Recapping the 2021 Additive Manufacturing Conference + Expo: AM Radio #5

From October 12-14, additive manufacturing (AM) professionals and those interested in adopting this technology gathered at the Additive Manufacturing Conference + Expo held this year in Cincinnati, Ohio. Attendance was lower than typical for this event, but the quality of the program speakers, exhibitors and attendees shone through. During a day and a half of sessions, speakers covered everything from 3D printed tooling to reshoring manufacturing to how teams of people — not just technology — need to change for successful AM adoption. Soon after the event ended, I discussed the themes and ideas that emerged with AM Radio podcast cohosts Peter Zelinski and Julia Hider. Listen to the episode at the link embedded above, or read on for the transcript.

Transcript

Peter Zelinski 

Welcome to AM Radio, the show where we tune in to what’s going on in additive manufacturing. I’m Pete Zelinski with Additive Manufacturing Media. We just got back from the Additive Manufacturing Conference and Expo held this year in Cincinnati, Ohio. We’re going to unpack what happened at that event. That’s coming up on AM Radio.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

This episode of the AM Radio Podcast is brought to you by PTXPO, the show for North American plastics professionals. Join Additive Manufacturing Media and sister brand Plastics Technology for the first ever edition of this event in March of 2022. To find more information at PlasticsTechnologyExpo.com

Peter Zelinski 

Welcome to the show. I’m Pete Zelinski. I’m joined in the studio by both of my AM Radio cohosts, they are Julia Hider.

Julia Hider

Hello.

Peter Zelinski

And Stephanie Hendrixson.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Hi.

Peter Zelinski

All right. We just got back from the Additive Manufacturing Conference + Expo. We’re here in the studio the day after the event wrapped was held this year in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Additive Manufacturing Conference + Expo is our event. It’s put on by Gardner Business Media. Let's talk about that.

Julia Hider 

How many times have we held this event?

Peter Zelinski 

Yeah, so it’s, I've been saying it’s an, it’s an annual event, sort of, because we didn’t get to hold it last year. But we, the first one was in 2014. The, the focus has always been largely additive manufacturing for production. And it is more, it is the, it is, we call it a conference and expo — it is more conference than expo. We put a lot of thought into our conference lineup and who we bring in.

Julia Hider 

And how was this year’s event different because of COVID? Because obviously, oh sure affecting everything.

Peter Zelinski 

Oh, sure. We have to talk about that. Like, like attendance was down like Stephanie, you’d agree. Right?

Stephanie Hendrixson 

Yeah, um, yeah, the attendance was down from, from what we’re used to seeing at this event, but it seemed that people were engaged; people were asking great questions during the presentations. And I heard a lot of good feedback from the exhibitors as well about the conversations they were having and, and just good energy out of, out on the expo floor as well.

Peter Zelinski 

So yeah, and and that, that, that point that you just raised speaks to something really interesting that, that came out to me at the, at the conference this year. It continues to be a difficult environment in which to hold events, like a lot of companies even still have travel bans. And yet, an effect of that is that it creates this filter mechanism where the people that we got at the event really, really wanted to be there because of the seriousness with which they’re, they’re exploring the technology and the exhibitors talk to me about that in ways that in some cases kind of surprised me.

There’s, there’s one exhibitor there, who made the point to me and Pete, I’ve, I’ve been to Additive Manufacturing Conferences and Expos going way back and he rattled off the different city locations, we, in 2019, where you were in Austin, earlier than that, we’ve been in Knoxville. And he said, from his perspective, this is the best one, as far as the number of conversations that he had with that seemed very likely to lead to business. For him, it was the highest at this version of the conference that he’s ever had, to the extent that I kind of, like, cocked my head. And really when he said that, because. because we could tell that the attendance was down.

So what I’d like to do is the three of us have a conversation about some of the things we heard and picked up at, at the event this year. And some of the themes that came out, it’s our event, but it didn’t change the fact that it’s, it is an, an additive manufacturing industry event. And so, the three of us were all racing around the whole time and the conference track, none of us got to see every speaker in the conference track. And so we’re going to, like, sort of fill each other in to some extent on some of the speakers. So I’m kind of processing it all myself, and I know you two are doing the same. So like, let’s do some of our processing together.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah.

Julia Hider

Yeah, let’s do it.

