Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To... Be Machined

Additive Manufacturing or 3D printing is bringing new perspectives to manufacturing, so we have a special guest, Matthew Stuckey, to bring us his fresh, new perspectives on the subject.

Matthew is studying Mechanical Engineering at the Tickle College of Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is well versed in Additive Manufacturing.  Matthew interned at elliTek over the summer and is currently working with us when he isn't in class.

After listening to this episode, you will know:

• What Additive Manufacturing is
• Types or methods of Additive Manufacturing
• Advantages and disadvantages of the types
• Material attributes
• Our wish-list of attributes
• Application successes
• Solutions elliTek offers
  
  

There are more acronyms, so here is a list that we hope you will find helpful.

• A2:  Cold work tool steel that combines high toughness and good wear resistance. Often regarded as a "universal" cold work steel.
• ABS:  Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, primarily used with FFF or FDM 3D printers
• CRS:  Cold Rolled Steel
• D2:  Cold work tool steel that is harder and more wear-resistant than A2, but not as tough.
• FFF:  Fused Filament Fabrication, also known under the trademarked term FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling)
• PETG:  Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol, a thermoplastic polyester
• PLA:  Plastic or polylactic acid
• POM:  Polyoxymethylene filament, aka Acetal or Polyacetal. DuPont trademarked the name Delrin™  for Acetal Resin.
• MIG:  Metal Inert Gas
• SLA:  Stereolithography, a type of 3D printing
• TIG:  Tungsten Inert Gas
• TPE:  Thermoplastic Elastomers, adds a little bit of flex to your part.
  
  

Additive Manufacturing and 3D printing is growing.  There are new changes and discoveries daily.  As Matthew says "Get out there and learn something for yourself because it's a lot of interesting stuff." 

Remember,  elliTek's engineers are also here to help when needed.  Reach out through our website or call (865) 409-1555.

Thank You for listening!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Introducing Matthew Stuckey
• 1:55 Today's Topic - Additive Manufacturing or 3D Printing
• 2:55 Shout out to Red Nation Robotics
• 4:15 What is Additive Manufacturing
• 7:35 Types, Methods, Materials of Additive Manufacturin
• 25:05 Advantages and Disadvantages of the Materials Used
• 42:04 Application Successes
• 46:20 Solutions that elliTek can offer
• 49:09 Spray On Finishes
• 51:45 Matthew's Reference Sites

Transcript

Brandon Ellis  0:25  

Hello, and welcome to "Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To..." this is Brandon Ellis your host. And normally, I would say, Beth Elliott, our marketing coordinator, but Beth is taking a week off. So, our second episode of 2021. And she's taking a little bit of R&R time. So that gives way to an empty seat, but I don't like empty seats. So, I am going to introduce our guest, and he actually has a lot to add to our topic today. But that special guest is Mr. Matthew Stuckey. Hello, Matthew.

Matthew Stuckey  1:04  

Hey, how are you? 

Brandon Ellis  1:04  

Good. Good. So, welcome to the Primetime. 

Matthew Stuckey  1:09  

Absolutely

Brandon Ellis  1:10  

"Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To..." podcast. Let's see. So nevertheless, um, tell us a little bit about give me a quick introduction. Give the world quick introduction about you.

Matthew Stuckey  1:22  

Absolutely. Longtime listener first time caller here. Yeah. Yeah, I've actually enrolled over at the University of Tennessee, I did some 

Brandon Ellis  1:25  

Go VOLS 

Matthew Stuckey  1:35  

Go VOLS. I did an internship over the summer here and have been working on and off getting some good experience and seeing what elliTek has to offer. So, I'm really excited to be in here and be talking about what we're talking about today. 

Brandon Ellis  1:45  

Well, Matthew is - was a summer intern for us. And we talked him into sticking around, he's really been doing a great job for us. So, I'm glad you're here. 

Matthew Stuckey  1:54  

I appreciate the opportunity. 

