"You can start with nothing and get to scale" — The Rise of New Manufacturers

In this conversation, Const Ivanov (DigiFabster) and Raymond Weitekamp (Polyspectra) discuss the launch of Core Zero, a new resin by Polyspectra, and its implications for the 3D printing and additive manufacturing industries. They explore the role of Kickstarter in funding innovative manufacturing projects, the transformation of 3D printing into a viable production method, and the rise of prosumer manufacturing. The discussion also touches on the importance of local manufacturing, the challenges faced by U.S. manufacturing in the wake of COVID-19, and the potential for customization in various industries. Ultimately, they emphasize the accessibility of manufacturing tools and the need for a resilient supply chain.

Takeaways:

Core Zero represents a significant advancement in resin technology for 3D printing.
Kickstarter serves as a vital platform for funding and validating new manufacturing ideas.
The transition from 3D printing to additive manufacturing is crucial for commercial viability.
Prosumer manufacturing is on the rise, allowing individuals to create and sell products.
Automation is key to making small-scale production feasible and efficient.
Local manufacturing can foster pride and economic growth in communities.
The fragility of supply chains was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are untapped niches in manufacturing that can be explored beyond traditional sectors.
Customization is becoming increasingly important in consumer products.
The tools for manufacturing are more accessible than ever, enabling innovation.

00:00 Introduction to Core Zero and Polyspectra
02:39 The Evolution of 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing
05:08 Kickstarter as a Platform for Innovation
07:33 The Rise of Prosumer Manufacturing
10:15 The Future of Manufacturing in the US
12:42 The Role of Automation in Manufacturing
15:28 Lessons from SpaceX and Used Equipment
18:07 The Importance of Local Manufacturing
20:34 Conclusion and Future Outlook
28:10 Iterative Design and Prototyping
29:58 Accelerating the Manufacturing Process
32:02 Empowering Young Innovators
33:42 Automation and Business Discipline

Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone. That's another episode of the Our Customer Highlights and also I just podcast with great people in manufacturing. So I have Raymond from Polyspectra with me today. Hi Raymond. Hey, thanks for having me. Absolutely, absolutely. So you have a lot of exciting stuff going on, I guess, with your new project, with your new material invention. yeah, share more with us about that. Sure, yeah. Right now we're in the middle of a month-long Kickstarter launch of a new resin called Core Zero, which for us has been 4,000 days in the making. And we're a materials company founded on some new chemistry that I invented when I was getting my PhD at Caltech. you know, for folks listening, don't know, materials take a long time. so, you know, I, about 10 years ago, one of my mentors told me, you know, hey, you know, it takes 10 years to bring a new material to market. And I thought, yeah, I'm, you know, I got this. I could do it in five, no problem. And in some ways we did in the early introductions, but you know, now it's, now it's basically been 10 years. So it's been a fun ride and Yeah, the main thing for us with Core Zero that's kind of different is, you know, all of our products are very focused on like high performance, high working temperature, chemical stability, durability, weathering, ductility, you know, all of these things. And for various reasons, including just like the price point that we're able to provide them out, but also some of the safety requirements for handling. It's really only been. let's say, appropriate to use in like an industrial setting or a lab setting or, you know, a much more like high-end like kind of commercial setting. we, you know, we made a lot of progress on making it work on hardware that's much more affordable. But then at the end of the day, it's like, if that hardware is in a building that costs, you know, a million dollars a year to run, then it's not really. able to like help as many people. So the big breakthrough with Core Zero was really around safety. And so the properties are very similar to the other products that we have in terms of being this, you know, very high working temperature, very high toughness, high impact strength material. But now with the ability to actually safely process it, you know, in a home workshop. Yeah, so you're saying that you're mainly focusing on the community of makers. So basically, those who... How we can call them? So semi-professional or basically like those who still professionally can produce the parts with the materials, but not at the facility scale kind of the way. how you... I mean, I think, I think Core Zero right now, we have been kind of quietly previewing Core Zero with some of our, you know, government and Fortune 500 customers. So it's not to say that, that, you know, the folks who can use the other resin obviously can, can use Core Zero too, and there are benefits there. The thing, but yeah, I think, I think with the Kickstarter in particular, the thesis was really around Maybe like prosumer might be like the word that you're searching for there where you know, this shouldn't be like the first resin that you ever print. You should have some experience with resin printing. And I think that the folks who are doing it are printing with resin are realizing like, hey, this is very cool for prototyping, but I can't actually manufacture an end use part with it. I think that's the kind of person that would be the most excited about what's possible, with Core Zero. So yeah, I think a big part, a big part of the thought process around the Kickstarter was actually, like, why do people do Kickstarter for, for physical goods, for durable goods, right? It's to pay for injection molding tooling. That's like, like, like even really, even people who have huge audiences, who are very successful, run profitable businesses. like there's this example, one Kickstarter I backed from this guy, Pat Flynn, who's like a digital marketing guy, millionaire, like everything profitable, but when he wanted the everything software really, and, like, like information products. And even though he could easily have footed the bill for it, he's like, no, like we're going to do a Kickstarter with a hundred thousand dollar minimum because I have to. you know, like we do all the prototyping, but like to pay for the tooling and the manufacturing run, that's the only way to do it. And so, so a big part of the thought process was just like, well, if you could directly print like the end use component, you know, that's ready to go, right. Then the kind of person who would be excited by that empowered by that, able to move faster, cheaper, would be the kind of person who had started Kickstarter. Right. Exactly. And I