Being an Engineer

S1E34 3D Printing: Plastic, Metal, and Composite | Tuan Tranpham

September 04, 2020 Tuan Tranpham
Being an Engineer
S1E34 3D Printing: Plastic, Metal, and Composite | Tuan Tranpham
Show Notes Transcript

Hear Taun’s firsthand account of escaping Vietnam as a refugee at the age of 6, landing in a Malaysian camp, then landing in Denmark where he lived for the next 20+ years. From Denmark Tuan came to the US via Intel during his semiconductor days, then quickly transitioned into the 3D printing space where he has spent the last 18 years of his career becoming an expert in plastic, metal, and composite 3D printing technologies. Tuan currently works for AREVO, where they have developed a 6-axis robotic process for “true” 3D printing of composite materials.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com 


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The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Aaron Moncur:

Welcome to the Being An Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Tuan Tranpham, who has been working in the 3D printing space for the past 17 years. In fact, he refers to himself as a 3D printing evangelist. Has a very interesting history before moving to the US in early 2000, but we'll get to that. Tuan currently holds the title of Chief Revenue Officer at AREVO, where they manufacture composite 3D printed components for everything from bikes to flying cars. So with that, Tuan, welcome to the podcast.

Tuan Tranpham:

Thank you so much, and thanks for having me. I'm super pleased to be here today.

Aaron Moncur:

Great, great. Well, well, let's, let's start at the beginning here. You have been in the US for about 20 years. But, but before that, you you were born in Vietnam, and you ended up emigrating to Denmark. Can you tell us a little bit about that, that transition?

Tuan Tranpham:

Sure. So back in. So my great grandfather is Chinese. So in the '79, there were a border dispute with China. And so therefore any Vietnamese with, especially with Chinese heritage, were not so popular. So I was part of the migration about a million Vietnamese escaped and left the Communism and Vietnam back in'79. And about half of them died due to pirates or stone. Big chunk, a big group went to Hong Kong and other big group went to Thailand. But a big chunk went to went straight south to Malaysia and the Malaysian Coast Guard just picked everybody up. Put us on four acre. It was an island, it's not a resort, it was an island that was supposed to fill 5000 Vietnamese boat refugee it ended up having 40,000 Vietnamese.

Aaron Moncur:

40,000 and this was all I mean, it was it was not like you were in a, a nice cruise ship or a yacht went to Malaysia. Right? You were I mean, I'm assuming packed into small boats, and you had to brave the sea and pirates, it sounds like? Do you remember much from that time?

Tuan Tranpham:

So I was barely six. I don't remember much besides what my parents told me, but remember, it's more than that, it is getting a seat on one of these rice boats. And it's not like you can tell people, 'Hey, you want to buy a boat, here's a shuttle to somewhere else?' No, it is all still, if you get caught by the police, you're going to jail.

Aaron Moncur:

Wow

Tuan Tranpham:

We have visitation camps and all that. But to get a seat, you have to sell everything. My parents sold everything to just to get the seat for us. And they had, I have two younger brother back then. But you saw all your life savings to get to see it and knowing that you might die by pirates or so. And if you're lucky and you permit to a tanker, you have to destroy your boat so that they by law have to rescue you. Otherwise, they are not obligated they can just sail on and not rescue you. So it's it's not that straightforward.

Aaron Moncur:

That is incredible. It really makes me grateful for the very comfortable life that I have enjoyed. Well, you spent some time in this camp in Malaysia and then ended up in Denmark where if I have my history right, you live for over 20 years. What, what did you do in Denmark?

Tuan Tranpham:

