Welcome to this edition of Technology Forward. I’m here with Greg Elfering, Ultimaker‘s newly named president of Ultimaker Americas. We’re going to discuss developments in additive manufacturing, particularly those in software subscription services. Ultimaker initially developed desktop 3D printers, but the company has expanded into connected 3D printers, then moved into larger systems as well as a network of 3D printing, including services. So thank you for joining me today, Greg.

Elfering:

Thank you, Leslie. Very nice to speak with you.

MPF:

So what do you see as far as where is additive manufacturing in 3D printing technology headed in the next year or two?

Greg Elfering:

Well, the big promotion within Ultimaker right now is what we’re referring to as distributed printing. What’s driving this is more companies are investing in the engineering of specific parts of their business. They’ve accumulated a library of CAD data and mechanical information required to make parts. The reality of turning that data into something that can be 3D printed on site is more in demand and even accelerated by the challenge right now with supply chain disruption. So, we’re excited about some of the changes in the next year to a year and a half. We think we’re ideally positioned just because of the price point of our product and the ease of use. Also, just the way the market’s going. People want to be able to make critical components near where they use them.

MPF:

Yes. I’m seeing several companies offering something along those lines or a similar kind of a thing. Is this the latest trend that the additive industry is going towards?

Elfering:

Well, we think it’s not the only trend of additive, but the additive industry is responding to it; it’s the trend of a larger industrialization effort to compete, to manage uptime. If you talk to customers like a Heineken or one of the large beverage producers, they measure plant uptime 99.9. So, they’re looking for those areas that are causing excessive downtime, and then they break down what is behind that. In many cases, it’s a supply chain problem where it’s someone taking the time to engineer a fix to something, and then a purchasing agent making sure that components are on the shelf. At the end of the day, these are perfect items to be 3D printed in the tool room of any one of these beverage producers.

MPF:

Other than the uptime issues, do you see other barriers to an adoption of this trend that we’re seeing and how will the industry be addressing that?

Elfering:

A big barrier to adoption, and we know this from the voice of the customer and customer survey data that Ultimaker has been involved in, really they’re looking for either the technology to be so easy that any person with a set level of education can adopt this technology and or they want a path where that employee can have some amount of professional training.

Ultimaker’s attacking this problem in two ways. We’re trying to make the product very easy to use. It’s engineered to be out of the box, making parts in 20 minutes. Our engineers watch a customer go through that process. So, it’s designed to be very easy to use and it’s well built. We’ve put some extra costs into making this device well-built and the combination of those two as a 3D printer, many of our customers say this is a very easy to use device, because it does exactly what they expect when they push certain buttons.

The next step to that is, if you’re a person who is trying to drive this technology into these plants, into these beverage plants, there is pressure on companies to supply training. We’ve introduced a program called Ultimaker Academy. It’s actually part of our Essentials product. And there are about six modules that take a very new user into 3D printing. Someone who has never run a 3D printer before and it takes them through the three or four critical courses. So, within four or five hours, a few people in that industry have been able to go through that online curriculum and become good users of that technology.

They are comfortable putting material into it. They are comfortable adding the CAD files to it. They’re comfortable harvesting parts from the bill plate. They are users of the technology with that kind of training tool. That we see as a real critical barrier to adoption. Companies don’t want to spend capital money, put it out into their plants, and have it sit there. No one wants that black eye. They need that device to be a winner. And the best way to do that is to put it in the field, but include it with a lot of training and support.

MPF:

Yes, I’ve heard for years that 3D printing has to be push button simple in order for it to be much more accepted than it is. Are there other barriers besides making it more simple?

Elfering:

Well, the technology has really improved in many aspects. So the push button simplicity has come a long way. I’ll give you an example. When filament fabrication, infused filament fabrication, our core technology for Ultimaker was invented, predominant material at the time was ABS, and that’s not the most friendly material to 3D print. So the success ratio was what everyone experienced. A few years later, a material came out called PLA and ToughPLA, was not as good as ABS, it greatly simplified the ability to 3D print. It really made it so that a kid at six years old could push the button and it ran that reliably. A teacher in a classroom could put this in the hands of young students and get a STEM education or curriculum. And that material was a big part of that. It just is a major improvement in the technology and I think we’re going to continue to see more of that.

MPF:

That’s an interesting tradeoff I hadn’t heard before.

Elfering:

The improvement of this technology is happening in a lot of areas. It’s happening in how easy it is to draw things in CAD. It’s happening in third party material companies, making their products available, having them available on store shelves and available for people to buy and an ability to run them in a professional way.

One big tool that Ultimaker provides in this ecosystem is we offer Cura as a no charge item. Cura is an entry level splicing program that many kids in our schools are using for introduction to 3D printing.  Their teacher will have them download it for free and it allows them to set up, build, choose materials, run, build time estimates, see where there’s risk in 3D printing, understand the process, and that’s available to them at no charge. Now that’s a huge conduit to make kids aware. It’s part of a great school education at this point. That’s a big advancement over maybe where you and I came from in our journey.