mean, have some, of course, have some options to fund your project like outside of Kickstarter, again, get a loan or something like that. But obviously, there's a lot of downsides, not only the interest rate, but also like with the Kickstarter, obviously, you're getting the exposure, you're getting a lot of the excited users, your users of your material, users of your service, whatever. And just overall, it's not only funding, but also like... maybe even at some point proof of concept that you can get from the audience that was involved from the funding perspective, was involved in your project. So I always was a big fan of the companies that run and launch everything in Kickstarter because again, that's so nice thing that they can be involved in that from that perspective and also get the first sample of whatever you launched in Kickstarter. So it's a great platform, I guess. Very good platform for, yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I think we'll, I think that, you know, we'll see, like, obviously we were working really hard and, we hope it's successful. And I think that there is, it's one of these things where it's like the, you don't know until you try it. Right. And I think that the, you know, we have this thesis that like the kind of person who would want to start a Kickstarter would know, would value this, would want to benefit from this, would be excited by it. And then I think the counter to that is, which is maybe just like interesting to talk about too, is there's also like a ton of totally bogus 3D printing and like CNC and laser cutting things that have been launched on Kickstarter. And so I think the counter to that is like And again, this, don't think you can find out any other way than doing it, right? Is like, well, the people who might be excited about that might just be really burnt by all the ones that didn't ship by all the ones that were three years late. And then it didn't work when, you know, they actually got it or, or they shipped, but it wasn't remotely living up to the promise of the marketing video. And so, you know, I think, I think that in some ways like that. is that that's kind of where our tagline like make it real, which is our kind of just do it for polyspectra. It came from is, you know, hey, everybody's excited about 3D printing. The vision that we're interested in and excited about isn't really any different than what gets everybody excited about 3D printing. But then so much of the time, the the solution actually falls short of the promise. And in our view, a big part of that is just the materials durability, right? Like the printers are cheap enough, they're fast enough, the resolution's good enough. Some accuracy is getting there, like it depends on kind of the context, but it can be good enough. But then it's like, if it breaks on day one or like after a week in use, it's like completely deformed or warped, then what are you gonna do with it, right? So, so yeah, I think, I mean, that's like the thesis that we founded the company on was really, well, with durable materials, then now you could actually transform 3D printing into additive manufacturing. Right, right. Okay. 3D printing into additive manufacturing. So basically we're thinking about those terms as 3D printing broadly as a technology and additive manufacturing is actually when it's become more commercialized, I guess, technology and use production. times, the people, you know, people jump up and down and shouting serial production, serial production, serial production, or engineering grade, engineering grade, engineering grade. And then it's like, you know, it's an industry where someone always sort of takes the term and like kind of abuses it for a lot. You know, actually I won't say who it was, but And when, when 3d systems first coined additive manufacturing, there were a number of people within 3d systems. This is like back in the, I don't know, like early nineties who were like, no, we can't call it additive manufacturing because it's just rapid prototyping. Like we aren't actually manufacturing the end use thing, but you know, the marketing team, one that argument. and so I think, in, and again, not to like, pick on them in particular. think most of the industry is at fault with this, it's like, I think we've basically been living a version of that, that internal like mismatch between the promise and the reality like over and over and over and over again since the 1983 invention of stereolithography. That's very true. But talking about prosumers that are turning into the professional manufacturers or whatever. So do you see that it's happening a lot now? So, I mean, do those people have any, I don't know, willpower or intention or whatever to build, actually build out of their garage, build a company, build a machine shop, build a... reprinting company out of that or they rather just want to, you know, do some prototyping for their home projects like homegrown projects, pets projects basically. So what do you see from your perspective? Yeah, I think it's a little bit of a mix. is very interesting in terms of people going into production of end use products is there's kind of this... there's kind of this... Printers have gotten so cheap that there is... The barrier is like lower than ever to... getting started and trying something. Right. And so in that sense, I one thing I always say is like, well, what's the value of a 3d printer, right? It's like the value of the thing it can output. Right. And so if the same printer can, with a different resin in it can now all of a sudden print something. I mean, we have some cases in something like a printed tooling, like additive tooling, you know, there's a $400 printer you can get on Amazon. print a mold that would cost you like $1,200 or something on a from a CNC shop, you know, running DigiFabster, of course. But the but like, so what the ROI is like, you know, one day or like one print you like make back. so I think I think there's something very interesting there where like specifically and again, without like breaking any confidentiality of our partners and customers. there are, there are more than a few folks that I know that are actually taking instead of buying a hundred thousand dollar printer that's branded for production, production, whatever, they literally are buying a $400 printer or maybe a thousand dollar resin printer and, and they can buy lots of them and run them in parallel. And And this part's kind of sad because it's very wasteful, but it's literally cheaper for them to run that thing until it breaks and throw it out and get a new one. And by the time it breaks, the new one will be a little bit better, higher resolution, all this stuff. And so then you can literally like there's no capex to amortize on your factory. Right? So like our joke with the, with the Core Zero is like, if you have a freezer, a microwave and a resin printer, you have a factory, you're just missing Core Zero. You know, that's like the sales