Increasing Your Production Power Additive Manufacturing with EOS Shapeways

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Hello, everyone. And welcome to  the Webinar today. I am Rhonda Geet,   director of marketing communications at Shapeways,  and we are hosting a Webinar with EOS today.   A couple of things. Before we get started,  the chat is on your right hand side of your   screen. Please enter any questions that  you have throughout the presentation,   and we will also be doing polls, which  you will see next to the chat button.  

With that, I am going to turn it over to our  two speakers. Carey and Steve Carey is from EOS,   and Steve is with Shaft Wave, and I'm going to let  them do a more thorough introduction of themselves   better than I ever could. So with that,   Steve, I will turn it over to you. Hi. Thanks. Rhonda. Steve, director of customer   success here. So deal with anything related to  customers here at Shape Ways. I've been with   the Adobe industry for quite a couple of years and  really just interested in learning about POS today   being one of our top actual manufacturing tools  that we use here Shape ways. And with that,   kick it over to Carrie. Sure. Thank you both. As Rhonda said, my name  

is Kerri Valer. Essentially, my job here at EOS  is to help develop our polymer technology and help   deliver it to our customers in a way that we're  working specifically towards new applications. And   so I manage the application development team here.  And essentially what that means is I work directly   with our customers to understand what are the  needs of your applications. What is the pull for   additive manufacturing on the end? Use customer  end. And it's my job to help drive our technology  

in that direction and to help enable those new  applications via working together with you.   So with that, why don't I go ahead and move into  the content Rhonda, do you want to introduce?   Yes, we have our first poll question. We  just wanted to see how many people have been   in the industry for how long. So if you can take  a moment to fill out your poll question.   This one is always interesting because  you would think being in the Adams face,   it's always going to be way more advanced,  but it's always exciting to see how many   people who are also just getting into it.  They come to these webinars as well.  

For me, it's always exciting to see that because  that's just more opportunities, right? That's   more people starting to see and feel the value of  additives and looking for people like us to help   connect and to help drive that with you. It looks like we have just over 82%   of the audience answering, which is great.  We have a very active audience today,   and it looks like it's a good mix. So with that,  I think we can jump into the presentation.   Okay, great. So why don't I just start  with introducing really broadly who EOS   is. And so we are an industrial metal and polymer  3D printing company. All of our technology   is powder based both on the metal and polymer  side. We powderize our materials and what our  

machines do is we layer by layer, deposit our  materials and melt or center via laser deposition.   We have roughly 4000 systems in the market  globally. We've been a company for over 30 years,   and we're roughly around 13 to  1400 employees worldwide.   Another thing I wanted to introduce to you  today is our applications team, which is   referred to as the Additive Minds  Team. Essentially, what our team   called the Additive Minds is tasked with is  understanding our customers and our partners   where they're at with the additive manufacturing  technology and where we can apply this technology   to make a difference in your business. And  so our team, referred to as the Added Mind,   is essentially focused on helping you to find  your applications, develop these applications into   something that fits in with your product  portfolio or creates business value in some way   and ramping up production and helping  you to certify that production.  

What this really means is often we work  directly with you to understand your needs,   helping to develop a tailored solution with our  technology for your products and helping to many   times connect you with manufacturing sites such as  Jake Waves to help you understand how to transfer   that into a manufacturing opportunity and a  business opportunity. And so we have a team   purely dedicated to understanding your needs,  taking our technology and helping to apply that   to walk through the entire process  from conception to reality.   Just a really high level slide here. I wanted to walk through. I'm sorry,  

it doesn't seem to have the animations here,  but I wanted to take just one half step back   and introduce what laser centering really is  and what this is and part of not having to   walk through here. But essentially, we recoach one  layer at a time, roughly 100 to 120 Micron layers,   and we will deposit a layer of powder for  a polymer technology. This powder is heated   because all polymers have melt points  or all thermoplastics have melt points,   and we heat the powder bed to just be below this  melt point, and we use a laser in directed laser   and select areas to melt this polymer selectively  and to create the geometry we want.   So essentially, we print in a two dimensional  method, but we do that in consecutive layers, in a   sense that we are building up a three dimensional  object. That's really how the technology works,   and what this really does in terms of creating  value is it allows you to take a digital file,   and it allows you to then implement this in a  way that you have a huge Design Freedom toolbox,   and so you can take really most parts that are  digital and used in either different manufacturer   designed specifically for additive. And you just have a lot of design freedom,  