So, so we really want to go to the US. That was my that was all, all the Vietnamese because of the war, the Americans helped us out, I was born in Saigon, which is one German city, so everybody knew of the US and wanted to go. So you can imagine the waitlist is pretty long. Alternatively, we go to Australia. That was the other alternative. So we were hoping to go to the US, but my youngest brother had an ear infection and he knew he needed medical attention. And the Danes were like, 'Why don't you go to Denmark?' It's like, 'Where's Denmark?' But it turns out that that the waiting list to Denmark was much shorter. And it turns out to be awesome for a refugee because it's very socialistic. The government you pay more than 50% tax but free education, free dental health care, it almost pays to remain unemployed and getting a low paying job. So it's a really good country. I could be studying whatever I want to become as long as my grades were good. So it worked out well. So when I got there when I was 6. So we only end up in the camp Malaysian camp for six months. Some stayed for, for, for years. But so I grew up in Denmark, south of Copenhagen. So you can say that after 23 years done the schooling and high school and military service and got my business engineering degree some I'm very Danish in my mannerism, in the way I think, because I was brought up by the, amongst the, the Vikings, right? The Danes were one of the original, the Scandinavian don't know which and Viking so they're all every way. I was like, the only Asian kid in my class and around me, I have all these white blond Danes much taller than me. So I stood out.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, I can appreciate that I grew up in Hawaii, where I was the only white kid in the class. Everyone else was really Japanese, or Hawaiian, or Filipino. And then there was me that the Halili in the class, yeah, I can relate for sure. You mentioned growing up amongst the Danes, what, what kind of, what's the culture like, what's the mindset like there? What are some of the I don't know, mannerisms are things that you took from from growing up in that culture?

Tuan Tranpham:

Well, I will say I, I feel very blessed and thankful to have grown up in Denmark is a very good country, very socialistic, very caring, I remember is in the Danish blood, the Danish Viking, they'd like to travel, they like adventure. And they are considered., they have done a lot of Danida work, humanitarian services and support the hospitals, but both into Asia. So they have a lot of goodwill, good people, a good intention. They took a lot of refugees back in the 79-80s. And they were also very good at integrating them into the Danish society. So it was there were they even a buddy system for each refugee family, there was a buddy family of Danish, who volunteered

Aaron Moncur:

Really

Tuan Tranpham:

To integrate you. So my summer was spent in I thought I was being adopted, given away, but I was actually being part of the summer camp living in a Danish family. For the, for a few months of the summer to get into the Danish society. They eat dog bread, the rye bread, not the Paquette bad bread. So it was a good experience. It's very Scandinavian.

Aaron Moncur:

That's amazing. Wow, that's fantastic. Sounds like a truly terrific experience that you had there, given what you were coming from.

Tuan Tranpham:

So I also felt like I had to, I was always brought up to be very grateful. So also give back to society. So I did do military service, in case I needed to defend Denmark, and also did a voluntary National Guard for five years to keep my military skill sets. So I felt like I was giving back to society, who has been so good to me. So yeah, very good experience.

Aaron Moncur:

Absolutely.

Tuan Tranpham:

But then after a while, they have this, this gentle now, because something mentioned is a little bit socialistic. So that meant that they do not encourage you to be the best that you can be. So there is this, don't think you're better than your neighbor or try not to stand out. Did you know In Denmark, they don't celebrate award individual achievements. That is a big no, no is only group we do as a group. We don't celebrate that. So when I work for Danish company got acquired. In AD, I just joined a small semiconductor company. And for my team, we got acquired by Intel, for 1.25 billion in March 2000, before everything dropped, that was the biggest acquisition in tennis history impacted the profit from that sale, pink path to the government. Also, the country made a lot of money on that deal.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah

Tuan Tranpham:

So then I learned the American way of doing business, which is very different than the way of the Danish business environment and behavior where now the Americans do celebrate individual accomplishment. That was a big no no.

Aaron Moncur:

And and how did that sit with you when you saw these individual rewards from from the US? Did you think to yourself, oh, that's terrible. What are they doing? They shouldn't be celebrating individuals, or did you think,'Hmm, I like this. I'd like to experience more of that.'

Tuan Tranpham:

Yeah, so so there was a LinkedIn post I posted on July 4, that even during my high school years, I always had a dream that I might was to end up in America. So to answer your question with Intel only validated that they want you to be the best you can be, which is what I wanted. And I saw that opportunity that that could be my ticket for the next bull ride in this case is a plane ride to to to the US. And then I convince Intel to relocate me on a LNB an intra company transfer to do my American dream. So I convinced them to expand the business that they are acquired by Giga, that I could help the revenue growth in the US by relocating me to the US but they said on the condition that you will never ask us to sponsor your green card paper visa got over to the US, right once the only time I need to find another step, how do I get the citizenship. So one step at a time I got so I arrived, I was relocated November 2002. So I've been in use for 18 years, except for two years in Hong Kong. I've been based here in Boston, but my my original dream was to be in Silicon Valley. Being California it was three things it was having an all convertible see palm trees and live by the ocean and small place to sleep because I was going to work and become the best that I can be because the amount was a little bit too small upon for me to swim. And so when you are revenue when you come from nothing, you're not gonna be stopped by good enough. You want to see how far you can go. But luckily, by coincidence, I call it my accidental passion even though I, I started called export engineering to convert it to the US like business engineering. And we didn't even have a 3D printer back in 92 to 99. So I call 3D printing my accidental passion because my, it's always because of a girl. So I didn't

