3D Printing in the Automotive Industry: Driving Additive Manufacturing Forward with BASF + Shapeways
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the next Webinar in the Shapeways series. Today we have BSF joining us talking about 3D printing in the automotive industry. I am Rhonda Gee, director of marketing communications for Shape Wave, and today our presenters are Steve Ward and Jeremy VAS, and I'm going to turn it over to them. But before I do, please look at your chat on the right hand side. That is where you can enter questions, and we will take them throughout the presentation. If we do not get to your questions, we will follow up individually with you. And with that, I will turn it over to Steve and Jeremy.
Thanks, Rhonda. Steve We're, director of customer success here at Shape Way. So essentially anything to do with the customer experience, you're going to work with me or my team to make sure we can get you what you need. Cool. Thanks, Steve. Jeremy VAS here. I'm with BASF Forward am the 3D printingsolutions division of BASF. I have commercial responsibility in North America for our powder bed fusion products, so that's any SLS or MJS materials we'll get to that in a little bit concurrently. I have responsibilities for all of our
materials in the automotive space. So I work predominantly in automotive, and that's I guess, why I was invited here today. So thanks for the invitation. And looking forward to the chat. We are starting off with a poll. If you look to the right of your chat tab, you will see your poll. And right now we want to know what your
expertise in 3D printing is. We will give everyone a minute or two to answer. So my guess is you're definitely going to have more of the intermediate just being shaped ways BSF Webinar you never know. But that would be my guess if we're pulling ahead of time. Yeah, I'm with you. I think the automotive space is ahead of many other industries. Automotive has been using 3D printing for a lot longer. We'll talk about this too, as we go through. Right. But automotive has been using 3D printing probably as long as any industry and is still one of the major users. And so I expect that to come out that way. Interesting. 65 35 so far.
Great. Yeah. Okay. I think that is a good number for that. I will turn it over to Steve to talk a little about Shape Way. Okay. So I'm guessing a lot of you probably do
know who Shape Wave is or might have heard Shape ways, but just to kind of give you a broad stroke, Shape Wave makes industrial great added manufacturing acceptable by digitizing the end to end manufacturing process and by providing a broad range of solutions to our customers, utilizing eleven other manufacturing technologies and more than 90 materials and finishes with the ability to easily scale new innovation. What does that mean? Essentially, what we do is we take different ideas and products and bring them to life using 3D printing and all the rest of our technologies, even all the way through traditional manufacturing. And we've been around for quite a while now, almost 14 years, you can see 20,000,003 D printed parts, 6000 parts a day. So you can kind of give an idea of the scale of our global operation. And one of the things I'm the most proud of is 99% on time delivery. So not only are we able
to scale this massive, massive level, but we're actually able to get to the customers on time for whatever project or whatever they're looking to make happen. And with that, let's turn it over to BASF. All right. So BASF, I won't talk a lot about our parent company. It's one of the largest chemical companies in the world 65 billion Euro company last year. Forecasts are looking a little bigger this year. So that's good BASF. The brand is Forward Am, which is the branded name for 3D
printing solutions. It started out as the company was established in September of 2017. As you see here and really established as a new business arm of BASF headquarters are in gorgeous Heidelberg, Germany, which is just outside of Ludwighaven, which is the global headquarters for BASF. Our team globally just topped 200 folks. And all of us are dedicated in one form or another, whether that be commercial or technical, dedicated to the additive manufacturing space. And we'll talk in a little bit about the different ways that we BSF engage the market. Probably one
of the most significant things that I'd like to talk about in this introduction is our application technology centers. So we have three of these ATCs we're calling them exclusively focused on customer projects and customer applications that are bringing us into industrialization. So the first one that was realized was the one in Heidelberg and that one has been open since 2018. The next one that opened was in Shanghai, and that one has been opened since 2019. And the one in North America is in Detroit. So right in the heart of the auto industry,
and that one will open in September of this year. We've got those technology centers, and each one has a nice complement of equipment and engineers to prove out ideas as we move forward. So we'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide. So for BASF, Forward Am, our focus industries and where we look first to develop applications are in these are in no particular order but consumer goods, medical and dental space, automotive and transportation. And then, of course, aerospace. And just to talk a little bit more about each one of these on the consumer good side, the opportunities that we're looking for, there are more into production and in mass customization. Those types of applications got some exciting ones that will be able to publicize soon. Medical and dental, of course, is more in the back end process side of things, automotive and transportation is what we're going to focus on today. So I won't be labor at that point here
