A day in the life of... an Application Engineer

TCT's 'A Day in the Life of...' series has been primarily launched for college and university alumni to better understand what career opportunities in additive manufacturing (AM) are available to them. Throughout the series, TCT will spend time with a host of AM professionals to communicate what their day-to-day tasks are, what kinds of teams they work within, what they have learnt on the job, and how they got to where they are today. In this instalment, Lithoz's Christian Mendieta Terán explains the role of an Application Engineer.  

Christian Mendieta Terán is peering through a yellow window of a 1.78m high machine, pointing up at the build plate that will soon dip down into the slurry where it is exposed to visible blue light from below. This process will repeat for a few hours before leaving behind a three-dimensional green part, which will then go through thermal post-processing, debinding and sintering.

An Application Engineer for Lithoz for several years by now, Christian knows this process like the back of his hand. He stands in a Lithoz showroom in the centre of Vienna, but his usual base is across town; this facility is instead used to host partners, prospects, and press. A row of Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing (LCM) 3D printers are queued up against the wall, with printed samples laid out on a benchtop and a meeting room located at the back of the facility.

It is between printers and benchtop where Christian is effectively retracing the steps of a typical day at work – if one of those even exists.

The role of an application engineer is effectively to solve problems. And because of the wide range of application potential with 3D printing technology, that can vary on a day to day basis, even an hour to hour basis. Christian will likely be spinning several plates as he and his colleagues work across multiple projects with multiple clients in multiple industries.

“We try to support our potential and existing customers to get an application or a function of the parts that wish using our technology,” Christian explains. “So, it’s helping them to get into serial production or optimise what their requirements are.”

Q. What’s the best thing about your job?

CMT: We get to be creative. We're not really fixed on descriptive tasks like in serial production where it's just doing and not thinking. This way, we have to think a lot, many times, to be creative, to try to solve challenges, to try to get new ideas.

A TYPICAL DAY

The most typical day Christian can think of starts with a routine email check to see if there’s any important requests to take care of immediately. Next, it’s time to cast an eye over the print jobs that have been running overnight to make sure everything has ran smoothly. If a print job has gone to plan, then the post-processing steps kick in, before inspections are carried out and the part is taken to the relevant meeting. These meetings could include internal or external colleagues, with the Lithoz application development team regularly printing samples for marketing and prototype iterations for customers.

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Christian and his team might also need to make reports on the parts that have been printed, to be sent via email with attached images, for colleagues and clients to digest, while they will also be responsible for how parts are packed and stacked to survive their trips to customers in far-flung places.

In dealing with customers, application engineers need to be effective communicators and arguably even better listeners. Some customers Christian has worked with have had zero prior knowledge of 3D printing, or zero prior knowledge of ceramics, and in some cases zero prior knowledge of either. That has meant he has had to be transparent about the capabilities and limitations of the technology and the materials, while also taking on information relevant to the parts being discussed.

“We have to communicate, inform and show [what 3D printing can do]. Let’s say there is some part geometry that the customer wishes to produce, we help and support. We [do the same] with which kind of material is better suited for their part and function. That’s why we have to communicate with them. We also need to know what do they want? What do they need? What is this part for?”

As the day goes on, Christian is likely to hear from the materials development team, who will want to regularly test their new formulations – first with cylinders and bars, and later with more complex geometries.

Not experts in the field, we’re experts in the tech, so we work across industries. Better to mix everything in case somebody is sick or on holiday, the work can continue. The services team may pop in to implement updates and fixes to machinery when a bug has been found on another system elsewhere, while marketing will be in touch in the run up to an industry event as new samples need printing.

Q. Why should somebody want to work in this industry?

CMT: Because it's extremely interesting. You get this nice feeling when you see that everything is working or when you see the results. Satisfaction. An example could be these last two days on the conferences, on the first day, on most of the presentations, and many of the pictures and the results that they were showing, there was always one part that we produced in our department.

THE ROLE BEYOND THE TITLE

Though the role of application engineer may seem self-explanatory, there is much more to the role than meets the eye. Christian isn’t only engaged when a customer is on board and trying to find the best part to target with 3D printing, he’s also crucial in providing guidance to prospective customers alongside the Lithoz sales team. On bigger projects with existing customers, Christian might be required to present the progress being made during status meetings too, while he is often sharing his wisdom around how the machine works through advanced training initiatives tailored to each customer.

The work that wouldn’t have featured on the job description for this role includes answering the calls from the marketing department during event season. With trade fairs and conferences coming thick and fast, the application development team is often having to think and think again about how Lithoz can best demonstrate its capabilities with technical demonstration components. Christian is also likely to lend the materials development team a helping hand when they need CAD support.  

Q. What have you learned working this job?

CMT: Because it's a new technology, I actually learn a lot every day. As new materials, new features are always being developed, we never stop learning here. We're always learning, innovating, changing. We're always trying to see where the limits are.

THE PATHWAY

“What we do [at Lithoz] is not something that you learn in most universities, it’s not something where you find a lot of literature. There are some professors, of course, that have specific lectures, but there’s not something that is already standardised or focused because we’re still making new things the whole time. So, we learn here.”

Although one might be forgiven for being fed up of education by the time it comes to enter the world of work, don’t let anyone convince you the learning ends there. For Christian and his rather niche role in the world of ceramics 3D printing, it’s where the learning really began.

Q. If you could give your younger self some advice, what would it be?

CMT: To learn more about materials, learn more about chemistry because I always tried to escape that.

Before Lithoz, Christian studied for a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering in Mexico at Universidad Tecnológica de México. He then moved to Austria to undertake a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Technische Universität Wien, where he was first introduced to ceramics – albeit only at a basic level in a select few lectures. Through both degrees, the materials Christian’s lectures were focusing on were much likely to be polymers, metals, composites and concrete than ceramics, but it all amounted to a good foundational knowledge when Christian wound up at Lithoz shortly after completing his Master’s degree.

“We don’t have a specific background for this, but they do need some technical background or technical base. In this case, for an application engineer, you also have to be willing to get dirty because we work with machines, we work with materials. We need to do that and to want to do that.”

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