Aaron Moncur:

All great stories start with the girl right?

Tuan Tranpham:

And the girls studied at BU, so I had to come and had to be in Boston, but because of her, who's now my wife, her friend's friend happened to be the financial controller at Z Corp, which were the only two 3D printing company with a product below 100,000. And that was Z Corp and and that was how I got introduced to 3D printing by accident. And it was a way for me to stay in the US because they were then, I knew that Intel whenever sponsor me to become a citizen. So I had to jump anyway. And telecomm was going down over 2000, 2001, 2002. So 3D printing looked pretty cool. I fell in love with it. And they under condition that they will get me an H1B and sponsor my green card. Those are my condition. Yeah. And that's how I got my green card.

Aaron Moncur:

Fantastic. Well, you started at Z Corp, which was later acquired by I think 3D Systems, right?

Tuan Tranpham:

It's actually funny, it actually was acquired 2005 by a Danish company first.

Aaron Moncur:

Oh, interesting.

Tuan Tranpham:

They did wide format, 2D, wide format printing and scanning, context scanning. And they even did those for HP. So we were acquired by a Danish company, and they asked me to come back to Denmark. And I was not going to come back. I didn't do all this work to go back to Denmark. So I stay put, and stay true to Z Corp in this hostile takeover and didn't jump ship. And then later, the whole lot was acquired by 3D System in 2010, for 137 million when I jumped to 3D system and advise them to buy Z Corp.

Aaron Moncur:

Ah, so that that's how that happened. So you have some unique insight into 3D printing companies, and how they compete in the market. It seems to me like 3D printing has become so ubiquitous that it almost feels like a commodity these days. And I have to imagine it's really difficult for some of the smaller boutique, 3D printing service bureau companies to compete with these the big boys like, Proto Labs and Stratasys and 3D Systems. How, how are smaller 3D printing service bureaus competing with these larger companies? Or are they not are they just getting smushed right when they start their company?

Tuan Tranpham:

Yes, so so I've seen a lot last 17 years, but if you look at from a materials point of view, from plastic to composite, plastic for prototyping, composites for tooling and metals for manufacturing, then to answer your question in the early days. Plastic machine were very expensive. It's only the Boeing and Airbus tipic aerospace company could afford it. But as those technology those patent expired, the rise of Form Labs and Envision Tech and other more affordable, but high quality engineering, industrial grade material, then service bill to differentiate themselves, they had to move to a better material, more expensive material. Because the easier FDM extrusion pays or formulas, equipment that used to cost 100,000, you can get there for 4000. So it changed the market and democratize certain is certain application, especially prototyping, so the incumbent move on to tooling. And now we're moving over to metal and titanium and so forth. As prototyping is becoming more commodity, not tooling and manufacturing. Because when you do prototyping, when good enough is good enough, well more than a manufacturing, you need to do not one to 5000 different parts for manufacture, you need to do 1000 or one to five part and they have to be identical, they have to be high quality to avoid recalls and lawsuit. So the requirements is much more difficult. So while there are minimal players, to give you some idea when I entered into this industry, the whole industry was not even a billion evaluation the whole industry in 2003. And, and not until last year in 2019 data just past 10 billion. So it has a projection and direction to become a full grown $100 billion industry. And by my experience on my calculation, it should take us at least 70 to 20 years more. But that's okay. I'll be retired by that time. So I'm going to ride this wave. So

Aaron Moncur:

It's convertible with the palm trees, right?