and then, of course, aerospace. We're seeing good success in aerospace. As far as Tooling goes. Our material portfolio doesn't complement the flight worthy but Tooling and some of those service parts and things like that. We've had some good success with other areas. We're willing to explore industrial cosmetics, construction products, robotics, which gets into Tooling some. And we'll talk about Tooling as we go through today as well. And then, of course, drones. So those are kind of a broad picture, a broad overview of what we are, what we're after as far as industry applications go. So let's dive into the automotive side. Oh, no, we're going to dive into the automotive right after we dive into the materials, go ahead and pop over the materials, slide around. Thank you. So our technologies and materials,
we focus on these areas for powder bed fusion. We have, of course, selective laser centering systems, SLS, commonly known, and then also the multi jet fusion process or high speed centering. Mjf is, of course, the HP brand. But there are other manufacturers out there for the high speed centering or MJF process. See, the polypropylene and the TPU are ones right on top there. And that's where we focus for the MJF for selective laser centering. We have
all of these materials available for the SLS platforms. So the Polypropylene and the TPU, the PA six family, which includes a mineral fill, the flame retardant, and also the PA Six meat, is a true PA Six material and very strong and very heat resistance resistant PA Eleven family, of course, and also our TPU, which is available for both Emjf and SLS. On the Filament side, we do have the Ultrafuse, the standard filaments. So what you would see in from any other offering PLA ABS. But then we also do have a broad range of engineering grade and high temperature filaments. And then, of course, what we're seeing the most traction in right now
is our metal filament. So we have a 316 L and a 17 four for fused filament fabrication or the FDM process. Very interesting for a lot of applications. Our photopolymers are probably the ones that are growing the fastest right now, as far as technological advancements go. So we have the ultra cure, the 3D, which is the rigid, and we've also got the tuft. And
then we've got flexibles and elastomers coming through. So there's a fourth technology that's growing right now, and that's called services. So in that is coming post processing solutions, so that'll be down the road. And then there's also a design service. And so we won't delve too much into that too deeply into that today. But we do have an ultrasound design service which can help
with complex additive design processes. And so that's something that if you've got a complex process, especially in ladder structures or in special load cases, it's something that we can really help out with. So that kind of gives you a broad overview of the technologies and materials from BASF. Go ahead. Rhonda. We have a question of the difference between the TPU on the SLS and the MJS. Yeah. So the base formulation
is the same or very similar. There are some slight differences because of the difference in processing. Right. There's a difference in how an SLS machine processes material versus an MJF performance part. Performance is very close. There are a couple of factors that are different depending on how you choose to measure the Shore hardness. The SLS can be a little bit harder, but again, with 3D printing, you can change that dramatically with just how you handle the geometry. So on balance, performance is very similar between the two. And if I'm correct for all these different materials, these are all agnostic. Right. These
can work on all the different machines out there for all the different OEMs and printers. Yeah. For the most part, that's true. The MJF process is a little more closed than some, but it still is quite open for the FFF Filaments. That's exactly true. Any open system will run them. They come in standard sizes and same with photo polymers. Yeah. So this is what we're talking about earlier. This is from the Wooler's report. And you can see here that the top users of added manufacturing
automotive, obviously, is on top of that list. And if you drill down on the right, I think you can see a little bit more about why that is still the vast majority of what's being used out there is prototypes and prototyping, and obviously still a viable option. And we're actually making great strides in bringing those prototypes even closer to where they need to be. Production is in the 49% and then R and B, which of course supports everything above it is 42. So you kind of get an idea there of how automotive and how automotive uses fit into the big picture.
And actually, as we go through today, we have some really good examples of prototyping and some production, and then also the spare parts. And that's really an interesting thing to talk about in 3D printing is to start thinking about this idea of being a digital inventory. And so I think that's where we land today is with this idea of beginning down the road of having files instead of on hand instead of spare parts and being able to print on demand. I know that's something that Shapeways does now with some of their customers in some other industries. So it's an exciting application. This is a trick question. We're going to see what everyone's answer
is. So we will give everyone a moment to answer this question. So please go to your polls tab. Let's see. Well, I think the last slide kind of helps you out a little bit because it kind of gives you just the scale right. Of all the different things, don't want to give too much away there. But I do think you got a little bit of a second.