Peter Zelinski

Okay, first topic, or first big theme, I think I see is, this is a manufacturing event, and it played out in the context of the manufacturing environment right now. And what’s very current right now is their supply chain difficulties. And that, that sort of catchphrase sort of refers to this, this big broad amorphous problem, which is disconnects in suppliers being able to deliver products they’re expecting and all kinds of delays and adaptations flowing out of that and in various ways that seem to come out. In the conference in, in points that the speakers raised or things that they were struggling with.

Julia Hider

Yeah, I think the most direct example of this was a Q&A that you, Pete, did with Spencer Loveless, who’s the CEO and owner of Dustless Technologies. You wrote a story about them earlier this year, and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes, but the Q&A that you did with him at the show was all about the supply chain and using AM for reshoring. So his company makes wet dry vacs and the, in the past have been offshoring a lot of their work in China and Taiwan, especially the the mold building, like he said the company had spent $750,000 on a mold from Taiwan, and that was 30 years ago, so prices have obviously gone up since then. And you know, on top of the money, the lead times for these molds are really long, so once you invest all this time and money into a mold, you can’t change the part’s design so he wanted to get away from injection molding altogether and find a way to restore this work, and he sees AM is the solution to that he’s been able to produce some of the accessories that they make for the vacuums, one of which collects dust from a jackhammer so it can be sucked up by the vacuum, and he’s making that part in the US via additive manufacturing, and because there’s no mold tooling, they’re able to make changes to the product. I think he said they pushed through nine product revisions since the product was released, but he’s still being affected by the supply chain issues today — you know, he hasn’t been able to assure all of his work, and I think he said he still has some parts that are stuck on boats right now.

Peter Zelinski 

Yeah, that was, that was a great conversation. Um, yeah, he’s using 3D printing to try to reshore manufacturing, and yeah, I think he mentioned that that he’s, I think, he said he’s got five parts currently stuck on boats somewhere that he’s, he’s trying to get because of the chance to manufacture domestically. The 3D printing is bringing to him, he said, kind of tongue in cheek, but he said mold is a four letter word — I guess a five letter word for our UK and Canadian listeners. Another, another talk that brought this out and, and I think we’re going to be referring to this, this conference speaker a couple times because she gave such an engaging and impassioned talk. It’s Haleyanne Freedman. She works for M. Holland, which is a plastic resin distributor, and, and she gave kind of this kind of challenging talk about the ways that the the additive manufacturing space has to, has to advance to become more industrialized in, in polymers and the way that she’s kind of calling and hoping for it to advance faster, but she spoke to this — the supply chain issues — and the role that 3D printing can play. The, the face shields example came out and, and the way that 3D printing adapted to that in 2020, and she said, like, that was, that was great in the moment when there was no other way to get face shields. But otherwise, that’s not a productive way to make face shields. She called for dual specking of products as part of product development as part of part development. Spec a 3D printed version and spec a conventionally manufactured versions say injection molded, so that you have the 3D printing option just ready to go as as a gap filler, where there are supply chain disruptions.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

Yeah, I think that came up over and over like we’re sort of searching for, like, what is the right role for 3D printing in the supply chain. And Pete, in your keynote, on the very first day, you sort of made reference to this and the same issue — the face shields, that one injection molder, who turned their attention to this could have maybe blown out of the water, all of the 3D printers who were individually doing this. But there was no tool there was no way for, for that to happen. And so I think we’re seeing we’re at a place right now, where 3D printing is maybe that, that first response, like it’s there in an emergency. It’s the way to get the thing that you can’t get right now, or it’s that, that dual spec solution where, you know, if you’re in production and you’re making a lot of things go with injection molding, but if that part is, you know, out of production now and you need a replacement or something like that, 3D printing can very easily sort of slot into that space and deliver that solution. If you’ve kind of pre-thought it and you have the file and you have everything ready to go.

Peter Zelinski 

Let’s shift from there, from supply chain gaps, to a different kind of gap that came out I think in the, in the conference sessions, which is, I feel like, the event this year, the conference this year, a theme that trickled up was the need for people. Additive manufacturing needs people. One of the very earliest speakers spoke to this almost, almost exclusively — Fabian Alefeld with EOS. He didn’t give a technology focus talk. He gave a people and culture focused talk and, and, and how do you structure a group of people to realize the benefits of additive given how disruptive it is. He’s got this idea he offered where you think about organization and, and additive adoption in terms of a transition team and an implementation team. And those are two very different things. And maybe there’s even, there’s some connectivity and some overlap between these two teams, but but first, figure out how to transition the enterprise to realize all the benefits additive is going to bring, and then doing all of the difficult and important work of implementation to realize those benefits, which is an entirely different undertaking, involving different skill sets and different voices in the organization. And one other point he raised, and it’s illuminating, additive manufacturing, a much newer space compared to other industries, a disruptive space. And we are accustomed to seeing a larger share of, for example, female attendance at edited event and an event like this. He put up figures about sort of gender breakdown among technical people working in and around additive manufacturing technology. The figure he found is 12% female. So obviously, more opportunity there to bring in more female talent as a solution for part of this gap that we have.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