Tuan Tranpham:

Yeah. So I wish that people have have advised me as an engineer that choose or technology, choose a career path in a technology that you can go with. And not to be selective and try to choose a growth. Of course there are risk but, but if you pick the right new technology like AI or machine learning automation, or whatever new technology you can think of, you could build a career on that. I guess that's what I've done deliberately. Because passion is also commitment. So I was committed to 3D printing. Therefore, now after 17 years, now I'm at my seventh 3D printing manufacturer. And and they're all the biggest one in the industry. So I'm really been riding this wave where most of the players you see today, like Carbon, Desktop Metal, HP, didn't weren't even on the map five years ago. So imagine

Aaron Moncur:

They thrive so fast.

Tuan Tranpham:

It's changing so fast. Imagine five years from now you have new players, I predict, like Google and Amazon and Apple would be in 3D printing. And they're not even on the map. So I'm excited about the future. And and it's been it's been a ride.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, I liked that you mentioned desktop metal, because they were one of the companies that which you work that I wanted to talk about a little bit. They of course, manufacturer 3D printers that print metal, something they do that I didn't realize was they also make a machine that rivals the mark forged machines which we use here at pipeline, and they print with continuous carbon fiber. I imagine you're familiar with MarkForged having worked at at Desktop Metal, what what are some of the differences between the desktop metal carbon fiber machine and the the MarkForged machines? Sure.

Tuan Tranpham:

And so I was the chief revenue officer at Desktop Metal, I joined September 2016. When it was with a valuation of 100 million. I was part of the team that grew to 1.5 billion, the initial focus of the company was to default high speed binder jetting. In addition to that, that was to address the production segment. For prototyping, it was an extrusion FDM process. But as we learn, so I left estimate of last year and join AREVO this march but what we learn is you as you get exposure to a lot of applications, sometimes metals is just overkill, you don't need metal and sometimes composite is is good enough. So to answer your question, the product that they later came was announced at formnext was called tm fiber. And it was really to take a novel existing technology with the automated fiber placement by tape that has already been used for 20 years, big white prepreg tape that you when you fly on planes, those planes, fuselage or wings were made by those tape. So you have these huge robots, a printer system for two, 3 million, and we'll put out this white tape. The heated up is like prepreg, with most likely a peak with some kind of aerospace graded carbon fiber. And it's spread out this tape is usually more than four or five inches wide, and then you have a compact compaction roller. And that's how you have the placement of the carbon fiber basically took that concept and miniaturize that. So you can call it a micro AFP. So basically, if you shrunk that down to a small table to three mm millimeter, you minute twice that and you can fit it on a FDM makeup art, typical extrusion and you have interchangeable head, you could have if you say you're printing a dish, you could have the perimeter based by the second hand which is a normal FDM like a makeup art or, or dimension, but the inside to have reinforcement, you could switch over to the micro AFP tape that is flat it is and you put that to reinforce in different direction, because carbon fiber, unlike metal is not isotropic meaning the same property XYZ is only directional. So it's all Right, right X and Y, not Z. So you need to mesh those layers. But gantry plays system you can do Z-string will always be the weakest because you're just putting tape on top of each other.

Aaron Moncur:

Sure. Yeah. Okay, so functionally it sounds like pretty similar to the MarkForged machines. MarkForged is, they have these strands.

Tuan Tranpham:

Instead of brown filament, it is. But most of them might for sales and success to my understanding has been the Onyx chop, a carbon fiber is not yet in use. And if you do continue will always be superior. But it depends on the application and your available budget, right?

Aaron Moncur:

Sure. Yeah. So MarkForged does have continuous carbon fiber as well. That's what we use a lot. And just, it doesn't even matter, MarkForged or Desktop Metal, the technology using continuous carbon fiber, I think is so valuable. I mean, we do mostly test fixtures and equipment. And we've used those printed parts as final deliverables for a lot of this stuff because the continuous carbon fiber makes the parts almost as strong as aluminum. They're really strong.

Tuan Tranpham:

Yep.