Brandon Ellis  1:55  

So, today's topic, "Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To... Be Machined", is the title of today's topic. And what does that mean? That means additive manufacturing. Now for some that's called 3D printing, we're gonna talk a little bit about how additive manufacturing is a bit more than just 3D printing. But 3D printing, and in general, additive manufacturing, has been around, how long?

Matthew Stuckey  2:23  

You know, they started stuff in the late 80s, early 90s. But it's been steadily growing. And it's finally getting to that point where a lot of people are having their own printers in their house. And it's kind of crazy that you can take something right off the internet and put it straight in your home in like two hours.

Brandon Ellis  2:36  

Right. Right. And so, if you can't tell, Matthew's got a lot of experience with additive manufacturing he's been doing that. Did you say you were in mechanical engineering? 

Matthew Stuckey  2:44  

Yep. 

Brandon Ellis  2:45  

So just want to make sure it got across. So, in mechanical engineering over there, he is very involved at the University with a lot of additive stuff. And so, I've enjoyed actually learning from him and from others that are very much involved with this. You know, one of the folks that that I learned a ton from is the First Robotics group over at Halls High School, and we, of course, sponsor them being members of the Halls, Fountain City, Knoxville community here, but they do a lot of 3D printing. But we're going to talk a little bit about some of the things and they certainly do some of that. So, so that said, additive manufacturing. So, I'll quiz you.

Matthew Stuckey  3:30  

Yeah, go for it.

Brandon Ellis  3:31  

So, you're the guest. You're, you're sitting in Beth's chair. And so, one of the themes of 2021 is that Beth has always kind of interviewed me in 2020. So, in 2021, last, our last podcast, she had done a lot of research on an FDA food rule or guideline that's coming. And so, I kind of changed roles. And I became the interviewer, and she became the expert. And so today, you and I'll have a quick discussion, but I'm going to quiz you and see test your knowledge. 

Matthew Stuckey  4:06  

Right on

Brandon Ellis  4:07  

And if you don't know the answer, we'll make fun of you. So, that's what you get. So, so the definition for those that aren't familiar with additive manufacturing, do you know it?

Matthew Stuckey  4:20  

Yeah, absolutely. So, the main thing about additive manufacturing is it's a rapid prototyping method. It's something you can take a 3D model and get it on to an actual physical existence in a matter of hours. It's kind of revolutionary, it allows for a lot of manufacturing of things that at one time would have cost a lot of money for one off molding and such. You can have a plastic part in your house, in your company in a matter of hours.

Brandon Ellis  4:45  

So, it and then you can print stuff that you... well so, why do we do it? Why do we use it?

Matthew Stuckey  4:53  

Well, you know, traditionally you have what we now that we have additive manufacturing, we call it subtractive manufacturing. Before that, it was just machining. 

Brandon Ellis  5:01  

Machining, removing material. That's why it's subtractive. 

Matthew Stuckey  5:04  

Right? And now that there's a lot of great things, people have been doing it, for millennia of machining, removing material, you can make almost anything you can think of. But with additive manufacturing, you take it a different direction, you build it from the ground up, there's a lot less limitations. Your tooling costs near nothing, your design costs decrease drastically, you don't have toolpath, and stuff like that. And it's just a matter of with a little bit of plastic and hope and a dream, you can have something usable, and you can actually make profit off of it, if not something that is at the same level of quality, if not better than a subtractive manufacturing method would cause.

Brandon Ellis  5:43  

And sometimes the subtractive method is, with the part that you're coming out with is basically in an impossibility. Sometimes, sometimes we print things that you just, I mean, if you could machine them, but they would be very, very, very expensive,

Matthew Stuckey  6:01  

Very labor intensive.

Brandon Ellis  6:02  

Yeah, if not, if not just impossible to machine. And so that's the cool thing about additive manufacturing is it kind of gives an gives open to a new dimension.

Matthew Stuckey  6:14  

Right. 

