Why Inventors and Additive Manufacturing Go Together: AM Radio #13

Additive manufacturing makes it possible to begin to make a new product cost-effectively at small scales, and both change the product design and scale up its production in response to market acceptance. This means inventors of new products can be their own manufacturers, and it’s why inventors producing their own product is becoming a new category of manufacturer. Julia Hider recently visited an example: Maxwell June, maker of a new razor system for shaving. She and I discuss what she found, and the reasons why additive manufacturing expands the possibilities for inventors.

Transcript

Peter Zelinski 

Let's talk about inventors. 3D printing offers a straight path from idea to product so inventors producing their own niche products are becoming a new class of manufacturer. That's coming up on AM Radio.

Julia Hider 

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. Find more information at PlasticsTechnologyExpo.com.

Peter Zelinski 

Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm Pete Zelinski, editor in chief of Additive Manufacturing Media. I'm here with a talented member of our writing team senior editor Julia Hider. Hi, Julia.

Julia Hider

Hey, Pete.

Peter Zelinski

So Julia, you travel, you visit places to tell stories about additive manufacturing, how it's being used. And you recently visited with someone who has an axe to grind a blade display it related to shaving, right?

Julia Hider 

Yes, yes. So I visited Rob Glen. He is the cofounder of Maxwell June. It's a razor company like you just said. And the Maxwell June razor is a little bit different than a typical razor. So to explain how it works, I kind of need to give a little bit of background on the different types of razors and some of the pros and cons.

Peter Zelinski 

What got me interested in like why I want to explore this is because there's this thing we're seeing of of 3D printing, enabling the arrival of quirky little ideas, niche inventions, and Rob sounds like is an example of that. Okay, so tell us his thinking about razors.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, so like I said, I need to sort of explain the different types of razors to explain how the maximal June razor works. So normally, you have three kinds of razors, right, you have a disposable razor, which is just a one-piece plastic razor, and you throw the whole thing away when you're done using it. Then you have cartridge razors, which have a reusable handle and then the changeable head and the head gets thrown out when you're done using it and you can reuse the handle. So I'm going to sort of lump those two together. Because the pros and cons are the same. The pros are that they're designed to make shaving easier and cutting yourself harder. But the con is that they can be expensive, and the plastic ends up in a landfill when you're done using it. The third option is what's called a wet shaving system, which has a reasonable handle and head and it's just the blade that gets changed out. This is cheaper because the replacement double edge blades are much cheaper than a disposable razor or razor cartridge. And there's no plastic but the con is that they can be difficult to use apparently have to like hold the razor at a certain angle. And if you don't, it won't work or it could cut or irritate your skin. So there's sort of a learning curve to figuring out what that angle is and how to maintain it. Now the Maxwell June razor is designed to combine the environmental and cost benefits of a wet shaving system and the ease of use of the disposable and cartridge razors. And they do this by using a 3D printed plastic razor press that breaks a double edge blade and automatically loads it into the razor. So you get a twin bladed razor that's easy to use, but uses the cheap replacement double edge blades and doesn't have any disposable plastic parts. We have a video demonstrating how the press works. So we can post it along with this. So you can sort of see how it works.

Peter Zelinski 

Yeah, so that's that's the most about shaving we've ever gotten into on the AM Radio podcast. Would it work for like rugged stubble like this?

Julia Hider 

Yes, I'm sure it would.

Peter Zelinski 

So here's why this interests me. 3D printing is bringing these inventors to our attention and allowing products like this, like you'd have to have a pretty committed position about the economics and value of razor blades and shaving systems to to be a customer for this product. But there are enough people like that to support his bringing this idea out and see how many shavers like that he can find. And these are the types of inventions the types of consumer products that maybe we would never otherwise see if not for 3D printing. In one of the ways that 3D printing additive manufacturing is opening up the circle of manufacturing is through the inclusion of small-scale inventors like this, small-scale manufacturers who maybe become much bigger scale later after their idea catches on maybe catches on more than they thought. I think there are a lot of reasons why 3D printing and inventors as manufacturers connect. So like I want to try to talk that out and see if it fits what you found at Maxwell June.