which I think I'll dive into a little  bit more in the following slides.   What are some advantages of 3D printing.   So, Carrie, while people are answering this  poll real quick just to kind of recap SLS,   you're taking a laser and melting that specific  portion of that image or 3D file you're trying   to create, and that's going layer by layer. And  if I'm correct, Micron is almost like the length  

of a human hair. Would that be a good comparison  to kind of figure out what you're creating?   Yeah. I think that's actually about right.  Yeah. So we're creating very fine layers. So   essentially, most builds have in the thousands  of layers and end up we're able to build these   very fine feature detail parts. For the  most part, we use largely fairly common   engineering plastics that tend to translate  well to applications that are already out   there and maybe being used via other methods  right now, such as molding or machining.  

So it looks like we have good amount of answers.   And I tried to make it easy, but it does look  like we have a few people with different ideas   of the advantages of 3D printing. So, Carrie,  do you want to dive into some of those?   Sure. What I wanted to do with this slide is just  give a very basic overview of some of the areas   that people look to when they're looking for to  transfer their product or to develop a product   in 3D printing. So as I mentioned, just an almost  infinite design freedom with how you're designing   your parts. As you see this kind of complex  bracketing structure there in that picture  

there this is something that if you can imagine  trying to make this any other way, it's really   difficult to conceptualize that potentially  you can make this part via machining.   You're going to lose a lot of material a lot of  time, a lot of tolerances and things like that.   But it's a really good way to look at. Hey,  we can lightweight parts that used to need to   be very bulky because we couldn't make custom  lattices and things like that that we can now   and we can take those and we can reduce the  mass dramatically, and we can reduce the   material inputs dramatically along the same lines.  Functional integration. So now we're looking at   okay, there are parts that we used to have to  take in machine or mold separately and assemble   via different processes that all  require time, all require cost and   all lead to product variation of things. Well, how can we now, given our design freedom,  

how can we look at this a different way? How can  we start designing some of these components to be   fitting in with each other during the  print and reducing the amount of input   parts that are going together in the same ways?  As I mentioned, a lot of customization, a lot of   user specific customization. So one of the I think  hot areas for us now is taking a user profile of   some sort. And I'll touch on this a little later  and printing specifically for that user.   And finally, I think this has been a hard word  for probably 20 years, 30 years. It's just rapid   prototyping. So being able to on an early phase  of your product, dipping your toe in the water in   the sense that you can build these geometries  up front, find out product failure, product   improvements that need to go into your design  process and integrate those in the earlier step.   Really? I'm sorry I jumped slide. I think really  speeding up your new product integration steps. So  

the way I kind of have this discussion today  broken up is into a couple of different areas,   and I'm largely just going to touch on  applications in each of these areas because   I think that's the easiest way to talk about  the technologies through applications.   Right? So if you look at the below bottom left  Quadrant, one area I'm going to talk a little   bit about is new product introduction and how this  technology is being used to redefine how products   are being developed. The second at the top left  here is how laser centering is being used to   consolidate products and what that really is doing  for companies in their business. And three is   how can Laser Centering be used to distribute your  manufacturing to digitize your product portfolio,   which ultimately leads to a lot of  spare part reduction and a lot of   faster turnaround times for manufacturing. The fourth one here is mass customisation. So we   have several, I think, really cool applications  out there right now that people are starting to   say, okay, how do we make our business more  tuned to our users? How do we distribute this   in a way that we're getting real feedback  about what our users are, their shapes,   their size, their needs, and printing those and  building those on demand for those users.  

We have another poll question  for this one. We wanted to see   what application surprised you the  most that came out of 3D printing.   Yeah. Making a case for additives. I don't  think people also realize just how long   it takes to make a typical mold injection molding.  I know when I first found out, I was like, wait,   we're talking months, not weeks, and then add in  transportation, logistics and everything else,   especially in our brave new world, out of just  making more and more sense, then throw in the   whole factor of trying to be good for the Earth.  Right? You're starting to see a lot of focus on  

reducing fossil fuels and everything else. So if we can make something locally   really changes the game not only from  the time, but also an ecological.   Right and not even from just a cost and time  perspective. But once you get that mold back   after a month or two, then comes the hard part  of looking at how well it's functioning. Right.  