Yeah, so that 12% figure like that slide, just kind of, like, burned in my mind because I’ve spent time in, in like, kind of the adjacent, like, metalworking industry like both of you have. And I do feel like there is, there are more women represented at events like this. And you know, like, shout out to Haleyanne Freedman. She’s the regional North American chair for Women in 3D Printing. We had Callie Higgins on stage — she’s another ambassador for Women in 3D Printing. So it was, it was exciting to see that representation. But, but clearly, we have more work to do.

There’s also another aspect that Fabian sort of raised and that I heard other speakers speak to as well — the need for cross disciplinary teams, like additive experts alone aren’t everything that we need. So he made reference to how you need engineers and you need material scientists. And you even need people like data scientists all working together to commercialize this technology to scale it. And then we heard from Paul Martin of Dimensional Innovations, and one of the things he talked about was how his business really actually needs machinists. They’re building these great big, like large scale 3D printed parts, but they need people who know how to finish those things. And so, like, 3D printing expertise gets you part of the way there, but we need people in other, other disciplines kind of coming together and working together.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, cross disciplinary teams is something that Jennifer Brennan mentioned in her presentation as well. She’s a researcher and PhD candidate at Penn State. And she studies manufacturing fixation in design. And just to briefly explain that basically, the idea that adoption of additive manufacturing is being hindered by people subconsciously designing parts for processes they’re already familiar with, like machining or injection molding. And some of the ways she mentioned to counter this involves building these cross functional teams that are very diverse and consists of people with diverse manufacturing backgrounds to make sure that they aren’t just subconsciously designing parts for one manufacturing process.

Peter Zelinski 

Diversity of perspective, she’s saying, is an aid to breaking out of the template you might already have when it comes to designing an industrial part. Exactly. That's really interesting. That sort of connects back to this point that we’ve touched on a little bit about the diversity of representation. We’ve talked about gender diversity, it’s part of why we have events like this, and it’s part of what is so valuable in different perspectives bumping into one another by virtue of different people bumping into one another. Stephanie, you mentioned Women in 3D Printing, and, and you are our area’s local ambassador for that organization. And as part of that you organized an, an evening event, a social networking gathering, one of the nights of the conference, I was leaving the convention center, and I was on my way to this event, and I had with me, somebody we both know, and I invited him along, and he asked the question that every male asks for the first time, it seems to me. Like he says, like, “Well, is it okay if I call him?” And? And the answer is yes. And I had the words for that right in that moment in a way that I hadn’t previously, which is the organization and it’s events aren’t about shutting men out. They’re about making it clear that women are in.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

I, yeah, I think that’s well said. It’s all about diversity, equity and inclusion, and Women in 3D Printing is very, is a very welcoming organization. That’s part of what I like about it. It’s not about shutting anyone out. It’s about bringing people in and giving seats at the table for everyone.

Peter Zelinski 

Alright, let’s take a break. When we come back, let’s talk about — we’ve mentioned this phrase “disruptive technology” a couple times. Let’s talk about some of those disruptions that came out at the Additive Manufacturing Conference and Expo.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

This episode of The AM Radio Podcast is brought to you by PTXPO, a new event for professionals in the plastics industry. Designed for the entire North American plastics market, the tradeshow will feature equipment, machinery, materials and technology solutions throughout pavilion exhibit halls. Check out the exhibits, attend educational sessions with manufacturing experts and make new connections in the industry. If your business is involved in plastics processing, moldmaking or additive manufacturing, this is the event for you join Additive Manufacturing and sister brands Plastics Technology and Moldmaking Technology for the first ever PTXPO. The inaugural event takes place March 29 through 31^st, 2022 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. Find more information about attending, exhibiting or sponsoring this event at PlasticsTechnologyExpo.com.