Julia Hider

Yeah, let's do it.

Peter Zelinski

So one of them freedom from tooling don't need to make a mold and this is a whole thing. Because 3D printing is also an enabler to making tooling, and there's a whole other conversation, lots of conversations to be had about 3D printed tooling. But it's also true. If you're making plastic components, you don't face a mold moment with 3D printing, you can start producing parts, and you don't have to commit to tooling. You don't have to make an investment decision about, Okay, it's time to make a mold. Now it's time to lock in the design. Maybe that comes later. But with 3D printing, you can at least delay and maybe avoid that mold moment and just start manufacturing, full scale production and whatever scale is right in the early moments. Talk about that, does that fit?

Julia Hider 

Yeah, this is something that I talked with Rob about. And he said, there were several reasons that he didn't want to go down the path of mold tooling. First and foremost, he wanted the product to be made entirely in America. And American made mold tooling is expensive. And the cheaper option is to go to China, which is not an option if you want to make your product in America. So that was one reason, the first reason that he didn't want to use mold tooling for this product. This is also a startup company, and he wasn't ready for the high volumes that an injection mold would provide. And finally, like you said, Not using mold tooling enables him to make changes to the product, he says he's made a few subtle changes to the product so far, and some of them have been based on customer feedback that he wouldn't have been able to get without putting the product out there first.

Peter Zelinski 

Another advantage of 3D printing is that designing and part making kind of flow together and one becomes an enabler to the other, and producing parts 3D printing, what might be prototypes, or what might turn out to be the finished version, it is a way to explore the design space in a way to see what kinds of refinements might be needed. Just this freedom that 3D printing brings to iterate as you go, and even still be iterating. Somewhat when you think you've entered scale production. How about bad has he used 3D printing to kind of experiment with and refine his design?

Julia Hider 

Yeah, I mean, Rob is a product designer, that's his day job. So he has a lot of familiarity with product design, and using 3D printing in that context. But only as far as you know, prototyping goes, and this is the first time he's ever use it for scale production. So he talks about using 3D printing to create tooling that helps him while designing the razor press, it's crucial for the blade to break properly inside the press. And it was difficult to know or be able to simulate what was going on. So he was able to 3D print these tools that helped him sort of isolate the position and movement that needed to happen for the press to work correctly and consistently.

Peter Zelinski 

So isn't that interesting, difficult to simulate how the press would work. Like there's no practical way for someone like him to like in a CAD model, like model the operation of something like that.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, he said it would have been just as expensive and taken just as long to build a simulation as it was to just iterate it with the tools that he made.

Peter Zelinski 

So here's another 3D printing advantage when it comes to inventors, which is the freedom to be Nietzsche the freedom to target a very specific market. And so shaming is pretty universal among adults. But so we've seen even much niche ear markets than this. An example I'm thinking of the Dustram, we've covered this product, we did an early episode of the cool parts about this product, a guy named Jack King, he works in the construction trade. And he created this product invented this product for capturing the dust from a chipping hammer that is used to break up existing flooring when floorings being replaced. Works really well solved a problem he encountered in his work. It is a successful product, but very targeted potential customer base. But 3D printing made it possible for him to go to market with this. So another one I'm thinking of that we've covered is the Periscope case, the company that invented this, their name is DeFox. And all it does, it holds a mirror at a 45-degree angle to your phone's camera, allowing the camera to work while it's in a horizontal position. So you could strap it to things you can strap it to like remote controlled vehicles or drones for filming. Limited application may be limited number of people who see a need like this, but manufacturing through 3D printing allows this product to be made at just the right quantity, just the right quantity of customers that are found.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, I kind of touched on that as the benefit of not having mold tooling. Maxwell June wasn't ready for the quantities of injection molded tooling. So the fact that 3D printing is slower is kind of a benefit especially because you know Rob is printing all these parts in his design office in Chicago and there's not a lot of room for inventory.

