Tokyo, January 2020.
A University of Texas professor finds himself in the company of someone he had never met before, someone he had never known before, but who he owed thanks to for his help years earlier.
For the man on the other end of the handshake, it’s something he’s quite used to.
Leuven, January 1994.
An electro-mechanical engineering and computer science graduate walks through the doors of a start-up, his first full-time gig, to man a stereolithography machine and engineer a software platform that many have since referred to as the backbone of an industry.
Just the 12th person to have been hired by Materialise four years after it was founded, Jo Anseeuw is now among more than 2,200 global employees. He first was responsible for maintenance of the company’s single SLA 250 platform, before moving over to software to help programme Magics for nine years, and then agreeing to lead efforts in a country that has always fascinated him; a country that he believes is primed to become a leader in additive manufacturing.
Indeed, the occasion in which the Managing Director of Materialise Japan encountered the Texan academic was a University of Tokyo symposium designed to help further Japan’s implementation of 3D printing technology. Anseeuw has been working with companies in Japan since he first started at Materialise; adopting 3D printing for rapid prototyping happened almost as quickly here than it did in Europe and North America. Talk of applying it for end-use components, though, is sparser than in the Western world, but Anseeuw assesses a culture of hesitance and patience rather than reluctance.
In some respects, that we’re even asking the question about manufacturing parts shows how far the technology has come. In others, it shows how much still needs to be done. Anseeuw offers a barometer.
“I had to explain what I did for a living until five years ago. Now, everybody knows what it is. A lot of misconceptions, but at least people know what you’re talking about.
"In the [90s], we had a limited number of tools. In one of the first Magics [versions], we had no support generation, we had to fix files in 2D, layer by layer, and we even had to close down the software because there were memory leaks. In that sense, a lot has changed. Things have improved tremendously.”
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Materialise 1st_stereolithography_machine
Materialise's first stereolithography machine.
Magics, the product Anseeuw is so proud to have helped build and the subject of conversation that had his fellow symposium delegate so thankful, has now been updated annually for 24 years. The name for the product is actually an acronym – Materialise Automated Generation of Interactive Controller of Supports – and its purpose has always been to prepare data and build files while remaining technology agnostic. Today, users enjoy the ability to analyse wall thicknesses; repair flipped triangles, bad edges and holes; and view slices and detect collisions. The absence of this kind of functionality in the industry’s early days caused a lot of frustration for additive users.
“We had a lot of failing parts at that time,” Anseeuw recalls. “In the beginning, with the CAD packages, you had to have a closed STL file, it had to be watertight. And you would have many cases where there were gaps, so you’re missing triangles, and when you’re slicing the files in layers, the line that describes the contour was not closed. That meant that the hatching in the middle went everywhere, for example, if your algorithm wasn’t good. It also happened that the triangles would overlap and then the hatching algorithm wouldn’t know what to do – should it hatch inside or hatch outside? What would happen is that one layer would be perfectly closed and the next layer, because of one small error, would be overlapping. So, the layer on top would fail and your part, you had to throw it away. It was a mess, very challenging, but really cool when something came out of it.”
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Desk lamp inner reflector prototype produced by Materialise in the 1990s.
Desk lamp inner reflector prototype produced by Materialise in the 1990s.
Anseeuw remembers there were irritations with the machines too – small build volumes, issues with the lasers and disparity in the surface quality on the top and bottom of parts - while the nascence of PCs and their computing power didn’t help either.
“This is before Toy Story,” he analogises. “You have to see that, at that time, putting something in 3D on a computer was amazing. The PCs were not powerful, we were working with DOS, Windows wasn’t developed yet and we had special extenders to have more memory. So, [tasks like] visualisation were tougher than it is now.”
Coding of the Magics software began almost immediately after the founding of Materialise by CEO Fried Vancraen. Much of the early work was done by current Executive Vice President Johan Pauwels, with Anseeuw being deployed on the project closer to commercialisation in the mid-‘90s. As computing technology improved gradually, so did Materialise’s software. Visualisation was enabled - albeit slowly - automatic support generation was added, but since fixing capabilities were still a few years away, STL files had to be perfect for parts to print successfully.
