Merit3D
Taking the reins of an industrial vacuum manufacturing business established in the late 1980s, Spencer Loveless was at a crossroads.
Father Mike, who founded Dustless Technologies, had passed away. Mum Colleen, who helped to run the company, was stepping back into retirement. And Spencer had the responsibility of moving the business forward. His father had engineered a vacuum initially to address the nuisance that was cleaning out a coal- and wood-burning fireplace, but soon expanded into industry. As Spencer took over, he was never perturbed by the ash, dust and slurry that needed hoovering up from a myriad of industrial settings, but instead with how the equipment was manufactured.
“I don’t like, almost hate, injection moulding,” Spencer tells TCT, “because every time a customer says, ‘Can you change this vacuum? Can you add a handle on top? Can you make this part bigger?’ The answer is always no even if their idea was great and made sense.”
Though the company manufactured its systems through conventional means, it had been prototyping with a Stratasys 3D printer since 2006. It was seeing the agility this added to product development that led Spencer to foster a mindset of continuous improvement.
In 2020, he founded Merit3D, harnessing 3D printing to make parts in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions.
“We have to find how [to] benefit the customer,” Spencer says. “How is that manufacturer going to bypass overseas suppliers? How are they going to be very agile? How are we going to change the future?”
Posing those questions, an Abraham Lincoln quote comes to Spencer’s mind. ‘The best way to predict the future is to make it.’ Spencer, then, has been determined to prove additive really can be used to make the future, doing so in a way not many people project.
In May, the company announced an order for one million hanger components which connect two epoxy tubes to a mixer nozzle. But getting there hasn’t been without its challenges. Merit3D’s first order was for 1,000 phone cases. It took 30 days to complete, with Spencer
describing the process as ‘brutal’. But his team got better. Last year, Merit3D received orders for multiple batches of binocular tethers. A first order of 5,000 soon grew to an order of 60,000. Feeling confident, Spencer pushed his team to additively manufacture the components in a single day, despite a typical turnaround time being closer to two weeks.
All the stars – materials, machines, people power – had to align, but Merit3D proved it could be done. To go at such a pace every day would not be sustainable without automation at the back end to cycle the parts through post-curing, but when Adhesive Technology Corporation came with a demand for its epoxy product hangers, Merit3D was not deterred.
Adhesive Technology turned to Merit3D in response to supply chain issues. Harnessing a fleet of Photocentric LC Magna machines, with their 510 x 280 x 350 mm build volumes, and a set of approved materials (including BASF’s durable Ultracur EPD 1006 material), Merit3D can print 400 parts per 225-minute build, delivering 40,000 units a week. At 30,000 pieces, Merit3D implemented its first significant but subtle design changes. It did another at 100,000 pieces, and another is set for when they reach 500,000 pieces.
It is this continuous improvement that makes it more affordable for Merit3D to additively manufacture the hanger parts rather than injection mould them, and also helped to increase the initial order from around 600,000 units to one million.
“Having the customer back AM is key,” Spencer says. “Good enough should happen but you should always have a continuous improvement mindset.”
Merit3D does, not just of the application, but the processes that facilitate it. As the company powers its way through tens of thousands of units a week, it has learned more about what it takes to manufacture at those numbers, post-process at those numbers and control quality at those numbers. Automating post-processing is now a focus, as is traceability, as is the evolving design of the parts. Merit3D is fighting to prove additive as an option for high-volume manufacturing, and has been now for three years.
“Within a week, we had a first design, we gave it to them, and it broke,” Spencer explains of the one-million-part order. “And they’re like, ‘it doesn’t work for our application’ – which we hear every single day – and we said, ‘wait, wait, wait, just give us another chance. Tell us some of your more in-depth design parameters, what do you need this thing to do, how do you test it?’ It took that moment of, ‘hey, just give us a chance, let’s figure this out.’”