I think you're influencing some answers here as I'm watching the watching them come through live. That's cool. Okay. Well, with that, I will go to the next one, and you can talk about all of the applications. Yeah. So this is one of my favorite
slides to show both internally at BASF and externally with customers when I'm sitting down with especially folks that are deep in the automotive world, none of this is a surprise. But elsewhere I do find a real high level of interest with this. So this slide actually comes from BSF corporate. And these are all of the ways that BSF corporate interacts with the automotive industry. So if you look around there, you'll see that we've got these little blue squares
rectangles around different materials. So if you take those squares out, this is a slide that BASF corporate uses. So we added our little squares there to highlight the materials that we have available that are currently in use in automotive production. Right. Just gives you an idea of PC ABS. Pma polypropylene, of course, is a huge part of manufacturing. But as you go around, you can see that we've got all kinds of opportunity for
functional prototyping, for replacement parts, even for some tooling applications where we can utilize similar material or compatible materials to aid in assembly. So, yeah, this is one of those slides that really can tend to get people thinking and asking questions about how do I use additive now and how could I be using additive in the future? So I don't know if it kicked up any questions, Rhonda, but it is kind of an interesting slide, and we can bounce back, too, if there are other questions we touched on this, the strategies that we use for open and moderate and closed systems. So BASF strives to work with the open print systems. And so that is any printer manufacturer that keeps their parameters and their settings open so that you can utilize whatever material that you want there's positives and negatives. Right. You may have more failures as you're learning, but you also have a broad range of materials available with an open print system. Our cooperation with hardware manufacturers. We've chosen some. We talked about HP already
where we're working together to create the best possible print outcomes. And in that instance, you'll see an addition to the label that says Enabled by or powered by Forward Am. And that indicates that we've worked with that manufacturer to make sure that the materials and machine combination are the best that they can be. And then closed systems. We don't participate right now with any of additive manufacturing that have closed
systems. That's just a choice that BASF has made strategically. And that's where we're at Steve, I know you brought this up earlier. Anything there any other questions or clarity needed there. Well, first of all, I love the idea of just making it open, right. And really not having it closed off to anybody. That really just makes sure that you're not closing off innovation. And you're just really kind of enabling everybody to use all the different materials. Can you give an example of one that's enabled by 04:00 a.m. That you're seeing out in the market
that you specifically went together with a company to kind of produce the best material? Yeah. Absolutely. The prime example that's commercialized right now. And out there is the TPU one. And that's the TPU for the HP system. So that was about a four and a half year process of sampling and testing with HP. And so we actually have a complimentary system in our Application Technology Center in Heidelberg. And HP, of course, has multiple
teams around the world. And we worked together with our Application Technology Center and HP to make sure that that material was formulated and ready to go for the HP 5200 series. Wow. You said four and a half years. Yeah. It was about four and a half years, correct. Okay. That was in the works before BASF 3D Print Solutions was officially started. And by the way, PPU for everybody out there is one of the flexible materials that allows you ability to kind of get a little flex when building. Yeah. Thanks. That's a good idea. Tpu is thermoplastic Urethane, of course. And it's one of those elastomers really works.
Thank you. We have another poll question. We will give everyone a few moments to fill in. Where do you think 3D printing is currently being used in the automotive industry? Well, I know. I think back to, like, when I got my first car in high school, and I think of, like, all the little interior, personalization things you can do. It'll be dating me. But I was driving a manual so you could even think of, like, your actual drive chapstick changing gears. It's a fun, personalization little skull on top of it or something like that. Absolutely. Yeah. To skew the results of everything.
Well, okay, fine. We can talk about form fitting from a prototype perspective. In prototypes is our most popular answer. So with that, let's move into what the applications actually are. Yeah. And so this slide, this information is really going to really reflect what we just saw in the poll question. Right.
