In conversation with software leaders in the additive manufacturing industry.
Part of my recent tour of Materialise headquarters in Plymouth, MI included an interview with David Flynn, senior development manager and Udo Eberlein, executive vice president of software. Our discussion covered the past, present and future of Materialise and the additive manufacturing (AM) industry as a whole, with a focus on how software specifically fits into that picture.
What follows is an edited and abridged version of that conversation.
engineering.com: Let’s start with your respective backgrounds.
David Flynn: I started in additive technologies back in 1980, believe it or not, when I was working at Baxter Healthcare and we were a beta customer for the SA-1, back when 3D Systems was about to commercialize their first machine. Then I ran a couple of service bureaus for better part of 25 years, specializing in prototyping activities and then investment casting patterns, getting a little bit into production on that end sold that business to 3D Systems, ran their North American on demand manufacturing operation for a couple of years and then came to Materialise.
Udo Eberlein: I’m not originally from the AM industry but I joined Materialise in November of 2023 and before that I spent 20 years building software companies in the Bay Area – IoT, digital media, online file sharing – pick a segment and I’ve worked in it, but always on the software side. So, even though I’m not the expert for AM technologies, I am the expert in building and scaling software technologies.
From each of your perspectives, how has the AM industry changed in terms of software over the past two decades?
David Flynn: It’s gotten much more sophisticated. Materialise in particular has done a lot of work to step up to enterprise-level software, managing more than just STL manipulation or CAD file manipulation and getting into managing workflows for prototyping, business transaction workflows, as well as production management.
There’s also been a focus on the scope of 3D printing in manufacturing, extending into what you might consider more traditional manufacturing with the downstream processes associated with physical parts: setting up work centers and proper routing and tracking, controlling that with proper quality control. It’s really evolved from research into software tools that are purpose-built for specific needs, dovetailing with ERP, PLM and other manufacturing software platforms.
Udo Eberlein: From my vantage point, additive manufacturing technology is like any other technology in that there’s a curve: we’re just getting to the plateau of productivity from a trough of disillusionment, where it’s no longer just about innovation as the driving cause. It’s no longer about feature XYZ that makes your machine faster or your slicing more efficient. It’s really about enabling different business models.
That’s one of the reasons I joined Materialise: I used to see 3D printing as a gimmick back in the ‘90s, but it’s become a mature technology and so it’s less about single use cases. Sure, we can do a lot with implicit modeling in terms of getting down the cost and time – and that’s still important – but, really, it’s about how the software enables production at scale, because that’s where the real ROI comes from.
It’s interesting that you mentioned going from the trough of disillusionment to the plateau of productivity. Would you agree that we’ve seen that happen more than once in additive over the past 20 years?
David Flynn: I think that’s a fair statement. It all boils down to materials and the appropriateness of materials for end-use products. The earliest photopolymers and even some of the thermoplastics that were used in SLS or FDM weren’t really appropriate for products that needed to have a proper life cycle or for repeatability in manufacturing processes. There was just too much variability associated with the materials themselves. But now we’re getting into much more refined materials with the characteristics you’d expect for a production environment, and I think it’s the introduction of those materials that kickstarted the industry out of certain plateaus.
Udo Eberlein: In today’s production settings, software isn’t just there to do one specific task. When I was in the smart home industry, I was chief revenue officer for a tech company that was building tech stacks for IoT applications. It had to have the flexibility to adapt to different environments, and that’s where I think we at Materialise can make a difference today. We need to be able to adapt to different settings to enable production by driving efficiencies, quality, and scalability for many different customers, so therefore our software has to be flexible.
On that note, let’s talk about interoperability. It’s a key feature in software, but it can also be in tension with business objectives. How do you balance that?
Udo Eberlein: Absolutely. I like to say that we’re like Switzerland with our CO-AM platform, where we’re using our 35 years of experience in additive manufacturing to deliver a holistic platform – if that’s what’s desired – but we can also partner with other companies to collaborate or by having open APIs. For example, if a customer wants a manufacturing execution system from us but they have their own owner management, so be it.