pitch. And, but I think that there are, there are more and more people that are kind of realizing that if they, You know, like if they can, figure out the design for additive and they can find the right material that actually the, the advantage of 3d printing is that the capex costs or the capital equipment upfront is, can be really, really extremely low. Right. And so, and again, to the point where like, you can get it with one day shipping on Amazon and potentially have a ROI. in one day or a week or something crazy like that. So that is, I think, a really interesting evolution and a big inflection point for the whole industry. Yeah, I think so. I think so too. And I see it not only in the additive manufacturing industry, but again, in machining and shit metals too. So basically, what I would like to call all of this is just basically people do more with less, you know, from the equipment perspective, from everything. something that's funny enough, again, something that kind of AI promised us like, you know, next one building company will be run by like one person. So I think it really resonates with something that in manufacturing can be true because again at the end of the day yes you can now have almost production equipment in your garage and you can basically yeah produce of course not like mass production nothing like that but you can definitely produce small batches you can do production quality And you really can do more with less. And I think maybe it's not something that scales with like enormous speed, but at least it shows that it's possible. It's possible to do a lot of the things locally, which is again, that's one of the topic like, you know, kind of made in the US that for me it's... really important. I mean, it's important regardless of the country, but again, something that when you can produce something in your country and label it, it's made in the US. I mean, it's kind of very proud thing, you know, for the people. And that's something that I would hope that excites a lot of the people even get into manufacturing, you know, because they can do that. And that's something that I think happening again. probably slowly, of course. But again, what I see is even though manufacturing industry in the US is like, I mean, on the paper, it's 20,000 machine shops, including 3D printing companies, of course. But at the same time, it looks like it's a lot of the new shops that's coming into the market running by, you know, younger guys that either acquire some sort of legacy shops or buy, you know, some cheap or use equipment, use CNC machines or build out of the sort of 3D printing farm, you know, kind of the setup like that. And they're starting to build, they're starting to machine, they're starting to produce. So I think it's happening. It's slowly, but it's happening. Yeah. So a few things on that. Yeah. First, first the hat, which is only available to our Kickstarter backers. Make America great at manufacturing again is a bipartisan. but I think, I think we're that you're onto something that's very important. And there, there's like a few, a few kind of examples here that, that I want to talk about, two that I thought of before we come on and one that you made me think of what the used equipment thing, but the, the, The fact of the matter is like the vast majority of like new technology advancements or like our outshare outsized proportion, right? Are in the U.S. and like someone from, I don't know, Germany or Japan is going to like, tell me I'm wrong or China's catching up, you know, all this stuff. like, at least let's say in my lifetime, right? Like that, like the U.S. is like the place for invention and innovation. And We can't make any of the things that we invent. the, article is kind of dated now, but one of my favorite articles on this is called America Can't Make a Kindle and why that's a problem. And it's from, this guy named Willie. She, who is now at Harvard business school. And basically what he does is he takes the very first Kindle that ever came out from Amazon. He takes it apart and he goes component by component. And he basically shows every single component. in a Kindle is an American invention, including all the manufacturing processes like injection molding and the ink and all this stuff. And zero of them, not, not only zero were made in the US S because Amazon chose to do it in Asia. It's actually zero can be made in the US as in like, you can't even. So yeah, there are a couple of people that do injection molding still in the U S but to do the quality and the price point that you need for a Kindle and which, has like, you know, very complex internal features that you can't see in a really nice surface finish. There aren't, there is no one in the U S that can do that and to have it still be whatever three bucks or whatever it needs to be for the bill of materials to make sense. And so, and so, you know, again, this is like his, the sky willy she is like his whole career is like, how do we like, there's no way to get that back. After you lose it. whether, whether we lost it, you want to blame it on like the labor arbitrage of cheaper labor overseas or the environmental arbitrage of like, well, they don't really care as much about the environment in like China or India or something like that. And so you're, you're like not seeing the cost of them ruining, you know, their ecology, that we would, it would be too expensive to do here for that reason, et cetera. Like, It doesn't really matter what the, how you want to point to it. The fact of the matter is like, you're not going to get it back. Right. And I forget exactly which coming was, but like in the, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I, or one of the big semiconductor companies thought, we'll do a fab here in Texas. And they couldn't staff it because no one in Texas wants a job that a Foxconn worker has in China. Right. And so, so I think the only way out. is to not lose the next one, right? So if we invent some new additive manufacturing process, let's not lose the next one. We invent some new automation technique, some new AI technique, like let's not lose the next one, right? And there's no way to get back the thing that you lost. And I think the second thing here that's like more of the vicious cycle aspect to this that... is like, and this is like Nassim Taleb who wrote The Black Swan is probably his most famous book. like one of the things he talks about is when you outsource the manufacturing, you inevitably outsource the discovery, right? So that this like trial and error iterating, like learning things along the way, right? Well, use, we've basically said to China like, hey, make everything for us. And now all a sudden they're better than us at all kinds of things, including like automation and probably a lot of categories of 3D printing. You know, even if it's the US brand, they're behind the scenes of all this stuff. lot of chemicals are made in China and they're better. They can do a better