Peter Zelinski 

Alright, we're back. We’re talking about the Additive Manufacturing Conference + Expo. All three of us were there, Stephanie Hendrixson, Julia Hider and I, and we’re sort of comparing notes here about about what we took away from the event, what we saw there. Additive manufacturing is still disrupting, that hasn’t slowed down to any extent. And we saw new examples of that, heard about new applications of that, or new to me — things I hadn’t thought about before. One of us mentioned Dimensional Innovations real quickly. Actually, that was you, Stephanie, because you talked about their need for machinists. Okay, this company is amazing. And the talk that Paul Martin from Dimensional Innovations gave, so they make really, really big stuff through 3D printing. And they’re the creators of the Las Vegas Raiders torch at Allegiant Stadium. And it is believed to be currently the tallest 3D printed object in existence and dimensional innovations created this tower in sections through polymer 3D printing on, on machines from Thermwood. And the thing about it is, we think of 3D printed parts as near net shape. And they are, but to make parts this big, that could fit together seamlessly, they had to get them really, really, really near net shape, there was machining involved, but it couldn’t be a lot of machining. And the parts are so big and massive that they needed to be able to fit together seamlessly with only a bit of hand finishing when they come together. So it is an application at a scale that certainly almost every additive manufacturing user won’t have to get to. But seeing what the technology is capable of by people who begin to apply their knowledge to realizing its capabilities, it was really striking. And it just kind of showed the envelope of possibilities that 3D printing brings.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

Yeah, and so you, you kind of open this by talking about disruption. And something else that I remember from his presentation was how they tried so hard to, like, minimize the amount of labor on site to assemble this thing. And, like, how that was a real shift from the way that construction and, like, architectural elements like that usually come together. So if I can take us maybe out of the conference sessions out onto the expo floor, I think we saw a lot of disruption happening in The Cool Parts Showcase area. So Pete and I, we host this, this show called The Cool Parts Show, it’s on YouTube. And we ran a contest for the first time this year, we asked people to send in their parts, we chose finalists, we asked our viewers to vote and we got to name the winners. There were so many cool parts that made it to the finals that were really reflective of that sort of disruption. So one that I will call out is a company called Cadens, sent us something they’d made called that they’re calling the BAAM Dam, and so it’s, it’s a series of 3D printed parts that are made on the BAAM, the Big Area Additive Manufacturing machine, and they are for hydro power. What’s happening is they were able to really sort of optimize the shape of all of these pieces to get the best possible water flow through this system, so that you can get more power out of this. I stood there and talked to the, the two guys who came to represent the company for a little bit and something they explained to me is that up until now you haven’t had a lot of options in, like, the shape of your intake pipe, and the intake pipe is really important because that’s how you’re getting the water into the system. And so if you’re limited to off the shelf options that are, like, 90 degrees or maybe 45 degree angles, that’s not necessarily going to get you the best payoff, and so by creating this kind of elegantly curved intake, they were able to improve the flow of water. And that’s important because if you can make this system more efficient, you can use smaller waterways for hydro power. And so they’re doing some really interesting things that, you know, maybe six months ago, I never would have thought of hydro power as an application or a space for 3D printing. And here it is possibly changing the, the places where we can apply systems like this.

Peter Zelinski 

Cadens was amazing. And the Cool Parts Showcase was so much fun. And they had this whole side effect of of bringing these, these faces and possibilities and parts into the expo that otherwise might not have been there. What were some other disruptive parts we saw in the Cool Parts Showcase?

Stephanie Hendrixson 

Um, yeah, so I think one that I would point to was from A.D.A.M. Bioprinting ADAM Bioprinting. They submitted a 3D printed bone, and it’s made of this material that I’m not even gonna try to pronounce, but it’s a medical powder that’s a form of the same mineral that’s found in your bone, and they printed this. It’s a humerus, and they printed it using binder jetting. And that was really cool because, like, we’ve talked about other 3D printed, like, implants that can be sort of like bone scaffolds. And we’ve talked about the advantages of, like, a titanium implant with that rough surface to help encourage bone growth. But a 3D printed item that’s a direct replacement for your bone, like that was really, really cool and interesting.