Aaron Moncur:

This is probably

Tuan Tranpham:

So. So I share your excitement by because for years to talk about plastic 3D printing, and then there was this big buzz of of metal 3D printing last five years, it was very clear to me people seem to neglect and in between composite, actually half depending on the application, you could make parts that are five times stronger, more than five times stronger than titanium, and a third of the weight. So if you want something lighter and stronger, there is a space for composites where people really don't understand or know that because the early days a composite not enough marketing dollars has been put into composite. And therefore you saw a lot of the I contributed a lot of the promotion and teaching and inspiring the market with carbon fiber is my forte, but but they will only known to be good for jigs and fixtures. They want it to be due in product, but in Parma be bigger than just a smaller bill envelope and they need something bigger.

Aaron Moncur:

Well this is a good place to take a quick pause and share with our listeners that the being an engineer podcast is powered by Pipeline Design & Engineering, where we work with predominantly medical device engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. And you can find us at testfixturedesign.com. We're speaking with Tuan Tranpham today who is truly an expert when it comes to 3D printing and probably has more experience with the technology than than anyone else that I've ever met. We started talking about metal 3D printing. And I've, I've always seen prices for metal 3D printing being relatively expensive, certainly a lot more than than the plastic 3D printing counterparts. Do you see that as being the case long term? Or should we expect for prices for for 3D printed metal parts to start coming down here in the next, I don't know, three, five years.

Tuan Tranpham:

Absolutely. And that's mainly going to be driven by a new print engine of metal binder jetting. Because what I've learned was that a customer would ideally learn a technology a system, a printing system, that they can leverage, not just for prototyping, but all the way to that learning to do a manufacturing. So what that's the metal had the metal FDM, which was extrusion bay's defining and centering, whatever you learn, you can only get the material property that you can on that system, you can transfer that knowledge to a binder jetting system, which is is not extrusion, and is not rod base, but is a part of that. So so therefore, that's why you saw this a metal saw that there is a need for an affordable metal bioenergetic system that could do prototyping tooling and manufacturing, instead of 600,000. A million, but get it down to 150. So once you do that, the joints your question, the the dominant metal technology today has been the last 20 years, six, seven years, 27 years has been laser part of that, but is laser bit so laser driven. So it is essentially hypertension micro welding layer by layer. So you can find by how quickly you can have your melt pool using your laser beam one, two, or four or more. But those are very expensive. So driving the cost down, doing indirect metal with metal binder jetting, and just print them good enough in the green stage, and just put him into a sintering furnace and doing batches. And this is to answer your question. This is when you have the financial justification of a tennis ball, moving costs of dollars per cubic and start to sense the cube. Because you're not using laser, you're literally just using metallic powder, and a binder. And a binder is mainly water with some kind of glue content. That's the secret sauce, when you can have the productivity and throughput. Your only constraint is now the sintering furnace. But then you do batches of much. So instead of 5-10 cubic inches in in bill rate, biogenic can get you up to four to five hundred cubic inches per hour.

Aaron Moncur:

And that technology exists now, right? I mean, they're actually in the middle

Tuan Tranpham:

It's actually been around for quite a long time to X one, they were the only player, but I don't know due to leadership due to marketing due to the lack of their own sintering furnace to complete the process to make a metal part. It the core competence of estimate is actually the sintering furnace, I will not be surprised, I predict a future where decimetre will be more famous for being a sintering furnace company than actually 3D printing company.

Aaron Moncur:

Interesting, okay, maybe they'll start selling their sintering furnaces to other metal 3D printing companies

Tuan Tranpham:

They could if they want to, because if you look at the entire industry, even with the dinosaurs of Stratasys, and 3D System, for the last 35 years, none of them have offered a sintering furnace. Nobody is offering that not even Swedish, digital metal or anybody else. So the furnace was the bottleneck that desktop metal sought to internalize because they somehow knew that that they could sell it out of printers. But unless the supply chain could fulfill and support it in furnace at affordable rate, instead of three, four or$500 per section furnace, unless you can bring that below 100,000 it can be a very expensive value proposition. So fixing that. Yeah, that's um, I could own the home market by just fulfilling certain furniture, all the players in the market today and in the future if they wanted to.

Aaron Moncur:

Interesting. Okay, well, your current role is with a company called AREVO, which is focused on composite manufacturing. And if I think I have this right on demand production environments. Can you share a little bit about the the technology that allows AREVO to serve as both on demand and production quantity customers?