job at higher purity than any American company can now. And it's like, well, and then now we're like, Hey, let's add a tariff onto you. We don't like that anymore. It's like, wait a minute. No, we. We literally paid them to do this and we paid them to get better at it. And so it's like, it's not, in some ways I don't even think it's fair to like be upset about it. Cause like we literally like handed them this, this opportunity to do it. So I do think, I do think the only way, I think the only way forward to like, is not, is not going to be like blocking like I mean, maybe in some situations tariffs might make sense, but it's like, if you have to go to a tariff, then it's too late. You know what I mean? And so what I'm much more interested in is like, okay, let's accelerate innovation here and let's not lose the next one. And let's figure out how to do advanced manufacturing here in a way that does make sense. And to this kind of idea around, well, can it make sense here, this huge difference in cost of labor, then I think automation is the only way out of that, right? And you could think of 3D printing as just one category of automation, but the robots aren't gonna take our jobs, they're gonna give us better jobs. Wouldn't you rather be a robot engineer making $300,000 a year than a button flipper, right? And so I think that we've been... We've been so afraid of a lot of these things for this like, jobs, jobs, they're going to take our jobs. But then when we do that, just, we don't like, no one knows how anything is made and no one knows that everything is made overseas. Right. So I think the automation piece has to, has to be a part of it. but the very last thing that I want to say, I'm sorry, like on, like on one here, but this is kind of like my, I'm very passionate about this. Your comment on these new shops buying used equipment. So one of the things that I want to share that I found really interesting is, so my brother works at SpaceX and he's been there for a long time. He's senior engineer there now, but when he first started at a grad school, I said, we had just like missed Mars because of like a imperial to metric unit conversion, maybe like a year or two. before he started there. And I said to my brother, Paul, I said, please tell me that SpaceX is using metric, right? Because like, it's so crazy that we're still using imperial units and like messing things up because of that. And he said, no, they're not. And the reason why is that they can, they could buy for like pennies on the dollar. all of the manufacturing equipment, like heavy, heavy machinery to make rockets that's used from like Northrop Grumman shutting different programs down from Boeing, you know, Lockheed, all the classic Raytheon, all the classic like defense primes and aerospace primes. So whether it's like a NASA program or a DOD program that like, so anyways, the thing that you said that reminded me of it is like, now we look at SpaceX and go know, this so high tech and the, you know, Elon's like a billionaire, blah, blah, blah. But like he, I mean, maybe he did it at a little bit of a different scale than what you're talking about, but like he started that company by buying used equipment from the, you know, people who weren't using it anymore in the defense and aerospace industry. And that was like, so like arguably his biggest innovation is actually just one of cost savings, right? And like they've been able to do a lot of things since then, but like the founding innovation of SpaceX was like buy used stuff and, and go do something valuable with it. I think that that's extremely cool insight and just an example that it's not like flashy title when, you know, they saying, okay, so, you know, Elon Musk without any like engineering background, you know, now launching rockets to Mars and stuff like that. That's not the point. The point is his approach on that, right? So his approach like, yeah, I started with a user equipment. Why not? Why not? If it's cost saving way, of course. And again, to your point like that, Unfortunately, now like US can't produce a lot of the things because of the... Well, first, it's expensive and secondly, no talents or talents just not willing to do that work. So that's interesting thing because like there's a lot of the money in software and because software companies in most of the cases have better multipliers on the public market compared to manufacturing companies, I would guess so all the money goes into software or a lot of the money goes. the software. So my wish would be, of course, that in the next 10 years maybe it's going to shift in the focus into the more into manufacturing and that maybe slightly artificially will make this industry very attractive to, well, investors, of course, too, but just maybe from multiplayer's perspective as well. Because again, once money is there, I mean, Of course, because it's obviously more expensive to build anything in the US, but you can train people, you can get people excited, you can get people love to do manufacturing and hard stuff. again, like SpaceX, know, good example, really good example that, you know, guys do a lot of things, a lot of the things in the, you know, not on the software, but in the hardware kind of. That's a good example for others. Obviously, it's the too big example, right? So you just don't need to think at that scale when you're just starting anything. You need to think in a small scale, like your example with use equipment. like start something, yes, by just leveraging use equipment. And that's the way to go. That's basically the way to go. So I would rather would like to see examples like that, you know, in the news, everywhere. rather than like, okay, so that's the billionaire building, you know, rocket company without any mechanical engineering background, something like that. So it needs to be more stories, foundational stories where people talking about that stuff rather than just flashy titles. That's how you get people even more excited because it's realistic. It's realistic stars. It's not something like, okay, so he actually just sold PayPal and then starting to building something like people, okay, so he had some money. I mean, it's maybe inspiring to someone, but on the really ground level, you want to be excited about those foundational stories where they started from nothing, from just leveraging the tactics that anyone can use even without the money or with a little money. