The monolithic booth of Desktop Metal loomed over the proceedings at RAPID + TCT 2019, Carbon’s keynote was the talk of the town, Origin grabbed headlines, and Markforged impressed with their latest piece of machine learning software.
There’s one thing those four have in common: funding, and there seems to be a lot of that about - those four companies alone have received over one billion USD in less than a decade. Such is the prevalence of funding, I was asked to introduce a panel at RAPID + TCT moderated by Danny Piper, Mergers and Acquisitions Principal at NewCap Partners Inc., who discussed with the group the inner workings of venture capital investments.
Though you wouldn’t have guessed it from the questions from the audience, who used it as a Dragon’s Den / Shark Tank pitch, venture capital funding is not for everyone. Take Mike Littrell for instance; he’s been running CIDEAS Inc. - the renowned service bureau - for over two decades and three years ago began to pursue an in-house development - a new, 3D printing technology called WAV, via spin-off company Paxis.
“I’ve been acting as the angel fund,” says Mike on his open-sided, modest booth on the show floor in Detroit. “I know bringing WAV to market is going to cost more money than I can afford eventually. But it seems to me like people think, ‘I’ve got a start-up, so I’ve got to immediately get VC money.’ There doesn’t seem to be an old-school way where it’s like, ‘Okay, I’m going to mortgage my house, I’m going to risk everything I own, and I’m going to bust my ass, I’m going to make this work. And I’m going to understand my profitability and build my company up.’”
The public first heard of Paxis and the technology called Wave Applied Voxel (WAV) at RAPID + TCT 2017. For the last two years, Mike and his team have had their head buried in technology development.
“We’re trying to build it with a little team,” explained Mike. “We’re trying to get the foundation set before we start bringing in software engineers, hardware engineers and chemical engineers.”
This ‘slow-and-steady wins the race' approach is the way Mike has built the hugely successful CIDEAS with their cabinet chocked full of AMUG awards, and he’s passionate about doing a good job. At this year’s RAPID + TCT, we saw more parts from the WAV technology including one large print; a full-size surfboard, printed as one with a honeycomb infill, and just for the hell of it the team paused the print in the middle and changed the design by adding their logo. One part Mike was keen to show off was an FDM ABS part mounted inside the Paxis machine in which they 3D printed a silicone gasket directly onto:
Paxis BASF
BASF's photopolymer materials 'ULTRACUR3D' for advanced manufacturing applications qualify for early development access in new WAV technology.
“Not a lot of people think of it as sexy but that’s medical-grade silicone, it is not a material developed for 3D printing. Our machine is going to be capable of running multiple materials, building extremely large parts all with trapped volume not being a problem. Looking at it from an investment casting standpoint, WAV should be capable of building enormous investment casting masters that are devoid of resin where we can build the ceramic cores into the parts. That surf board, for example, cannot be built in any known photopolymer-based technology today in one piece. The proof of concept machine that made the surfboard had less than one litre of resin at any given time during the building process. Imagine one day, printing the entire wall of a house with embedded electronics and plumbing in one piece, on-site.”
The final point on the resin is often a pain-point in any large-scale SLA style process. One of the reasons the likes of the Mammoth machine from Materialise has never been commercialised is the sheer amount of, and therefore cost of, resin required.
Although the Paxis team has been experimenting with off-the-shelf resins, at RAPID + TCT the company announced its first official materials partnership, and it is a significant one, with BASF. In the press release, Arnaud Guedou, Business Director Photopolymer Solutions, BASF 3D Printing Solutions glowingly stated:
“The combination of BASF materials and Paxis’ system will revolutionise the way end-applications are designed, manufactured and integrated into production.” “Pairing innovative materials at the earliest stages of designing the WAV technology is critical to meeting the needs of end-users – that is, the commercial manufacturers. We are taking our time to build the right partnerships early in development stage so we can bring to market a turn-key solution for end-users. Future funding may take the VC path, or may take an alternative partnership from within, or outside, of the AM community. Our technology reaches beyond traditional AM processes which opens the door to alternative funding options,” added Mike.
During a lengthy conversation with Mike about how one takes the step from invention to business and how difficult it is to juggle a passion project like this and remain a sustainable employer to his staff, a magical movie moment happened. Like Yoda appearing in the mist to offer Luke some wise words, Scott Crump - the inventor of FDM technology stepped - into the booth.
Scott was unaware that I was conducting an interview and therefore I won’t disclose what he said. Needless to say, Mike had a ton of questions. Mike was able to reel off facts and figures about the history of the TCT Hall of Famer gleaned from the fireside chat between Scott and Todd Grimm at AMUG 2016. It was all the information Scott divulged about starting a business and what it took to launch FDM that stuck with Mike:
“It took $50 million to bring FDM to market, and that was in 1985, that talk was inspirational, I realised we can do this but we’ve got to always keep costs in mind.”
After the divine intervention, Mike continued to ponder what he’d do if the kind of VC investment we’ve seen elsewhere did come his way.
“My booth would still look like this,” he says - even in his dreams, he’s grounded.