That’s interoperability on the technology side, but it’s also understood that there are not a lot of companies in our industry making a lot of money right now, so there will naturally be some sort of consolidation coming, but it’s also important to be Switzerland in that context as well. We need to be open to collaborate with anyone who’s in the mix there. That’s our strategy.
I’ll admit I don’t follow the markets as closely as the tech but, from what I’ve seen, you seem to be holding your own against the tide of uncertainty. Do you think this neutrality, as you’ve described it, is part of the reason that?
Udo Eberlein: Yes, even though sometimes that comes back to bite us because we’re in manufacturing as well. You know, some of our customers are also competitors, which can be an awkward situation, but I think we’ve done a good job of managing that because we have to be flexible and open, especially if we’re going to see more consolidation. On the software stack, that means building open APIs so we can integrate with others.
I was on a panel at RAPID last year with Hexagon on one side and EOS on the other, and all the questions from the audience were about integration: How do you give us a seamless experience? And that’s what we’re all after. If I go back to the smart home example, when you look at what makes a smart home work, where you have many different protocols and standards, you need a flexible layer that enables all those different pieces of software to work together and connect. That’s what we want to be for additive manufacturing.
I imagine that, like most areas of manufacturing, you’re also dealing with legacy systems where it’s not just a matter of sticking a PLC on something to get it to work. Does that come up often as an issue for you?
David Flynn: It absolutely does. We have big aerospace customers that are still running systems on DOS. They’re still using systems that were built thirty or forty years ago because they’re so regulated. But bridging the huge gap between that kind of system and a connected digital workflow that’s going to be dealing with CAD inputs, dynamically managing changing configurations and builds – that’s absolutely a challenge.
How do you approach it?
David Flynn: A piece at a time. Realistically, you find the best way to interoperate with those systems. Maybe you can encourage the customer to get off the old platform and adopt something new, but you can’t overcome all those obstacles in one shot. Sometimes those old systems are in place for a reason (like regulatory issues) and it would cost more than it’s worth to make those types of changes. So, you integrate what you can, you connect what you can, and you try to create as seamless a workflow as possible and then just deal with the exceptions.
It also makes me think about what we can do internally to address that. For us, it’s not like twenty years ago when there was just a product sale. Sure, some of our tools are plug-and-play, but for a big task for a larger customer, you’re stepping into a different ecosystem each time. In order to cater to that, we have to build solutions and not just products and that means in some cases we have to customize to bridge those gaps.
To the user, these don’t look like gaps at all, but this is why we’re actually opening up a lot of our technology, like selling our Magics SDK so people can script against that, and there are more good things like that in the pipeline.
Have you been seeing a lot of uptake for that?
Udo Eberlein: We are receiving significant interest because, at least for certain use cases, that helps our customers automate and that helps them bring costs down. We can, of course, do that for you based on our SDK but if you want to do it yourself, you can write your own Python scripts. Now, of course, there’s some cannibalization risk in that for us, but it’s also the way things are going, so it makes sense. That’s what many customers really want: to build their own custom workflows.
Is that what most of your customers have been asking for?
Udo Eberlein: Right now, in certified manufacturing and production, it’s lower costs.
David Flynn: Even in prototyping, there’s downward pressure on prices and a lot more competition. That’s when automation becomes really important.
Looking ahead, what are you most excited about for the industry over the next five years?
Udo Eberlein: I’m really excited about additive manufacturing coming out of its dark corner and into the limelight as a formidable production technology. I’m excited about big parts and about the growth in metal.
David Flynn: I’m excited about the same things. I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen the whole history of this particular industry, and there were times when I thought it was going to die on the vine, because I couldn’t see where it was headed. But, as we said, we’ve come out of that a couple of times now and I think manufacturing using 3D printing technologies is going to see a lot of advancement in mass customization and personalization. We’re already seeing it in some of the medical devices, but being able to easily adapt a product to an individual and still make money on it? That was just a dream 20 years ago, and now it’s actually possible.