Brandon Ellis  6:15  

And so, we think about those dimensions a lot when it comes into the engineering side of things, not just the materials, not just the methods, both of which I want us to discuss, but also some of the things that you can do. I know for me personally, over the last few years, as we've, we've explored it, I tell people that I've I have been a very slow adopter to additive manufacturing, because I just wasn't sure where it would fit. I mean, I see some of this stuff, you can print, 3D print, just PLA print, get off the internet kind of stuff where you can print, you can actually 3D print chain. 

Matthew Stuckey  6:54  

Yeah

Brandon Ellis  6:54  

That's an example. Or, or, you know, some type of a wheel inside of a bearing. Well, you know, you could machine that. 

Matthew Stuckey  7:01  

Right. 

Brandon Ellis  7:02  

But that would that would be awful to try to machine. But printing it, not so much.

Matthew Stuckey  7:07  

Yeah. And a lot of people struggle with that. It's like, Well, why would I go towards something with additive because it's something it's for knickknacks, it's for things that you're not gonna use. It's the, it's the little toys you get off the internet. But the strides I've taken in the technology here lately have been amazing. There's been some really, really interesting industrial applications. And with more and more industrial equipment hitting the market, it's become a big, big thing. 

Brandon Ellis  7:33  

Perfect. Well, and that's what I want to talk about. So, some of the methods of additive manufacturing, I said earlier that additive manufacturing, a lot of people just blankly refer to as 3D printing. But it's not. 

Matthew Stuckey  7:46  

Yeah, there's a lot to it. 

Brandon Ellis  7:47  

So let's kind of roll through some of the different, what I'll call methods. And then then that comes that does come down to materials

Matthew Stuckey  7:55  

Right.

Brandon Ellis  7:55  

So some of the methods are limited to, to metal.

Matthew Stuckey  8:01  

Right. 

Brandon Ellis  8:01  

And there is additive manufacturing of metal.

Matthew Stuckey  8:03  

There is and people a lot of people don't know about it, a lot of people think it's outside of their reach, but it's something that's constantly growing, being from Knoxville, and from this area, you know, we've got Oak Ridge doing research with stuff like that all day, every day. And there's two main methods that I've seen in my time at the University that are really common, or have almost been perfected. And that's the sintering type and the actual, more of a welding, traditional type of metal manufacturing.

Brandon Ellis  8:31  

Okay, so this is where I gotta be Beth for a second. 

Matthew Stuckey  8:34  

Yeah.

Brandon Ellis  8:34  

I'm channeling Beth. So, Beth if you're listening, I hope you're proud. So, sintering, that's what's that, is that s-i-n-t-e-r-ing?

Matthew Stuckey  8:45  

Maybe a c, ,maybe an s. I'm not sure.

Brandon Ellis  8:48  

We're engineers; we're not English majors. Now, I'm pretty sure that it's that it's s. 

Matthew Stuckey  8:52  

Yeah. 

Brandon Ellis  8:53  

But But nevertheless, I think it is if I'm not if I'm wrong. Sorry.

Matthew Stuckey  8:58  

The only thing that makes me want to say C is cinderblock. But I don't know. I feel like that's what the D and not a T. We'll see anyway. 

Brandon Ellis  9:04  

Yeah, nevertheless. So, sintering, so tell us a little bit about what sintering is.

Matthew Stuckey  9:08  

Yeah, so a traditional sintering 3D printing machine will be having a lot of metal powder. It'll drag a layer of metal powder out, use a high-powered laser, bring that metal powder up to a melting point and create an actual 3D object. Blow all that off, do it again.

Brandon Ellis  9:27  

Sintering with an S 

Matthew Stuckey  9:28  

Sintering with an S.

Brandon Ellis  9:29  

Yeah, I thought it was so. So as far as your C. As far as my S

Brandon Ellis  9:40  

Alright, so sintering so so again, I've seen those those systems and they've actually been around probably longer than a lot of the plastic. 