Tuan Tranpham:

Sure. So before answering that, I will say so I spent the first 11 years of my career in plastic polymer 3D printing, and I got super excited about metal and I spent the next six years in metal with this Swedish art cam, and then there's a metal one when I thought about my next move, I realized that that's why I led made the commentary that between plastic and metal there was composite. And there was, I believe there's a growth potential if people knew about it. And as the technology progresses, that there could be more applications done with composites. So I joined, I was lucky, fortunate to join AREVO early March, just when pandemic hit the market where no, where there were now less jobs available. I was I was lucky to get a job starting March 1. So I joined AREVO as the reverse the chief revenue officer and that was said to be some I joined them was one is the people. And because they had six years to mature, the technology, I thought it was it was ready to be commercialized. And what I found fascinating is not only is it so basically it's a filament. But it's a prepreg, with half peak half aerospace graded as for. So it's 50-50 in fiber void content. So it's a pre prep, we had that filament, it goes to a six-axis robot arm, and through a deposition head, you have a laser source that heat the filament, you heat up the peak, at the same time you hitting the previous substrate, and then you have the deposition. And as you deposit the filament that you heat it up with the previous substrate, you have a compaction roller, that's push it together. So you have very strong Z, material property. So I thought robotics is part of the fourth industrial revolution, I thought composite could be stronger than metal and lighter. And, and what I learned from my 17 years of 3D printing is that the weakest link of 3D printing is basically hardware software materials. But looking at the process, but a software designing for additive or designing for the technology of the materials, the mid software was the weakest link. And most 3D printer manufacturers software was basically just a slice of your important kind of CAD, and you slice it up, and you just, it's just a dumb slicer, just doing the toolpath. But what the market really needs is a customer you nibbly need is, can I take my design? Can I do additive FEA analysis? Wouldn't it be nice that the software can do topology optimization, morph into a topology, optimized geometry, and then create virtually potential toolpath and then do a virtual simulation. Knowing all of this before you hit print, and then in print, there's only one company that can do that in the entire industry, and then it's only a river. So there's a metal might be the core competence might be of the many the sintering furnace, I will say AREVO is actually a software and not a robot entity

Aaron Moncur:

Oh, interesting. Can you share some of the parts that AREVO has helped customers redesign in composites that maybe historically had been produced with maybe casting or other more traditional manufacturing processes? And what was the value proposition for the customer moving to a 3D printed composite material?

Tuan Tranpham:

Sure. Are you a cyclist by chance? Do you like bicycle?

Aaron Moncur:

I have been in the past.

Tuan Tranpham:

So, so remember that the composite carbon fiber was already in 3D printing to a gantry FDM system, like MarkForged, any supreme 90 Labs, but they will confined by the smaller bill envelope. The river system is a robotic. Not only is a six axis robot, but with a rotating bill table. And that's awesome for we only offer continuous carbon fiber. So this is how you can do very oval unibody structure is perfect. So to answer your question, we explored making a bicycle a bike frame two years ago for Emery. The Emery bike was one of our first prototypes for making a 3D printed bike frame to see if we could do it. So to answer your question for the last many decades, when you want to buy a full carbon fiber bicycle from tracks, specialized pinarello those who don't buy manual layup have often three 400 patches of carbon fiber patches a weaves and then they were manually placed by a human and then they will usually thermal cells that need to go into an autoclave and often and then fuse it all together to make a strong frame. So manual labor sintering autoclaving. And there were a lot of challenges of making a strong robot frame because it could shatter because it just basically a lot of axix coming together. So we thought that doing using continuous carbon fiber for a unibody bike frame could be a killer app for AREVO. So we took it to the next level, learning from our early days of Emery by doing an E-scooter. The e-model that we showed as a marketing application, we decided to do a super slider bike, which we launched about 15 days ago on March 13, on Indiegogo. Because if we want to show the market that it can be done, we have to show them. So we design a bike within five, six weeks did a functional prototyping, we did a video, and we launched on an Indiegogo for half the cost instead of 4000, you can buy a fully 3D printed, customized to your size. For right now today's like more than 50% off, a 3D printed by unibody without the seat tube, there's no seat tube. Because we're using continued carbon fiber layer by layer. And we can choose the direction of that, we can bypass the seat tube. And also we can customize the hollowness inside the down tube to fit the battery. So whether you're back in our supersonic bike, or a bike, it looks identical and the outside is whether it has a battery inside or not. So it's the same. So basically you get an E-bike that doesn't look like an E-bike.