With much of the tech still limited, there remained a lack of willing adopters of 3D printing, which meant innovation tended to happened slowly. Luckily for Pauwels, Anseeuw and co, Materialise also ran a service bureau within the same facility, using stereolithography to supply prototypes to industries like automotive. This allowed Materialise to not only develop functionality in anticipation of issues arising in the builds of parts but in reaction to the internal struggles of their colleagues. New functions would usually be engineered within a few days, sometimes within hours, for the service team to again put into practice. No other software vendor at the time had that benefit.
“The advantage we had is we were not just a software compare thinking theoretically,” Anseeuw says. “Some called it our kitchen as we could experiment with our ingredients. If you made something and it failed, you get the phone call in the morning from the guy who used the machine. You would get immediate [feedback], you could see what happened and you could solve it easily because we were so close to the user. That made a big difference.”
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Materialise software team 1995
Materialise's software team pictured in 1995. Jo Anseeuw is second from the right.
This dialogue between service and product departments continues to this day and is further supplemented by Materialise’s play in the medical sector, as well as customer relations in a variety of other markets and close ties with a number of machine vendors. The company has also consistently believed in remaining agnostic, supporting all the different 3D printing processes that have emerged, and linking with traditional manufacturing software packages too.
Anseeuw believes recognising that most manufacturers, if not all, want to house several machines offering different technical capabilities and be able to integrate software products to power this production capacity, has ‘given Materialise an edge’ as additive embarks on a steady transition from a solely prototyping tool to a potential means for production. “The customer wants an open ecosystem, they don't want to have six software packages from different vendors, so if you want to get to manufacturing you have to be open,” he emphasises.
"Once something works, Japanese companies can roll it out in a very systematic, very profound way."
That Materialise stayed true to this ethos is down to the man who founded the company; the man who, Anseeuw says, has created a culture that has not only seen him remain an employee for 20+ years but CTO Bart Van der Schueren and Pauwels, among others, as well.
“I think a lot of people stay very long in Materialise because of Fried; because he had a really strong vision. From the beginning, he said, ‘no, we have to be open.’ If he had made a choice [to partner] with one of the [early machine vendors], maybe the story would have been different. But he said, ‘no, this is the right way to go’, and he was right.”
While rapid prototyping was what made up much of the service bureaus’ workload, they were beginning to see the potential application of 3D printing for rapid tooling when they exercised some ambition. Anseeuw says Materialise has never been overly-optimistic as to the ability of 3D printing, even at the peak of the hype ten years ago – “Luckily, we never went with the hype. We’re realistic with that because you can’t win, only lose.” – but Vancraen was looking beyond the parts he could see in his production facility. In 1994, in fact, he had identified surgical guides in the dental and medical spaces as an application which would be suitable in the future. Fast forward 20 years, Materialise is collaborating with companies to enable patient-specific surgical guides and has also received FDA clearance to develop 3D printed surgical guides for radius and ulna osteotomies.
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Materialise CEO Fried Vancraen.
Early photo of Materialise CEO Fried Vancraen with a 3D printed skull.
There were likely more end-use applications in his sights, hence his adamance in remaining open, knowing it would mean the manufacturers most likely to be able to achieve production application would also be more likely to adopt his technology. Less than six months ago, when it was announced Materialise’s Streamics AM management system, as well as Magics, is being implemented by Avio Aero to help additively manufacture turbine blades for the GE9X engine, he was further validated. Among the most important benefits of using Materialise technology for this application, according to Avio’s Additive Leader Danila Marco, is ‘the ability to directly connect our 3D printing machines to our SAP production planning tool.’
“Fried knows what he’s talking about,” Anseeuw sums up.