And so all of the lead times and those product  improvements compound into now you're looking at   a year, right? For several iterations. What you're  able to do leveraging this technology is say,   okay, first, Bill didn't work two days later.  One day later, you're changing your file,   right? Your file input, which takes minutes,  not days or years, and building iteration   upon iteration until you meet that product  perfection that you're looking for.   It looks like we have a good amount of answers  with mascara, brushes and performance racing cars   leading the way. There are a couple of others,  including living cells and model railroads   that were added to the chat. So,  Carrie, what are some applications?  

Sure. Why don't I step into this now? A bit? So   essentially, what I'm going to do, as I mentioned,  is if you look at the left column here, there's   four different areas I wanted to highlight today,  and all of these areas really have verticals   and parallels in each of these aerospace,  auto, personalization medical equipment,   things like that. But I'm just going to  touch over a couple of applications. So   some are focused on short run production,  some are consolidation of parts and so on.   So the first one I wanted to go into is  just a kind of interesting example of   a short to mid volume production run. We teamed up with Rolls Royce on a number  

of parts. You can see a little snippet  in the top right of this picture here.   Most of them were venting structures. Most  of them were things that you can make via   machining or molding, but it's high input cost.  And also this was for essentially, for a platform   car that they knew they weren't going to be making  for ten or 15 years. They said, okay, we maybe   need about 50,000 of these pieces, 25 to 75,000.  We're not exactly sure, because some of these once   they're on the market, we don't know the failure  rates of these cars and things like that.  

So they had a little bit of an unknown of  ultimately how many components they're going   to need. But upfront, they knew they had kind of  an estimate. This is a short run of production. So   we work directly with them to basically  identify the costs of making this traditionally,   which has like we were talking about before all of  those input costs of molding machining, creating   all of those supply chains. And what we found is  we were able to identify twelve components just   purely based on the business case alone and the  speed to market of designing and building these   that essentially save them about ten to 20%  upfront of being able to build these and use them   for their limited time automobile there. I want to also touch a little bit about   how people are looking at this technology from a  consolidation standpoint. So this is a case study.   We partnered with the customer on where they were  making a gripper. So this is part of an assembly   line where this is essentially what this does.  Is there's a unique profile to this gripper to  

where it's able to pick up parts throughout  the process and move them to a difference,   essentially to a different manufacturing line  and things like that. So it has to have a really   defined feel and have a good hold on. Basically what it's trying to do. This is really   the fastener and basically the hydraulic section  of it. And then there's grippers on these also. So   a lot of components went into this traditionally,  how they were doing this before, largely because   all of the piping and the air handling had to  be separate from the gripper structure. So there   were connectors, there were tubes, there were  little spindles things like that. Well, we were  

able to redesign with them and work that down to  actually three different parts. And the reason   we were able to do that is all of these functions  that they had to look in separately through hoses,   through connectors, things like that we  were able to build into one solid structure,   and this doesn't include the gripper, but this  is essentially the functional component of   moving air, holding the grippers and things like  holding the actual rubber gripper parts.   What we saw is we were able to reduce the weight  dramatically, which led to a reduction in cost,   because this is all a fraction of the  material required to make the original   part a fraction of the time, a fraction  of the lead time and such. And so that's   kind of I think a cool example of hey,  it's not always just a straightforward   let's just look at one either material or  lead time or something. You can actually   make a real difference in how many components  you're using to make a functional part work.  

If you're open and willing to look at redesigning  that this is a bit more of a broad example, but   same things are happening in the impeller  space and other there's heat exchangers   things like that that traditionally require a  lot of different components coming together.   And this is just an example with a partner that we  were able to reduce the 73 component impeller down   to one component, and the production speed of that  just improved dramatically as well as the quality.   The reduction in failure rates also went up really  high, because if you think about it, especially in   small parts, if you're taking 73 components,  they all have their own tolerance.   Right. And imagine putting all of those tolerant  parts together. You have a lot of rejections.   You have a lot of failures of those parts, but  being able to integrate that into one structure   really brings a lot of functional and cost  advantages. Those are two examples. There's  

some broad other areas that this is really active  for people looking at and integrating into their   business now for cost savings, for light weight  and things like that example on the left here is   actually taking a generative design and replacing  what's traditionally a metal component armrest   for an airplane with a structured polymer  material that you're able to reduce a lot of   the mass because you can make these lattice  structures that are specific to keeping   that surface strength up on this part. This was one that we did with one of our aerospace   customers and saw a really large dramatic  reduction in weight, which is really important,   right? Because they're under pressure all of  the time to improve their fuel efficiency,   to improve the business case and the  environmental case at the same time. So   they're looking to us to help drive some of these  metal replacements, some of these lightweighting   opportunities, same thing with being able to print  bearing structures really creatively. And also,   if you look at this vending structure, try  to imagine making that any other way.  