Aaron Moncur:

Now you you mentioned that the AREVO process for deposit in the fiber uses a six axis robotic arm. Is that right?

Tuan Tranpham:

Yep.

Aaron Moncur:

So does that mean that as opposed to traditional 3d printers where the printing head, it moves around in X, Y, and then it raises or lowers in Z? Does that mean that the AREVO process allows the printing head to have much more flexibility in terms of degrees of freedom, it's not just stepping up one layer at a time in the Z direction, but it can, you can move around in almost infinite directions. If it's a six axis robot?

Tuan Tranpham:

I can tell you an engineer because you, you're spot on. The AREVO system is actually true 3D. Like you said, we believe that all the FDM system, even smartphones is really two and a half D because the only difference is they still have again to X Y to move ahead and is only the bed can only go up and down in Z

Aaron Moncur:

Right

Tuan Tranpham:

So AREVO with a six axis robot, you can do true 3D, you can curve the head. So now the first few lines the bottom of this canoe that I'm showing you, you can have it XY like a gantry system, but then you can switch to do it oval, I can curve and if you want to because we've built rotating table we can actually print vertically on this side and then continue 90 degree on the other side. So we have true 3D mobility in our deposition. And this is how you get a superior not just XY string but XYZ string.

Aaron Moncur:

That is very cool. And I encourage all the listeners to go to the super strata website and there's some video of this printing head is really neat. I mean it's just like Tuan mentioned this this six axis robotic arm this laying down fiber very cool. Oh, shucks, I had a question and then I lost it. Well, Tuan, tell me what, what are some of the biggest challenges that you face in your industry?

Tuan Tranpham:

And I will say, if you look at what I've been trying to do, right is the last 17 years I've been trying to sell 3D printing system. But to really understand additive manufacturing, I face that all the software engineers were by education for the last many decades, they were educated for subtractive manufacturing. So it I learned that the younger engineers who might have seen a 3D printer during the college, technical college, the younger engineers are more open to newer technologies versus the previous generation, they only understood designing for casting or milling or machining subtractive technology. And they really don't get the little bit worried about what is all this additive. So there was this is related to why software is the weakest link because people don't understand additive manufacturing that you have this design freedom and you design your part definitely. You're no longer having all this waste by machining it or you can actually just deposit what you need. So it's a thought process so it's really active. My mind is ready swapping the way we think. And and I've learned that the getting started 3D printing most, most customers says that can you make this part that I've done subtractive labor the last two decades, can you do that additively? Well, this is a new technology is a new way you're not even leveraging all the benefits that come with a Newton, no longer confined by all these settings for subtractive. And layer by layer, you can do organic shapes you can do curve actually took the biggest contrast is I predict a future with additive manufacturing, that in your room, you look around all the products, you see they have edges. For additive, your home, your TV screen, it will have curve, a particular future where everything designed in us, they will no longer be edges because you have that design freedom. And now you can make to 3D printing organic shapes. So it will

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah

Tuan Tranpham:

The future will be more beautiful when there are no edges. That's why you see beautiful, beautiful cars. It's not like he evolved, above all you saw back in the '80s. Remember that?

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, yeah.

Tuan Tranpham:

Bad and all that? Now it is beautiful curve where there's no edges at all, especially not on a Tesla

Aaron Moncur:

That, that's a great way to put it, the future will be more beautiful. I love that. And I remember the other question I was going to ask. At AREVO, I think if I understand correctly, you can do small volume. I mean one off to off printed parts there. Is AREVO truly a 3D printing service bureau where just like Proto Labs, I could send a part and say, 'I'd like to get this printed,' and I get a quote back and I get it printed, I don't know, a week later, something like that?