This confidence in his boss – plus a fascination since childhood – led Anseeuw not to think twice when the opportunity to move to Yokohama to help build the Materialise brand in Japan arose in 2003. His enthralment with Japan and its culture saw a young Anseeuw save up the money he earned in the summer to buy a kimono and has seen an older Anseeuw become the first foreign board member of the Japanese Armour Society - and an author on the subject too.
Materialise CEO Fried Vancraen inducted into TCT Hall of Fame
In his professional life, he directs a team of around 25 people, made up of software sales, technical support and a medical team who work with local healthcare companies to manufacture surgical guides and medical models. This year will be Materialise’s 20th in Japan and Anseeuw’s 17th since leaving Vancraen, Van der Schueren and Pauwels behind in Leuven. Despite now being on the other side of the world, they are in regular contact, with Vancraen making frequent visits to the site in Yokohama.
“He knows what we do,” Anseeuw says. “We’re 2,200 people now and in many companies, the CEO doesn’t really know what’s happening [everywhere] but Fried knows very well. He knows what the projects are. Maybe he doesn’t remember all the names of the people in my office, for example, but if somebody has done something, and a year later he comes back, he still remembers. He’s business, but he’s also very technical.”
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Materialise Japan team in 2010. Jo Anseeuw is bottom row, third from right.
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Materialise booth at the DMS Show in Japan, June 2014. This photo was taken a few days before Materialise announced its Nasdaq IPO.
In the instance of Materialise’s expansion into Japan, Vancraen’s technical knowledge and his business acumen combined to pursue a market that, with one of the largest economies in the world and a history in automotive and electronics manufacturing, ought to one day become a leading additive manufacturing region. On top of that, one of the first users of Materialise’s prototyping services was a Japanese customer, wanting to validate the design of a new cover for a professional camera. This was the very first 3D printed part Anseeuw designed.
It has such always been an important country for Materialise, and important also for the company to establish itself there early. Despite its industrial prowess, things move slowly here. The Japanese are big on trust, which has to be built over many years; are competitive to the point that the few end-use case studies Anseeuw is aware of, no company is prepared to talk freely about them; and amongst all that, are sticklers for absolute quality and repeatability.
“Being here for a long time, I understand that they want [3D printing technology to be] perfect. They want to make sure it works,” Anseeuw explains. “While in Europe and America, we try something, if it doesn’t work that’s fine, we’ll work on that, but here they want to make sure it works. You need to have a lot of patience, but once something works, they can roll it out in a very systematic, very profound way.
“I have a lot of trust in these companies that it will happen. It’s slow, yes, but I know that several big companies are working on research projects related to 3D printing. They’re all highly confidential and they don’t want to show it off until it’s ready, but I think once these companies [are ready], things will move faster.”
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Magics 24 Materialise
Inside Materialise's latest Magics release.
Materialise’s role is to help facilitate that acceleration. Anseeuw is a regular participant in and visitor to conferences and trade shows, while the staff in his office are working close to customers every day to deliver the tools and services they require to produce parts with 3D printing technology. He believes the company, as well as its peers - the likes of Autodesk, EOS and BASF all of whom are growing their play in the Japanese market - need to help change the mindset of trained professionals, explain the benefits of the technology and the importance of designing for the process. Anseeuw also emphasises the need for improvements in the technology, offering automation and connectivity capabilities as examples, and highlights ubiquitous production applications that can be communicated, like 3D printed hearing aids, to provide inspiration.
There is much work to do in Japan for its engineers and manufacturers to take full advantage of 3D printing technology. There is all over the globe. Materialise, as it has now for three decades, is vying to facilitate that. The strides made in that time give people like Anseeuw belief that they can. It’s exactly why the man who was employee number 12 at a small Leuven-based business has stuck around to see the appointment of the 2,200th member of staff at an international leader of its industry.
“I want to be able, in 10, 20 years, to look back and say, ‘we were there when it happened, and we made a difference’. Right now, the challenge is to go to manufacturing and that’s exciting because, in my eyes, you can make a difference now. That’s not something you can do with every industry.”