And then the other thing that I would maybe point to, and this is maybe more, like, additive manufacturing, maturing and finding its stride, but we had a lot of examples of like orthotics, prosthetics, assistive devices, things kind of of that nature. So, there was Quorum Prosthetics had the Quatro socket, which is a very easily adjustable socket for somebody with a prosthetic leg. There was the scoliosis brace that was submitted by Extol that they developed with Fited. And then one of our showcase winners was the custom dog wheelchair, sent to us by Braskem and developed with Dive Design. And I feel like that’s just sort of reflective of additive coming in and disrupting this industry that until recently has depended a lot on on handwork to deliver these custom devices. And so, there were so many of them that it seems like maybe the, the disruption is sort of like blossoming. And it’s further along than some of the the other cases that we got to see.

Peter Zelinski 

I think that’s a great segue into the next topic we want to talk about because you mentioned prosthetics, and it makes me think again of Haleyanne Freedman’s presentation. She urged us all to focus in hard on these sectors and solutions. And applications that are really well suited for additive and where additive is already showing its strength in tooling is an example of that we cannot forget about tooling.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, that was one of her big points was finding the applications that make money and tooling is one of those biggest opportunities. But these applications often get [over]looked in favor of last year applications, like 3D printed shoes or sports equipment, you know. Not to pick on anyone here, but and not that those types of applications aren't important for other reasons. But her point was that, you know, they’re not the ones that are driven by cost.

Peter Zelinski 

Yeah, so we also had a speaker from Procter and Gamble. The event was in Cincinnati. So big, Cincinnati-based company. Consumer products maker, Michael Farrell, is one of their additive manufacturing leaders and particularly has been involved with additive manufacturing for tooling. You think about Procter and Gamble — they make, they make consumer products that are on grocery store, sell shelves. You think of all of the packaging, for example, that goes into their products. They are involved in a lot of molding and think about mold tooling a lot, and he described this sprint the company has gone through to integrate conformal cooling into into a large number of molds in like a 14 month period. They ended up making 420 cores, 220 cavities that all had conformal cooling. He made clear, he says you know for P&G conformal cooling in moldmaking. It’s not an emerging technology anymore. This has emerged he called it an — it’s kind of hard to say — but it’s an emerging technology. And he described the very real and practical benefits of that, the role conformal cooling plays is by facilitating heat transfer. It makes the plastic part faster, the dwell time in the molding cycle is shorter and the molding is also more consistent. He said, for example, they’ve seen scrap rate fall from 6% to 2%. As a result of conformal cooling, so parts faster plus more good parts. He said the result of their conformal cooling efforts is a million more plastic parts per year on their existing molding machines that wouldn’t be made otherwise because of how much more effectively their mold tooling now works. So it’s, it’s not like tooling is some kind of way station on the way to production additive manufacturing. The reality is additive manufacturing has this huge, disruptive, important role to play in production. And its impact on tooling is going to keep on advancing as well. And and, and we have to encourage that advance.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

Yeah, so the P&G presentation was, was really great just to see, like, how far they’ve been able to take the conformal cooling, and like, this is our one of our hometown companies here in Cincinnati. And it was neat to see the kind of work that’s happening here, and then shout out to some other, another local company. The, the Verdin Company, Tim Verdin, and Alex Riestenberg from Cincinnati Inc. gave a presentation about how Verdin is 3D printing patterns for bells, so like large metal parts, and they’re finding these opportunities with 3D printing to make custom geometries for these bells. And, you know, it’s, it’s obviously like a lower volume application than what P&G is doing. But again, it’s tooling. It’s 3D printing, delivering on the promise of tooling, so we can’t forget about it.

Peter Zelinski 

Okay, before we finish, I want us to explore one other aspect of the conference that I think came out this year, which was — it’s sort of hard to put a label on this. But it’s sort of a change in voice for the conference. I think there was a different tone to the conference this year relative to the conference in years past.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

I think that’s true. I felt like more people were talking about how do we scale this technology. And as a result, they were talking a lot more about commercialization, and just money overall.

Peter Zelinski 

Greg Morris talked about money, or among other things, I got to have a Q&A on stage. Greg Morris, obviously pioneer in additive manufacturing, with Morris Technologies, he was involved in the development of some very early additive manufacturing production parts for GE Aviation. That company sold; he’s back. He’s the founder of a co-founder of another manufacturing country company here in town, Vertex Manufacturing. He joked a little bit, like they never intended it to be Morris Technologies 2.0, but they feel themselves pulled in that direction, sometimes with the additive opportunities that have come. But he talked about how a difference now versus then is, it’s not all about DFAM anymore, designing the part for additive manufacturing. More sophisticated prospects and opportunities are coming in, in the production additive manufacturing space. But now, where he sees things is making the business case, and and just thinking about the costs, the scaling, the potential commercialization of an opportunity that comes in evaluating whether additive manufacturing makes sense in light of all of those considerations.