Tuan Tranpham:

Yes, that that has been what AREVO has done all this time. But what I've done differently now is if you that's how you get started parts manufacturing, so but you now also have the option to bring it in house if you want to. So that's why we announced we going to build the largest composite print farm. We're going to start with 12 Aqua printers of ours to enable our technology to be used for bike frames for aerospace for automotive industry where they don't need to own the equipment, we will do it for them. So we are like Australia's direct manufacturing Red Eye, Proto Labs, we are a service provider. But you can grow with us you can you never need to buy any equipment. But should you want to you have the option to buy it later on. If you want to do secret stuff and you don't want your CAD file to leave your building you have ever had the option to purchase. So we start with this time this Christmas, we start with a dozen awkward pinches. We have chosen a location outside of hochiminh city which used to be called Saigon where I was born. We're going to start with 12 point we're going to grow that to 120 and beyond. So this will be all the parts you need not only for the parts being printed, 3D printed, but also if you need sanding, machining, assembly painting, we will offer beyond just 3D printing. And there are a lot of affordable skills or talent pool in Vietnam is a good alternative to China and Taiwan. So both the CEO and I, Sonny Wu and I. Sonny Wu was also the founder of Misfit wearables that was acquired by Fossil watch go for 260 million. We have an unfair advantage since both Sonny and I will both be enemies.

Aaron Moncur:

Unstoppable. So does that mean that customers or companies can purchase one of the 3D printing machines that AREVO manufacturers?

Tuan Tranpham:

Yeah, if they want to later on but we'll start doing whatever you need 1000 bike frame 10,000, 100,000. So we have the aspiration of think of Amazon AWS storage in the cloud, you don't care where those servers are based, how they maintain what kind of security you just pay storage on demand. So the AREVO manufacturing as a service is really capacity on demand. You tell us what you need and we will allocate resources according to your needs. So if you have the bike design that you have five different by design and you one is not doing so well, you can switch it overnight, and reduce your capacity and volume. And we will adjust accordingly. So you no longer have the, it's kind of like you see how we have all these ride sharing Uber or Airbnb. There will be a future that is happening where you just buy you only need the parts where we move all the concerns of getting operators site facilities site proving you don't have to worry about the equipment, we can take care of all this for you and you just pay for capacity. But at certain point when you have high enough volume, you might want to internalize it and to maximize it so you always have that option

Aaron Moncur:

It sounds like it sounds like a contract manufacturing facility

Tuan Tranpham:

It is

Aaron Moncur:

That is specific to this this new 3D, this truly 3D printing technology and then you mentioned that you'll be adding more traditional processes as well. That sounds very interesting and no tooling right? If you want to make a change to your production design you don't have to make a tooling change it's because it's it's additive not subtractive?

Tuan Tranpham:

Yeah, it would be the largest composites print farm service, service provider in the world for composites.

Aaron Moncur:

And what what kind of parts are a good fit for this technology? I mean, if I'm if I have a little plastic injection molded housing, is that a good fit or are these more like larger things like air foils, and an airplane and bicycle frames?

Tuan Tranpham:

Sure. And so we we have applications ranging over 10 different verticals from maybe gives you an idea from volume from a baseball to a bike frame. So as you, if I gave you the knowledge that a filament is less than three mm 2.8, if you have that filament is this tennis wall, the faster you can go over a big part from a tennis racket to pipe frame, there are more advantages in terms of using our technology. So we will probably justify the return on investment faster by medium to large part, but it ranges from aerospace fuselage components to non structural automotive parts to delivery drones. So basically, where metal is too expensive or too heavy, or too corrosive, you will move that over to composite even certain construction developer for building our hotels and offices. The cement and metal use for the reinforcement, the carbon fiber will be much lighter, and you can put it on demand on site, and it's not corrosive. So we are explaining many different verticals. But I will say for medium to large sizes, is going to be a sweet spot from volume from 1000s to tens of 1000s. But not millions. When you get to millions, maybe it makes more sense to use traditional available processes unless you have a design that cannot be printed any other way than additive.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay, that makes sense. Well, Tuan, thank you so much for for sharing all this has been fascinating listening to your your history and all the expertise you bring about the 3D printing field. If people want to get ahold of you, what's what's the best way for them to do that?

Tuan Tranpham:

And if they look up Tuan Tranpham on LinkedIn, that is my main media where I usually share five cool article or posting stories about 3D printing every day, for the last 13 years. So LinkedIn will be the best way.

Aaron Moncur:

Terrific. All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show.

Tuan Tranpham:

Thanks for having me. Have a great day.

Aaron Moncur:

I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com Thanks for listening.