This is a real vending structure that is  meandering through this part in a way that   it can accomplish this venting, plus fitting into  a really tight space at the same time, this was a   structure for an application  that we worked on.   The first one is for the automotive  parts, how many were made   and how well engineered was it compared  to traditional manufacturing methods?   Yeah, that's a good question.  So roughly 50,000 were made.   So in the ballpark of what they expected,  they did make. When you say well engineered,   there is some complexity to working with.  Let's say, let's use the automotive example.   That's all a very highly regulated industry,  and they're always driven by specifications   and things. And so it is part of the consideration  when you're going, especially if it's a company's   first product going into this area, you have  to understand for each part the performance   specification so that you can translate  that into a viable part in this case.  

For this specific example, those were not  structural components to the automotive,   to the car. Plus they also weren't under  the hood parts, so that actually reduced the   performance specifications that were needed  for that. So we just really had to deal with   the requirements for venting structure casings  and things like that, which can also be tough, but   they're not the same level as something as sitting  next to the engine in the front. And so there is   a difference in most laser centering polymers  from what you will see in the industry, and all   of that needs to be taken in consideration when  choosing your material and your material.   US has several different plastic materials  and others. Are you thinking of expanding   into precious metals or other materials? And  what do you find to be your most popular?   Largely, this talk is focused on our polymer  portfolio. We are looking into and working on  

quite a few of those topics on the metal side  also. So there's some precious metal work going on   and things like that on the polymer side. I  can answer from my perspective is I continue   to see a couple of really high growth areas on  our materials. One is our customers ultimately   want a product that is environmentally friendly  but also efficient from a cost standpoint. And so   we're continuing to work on our materials to make  them higher recyclability and lower waste.   We're working on several products right now  that will help us drive a more efficient   product and drive a more efficient product from  an environmental plus a business standpoint.  

Additionally, I think there's a lot of  really cool work and opportunities in   the composite space right now because as  we dig deeper into aerospace in automotive   additive manufacturing, getting further into  working our way into the specifications,   which gives us more opportunities  to design materials specific to   auto and other applications out  there that demand new materials.   By how you can take 78 parts and bring it  down to one. When we were talking about the   slide back there, and I think that really just  goes into showing how some of the limitations   of creating molds with complex geometries  are going to continue to show why additive   is catching up or will actually surpass  traditional manufacturing with a lot of more of   these complex parts, which actually is kind of a  perfect segue into these custom Shin guards.   Yes, absolutely. The next thing I wanted to kind  of talk about is more of a user designed approach   to kind of a mass customization approach to  delivering a truly customized product to the end   user. And so one example that we've collaborated  with several companies on is okay. Here's a  

Shin guard. We understand how to take and many  people understand how to take a scan of a Shin,   right? But currently, really what's being done  there is if a company does take a scan of a Shin,   they essentially mold a part that's used for  that Shin, and they're applying general foam   to that and try the best you can to mold  parts to someone's specific profile.   What we did is we work to take a bit of a  more compliant nylon, which is nylon eleven   and create a unique lattice structure that's  able to absorb a lot of the typical impacts   you'll get from soccer balls from other  people's feet. Things the reason you're   wearing a shitten guard in the first place, you  take a lot of errant kicks and things like that.   We designed a lattice that was specifically  aimed at taking the abuse that you see and   you need to guard against with a Shin guard. And so what we were able to see is we were able to  

improve the breathability of the  Shin guard. So if you imagine   most of us have worn these kind of clunky as kids,  these clunky safety equipment, things like that,   you instantly sweat and itch if you're like me,  this particular case is really cool because you're   allowing air to pass through here. You're allowing  much better breathability, much lighter weight.   It just feels more natural while we were  able to achieve the same and higher, actually   response to damage in response to impact. And it's really cool because you can customize  