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, I think a few, a few things here, like maybe, maybe one last like Elon one, cause I think it's like interesting, but just to like put him and say, okay, you know, arguably like the richest man in the world or second, I don't know, like, I don't keep track of that stuff, but like there's this amazing video of Elon like out in the parking lot as SpaceX basically saying, okay, if, if capital is the bottleneck to us, like making more, he's talking about the Raptor engine specifically, right? It's like, if, if capital is really the bottleneck, well, I have capital here's whatever, here's a hundred million dollars. Here's a billion dollars. Give me, give me a hundred Raptors right now. And he can't do it. Right. And so there are things where I think, you know, we like without, like nation level global scale manufacturing infrastructure, right? Like even, even like, think it kind of goes to your point of like the VCs are all investing in software because they want those returns, right? And we could talk about, well, now that software is like so easy to make, I think it's hard, probably hard for a VC to get a return on it. But I think that there are like, there are things that money can't buy, right? Or at least not, not easily. And, and like manufacturing capabilities and, is one of those because the supply chain is this insane global complex system. Right. So I think, I think I just want to like, like wrap up the Elon thing with like even whatever religious man in the world can't just demand at, you know, like, I want a million Raptor engines. Cause I want to go, I want this project to go faster. Like it's just not possible. That's actually not the bottleneck in that design. and yeah. And then. And then to make it more about, you know, everyday people making their ideas real. think that and connect it now with this conversation we've been having about like software. You know, one, one of our goals or ideas, right? With this idea of like, it real or actually make 3d printing into additive manufacturing is, you know, if you can go from the CAD model on your computer to the end use part, right? In a couple hours on hardware that you can afford, maybe it's in your house, maybe it's not, maybe you click buy and it shows up the next day from a shop, right? Now you actually could have hardware look like software, right? So like hardware tomorrow can look like software has looked in the past where you can iterate very quickly. You can start basically selling the thing with an imperfect version and then iterate and improve along the way instead of kind of waiting or outlaying, you know, some huge amount of capital only to find out that no one wants that first version, you know, that it wasn't good enough. Right. And so, so I think to me that's kind of been one of the theses of polyspectra was like, well, it to make hardware look like software, a lot of that, like The CAD stuff is there. It's an eight year old can do Tinker CAD on an iPad or whatever. And like that's not hard anymore. but and you can I mean most schools have FDM 3D printers. Right. And I mean there are I don't know there must be like a million resin 3D printers sold every year on the cheaper end of things. So so all of that's out there and accessible. But why isn't it? Why is it just prototypes and why, you know, and so that was kind of the whole thesis was like, well, if, the material was durable enough, then the exact same stack of hardware and software can now output a manufacturing grid component. Well, Hey, that's a factory. And, and yeah. And, and then it lets you get started and then it lets you kind of iterate and sell. the smaller volumes and then you can move on to the bigger ones, right? And I think that connects back to this idea of the Kickstarter of just like, let your customers support you and get something out the door, right? Yeah, and I think which is crucial, very crucial, it is also like speed up the dopamine cycle in people because again, you can actually create something and print it or produce that within, I don't know, hours, right? It's final product in hours. as being like a young inventor or the person who, you know, very into product design, engineering, young person, of course, if you can speed up this dopamine cycle and just get parts and get product like almost next day and then starting to kind of taste the market, try the market and maybe sell some of the... That's amazing because that's something that's possible with software. I mean, obviously with AI and stuff like that, it's even now even more possible. So you can basically code something and ship it like, okay, not next day, but with a very short period of time. So if the same thing is possible with physical products, well, it's perfect. It's perfect because again, so I would hope that this is something that will basically accelerate more engineers into the manufacturing and just overall accelerate manufacturing. manufacturing, like interest people in manufacturing. So I think that's important because again, like, as you said, like, it's just not enough people excited about manufacturing to basically run it on a national level when, you know, people instead of go into the financial school or lawyer school, whatever, go into manufacturing, you know, but again, it's It's complex thing. It's not just education, but it's also just excitement about everything. Like, you know, at some point of time, obviously, lot of the people wanted to, you know, get to space, go to the moon and stuff like that. And same, kind of the same with manufacturing, because it's exciting thing when you actually can, I mean, first get excited from someone else's project, someone else, you know, launching the rockets into space, but also when you can do that without big money, big efforts, but with just your hands, your printer or the small machine and go to the market with that. So that's a perfect cycle, I guess. So maybe we are coming into the age where it's like not just possible, but that's the reality. And maybe that's the way how to just create more, you know, even more bus around manufacturing and get more people into Yeah, totally. No. And if you're for people who are passionate, I mean, everything's there, right? I mean, we had one of the more fun projects that we've worked on was with a high schooler. And now he's in college. But a high schooler named Ben Choi, who came up with a brain powered prosthetic robot arm by himself with with by hacking one of these EG headbands and putting a bunch of servos in a robot arm and he could with his brain get it to go pick up a ball and, you know, toss it and, and it's, you know, yeah, he was at a nice high school. Yeah. They had a 3d printer at the high school. Right. But, but I mean, again, like a 16 year old can invent a brain powered robotic arm. And, and so I think, I think that, the tools, the tools really are there for people who want to do it. And, and, it's not. as expensive as it seems. I think to your point about the education piece, I do think that one of the things that's exciting and interesting to me about 3D printing is the idea that, you know, the vast majority of people have no idea how things are made, right? And okay, maybe you took wood shop or maybe, you know, something back in the day. But I think 3D printing is an opportunity for younger people to like think about and learn about, hey, well, how, how would, you know, we all have ideas every day of like, man, I don't like this thing. What if I had a better