The Additive Chicken Coop, Part I: Million Dollar Petri Dishes

After decades of tinkering with our individual technologies, billions were poured into speculative claims and optimism. Now the attention is gone, and sometimes it can seem like we’re surrounded by the drafts of an empty high school gym amidst archipelagoes of confetti and withering balloons. Simultaneously, we have a billion-dollar revenue company founded in 2020, a nascent desktop 3D printing revolution, and dollops of fat profits unequally distributed, while other companies are declining. Certain applications, sectors, and companies are doing exceedingly well, while others struggle to survive. Let’s look at the major forces shaping our past to see how they are affecting our future.

The LPBF Petri Dishes Effect

At one point, we sold 100 metal LPBF systems a year. Over half of those went to universities, and the remainder went to secret projects in the depths of corporations or large aerospace and defense firms. Machines sat idle a lot and then spent two-thirds of their time recoating. But everyone wanted to do something a tad bit different. Everyone wanted particular settings or particular parameters. What we ended up with were million-dollar petri dishes. A machine where everything can be changed, but it is not good at making anything in particular. I swear that there was a six-year period when every university tried to characterize Inconel in some way.

Engineering leaders across the earth then tried to take these experimental boxes and push them into production. It’s a bit like trying to turn a Barbie into an actual doctor. Or to ride a My Little Pony. Or to take your old childhood microscope kit to the CDC lab. The switchover to more production-oriented architectures, devices, software, and materials pricing took a long time. Organizations we’re hooked into making these lab boxes, and switching the whole ecosystem over took time. At the same time, we didn’t have systems integration companies that could help you set up production and customize machines. This led to a delay in adoption. Also, many firms just gave up, and only the most (fool)hardy succeeded. You did metal additive because there was no other option, or you didn’t do metal additive at all.

Chicken Coop

Success in metal additive manufacturing is therefore focused on a few applications. And by and large, these applications are secret, or information about them is closely held. The total of these effects reflects the peculiar functioning of the LPBF market. A few hardy, secretive pioneers are the way to see this market. If you want to expand it, therefore, hitting the same verticals, companies, or parts won’t work well. What is, within the current paradigm, is to find people who need it badly across all industries, or to make the technology more accessible. Instead, by doubling down on existing needs and customers, firms have further increased their supplier concentration risk and dependence. And once again, we´re seeing strategic replication. It may pay off if the few customers grow, but it also shapes you and them to succeed only in tandem. Now that may seem amazing, and it feels amazing, but it limits you both. If you keep on making the best cars for the richest people, you could be Rolls-Royce, but there is a Ford, cars for everyone, an opportunity that you eventually can not take. And eventually, the volume player could buy you or displace you. This results in the current chicken coop, which is a metal LPBF. It’s so busy, we’re so busy all the time, and oh wow, are we closely watching the other chickens peck away! It’s so busy, and we’re all cooped up; it’s hard to forget that there is a world beyond the chicken coop.

Artesenal Aircraft Parts

My first encounter with 3D printing in a manufacturing context was a bit of a creeping disappointment. Yes, there were lasers, but there were also guys with paint brushes. Likewise, when I saw metal printing, there were more brushes, and guys were sawing things off with a Flex. The lack of automation and integrated systems was due to a shortage of systems integrators and to the industry talking up production while making petri dishes. Many early pioneers did everything themselves, from software to finishing, creating processes and machinery laboriously. It therefore took years and significant funds for people to reap the benefits of scale and scope. This led to a compounding delay in developing a market for systems integrators and products that would let the whole industry accelerate.

It was also never any vendor’s responsibility to automate the whole process. This delay has slowed the growth of automation solutions that could benefit the market as a whole.

Because we’re in the chicken coop, we obsess over the behavior of the other chickens. Because we used to sell million-dollar petri dishes, previous implementations were slow, and the adoption of additive was concentrated. This exacerbated the development of systems to automate key steps, leading to our current state of running while standing still.