With this, I always like to talk about technological readiness level the TRL, because it really gives us a good indication of what we can do. What's ready today? What's coming soon and what's way off in the future? Right. Ford used to always talk about now, near and far. This is kind of that same idea. What's now? What's near what's far? We don't have any far on here. It's all now and near. So that's good in the prototype section. And we'll talk about each of these in a little bit. But we really do have a high TRL for design prototypes. Of course,
that's been in place for years. Functional prototypes. And that picture that you see, there's an interesting story when it comes to functional prototypes. It's probably not what you think, but it's really interesting. And then we're just now, especially with Polypropylene moving into
this idea of working on preseries or, as we would call them, in North America. Test mules. We do a new design model. You've got to do tens or hundreds of test mules and really good options. There jigs and fixtures. We'll skip to the other side, jigs and fixtures again, ready to go and being used every day. This is probably the least exciting application for 3D printing. It doesn't hit the Wall Street Journal, but it's also the thing that just keeps chugging and keeps working and keeps going and going and going. And it's making a huge difference
in the assembly side of automotive. Right. If you look at transportation AIDS, that gripper, that's in the picture there we want to talk about it is more industrial, but that's utilized to move heavy objects around the factory. Right. But it's made out of CPU, so you don't scratch anything. The robotic gripper is the same way. It can be much
smaller and used as end of arm. And then, of course, assembly fixtures. And we'll talk about that as we're putting things together where our technological readiness level is in the near is in 3D printed foams special series. You'll see in the next year or two, a 3D printed portion of a seat and some other applications like that spare parts. Of course, we'll touch on that today. We have some work to do with materials to get to the point where they're really functional and then the individualization. And that's something that I think the technologies here. And we've got a couple of projects that are getting really close
and we'll be able to do a lot of personalization in both interior and exterior. This kind of gives you the big picture, right. The broad overview of where we've got more readiness and what we have to talk about today. Let's dive in Rhonda. All right. So I wanted to start off with this one because it really is kind of that classic use for 3D printing. This is where serialithography, of course, in the last 20 years really has been used most effectively in automotive is with appearance prototypes, right.
Because you can make large parts, you can make them relatively quickly. You can make them of high quality. And the challenge now is to keep getting the finished quality, the accuracy, keep getting those things better and better and better. So we can keep driving the price of those down. So one of the companies we're working with is Photocentric and their Magna Machine, which is coming is large size. Right. The challenge is to have a big part that is of high quality that can be utilized, and you can kind of see in that. Hopefully you maybe have
a bigger monitor than I do. But that panel that's called out there is part of the rocker panel on an example vehicle and coming to the finish process with a part that doesn't need to be sand, it doesn't need to have any special treatment other than just being coated like the rest of the body panels really leaves us with a huge efficiency gain in this appearance prototype market. So that kind of touches on the appearance prototypes application here. When you say, like a large format prototype, is this a big part? Like, how big is this prototype panel? Because what I'm looking at almost looks like a tank over here. The bigger picture. It's a Camper van. So it's on a Sprinter, like a diamond or Sprinter chassis. So that part is probably at its largest extent is probably 18 inches by 20 inches.
Okay, so pretty good size. How about the coding? Yeah, in this application, the coding is going to be just standard automotive surface prep would is cleaning just as you would before you paint any vehicle. But the coding is just standard automotive, same process they would use to do the rest. This is a little bit different, a little bit different take on a functional prototype. So rather than an appearance model, rather than talking about appearance, the functionality here is in helping to move from a metal or alloy into a polymer for production. In the meantime, what this is it's a high voltage inverter housing for an EV and for that to work properly. Of course, you've got to have electromagnetic
shielding. So there's a challenge with polymers and not providing any electromagnetic shielding. So a coating was identified that was much lighter than creating this part out of solid aluminum. And the PA six mineral filled was the material that was identified that could function as a substrate that would hold up to both the coding process, but then also hold up to the part being in use. And so these parts were printed and then had a thin metallic coating applied afterwards, much like a chroming process, but with the PA six as the substrate.