Peter Zelinski 

I guess there's one other little advantage 3D printing for inventors worth touching on, which is the freedom to fail. There are products we've looked at that didn't take off, they were made through 3D printing, I'm thinking of one that comes to mind where the the inventor just found a different better opportunity and stop supporting a particular invention that they were trying to bring to market. And it's okay, like 3D printing allows that kind of freedom. I don't know if there's anything to say there about Maxwell June because I don't think he's gonna fail. But —

Julia Hider 

No, yeah. In fact, he's talking about scaling up. You know, he basically said that if everything is working out the way he thinks he can scale up until he runs out of room or power in the design office.

Peter Zelinski 

So yeah, let's talk about that. That's exactly where I want to go next. So he's producing he's, as you say, he was he was using 3D printing just as a design service up until now. Now, he's a manufacturer he's an example of this phenomenon of person with an idea becoming a manufacturer. Can we talk about how he's scaling up?

Julia Hider 

Yeah, let's do that after the break.

Peter Zelinski

All right.

Julia Hider

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. This 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 31st, 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 

Welcome back, we were talking about inventors. This episode is about inventors, for inventors, inventors using 3D printing to become manufacturers of their own product, among other things, taking advantage of the freedom to manufacture at a small scale first when a niche product is still finding its market. So Julia has an as an example, she just visited Maxwell June and they've got an idea about using razor blades more effectively a press that they 3D print that splits a blade and turns it into a multi blade shaving system. So Maxwell, June is manufacturing now they were a design firm up until this moment now they're our producer, so attach some numbers to that, like what does their manufacturing look like?

Julia Hider 

Yeah, so the way that Rob set this up, each printer can produce four razor presses per day. So he sets up the printer before he leaves office for the day. And they'll do three razor presses overnight. And then when he arrives in the morning, he unloads the machines sets them up, and they run one more razor press during the day, and then he unloads it and repeats again before he leaves the office.

Peter Zelinski 

How many printers is he using?

Julia Hider 

He has four printers that are dedicated to production right now. And he's running them about 25 days a month. So that adds up to 400 razor presses a month.

Peter Zelinski 

And they're desktop machines, aren't they?

Julia Hider 

Exactly. So that's something that I found really interesting about this story is that he had an Ultimaker 2+ and an Ultimaker 2+ Connect. And so he sort of referred to those as a prosumer level of printer where it's not, it's sort of a step above the hobbyist printers that you'll see it's fully enclosed, he got a lot of different, you know, optional features to go on it. But when I visited him, he was talking about wanting to test out a hobbyist level printer. So in between the visit and me writing the story, he got four Ender-3 V2s, and he's using three of the Ender-3s in production and one Ultimaker right now. So those are the four printers that he's using in production. And he wanted to test out the hobbyist printers before he started scaling up with the Ultimaker is because there's so much cheaper, we're talking like a few $100 versus a few $1,000 for a new printer. And that was a consideration for him as he was planning to scale up. And he knows that the under threes might require some modification or some more maintenance, but there's so much cheaper that he can just have redundant capacity to deal with that.

Peter Zelinski 

It's an excellent point. That's an interesting point about the kind of equipment that's used here. So Ultimaker it's a desktop size machine but we see that used in industrial facilities all the time. And in itself. It's an it's it's a an economical piece of equipment. But yeah, even small 3D printers that sort of 10 in the consumer direction in the hobbyist direction, the make functional parts. We're not talking about factory production equipment here we're talking about manufacturing in a different space and at a different level than that, but when you're at the the beginning level, like Maxwell June is at, like exploring whether equipment like that might let you make ongoing production of your components like you might discover the answer's yes. And that turns into a really cost-effective way to proceed.

Julia Hider 

When I spoke to him last, he said that it was going really well. So we'll have to check in with him later and see how that's going.