Matthew Stuckey  9:48  

They have 

Brandon Ellis  9:48  

Printers that we see the hobby printers because they're expensive. 

Matthew Stuckey  9:51  

Yeah, they're not exactly available on a small scale.

Brandon Ellis  9:56  

Yeah, you're not gonna you're not probably gonna get one off of Amazon. 

Matthew Stuckey  9:58  

No.

Brandon Ellis  9:59  

And so again, the concept is kind of a powdered metal, I guess, you pull the powdered metal across, of course, powdered metal, I actually had my first experience with powdered metal back in 19, probably 1996 or 97. So quite a few years ago, we were doing a heating system, actually a microwave based heating system for a company and I was doing the motion systems for it, but they were heating up powdered metal and driving it with an auger, they were feeding it in, batching it, and then pressing it into a green state, and then you heat it. And they were heating it, in that case, they were working with heating it with microwaves because it's faster. And going from there. And so, once you heat it, the powdered metal, the individual kernels, I guess you would say, or granules actually reach like you said near the melting point.

Matthew Stuckey  10:56  

Right, and then fuse.

Brandon Ellis  10:57  

And they fuse, that's right. And so, a large, large, large portion of powdered metal parts are used today.

Matthew Stuckey  11:04  

Yeah, if you have ever used a hand drill most of those pieces and parts and the gearbox, the assembly, and there's a sintered Metal Gear, stuff like that.

Brandon Ellis  11:13  

And so now with sintering systems, you can actually drag that across, take, I guess, did you say a laser?

Matthew Stuckey  11:20  

Usually a high-powered laser, and it comes down and lasers it out, and then sweeps it back off. And,

Brandon Ellis  11:26  

Of course, what that's doing is the laser is precise, and it's applying high temperature at certain points. And so, and of course, then it not quite to melting, we don't want it to melt, because then it'll flow away. And so, the metal melts it enough to bond and that's called sintering. So that's an additive. And then you mentioned the welding.

Matthew Stuckey  11:46  

Yeah, so a lot of research has been going into a more, if you're familiar with welding, more of a MIG approach where you actually feed a wire, electrify it and it melts into a puddle. It's kind of the same concept as like your traditional 3D printer where you do actual layup, it'll trace out a pattern laying metal all the way around, start to go up a little bit and go around, again, on and on, and on and on until you have something built up out of metal.

Brandon Ellis  12:14  

And the problem that I've seen with that is, of course, a lot of the times they're doing robotic welding, which our remember we do robots and welding is certainly one of the things that they can do but, but when I'm welding, MIG welding by hand, it's not much different than some of the stuff that we see there. And that it actually looks better, but still doesn't look great. Looks like the apple stack cakes at the Apple Barn in Sevierville, Tennessee, you should go there and try them. But that's not metal. That's actually Apple cakes, and so you can eat it. The metal though it doesn't look

Matthew Stuckey  12:52  

Yeah, sometimes the surface finishes on those parts are not the best. And you usually have to go back and do some kind of finishing process.

Brandon Ellis  12:58  

You got to machine it. And then there's porosity problems.

Matthew Stuckey  13:01  

Yeah, that you can encounter. Even with traditional welding, you know, you never know what's inside until you get in there. And then 

Brandon Ellis  13:08  

Till you cut it.

Matthew Stuckey  13:08  

Till you cut it. And then you could be going through your finishing process, and you uncover a bunch of issue.

Brandon Ellis  13:13  

Right. 

Matthew Stuckey  13:14  

So that is something they've been struggling with. But there's a lot of a lot of research going in on that. Another downside of some of the metal types is there's usually a sacrificial plate. You can't just spawn that metal in thin air. So you got to start somewhere. And a lot of times, it's no big deal. You end up with a nice flat base plate to your part. But you are using, you know, something that can take the heat of being repeatedly welded or lasered. So

Brandon Ellis  13:41  

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. So that's, that's where the metal the metal type things come into play. Any other metal-based that you can think of?