one? Right. But actually being able to have the agency to do something about that. Right. it doesn't need to be super expensive anymore. You don't need, you know, a PhD. You don't need a million dollars. Right. you, you can actually make your ideas real, much more affordably than I think most people would think. Yeah, yeah. And of course, the next question would be like logically, okay, so you are creating this new product. Maybe then you want to run your own, you know, not a factory, but let's call it factory, a small factory, you know, building your own products, maybe then build someone else's products. And obviously, at some point, you would want to make a business out of it, not just, you know, the small factory or small machine shop. And to me, it looks like the only... a sort of reality, at least in the US, maybe not only in the US, but a other countries, of course, as well, where labor is really expensive and talent is expensive, everything is expensive. So this basically comes down to automation, automation of everything. And it's not just like, you know, this thing like, okay, so let's automate everything. It's probably more about the discipline that's important when you're the business. So being... very disciplined about the spending, about pretty much about everything, about yourself too as well. And because in the US it's now probably a requirement, you know, to be disciplined about that. So, but the good thing you have lot of the... you have access to a lot of the tools on both hardware level and also like on the software level. You can automate a lot of the administrative tasks. You can also automate a lot of the things with the production itself. And again, I mean, this is the idea of running like one man shop or something like that. I think it's more than reality and that's fine. That's fine for the people and it should be very accessible for a lot of the people and people need to be very confident about themselves that it's possible. It's not like... the only way to build a business you need to go loan the money or get money from VCs, starting to, you know, starting to hiring people, starting to build actual business. So no, actually you can start with almost nothing and still, still, you know, get to some scale with the business. And I think that's, that's, that's beautiful that it's, that it's more possible now than even five years ago, 10 years ago. So Yeah. And on the pure software side, I mean, with some of these like AI coding tools, they're folks literally like, you know, launch a new product in an afternoon, you know, and that's, that's pretty, pretty amazing. and, and pretty crazy to see. And I think on this idea of automation, one thing, I don't know, this is maybe like a little bit more like philosophical or something, but I think what, one of the things that I you know, over the last like, you know, year and a half, two years of really, kind of learning more and pushing myself to be using AI, you know, every single day. One of the things that I got thinking about a lot is kind of this idea of like a business as a function, right. And, and I think that, you know, the you can think about, okay, well, what's, you know, what's a business like, what's the goal of a business like create more value than like it charges for, right? But then you can start to think about all these different things that I think, you know, historically have been a person, right? Well, now, instead of thinking about it like a role, we can think of it as like a job. function, right? And so something, you know, with, kind of really, really, really thinking about it as a function or a process, like an algorithm, right, then it doesn't mean that there are no people. But it basically means that you can actually leverage. like with a tool like Digifabster, right, where there's no, there's no like non deterministic AI stuff right in there, right? Like it can run an algorithm to say, okay, yeah, the walls are too thin, you know, more than the customer, whatever. what's the best orientation for this part, right? But then with the kind of non-deterministic magic of LLMs, right? And, the ability to convert natural language into, you know, function calls, convert natural languages into code. I think that there's this amazing, opportunity to now say, okay, well, what are all of the requirements that we would even need to know to provide a quote to the customer, right? And that doesn't necessarily need, maybe there's an AI agent that's helping say, you know, I can't finish, right? Like, so we use the DigiFabster, right? A lot of the time it's like the, takes us the longest time is just something that isn't represented in there or isn't the customer didn't say, this little tiny thing. you really have to pay attention to, right? But there, that kind of thing, I think is becoming more and more and more automatable, right? Where you can now say, okay, well, there's a, there's a structured set of inputs that are required to generate a quote as an output, right? And so now what's, what's an AI assisted workflow to like fill out all of those requirements. Okay. We need to know if there's any like, A surfaces that we have to care about. need to know if there's any trap volumes or like really thin holes that we didn't see, know, know, things, things like that. So I, I dunno, to me, I am like back to your point about like the smaller stuff or the solopreneur or the prosumer. I actually think I am, I am really bullish on there. There's an article I need, I could try to find this and link to it. There's an article that kind of breaks down like this idea of like the billion dollar company by one person and kind of shows like that's kind of insane. Like maybe a billion dollar valuation, but then, you know, how do you get to like a hundred million dollar revenue on a single person? But the but I think the idea of like the the and we got talking about this a little bit before we jumped on the recording, right? But it's like the the normal thing is to think like, I need I need more money, right? Or I need more people. And then I need more money to go hire those more people. Right. But it's like, no, actually, you don't what you need is to figure out if anyone is going to buy the thing that you want to want to sell. Right. And obviously, you need to be honest about that. You don't want to like, you know, sell something that you can't deliver or like have vapor where that's a big problem of. 3d printing in general as an industry. But the, think that thinking through like, what is, whether there's people involved in the nodes or not, right? What is the, the, the function of the business where this kind of person pays X in this way? And how does that like cash flow work, into the outcome of, the product and and I think most, most people don't, don't think about it that way. And I think, I think that I, I myself am like, you know, again, coming from this like super deep tech chemistry, innovation, platform technology, raising, you