MPF:

Okay. Now let’s shift a little bit over into the software area of additive manufacturing. I believe I saw recently that you’re offering some software that’s on a subscription service, and I know others are doing the same thing. What benefits does this offer the design engineer?

Elfering:

For the last 10 years, Ultimaker has promoted a product called Cura, just mentioned it and it’s essentially available at no charge. You can download it off the ultimaker.com website. But that’s free ware. There’s a limit to how much Ultimaker is going to be able to support it, for example, for IT security testing, whether or not the product’s been white hat tested, whether or not it’s capable of an automated IT rollout. We had the customer saying, “Hey, you need to offer us a professional IT product. We love the fact that your product’s free. That’s great. A lot of our employees have it, but we have rules with our IT department and the product has to be verified. We need that certificate saying it’s been tested.”

If the customer wants that level of documentation and enterprise security, we have a tested, validated version. We keep it current. We spend a lot more money doing that, and it’s called Ultimaker Essentials. We enable our customers to pay for it on an annual basis. So, if they choose not to renew it, there’s no substantial out of pocket cost. We’re currently running a trial period. Customers can try it and it’s got a number of other value added benefits. If you want one, for example for a print farm, Ultimaker Essentials is a great tool where one computer can take hundreds of requests for parts, delegate them to hundreds of machines and track and trace all of that through a production technology or digital factory.

And that’s a paid type of software product. That’s part of this Ultimaker Essentials. So it’s the same product, but it’s just an example of one more value added feature that’s built into it. It’s much more than just a splicing program that we’re giving away for free. It’s a true professional, IT validated and also production-enabled technology.

MPF:

So, the subscription indicates that the software has been validated. Does it also ensure that the software is updated, should you or your company make changes to it as needed?

Elfering:

Correct. So, one other additional part of it is, is you are guaranteed the revisions and software releases. You also have a very high level of technical support. You have the ability to expect something like a 24/7 level of technical support. If you’re an IT person you’re trying to roll out 30 or 40 of these printers, you’re going to have some questions and if that’s interrupting your installation of these products, you want help right away. Your company paid $650 for the enterprise version. They want someone on the other end of that phone helping them.

MPF:

Okay. How large of a print farm can the software handle?

Elfering:

Theoretically it’s unlimited. The way this technology operates is these devices are IP addresses on a network. Since Cura enterprise is a cloud-based technology, these are printers that are on a wide area network, so they don’t have to all be within the four walls of the building. You could have an engineer at a military base emailing a file to someone on a Navy destroyer printing a replacement part. A sailor on a Navy destroyer does not know anything about machining or making that part. He just knows an engineer is going to email him the file. He puts it into the printer and presses play.

MPF:

Now, does this software track performance parameters from any of the printers or maybe all of them. Is that information also something that you gather and use for future improvements and developments?

Elfering:

Yeah, it does have an analytics package and that tracks everything from machine utilization. So you’ll get stats on which machine is maximum utilized or percent utilized. You also can make decisions on material delegation. Now we recently introduced a product called the Material Station that greatly improves the customer selection of materials. It gives them up to six choices. Part of what this software also does is it gives them the ability to see all those materials and know they can take advantage of them.

MPF:

This is something that we’re definitely seeing, at least from the media perspective, is the subscription services. It sounds like in addition to performance and better uptime, what other benefits will it offer a manufacturer in use?

Elfering:

Well, if you’re a large company and you want consistency across the board, the one benefit of a subscription-based service is these customers will have username and password so they can share parameters and profiles. The IT department has a specific requirement on how they want the printer set up, the minute that printer gets put on the network, it is automatically flashing that setup instruction to the printer. It prevents that printer from being a rogue device that IT hasn’t blessed. That’s the benefit of a subscription service in some ways is that level of interaction with the customer to keep the device that user-friendly, and that deployable, it’s just best done as a subscription service because otherwise you have to ship around dongles and ways of putting deterrence or something in the software to try and keep customers honest with their usage.

And we find that a subscription model, first of all, it doesn’t capitalize. It’s paid every year. Also, it’s not like the customer is paying an upfront amount of capital. So, in that way it’s customer friendly. It’s a method of financing and it also gives them an out. If they decide after a year, they don’t like it, they’ll stop. So, it’s also customer friendly in that way. I just think that this is a competitive way to sell the product. It’s what customers are asking for. It’s what their IT departments want. It’s standard in the industry for IT. So, as 3D printing matures, we’re trying to follow more of those business standards.

MPF:

It does seem as though at the additive industry is maturing and maturing nicely.

Elfering:

Yeah, I know it’s an exciting time. I’ve been in this business now for over 15 years and it’s made huge improvements and I’m extremely proud of Ultimaker’s product of five, $6,000 price point. We can make amazing looking 3D-printed parts. That’s just never been available to our customers like it is today. And that’s just going to get better. It’s not only from Ultimaker, from the industry.

MPF:

Well, I thank you for your time, Greg.

Greg Elfering:

Leslie, thank you so much again. I very much enjoyed talking with you today.