Matthew Stuckey  13:51  

Well, you know, and there is some technology in additive manufacturing with the plastic side of things where you can actually integrate metal into the filaments and print that, but you're only as strong as your weakest link. So, if you're putting a metal type filament down, yes, it's going to have metal in it. It might polish up to be beautiful, but you've still got plastic in there somewhere. 

Brandon Ellis  14:12  

Yeah

Matthew Stuckey  14:12  

So, it's kind of like you got to balance the pros and cons of that. 

Brandon Ellis  14:15  

Right. Right. So, let's talk about it. That's a good segue. Let's talk about the plastics. And so some of the some of the means of methods, of dealing with additive with plastics.

Matthew Stuckey  14:26  

Yeah, two common ones right now that are out there for kind of the home gamer is FFF, Fused Filament Fabrication, also known as FDM, which is the Fused Deposition Modeling. That's where you're going to have kind of the same idea as the MIG stuff. It's coming in, it's laying down a layer, moving up microscopically, laying down another layer, building up from the base plate.

Brandon Ellis  14:50  

That's pretty common among most, right?

Matthew Stuckey  14:53  

Yeah, traditional plastic printing. So that's where you're going to see stuff like your PLA your PETG your ABS plastics that are more commonplace; that are pretty easy to work with, depending on your setup. And that yields good parts for a lot of applications. And the big thing is, it's finally getting to a point where it's almost affordable for almost everybody to be in. Now, that's not to say that industrially, you're going to be pushing out the best parts in the world, but you can have something printing in your own home. 

Brandon Ellis  15:23  

Well, we've talked about how, you know, actually, let me take a step backwards. So, you mentioned, you mentioned Oak Ridge National Lab and their additive manufacturing laboratory over there, and that's a really great thing. And they're doing some really awesome things over there. And we've talked with them on a number of occasions and excited about that. But one of the things that I asked because again, now I'm a slow adopter. And so, it was about a year ago, I asked, Why, why, why are what's what is so appealing about additive manufacturing, because we hear a lot, we've heard a lot about additive manufacturing, not just not just in the hobby, hobby areas, and not just in the educational areas. But we're hearing I'm hearing more about it and have for the last few years in manufacturing. And so, I asked the why why is why is it so important? What do you all say, and what they told me was, the concept is they see it as a means to bring about affordable manufacturing among small and small to medium sized businesses and industries. So, it allows companies, smaller manufacturers to get in the game, so to speak. And so, the question then comes down to what are the what are the materials that they're going to be dealing with? 

Matthew Stuckey  16:43  

Right

Brandon Ellis  16:43  

So, let's talk a little bit about those materials. Within? Well, first of all, within metal.

Matthew Stuckey  16:50  

So yeah, you could do a lot of different steels and different, if you can powder it, you can laser it a lot of the times. But you know, they are doing some stuff now with some tool steels even that you will yield pretty good, you know, strong parts that print at ridiculous angles and things you wouldn't even think are possible out of a high-grade steel like A2 or a D2.

Brandon Ellis  17:12  

A2 and D2 being tool steels. 

Matthew Stuckey  17:13  

Yeah. 

Brandon Ellis  17:14  

And so, we're very familiar with tool steels, I am at least we use those a lot. Just machining them for hardened tooling and things of that nature, tooling has got to be hardened. I like D2. Our machinists don't like that I like D2. They say it's, it's not happy to machine. But D2 has a high chromium content, so it won't rust as readily as standard cold rolled steel and things of that nature. And so, I'm getting off into material. Sorry.

Matthew Stuckey  17:44  

There's a lot of weeds to get into with materials. 

Brandon Ellis  17:46  

Absolutely. And so, within metals, you know, we're talking about, we talked about the MIG welding, and so the type of wire that you're putting down that kind of thing, and that could be, I assume, they could do it in. 

Matthew Stuckey  17:57  

Yeah, any cold rolled steel, you know, like your standard baling wire, what is it? Er78 or something like that? That's just a standard steel, you can lay that down all day long.