Peter Zelinski 

Okay, so he's sort of like tending these different 3D printers. He's setting them up harvesting parts, he's doing that every day. And that's what production looks like for him right now. And if his market grows, his production might look different than that. But he's sort of a picture of the way in that inventors could take, they don't have to invest in a mold yet. They don't have to contract with another manufacturer, they can start exploring the market start engaging with their market. So let's pretend we're inventors, because I hope inventors who are potential manufacturers are hearing this and they no doubt have questions. So you and I have just invented something. We've got this idea for podcasting microphones that are way better than these ones we're using right now. We're not sure that we're gonna start by making them through 3D printing. So as inventors like we are like, what kinds of questions about manufacturing through additive Do you think we might have?

Julia Hider 

Yeah, I think my first question would be What kind of 3D printing process are we going to use?

Peter Zelinski 

Yep. So we're talking about polymer parts, consumer products, like we'll just assume we're talking polymer. So there are some different choices there. So Rob, at Maxwell June, like what's the what's the 3D printing process he uses?

Julia Hider 

Yeah, he's using FDM, fused deposition modeling, or FFF, fused filament fabrication. And that's when the part is built up by thermoplastic being extruded through a nozzle onto a build plate.

Peter Zelinski 

So that is one way to 3D print with polymer. And that's the way that I think like most people who imagine 3D printing, that's what they're thinking of. There's also another potential desktop size 3D printer could be stereo lithography, stereo lithography, a laser moves through a vat of resin. So FDM, or FFF, like you just described, it's it's a nozzle moving through space and squeezing out stuff. And in stereolithography is a laser moving through a bat of polymer in a fluid form and solidifying it differences there in material options. That's, that's a whole other conversation. But suffice to say so stereolithography, it's it's more precise. And it has succeeded in, among other things, soft things that touch the body, like it gets used for hearing aids, it gets used for mouth guards, things like that.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, Rob, actually an excellent you. And he actually has a desktop SLA machine, and he was using it to print prototype razors. This whole project for him started off as an idea for an open-source razor, and he was using SLA to print that. And he actually got the idea for the razor press because it was really hard to load the blade into the SLA printed razor. But he found that it wasn't a good fit for, you know, production of the razor press because the parts needed to be clean when they came out of the resin and they needed to be baked. Whereas with a process like FDM, he can pull them right off the printer and start using them.

Peter Zelinski 

Okay, so there you go. And we're describing now two processes that are often used, particularly in desktop machines to make parts one at a time, or make small quantities of parts that are polymer options for larger scale production. And some of the inventors we've met have used them something like digital light processing, similar to stereo lithography, but it cures an entire layer all at once. Builds parts quickly that way. And Multi Jet Fusion were mentioned Dustram earlier, he uses Multi Jet Fusion machine to quickly produce those parts. And that's the polymer in a powder form. It gets bound together and cured in this like single quick process. So even a 3D printing, there are sort of options and ways to scale depending on how much volume you want to do initially.

Julia Hider 

I think that's a pretty good summary of the different types of processes that an inventor could use. But now I would be wondering about what are the drawbacks of using 3D printing? Yeah,

Peter Zelinski 

I wonder what Maxwell June thinks about that. It sounds like one of the drawbacks is every day he's got chores to do. He's got 3D printer chores of pulling parts off and setting up the next run of parts. Is that a big deal for him?

Julia Hider 

Actually, it doesn't seem to be a huge deal for him because of the way he designed the part for minimal post processing or no post processing like because this is a side business when he was designing the part he took the production process and the post processing into account. So on the razor price, there are no support structures to remove no Cleaning or sanding or anything, and he says it takes him about a minute and a half to remove the finished parts and set the machine up. And going a step further, he's even looking at ways to automate the machine tending. He describes sort of like a wiper blade or something that would be able to remove the parts from the build plate and get them into a box or something.