this based on a scan, which means it truly is  user design. I'm going to stick on this theme   for a while because it's a really active area  for us, another effort that we have ongoing   as we work with a company called Hexer. Hexer  is a leader in specialized helmets for bikers,   specifically for bikers. Largely, they  essentially had a problem statement of okay,  

our customers want how much that fit  better, how much they perform better,   and they're demanding that are these more  tailored to what their profile is?   And so we worked with Hexer to develop a  process that takes a quarter million scans   of your head. So you put on this helmet that's  pictured in the left, this head mat thing,   and it takes all of these data points. And  essentially what that does is it creates the   shape of the part, the shape of what the helmet  needs to be, especially the inside shape that's   going to ultimately be against your head. Because  when you're talking about impact, having a snug   fit really does make a big difference. And what we then work with them towards is   taking this translating this into an open sell  structure, as you see there, that accentuates   the material strength in the direction of the  impact that you will be potentially receiving,   while again offering a lightweight structure that  allows better airflow, lighter weight, so less   weight on your neck and head while  you're riding. We're able to dye it,   and then they're actually able to customize  it, too. So ultimately, if a person wants  

to put their name on it in case it gets lost,  they want to put personalization on that.   All of that is achievable via this process.  And this is one way that laser centering is   being leveraged to truly distribute  mass customization to customers.   That's fascinating. The  past two examples, the help   it seems like the latter structure is almost  imitating nature. When you talk about the  

self structure and creating more customized and  advanced ways of protecting ourselves while at the   same time being able to specifically make it just  for one person. Pretty amazing technology.   It's funny you do find that somehow nature  has found the strongest structures, the most   efficient structures in many ways. And so I think  you're right. From a sell strength standpoint.   A lot of designs lead to something that is found  in nature that is meant to accomplish a similar   purpose. Right back to one more automotive example  I wanted to give. We worked with Mini Cooper, and   essentially, this is a true personalization mass  customization example is where folks could not   only print a dashboard insert that is according to  what they're choosing on the Mini Cooper website,   but they're able to choose the color they're  able to actually put their names in it.  

So your car actually has your customization  in it, which is, I think, really cool   and something that I think people have been  asking for for quite some time. So I think this is   one more example I wanted to give, and this  is really on the orthotic side of this,   we work with a company called a Tree that is  a leader in making custom insoles for their   customers, which many of them have back pain.  Many of them have foot pain, things like that.   And essentially the way this is traditionally  done is they take a foot scan and they custom   shape these parts and things out of some foam and  things like that to make unique profiles.   What we realize we can do with them is  we can take one of our soft materials,   and we can actually create lattice structures  that change the response of our materials on   the user's foot. So essentially, what  they're doing is they're taking a scan.   I think I can go to this next slide here. They're  taking a scan of the user's foot on the left here,   and we translate this with them to a specific  material density and a specific unit cell shape,   which in translation, gives a specific  pressure response back to the user's foot.  

So all of this essentially is customers can go  into their store, scan their feet, and within   a number of days they can have an insole that's  truly designed for their weight and mass profile,   which we've seen is really helping customers out  and improving their pains and also their balance   and just their livelihoods, especially  for people that are on their feet a lot.   And it's reduced for a tree. It's reduced a lot  of the input times, the waste, the costs that have   went into the traditional time and allowed them to  have these fast turnaround times and fast custom   turnaround times that have really accelerated the  ability of people to get custom solutions.  

Another example of this on the eyewear  side is there's a company we worked with   called Fitzframes. Each of the founders here had  children, and they realized, Man, we're buying new   glasses every single year, if not earlier, for  our children. It's a major pain point of waste,   of rework things like that. And  so what they said is we want to   create a seamless way for kids to pick their own  eyeglasses, to choose that customization enough   to deliver them really quickly. So what they have  is essentially a subscription based model.   They're running EOS machines, and they've created  an app where a child can essentially look at   his or her own face, scroll through a number of  glasses, pick their color, pick their size, pick   their style. It goes straight to the printers,  they get printed, died and fit for lenses all  

within a few days and are at their door. And so  they can avoid a lot of the traditional processes   that needs to go in there. And since it's a  subscription based model, and children can   basically swap out glasses as their face changes,  as their needs change and things like that.  