know, $15 million to go like make this thing real. Right. It's like, can I even challenge myself to like think differently or think Like, how can I do this faster? How could I actually, like, do the experiment on the market, run the scientific experiment, scientific method, right? On the market to see. And, you know, only then when you have that, then you can go solve the really hard thing, right? I agree, completely agree. And again, because we know like the playbook now changes from the perspective of the fundraising and things like that. But again, it's pushed people to, again, to the same thing that I said before, like do more with less. And before, maybe you have less tools available for you to do that. But now there's no excuses to like... you know, I can't build a company because I need to hire like 10 people, 20 people, 100 people, whatever. So it's just more, more, can we be disciplined enough in the beginning to create a foundation of the company and the sales motion, obviously, because that's the key. So create this initial sales motion and then scale it up. So that's what a requirement now. But again, to your... you have... all possible tools and all channels now to do that, get this initial traction. And again, no excuses not to do that when you just start to get the solo premier or something like that. So that's, I think, the beauty of something that changed really recently, I guess, in last maybe 10 years. And yes, it's a new playbook, of course, but... I mean, to me it's in a good way. It's just help you to create healthier business, more stable business and just learn even faster, probably learn just faster and build more important skills in your skill set as an entrepreneur. So, yeah, I mean, I think all those changes are for the good, for sure. Yeah, so some other interesting topic that I would like to touch on and something that, obviously, because we work a lot with very different machine shops and 3D printing organizations and always like, always trying to get understanding of, so what's your, who's your customers? Like, who's your ideal customers, of course? What's the most profitable niche you're serving, right? And I mean, because in the machining and in the metalworking world, it was pretty much always was either defense or aerospace as the biggest customers most of the time, because again, they obviously have a lot of work to do. But also I was always wondering, it more, let's call it civil applications that can get you to the... you know, get you to build big business or at least like, you know, just profitable business, profitable machine shops. Like, what about other niches? Like, talking about like, all in gas, talking about probably, you know, some farming equipment, maybe some go-kart engineering, whatever. Like, it's a lot of the small niches, but the question is, can you really build machine shop or 3D printing company out of those niches? I mean, in comparison to like, those heavily funded basically defense or airspace. So what's your thought on Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, with defense and arrow, there's a few things like one, there's more zeros in their budgets. And so they're less price sensitive to because of some of the security stuff like it has to happen here. Right. And and then and so they know that they're going to be kind of paying extra right for some of that. And the So again, I think that they're like a classic adopter of new manufacturing processes, a classic early adopter of advanced materials, right? And also kind of have, again, these sort of unique performance requirements or like constraints on like, like this file can't leave the United States can only be seen by... US citizens. And so so there I do think that it's like, you know, it makes it's makes sense that that's a stable market, right for this kind of thing. Outside of it, I'm a little bit less in touch with the on the like, CNC side of things. But the, you know, one industry, for example, that is undergoing a lot of digitization where there's milling and printing processes that are active and involved is dental, right? So basically because there's no size 10 mouth and it needs to be unique for you or in the case of something like a clear aligner, like Invisalign, it's not just like unique to you, but then like every two weeks or every three weeks, it's like a new shape, right? So their printing makes a lot of sense there. You know, how fast can you go from the dental hygienist waving the wand around in your mouth to get the scan to like the treatment planning to the part in your mouth? And so I think that there are opportunities. So on the printing side, if you have something like that where there's this like mass customization need right or this unique shape right then you're not constantly battling against you know injection molding where someone's someone might think something is really cool but then at the end of the day like that component's got to be two bucks and so then the only way to get it is to mold it in Asia right for for that price point So I think dental is a good example of an industry where there's, there's like, enough like momentum and applications. And, obviously it's like, you know, some things in dental or insurance reimbursable. So it has that kind of healthcare extra couple of zeros, you know, on it. And in some cases there, you know, there are whole companies that just do, chair side dental where they're trying to have the The offices like make it themselves. There are other companies that say, no, that's silly. The, a dental lab, which is effectively like a dental, product producing factory, right. Is going to make those. And now it's more like, you know, parts on demand kind of thing. The dentist doesn't want to manage the 3d printer. They're going to just order the parts, have them delivered. And, and I think, you know, which one's sort of the best or wins or gets more market share is like. not really the point that I'm trying to make, but like that it's possible and able to do that. So that I think is, I think there are opportunities for that in other kinds of healthcare. think there's also opportunities for that in other kinds of consumer products where people do want things to be unique or custom to them. But I do think that it's, I don't know. It's kind of tough to there is this like huge momentum, right? Or like inertia, however you want to think about it of just like, hey, we, you know, I get something for very cheap because it was made overseas instantly because you know, now there's like same day shipping. And I like want that. And, and so I think, I think the challenge for folks who are kind of watching this, who are makers, who are engineers, who are coming up, with their new ideas is like, well, then how do you find that kind of minimum viable audience that like cares enough about, your, you know, unique one, right. and what's that value proposition that you can bring that makes it, something that's in this case of the custom