Peter Zelinski 

So we'll call that one drawback with an asterisk, the need to tend the machine because yeah, it actually does sound kind of satisfying the way he's set it up coming every day, like, oh, there's new finished parts for me. But there, there are real drawbacks to 3D printing compared to other manufacturing processes. It's slower. We talked about molding and the the chance to avoid mold tooling. But if you are using a process like molding, it's fast compared to 3D printing, we're gonna see I worked we're describing a number of parts per day at Maxwell June, he can count on both hands.

Julia Hider 

But again, like I mentioned earlier, maybe the fact that it's slower is a plus, maybe you're not ready for the high rates of injection molding, maybe you can't deal with the inventory, or you don't want to.

Peter Zelinski 

That's right, fast production means inventory piling up totally true. I'll reach for another drawback. But but there's a flip side of it, too, just like you said, it's the price per part is going to be higher than in molding. But you get the low cost per part if you're free to make lots and lots and lots with a mold tool that you've already paid for. His unit cost per part is high compared to a low volume part. But his unit cost per part is maybe is just right for the the production quantity that he's at. Here's another question that I think an inventor would have. You touched on it a little bit, but it's sort of like, how does becoming a manufacturer change or color your day to day?

Julia Hider 

Yeah, like I said, for Rob, because of all of the considerations he put into designing the part itself and the process. It doesn't take a whole lot of time out of his day. But depending on the type of part that you're making, or the way that you're making it, maybe it could be a huge change.

Peter Zelinski 

Jack King is the name of the guy who invented the Dustram I mentioned earlier in his day to day actually, it's sort of on some days, he becomes more of a manufacturer because he started using the 3D printing capacity. He got to provide that service to other manufacturers out maybe as far as I know, other inventors that he's met. So there is that starting to get good at manufacturing, you might get good enough to help other people.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, maybe in the future, we'll visit Maxwell June, and they'll be running a print farm that's printing razor presses and other things too.

Peter Zelinski 

Alright, so we've kind of talked around this. Can I make like a big picture broad point that I'm like, seeing as we talk about this? Yeah. So we work for a media company, right. And we worked for a company that was founded to be a publisher. And I just think about there is a democratization of manufacturing we're describing that is similar to what happened to Media and Communication, like we're in the studio. And if we walk out the door and take a few steps, we've got this big display hanging on the wall. And it's tooling that used to be used for communicating. It's all of these metal plates that were used to basically stamp out pages of the magazine back when it was produced that way and you you couldn't do mass communication, unless you had the tooling. And now we can do media without tooling. And there are all kinds of communicators out there. And there's not a hard line anymore between who's in media and and who's not. And what if manufacturing starts to look more like that.

Julia Hider 

Yeah, but at the same time, like you said, we work in a media company. So there's still a place for people to do this professionally. And I think there will still be a place for people to do dedicated manufacturing, you know, the jobs might look different than they did in the past. But I think there's a place for both.

Peter Zelinski 

That's right, that's right, so that the factories aren't going anywhere. But manufacturing gets bigger and expands what it can do. And now it includes these people who are kind of sort of manufacturers.

Julia Hider 

Alright, yeah, that sounds like a good place to wrap up our conversation.

Peter Zelinski 

All right, let's do it. So you've been listening to AM Radio. If you found us for the first time because you're thinking of 3D printing your own product, then learn a lot more about 3D printing, learn about additive manufacturing. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and yeah, sure, give us that five-star rating. It helps other people find the show other inventors

Julia Hider 

And if you invent a really cool product and you use 3D printing, you should definitely tell us about it so we can write about you and talk about you on the podcast.

Peter Zelinski 

Thanks for listening.

Julia Hider 

AM Radio is recorded with help from Austin Grogan. The show is edited by Alex Lytle and Stephanie Hendrixson. Our artwork is by Kate Bilberry. AM Radio and Additive Manufacturing Media are products of Gardner Business Media located in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Julia Hider. Thanks for listening