And so this was a waypoint in moving from this housing being made from aluminum and going into production in aluminum and going into production in a PA six injection molding material and then being coated with the metalizing process. So it's a waypoint a functional prototype to get us from something that's an alloy and getting it into something that's a polymer in automotive weight reduction is King. And so we're looking at a 50% weight reduction, especially in EVs. The other functional prototype, this is the one I talked about earlier. This one is super interesting. So once again, company was looking to transition from a metal to a polymer to do engine mounts, and the material was selected was PA six. Now this is not about printing engine mounts for production. This is about a design validation problem that came up
where Daimler was needed. I believe they needed ten or twelve of these engine mounts to complete noise, vibration and harshness testing. And the injection molding tool was months away. And so BSF was commissioned to print parts that could be used for NVH testing. And the challenge here is that the parts needed to be designed so that they would accurately represent how the injection molded parts would function. Once they were molded and assembled on the vehicle, we were able to use the ultrasom software that we talked about a little bit earlier. We were able to use the Ultra SIM software and create an accurate model that really functioned exactly like the molded one would held up to the rigors of testing, and they were able to complete the NVH testing on schedule, kept the rest of the design and production process in motion. And then once the injection molding tool
was done, we were able to drop in the finished parts and keep the whole process moving along. So it's a really fascinating story and really kept dimeler on track for a new vehicle launch. Here's another one that we've had. We've had some really good success with and this one, the challenge is really twofold. Right. So there's two things here that we're working
on. There's two things here, two problems that can be solved. Sometimes they're in parallel, and sometimes they're in series. Right. So the first problem is functional prototypes for, like, a design validation. And that was what I threw out earlier with the test mules. So you have a new design and especially in the EV market and in the self driving cars,
autonomous vehicles. That's what I'm supposed to say in the autonomous vehicle market as well. Washer bottles, fluid containers are becoming more and more and more important to keep cameras clean. And they're also becoming more and more complex. So being able to create custom structures, being able to test out those structures, being able to slip them into new design vehicles and being able to test that how that all functions is really important. Another thing that's important about that is being able to Weld fittings into it. So you have a standard fitting that's needed for, like, a de gas bottle or even a washer bottle. You want to be able to use that standard fitting that might change depending on geography or other things.
And so the polypropylene, both the MJF and the SLS polypropylene. Weld very well. So you can Weld on tabs. You can Weld on fittings. You can even print the bottle in half, and Weld together. So that's a fantastic way that we've been able to solve the functional prototype problem. The other problem that we see, and this is probably one that's even more expensive and that is in the plant startup process. So when a new model line is being started, you have all of these different things that have to come into play. And a lot of them
are blow molded polypropylene. And so you can print and print and use analogs as a stand in to either validate the manufacturing process or even to begin the manufacturing process. So you don't have $100,000 an hour worth of machines and people standing around waiting for one injection molding tool to be finished so that the blow molded parts can come in again. The same idea where we can do a lot of welding. We can do a lot of fastening to this material. It accepts polypropylene to be welded. It accepts PA twelve. Basically,
any chemically compatible material will Weld to it the welds we've also found are better than the better strength than the parent material. So as we do burst testing and things like that, we're finding that failures come in the parent material and not in the well joints. So it's been a very robust material. We've been able to solve a lot of problems in those two areas, especially.
It's amazing that 3D technology has gotten to the point where you don't have any porosity issues when creating stuff that holds liquid. It's really amazing how far the technology comes. Yeah. Our polypropylene specifically is one of the few materials out there that is both air and watertight once printed, so there's no post processing necessary for that material to be non porous, so it will hold water, it will hold air and it will hold pressure.
Amazing. This is one of my favorites that keeps growing and keeps building. We've got a project going right now with an OEM that's super exciting around this. So the whole world of lattice structures in 3D printing is at the AMA
conference. I did an entire hour long presentation on it. I didn't even scratch the surface. But what you can do with lattice structures and 3D printing, the combination is quite amazing. You can tune responses for energy return for energy absorption. Obviously, you can customize hard soft depending on different points. So you see this headrest, you have a spot in the center that's very soft, but then area around the outside where you need some energy absorption, which is harder. But in the event of an impact, it's going to be an absorber, and it's going to help control loads. What you can do with the ladder structure is really quite
amazing for comfort, for safety. And in this case, we worked on a headrest and seat components where the lattice structure was made for comfort. Right. So different grades of vehicles have different comfort requirements. You're less expensive vehicles. Typically, you're going to have a harder headrest, harder seats
built for durability. As you move up in that process, you're going to have softer seats. Everything's just going to be a little bit more comfortable. So you can do that with the same material, just different build strategies. And then you can also create an open structure, an open internal structure that allows heating and cooling to move through the entire seat. So I like my heated and cooled seats the way they are now, but with the ability to move air and distribute it throughout the entire surface is just kind of that next step in comfort and technology. Here again, we use the Ultrason software to create the responses that we needed to create the airflow that we needed, and we and the customer chose. You can see that this is an MJF process because
the TPU one material for the MJF process is so repeatable and has such good performance over hundreds and hundreds of build cycles. So we wanted to develop something that was pointed in the right direction for an application where we could actually be on car in a program to be able to do that. And if you want to slip to the next slide Rhonda, we also went after the after some certifications to be able to go into the vehicle interiors. Our TPU material has passed. Here what you can see on these tests. Specifically for vehicle interiors. You can see on the VOC and the fog. We had a pass with a coding, and so all of this detailed
information. If you have an application, if you have an idea and you're serious about it, it sounds like the 18, right. If you need help and you can find them, maybe you can hire. But, yeah, this is stuff that's understandably NBA protected. But if you have an application, my contact information will be at the end here. By all means, reach out and let's chat. We can make this all this and more detail available, but we do have those interior tests passed, and we're in a good place to be able to take advantage of applications like this with interiors.