It's another example of how we're revolutionizing  the mass customisation market with our customers.   And one final one, I think, would be just taking  it to the medical segment of custom or those   with some of our partners here that are  actually printing the entire orthotic for users   that have real medical needs, too. And essentially  what this has been able to accomplish is very   similar things is weight is a real problem on our  thoughtics. So carrying around a really heavy is   often, well, it helps. It also hurts from a  balanced standpoint, a mobility standpoint.  

By being able to create these open  structures and these user design structures,   we're enabling a much faster recovery  time and much more user focused   production method that's really generating medical  devices that are tailored for our customers.   And then the last application I wanted to just  touch on quickly is the concept of spare parts   and inventory. So from a business case standpoint,  especially from products that have been in the   market for a while. One pain point many companies  have is how do we manage our spare parts for these   machines or equipment that's in the field,  essentially the way they manage that is   just by having piles of it in warehouses  often because it's really difficult to   project how many parts will be needed. And if you're under on that, then you really   have a pain. You really have an issue with  your customers and with your lead times. And so  

it's really common in the industry for folks to  be burning a lot of their internal capital and   having these large inventories well, if you think  about the ability to take a digital file, have   what's referred to as a digital twin for these  parts, keep that on file. You can then just have   a number of machines on standby and ready to print  on demand these parts that customers are requiring   to keep their equipment up and running. And so what we're seeing really is there really   is a very strong business case for converting as  many of these aging parts or parts that you know   will be. I guess your replaceable parts for new  products and converting those to digital files so   that you can have those when needed without having  these massive warehouses full of aging parts and   inventories that are just sitting in warehouses.  We've worked with a lot of customers to look   through their product portfolio. This  is another thing that added to mind  

works on is looking through your product portfolio  and saying, okay, which ones of these could work   in an additive process while retaining  the performance specifications you need   and converting those to digital tools so that they  can be done so they can be printed on demand.   And one company that we have done this with  successfully, they have a company called Evo Bus,   and we went through all of their components.  We identified over 380, and we essentially were   able to digitally convert these to where their  inventory has went way down. While they're still  

able to meet the same needs of keeping their fleet  up and running and keeping their customers moving   as needed. And there's a little snippet of  some of the parts we designed with them.   Some of these are designed to also mimic  leather interiors and things like that,   so that it's a seamless replacement  of the original parts.   So that really from a high level is some of  the applications. I wanted to deep dive on   what I wanted to do as we get towards the end of  the talk here is just to go a little bit into the   material side of things and how EOS manages our  materials and our products. And I just want to   give a high level overview of that. In general,  EOS has 14 plastic materials that we currently   offer on our printers. Shapeways runs many of  these materials, and we also have a subset of EOS  

that is a company called ALM Advanced Laser  Materials that is more towards customization   of materials for specific applications. And so we have EOS, which rolls out standard   materials, and we have ALM, which works directly  with our customers to say, okay, you have a   specific duct work in an aircraft that needs to  be ESD needs to be tolerant these things. Well,   we then often take on that as a potential custom  development project. So we have the ability  

to support our platform materials while developing  custom materials also. And so just a list of all.   And you can find these obviously on our  website a list of our materials.   A lot of these are nylon based. Like I've been  discussing. Nylon Twelve is our highest volume   material on the market right now. And nylon  Eleven also is a very popular material for   applications that require, I think, more dynamic  mechanical strain and more compliance in a little   bit. In some ways. We also have materials  that are carbon fiber filled aluminum filled,  

which improves the ability to dissipate  heat. So some of the short run production   molding applications uses  aluminum filled materials.   We also have a number of elastomers, so we  have TPUs and TPEs that we've employed.   The insole application that I discussed a couple  of slides ago was actually using a soft material,   and that was able to create that kind of  custom soft feel that the users needed. And we   take very seriously managing the quality of  our powders. We have suppliers that comply to   our quality standards. We do our own quality  checks before we send, and our quality checks  

include mechanical testing in our printers before  we send any material to our customers. So these   are all have certificates backing them, and  all of the powder is managed quality wise   at EOS through building and running witness  coupons and maintaining a quality process.   So just to go back to our ability  to create custom materials   through advanced laser materials,  which is a subset like I said of EOS,   what we really do here is we're able to take  example traditional nylon eleven, nylon twelve,   and I'll give a broad example. An automotive  customer may say, okay, we need something that   is a really high heat deflection temperature as  a higher heat deflection temperature. It needs   to be flame retardant because it's going to be in  a really hot environment, and it needs to be able   to withstand some of these dynamic mechanical  strains that it's going to undergo.   So we will then go to our portfolio of polymer  materials, and we have a large range of   fill materials that we're able to look  to, such as glass fibers, mineral fibers,   carbon fibers, things that can allow  us to make materials conductive or ESD.  

