When Greg Morris was selected by his industry peers for induction into the TCT Hall of Fame six years ago, they did so in recognition of his influence and role in “helping to validate the entire metal 3D printing industry.”
This year, Morris, founder of Morris Technologies, one of the leading providers of specialist AM services in the 1990s, later acquired by GE Aviation in 2012, is this year being honoured with the coveted Innovator Award at the AMUG Conference. The first thing Morris says as he joins Todd Grimm on stage here in Chicago and acknowledges the significance of the accolade as a celebration of not an individual but teams that enabled them is: “You sure you want me to be here?”
Morris began his career right after college by joining the family business in the steel distribution industry in Cincinnati. The company was founded in 1850 and it’s believed it sold steel to the Wright brothers, not for their famous plane but for bicycles. The steel industry, as Morris tells it, is competitive and cyclical, and in the early ‘90s, the Morris family found itself at a pivotal moment, deciding whether to downsize, compete or sell. They ultimately decided to sell, and three years later in 1994, using seed money from his parents, Morris set up Morris Technologies.
“For any start-up, it’s rare that one stays true to exactly what it is [they say] they’re going to do,” Morris said, commenting on the need to shift when opportunity arises. “Without the flexibility to pivot, you might miss out on opportunities.”
Morris Technologies started out as a polymer technology provider, starting with a used SLA 250 3D printer from 3D Systems. The company later added the paper-based LOM technology as a way or 3D printing larger parts but after a couple of fires and questioning the integrity of the models it produced, decided it probably wasn’t the right technology. “Good concept but lasers and papers don’t always match,” Morris remarked. The company went on to invest in the larger SLA 500, a machine which last year’s Innovator Award recipient Diana Kalisz managed the development of.
In 2004, the big shift to metals happened after a meeting with Procter and Gamble. Morris Technologies had staffed some of its employees to run equipment at the consumer goods company’s Cincinnati-based technology centre where Morris was shown two mould inserts that had been 3D printed on an EOS M 250 system at P&G’s UK facility. That was it, the lightbulb went on, and shortly after visiting EOS and a couple of its automotive customers in Germany, Morris Technologies brought in what is believed to have been the first Direct Metal Laser Sintering system in North America.
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The company presumed it would be going after rapid moulding and tooling applications but was surprised to find demand coming from elsewhere. “The demand was not for moulds, it was really for direct parts,” Morris said. “Shows what we knew.” The company found several applications with GE, which was located close by, yet never sold a single DMLS part to P&G.
Morris Technologies pushed the M 250 as far as it could but soon learned it was limited by the materials it could process due to the C02 laser it operated with. Customers wanted Inconel and high alloy materials and so Morris invested in a second machine, an EOS M270, which had been developed in Europe primarily to run cobalt chrome for dental applications. It turned out to be incredibly useful, and so the team was faced with another opportunity: should it invest in more machines?
“This is either going to be something pretty neat or could be something where my partners never talk to me again!” Morris recalls of taking the risk to buy two more metals machines. “It turned out alright, fortunately.”
It wasn’t an easy road, Greg says, and the company was utilising much of its polymer capabilities to supplement its metals activity while it continued to grow. The team had to learn everything from the ground up, “all the crashes, all the build problems.” They even had a large box known as the ‘box of broken dreams’ where they would throw in failed prints and parts that didn’t work. But that was Morris Technologies’ education, and over time, they got smarter, and in 2012, GE Aviation came calling with an acquisition offer.
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Early power generation fuel nozzle design and the famous GE LEAP fuel nozzle
Morris Technologies had already began working with GE Aviation to demonstrate the possibilities of metal AM years prior. In 2007, Morris took a power generation fuel nozzle design and purposely printed a new version that had the ‘cool factor’ and would be impossible to cast or machine.
“We were really pioneering a technology and trying to explain to engineers how it benefits them, why should they care,” Morris explains. It made quite the impression but it was the famous GE LEAP fuel nozzle that really started to validate how powerful this technology could be. While the well-known image, which you may have seen publicised across presentation slides in the years since, was taken way before production (It’s actually the nozzle tip that was 3D printed as it wasn’t economically viable to print the whole thing, though Morris adds, “there is not a single voxel that was not highly engineered.”) this application remains, to this day, the poster child of series production metal 3D printing.
Throughout the conversation, Grimm shows several personal photos and asks for Morris’ reflections. The first is a photograph of Morris’ family: his wife and two daughters, the reason Morris decided to retire in 2018 to ensure he didn’t miss out on any of the big family moments. The second is a photograph taken on September 12th, 2001. As a volunteer firefighter, later an EMT and paramedic, Morris was part of the Ohio Task Force 1, which was deployed as part of an eight-day search and rescue effort in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Morris shares that one of his biggest regrets is not partaking in military service, and so he spent 20 years as a volunteer firefighter.
Morris retired from GE in 2018 but in 2020, founded advanced manufacturing service provider Vertex Manufacturing. Shortly after, the company was acquired by medical device start-up PrinterPrezz where Morris served as CTO before his retirement.
Morris was inducted into the TCT Hall of Fame in 2018 for his significant contributions to the AM industry through application development. Today, he believes there are plenty of applications still to be discovered. While he admits that he would have liked to have seen more metal applications on the market at this point, he concurs that high costs and qualification, particularly in industries like aerospace where additive has found a home, continue to be barriers. Yet, he is optimistic about the “tremendous opportunity that has started to develop and will continue to develop,” particularly around current global challenges and supply chain disruptions heightened by the pandemic, where additive can start to lay the groundwork and be ready for any big pivot the world may face next.
“There is a great need coming and we do not have the infrastructure in place yet to meet the demand that is going to be asked for,” Morris concludes. “I would like government and others start to prepare for this demand because you can’t just hit a switch.”