Julia Hider 

Yeah. And going back to Haleyanne’s presentation again, you know, one issue that she pointed out in scaling was material cost and how that affects that and how it has to come down in order to increase adoption of AM.

Stephanie Hendrixson 

So, I feel like the approach to adopting additive, like we heard about some changes there. It’s not just buy some machines and figure it out; people are taking, like, sort of a more measured approach. So Tim Bell from Siemens told this great story about how this manufacturer was on the verge of buying something like 65 powder bed fusion machines for this, this factory they were going to build. And they came to Siemens and said, you know, “Is this enough like is this what we need, the capacity we're going to need?” And so Siemens has the ability to build out basically a digital twin of a facility, like this a digital factory. And so, they did that. And they included the postprocessing capability. They had automated guided vehicles simulated into this for material handling and things like that. And actually, what they discovered through doing all of this, that the company could accomplish what it needed to do with only 35 machines. And so that was just sort of I think reflective of the way people are approaching additive now. They, they believe in the technology, and the challenge is not so much can 3D printing do what I needed to, but how do I make sure I have the right capacity? How do I make sure that I have the, the workflow in place and, you know, simulate it, refine it digitally before you ever make that leap?

In a similar vein, so we heard from Plus MFG; they are actually an Erlanger, Kentucky, company. So they’re just across the river and they give a presentation on COSMO. It’s this tool; it stands for cost over specific modulus. But it’s basically this sort of like automated spreadsheet tool that you can use to compare different manufacturing methods to decide how to make a metal part. So if you want to compare say, form sheet metal versus CNC machining versus dd 3D printing, you can sort of plug all your information into this and it will tell you things, like, which of these choices is going to give you the fewest process steps. Which one is going to deliver the lowest part. Which, which one is going to have the lowest cost. I got to speak to our speakers Stephan Abt and Tom Kruer afterwards for a little bit. And something they pointed out was this is a tool that can be used to help people change their thinking about manufacturing. So if you are looking at these different options and seeing that actually 3D printing is going to give you a lower part weight or a lower cost. And that might be something that's desirable for the application. It sort of prevents the engineer from saying, “Well, let’s just make it out of sheet metal because I know how to do things out of sheet metal.” You know, engineers are not necessarily trained in all of these different ways of making things. And so a tool like that can be really insightful for just exposing the different opportunities and the different choices that you have, including additive.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, that’s exactly what Jennifer Brennan was saying in her presentation on manufacturing, fixation and design that part designers are being subconsciously influenced by more traditional methods. So when they go to look at actually producing the part with AM, it’s too expensive, or it’s not cost effective. And it just makes it seem like there’s never a business case for AM. So part designers really need to rethink their processes. And it’ll open up a whole bunch of additional applications for AM.

Peter Zelinski 

I feel like what all of this points to is not exactly additive manufacturing fully arriving. But additive manufacturing, arriving now enough, established now enough that a large and growing share of the applications do not take the form of let’s see if additive can do this. Let’s begin this journey with additive by seeing if we can make this part, but it’s more additive is an option that’s on the table. It’s an option that makes sense in a whole lot of cases. And so let’s now be very analytical and very coldly critical in our thinking about where we use additive, how we use it to ensure that we’re using it effectively and capably. And for the, for the applications that make sense. I think we’ll end it there. There’s a, there’s a lot that came out of this, this two day event this week and a lot to talk about. We’re gonna put links to things we mentioned in the show notes, check out the Cool Parts Showcase announcement and keep an eye out for the episodes of the Cool Parts Show we will do based on the winners that our voters revealed at this event. For information about the Additive Conference, Additive Manufacturing Conference and Expo, that’s an additive conference next year, it’ll be at the International Manufacturing Technology Show. So join us for that. Thank you for listening. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you hear. Those five stars really encourage us. Please do that. Learn a lot more at AdditiveManufacturing.Media.

Julia Hider 

This episode of AM Radio was recorded with help from Austin Grogan and Kade Nicholson. This show was edited by Alex Lytle, Stephanie Hendrixson and Troy Brewer. Our artwork is by Kate Bilbury. AM Radio and Additive Manufacturing Media are products of Gardner Business Media located in Cincinnati, Ohio. I’m Julia Hider. Thanks for listening.