only one with the initiative to bring everything back. So how are you going to do it in a thoughtful way to really position itself for success?

Raymond Yin
Thank you for listening to our subscriber exclusive episode. We hope you'll explore more of Mouser's Empowering Innovation Together content and stay tuned as we dive into more technologies throughout the year by visiting mouser.com/empowering-innovation.