one, it's like it really, I really do want it to be custom. I don't want the one off the shelf, right? So maybe it's like, you know, my brother just got married. He got like the, like there, you know, our last name in like a neon sign, you know, at this like, okay, that's not going to be on Amazon because there's like, like my last name is not that common as you can, as you can see. Right. But, that's not a huge business either. so, so I think, well, I think figuring that out of like, well, what is the, you know, do you really need a market of one in terms of the shape is there, are you making, what's the lot size of you, identical units that you're making, right. yeah. Yeah, I think to your point, I don't think we will see huge shift in injection molding, like shifting from Asia to US. No, I don't think we will see that. Yeah, but... in a lot of cases, like if that's the, you know, I, again, I won't say who, but like there are a few folks in 3D printing who are like, you know, if, if the competition is injection molding, then like, I'm not even going to have the conversation. Right. Because it's too, it's, injection molding is amazing. Right. It's just the, you know, the, but I think most people don't understand the supply chain risk piece. Right. And the, I think the sad thing, I mean, there's. I think one of the most disappointing things to me about COVID was I think there was this in like, so the on the bright side of COVID, one of the things that happened a lot faster was just like we're doing, right? Like digital meetings, everyone going on Zoom, this idea of decoupling, like what's my job versus like what building do I sit with my butt in a chair, right? Like more remote work, more digitization of healthcare, like that's all. those are like very cool things to come out of it. One of the things I think we totally missed the boat on in particular in the US is like the the wake up call of like just how fragile all of our supply chains are. Right. And these whole this whole panic around like how do we make ventilators really fast? And then and then it was like, we don't need them anymore. Yeah, let's forget about that. And it's like, well, but wait, but what's the next what's the next thing that we can't make? And like Is it going to take, you know, I hate to say it like this, but it's like, is it going to take like a war with China for us to realize that we can't make anything anymore? We're completely screwed. Everything that everybody uses, whether it's us, you know, the stuff you want to buy for yourself on Amazon or, know, essential medical equipment or essential, whatever, like transportation equipment and military equipment. mean, come on. Like we're, we, we don't have a resilient infrastructure to make these things here. And so, you know, whether what happens when China just says that, eh, we don't really feel like making that stuff for you anymore. And, and I think, I don't know. So to me, I think there was this huge missed opportunity with COVID for the federal government to be like, Whoa, actually. Wizz is so fragile, right? And for companies, the big OEMs, right? To say like, my God, like we need to invest in resiliency, like redundancy, right? And I don't think that happened really at all. mean, it's still like the, I don't track this closely, but it's like, you still have this like, we're still feeling the lag for just. in automotive manufacturing, for example, we went through this huge cycle of like, well, there were no cars made. Now there's no cars available. Now rental cars are insanely expensive and used cars are like worth a ridiculous amount. It's like, how long has it been? You know what I mean? Since the lockdown, but like those lags and delays are really long. And you could argue, well, do we really need all those cars in the first place? But Mm-hmm. But I think you could do that for any specific item. I think the point is like, well, again, if you it's like manufacturing resiliency, domestic manufacturing is is like an insurance policy against whatever, whether it's a of this, these giant, you know, tropical storms that we just had in North Carolina, whether it's a war, whether it's a pandemic, like with if you don't have the means of production is the like Karl Marx term for it, right? But it's like you don't have the means of production then like you're kind of screwed, right? And maybe you can buy your way out of it. And I think what I worry about for the US in particular is like, think of that game of just like, well, we'll just like print more money to buy our way out of it is kind of, I don't know, maybe, short-sighted to say the least. So. Definitely. It's all about having this bulletproof critical components made at home. That's it. And it's regardless if it's like defense or military, it's also like a lot of the civil applications, of course, as you mentioned, like healthcare and some others, you need to have maybe even slightly more than just a backup at home with the production. It's really about that. And on the top of that, I guess, as the opportunities for So for entrepreneurs and for machinists, of course, like, yeah, we're talking about, yes, maybe it's a small batch manufacturing, know, some CNC parts that you can make, but you're not making just a CNC parts, you're making the final products and sell it with some premium on top of that. So that's the opportunity. That's the opportunity at home because I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of the people who would be... absolutely okay and willing to pay more in premium for the products that made here. And not only because it's like a proud moment like made in the US, but also because it's like logistically it's like it's also like it's maybe your neighbor is doing something like that or it's just super close by to you like you can get it overnight and it's a lot of the components out of that. But again, we're probably talking about like yeah just make small batch manufacturing regardless of if it's like 3D printed or know machines just you know make it make it make it possible make it work at home in the US so that's I think critical that's absolutely possible and you know like yeah obviously a lot of the not a lot of them at least a few companies in the market show that like you know that could do a lot of the you know like cars as it's that's like an at home with all the engineering with all the machining at home so It's all important. But again, think it's all kind of showing the way for others. It's possible. You can do it. And I think it should be inspiring for people. Yeah, let's make it real. absolutely. Let's make it real for sure. Very cool. Yeah, great to talk to you, Raymond. Yeah, as always, let's make it real and let's make makers into manufacturing. Let's help them with that, for sure. There you go. Awesome. Hey, well, thanks for having me. It's really fun conversation and yeah, super excited to be a part of the show today. Awesome, thank you so much. Alright, see you. Yep, thank you.