And we essentially use that toolbox to develop  a custom material if the business case and the   application is asking for them. So a large part  of our business is helping to identify the needs   of our customers specific to an application. If  we don't have a current material that meets that,   we often can make it and often will help  enable our customers by working with shape ways   to then say, okay, we have a material,  we have a production process.   Shape ways can help fill that production need  with our material, and we can then have a   cradle degree of solution in terms of  conception to specified material and process   to a production platform. Correct.  

I'm near the end of my presentation. There are  three materials that I just wanted to highlight   that we've developed with customers for  applications. So one is Fr One Six. This   is a material we actually developed with an  aerospace OEM that is currently on many aircraft,   actually as duct work on many aircraft. This is  a nylon Eleven material that has flame retardant   additives in there, which makes it compliant with  a lot of the FAA regulations for flame retardant,   so that we were able to take a need that they  gave us and create a custom material that is now   actually on aircraft on many aircraft  that are in the sky right now.   These are used not just for duct work,  but they're used for some casings   and some air vent structures within an airplane.  It's even being used in some automotive interiors,  

which have somewhat similar flame return  requirements in cabin applications.   There's another one I wanted to highlight a  high performance nylon Eleven with carbon filled   structures, which is specifically designed  to resist impact and to reduce fracture.   And this material actually has  very high isotropic properties,   which means in the X and Y. It also is very  similar in the Z direction property wise.   So that is something within 3D printing that  is a common challenge in your print direction.   Your properties can often be different  than outside of your print direction.   This material was designed to combat that in a  way that gives you very uniform properties, and   this is used in a lot of racing applications, a  lot of custom cars and also regular commercial   cars. It has a couple of applications in there.  Also, I think the final material I wanted to  

just give an example of something that we've done  in the past is we've taken a nylon twelve.   And we've added glass filled beads,  basically glass beads into the structure   and some other additives to basically result in a  very lightweight structure that retains stiffness   and strength. And so if you go back in the  presentation, I was talking about lightweighting   out structures, replacing metal, replacing current  components to really improve efficiency and   weight. Well, this is one of those materials that  is doing that by really creating reduction in mass   while retaining weight. And so this is being used  in drone applications and bike applications, and  

again, in different sports related applications  that require lightweight structures.   So with that, I wanted to wrap up and I appreciate  your time and attention. What I really wanted   to say is we at the US have the ability to  take you from conceptualizing a new product,   looking at your business case, walking you  through that process and with strong partners   like Shape Waves, we're not just able to sell you  a material or a machine. We're able to help you   develop that process and really turn that into a  supported production scenario with shape ways to   meet your production needs. Yeah.   One of the applications you talked about actually  fits frames. I love that story just because it  

was one of those interesting stories of how a  customer kind of started off identifying what   their problem was, what they wanted to figure  out while creating the glasses for children   actually worked with shape ways  for all the early stage prototyping   and really kind of conceptually building up the  business. So then eventually, once they ramped   up and had the business going coming over to EOS  and buying machines. So again, kind of just one   of those wonderful symbiotic relationships  you saw come out of this whole process.   It's a great story because they brought all  of that knowledge around what it takes really   to develop a new eyewear technology. We  brought a lot of that knowledge around   what the process can be done or how the process  can be tailored to accommodate those requirements.   We put those together. And like you said, it  really was a successful concept. And through Shape  

way support and added in mind the US support, they  now have a business up and running that's doing   great and meeting a real market. Thank you very much, both of you, for giving   such a great, informative presentation. There  are a couple of questions that we didn't get to   that were out of the scope of this presentation,  but we will follow up with everyone if you did   not get your question answered. And in  the meantime, everyone have a wonderful   rest of the week. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're.

2022-01-09

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