Now, when this is like this data is like particulates in the air. Right. Is that what this is specifically talking about? Yes. Exactly. So these are standards of VOC conensible substances. As you can see, they're formaldehyde and just general odor, which means you don't get the new car smell because the new car smell basically is formaldehyde. No. Never knew that. Yeah. About TPU. Have you
ever coated it with metal? No. To my knowledge, you definitely lose the elastomeric properties with a metalized coating, but there's a potential, I think maybe for some type of masking operation, right where you could build into, especially even build into the structure of the part a masking apparatus that could allow you if you wanted to have a portion. So let's say you're working on a flexible interior badge or maybe a threshold or something like that. And you want to have a piece of that metal coated. Obviously, you'll lose your last American properties, but I
don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. I'm also not a chemist. Okay. Thank you. So this is one of those applications that we're talking about. That just isn't that terribly, terribly exciting. This kind of stuff doesn't get presented in the board meetings as a raw application. But this is one of those ways that 3D printing is being used every day. This is a patented product from a company called Xtoll. They do a lot of custom
custom machines for plastic assembly, and they needed to solve a problem where they needed a workholding device that was inexpensive, easy to change out and super easy to customize. And so for that, they chose the TPU. So you can see that just the very end of that workholding device is a little bit different color. And that is the TPU. The TPU has been tested to not Mar,
not scratch it'll, protect Class A surfaces. There's a video floating around out there for my buddy Paul DeWise, who did a test of, I think, 100,000 cycles of pressing a Class A badge into a TPU holder and did it 100,000 times and kept shimming it to make it and try to rub on the edge of the TPU and try to damage it. No damage to the. No damage to the badge whatsoever other than he shimmed it far enough that a piece of the badge broke off, but no scratching whatsoever. So this material is
able to hold Class A finishes, it's, able to hold them in place. And as you can see, there's a tiny little picture. So it's kind of hard to see. But it's just the very tip of that workholding device. So if the geometry changes in your finished piece, you don't have to start over. You can just change those workholding into factors and make a process change very quickly.
Big benefits here. Of course, costing is within 5% of traditional manufacturing, which is a big deal. Knowing that you don't need to create a mold, you can go to direct print. And like I said, part changes only require that TPU. And it's also user serviceable. Right? So you've got a part change, or even if you've got a part that wears out, you don't have to have a technician come in, take the entire tool out of service to replace those into factors. They
have an internal locking system in them. The operator, the person running the machine can see that there's a damage piece there. Grab a hold of it, pull it off, slide the new one on, and they're back running. So literally zero downtime. It's been a neat one to explore. This one is the spare parts application, right that we were talking about earlier. So this is one that's been proven out. This is a project we worked with folks at General Motors.
So this is the part that they're required to be able to produce it's a recall part for early 90s, full size Chevy Silverado. I owned a 1019 94 Chevy Silverado probably needed this. It's long gone, but they're required to have this part in hand. And so if they needed to produce this part. Traditionally, we were looking at a $20,000 tool cost and then the cost of
carrying inventory or, Alternatively, the cost of paying an injection molding house to do short run. So literally, with this application, the minimum order quantity is one that is all they need. And so it's this idea of allowing GM to carry a digital stock of parts, print on demand and eliminate the tooling, eliminate the warehouse space requirements.
Now, as we kind of take this and we look into the future. So we look into the far. We can see companies like Shapeways getting involved in this and being able to do this production on demand, being able to do this production close to where the parts are needed. And that's kind of one of the ways that this stuff fits together for us, right? Is things like this where we start to prove out applications like this, and then we have partners that are qualified and able to print and help with that idea of that digital inventory. So this is a really exciting one. It's a ways down the line for large scale, but it's a perfect proof of concept, and it was a fun one to work on. All right.
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