Brandon Ellis  18:06  

But you can also MIG aluminum.

Matthew Stuckey  18:09  

Yeah, you can. And I'd, that's something I haven't really seen not to say can't be done. I'm sure it can. But aluminum is something that really likes to be clean when you weld it. And with a robotic workcell, I think that might be a challenge is how are you keeping that metal clean while you're welding it?

Brandon Ellis  18:25  

That's true. Well, and I'm just familiar with, of course, all the aluminum welding that we do is TIG. Which is different than the I don't I don't see how you would do TIG additive.

Matthew Stuckey  18:37  

Yeah, I've seen some adaptions for MIG torches for aluminum. But,

Brandon Ellis  18:42  

But it's still a MIG, you're still electrifying the filament and things of that nature. And so, it's a little bit different process. So we might I haven't seen that either. I've seen just standard, I guess it's standard cold roll or whatever MIG wire, typically is. 

Matthew Stuckey  18:55  

Right. 

Brandon Ellis  18:56  

So that's where the metals are. And then the other types of metals. You talked about A2 and D2. Which actually are becoming more common. Yeah, common. Yeah. As far as printing, and I'm talking about the multilayer. What did you call it?

Matthew Stuckey  19:17  

So, like with the fused filament fabrications? 

Brandon Ellis  19:19  

Yes. 

Matthew Stuckey  19:20  

Stuff like that. 

Brandon Ellis  19:21  

FFF. That's right. Triple F. So triple F.

Matthew Stuckey  19:25  

Yeah. So that's something you know, there's a lot of research going on and stuff like that. It's a really broad horizon. And there's a lot of money to be made and a lot of research to be done in a lot of those different topics.

Brandon Ellis  19:38  

Okay. Well, and that's what I was getting at was the A2 and the D2. So, you just like what I'm getting to is just like printing similar to printing plastics, and different types of plastics. You can now print steel, specifically A2 and D2.

Matthew Stuckey  19:57  

Right. And you can even take your sintered parts and if you wanted to take them and get them hardened, I think that's something you could do as well. So, it's getting to the point where like you can get a high-quality part out of a 3D printed thing, which a lot of people have had reservations about. 

Brandon Ellis  20:11  

Yeah, yeah, with metal? 

Matthew Stuckey  20:13  

With metal.

Brandon Ellis  20:13  

Yeah. So that's the point I was wanting to make. So, thank you for driving that home. So now let's get over to plastics. And this, honestly, I believe is what more people are used to.

Matthew Stuckey  20:23  

Well, and the good thing about 3D printing with plastics, there's so many different thermoplastics out there that react well with heat, will absolutely lay down a beautiful bead, and will make a really nice-looking part. You know, you start out with the home gamer with like PLA, which is really susceptible to UV light, it doesn't really like being it doesn't like being outside in the elements for longer than a few months. It gets brittle, kind of powdery, and can break easily, you step that up with ABS, which has the concerns of like, your print smell, it off gases a lot. It's ABS; it smells bad; it always does

Brandon Ellis  20:59  

And the off gassing, are we deciding that's not, it might be a twinge hazardous?

Matthew Stuckey  21:06  

Well, and you always usually with ABS, you have to print in an enclosure, partially because of the off gassing. And then the other part is, it likes the heat, it wants it hot. So there are some printing with ABS is a little tricky, but it is kind of a step up. It's a nicer plastic, it's more commonplace. So it's definitely a material to be looked at. Now you're getting into like, your PETG, your plastic polyethylenes, those print really nice, good quality parts. And that's probably getting towards the top end of what your basic home gamers gonna do. 

Brandon Ellis  21:39  

Yeah. 

Matthew Stuckey  21:39  

But then you get something more, I would it's not more industrial in nature, but it's just more resilient, stronger, has more beneficial characteristics with like, a polycarbonate, your, you can even print nylon, with carbon fiber and different stuff in like that. And some of the really interesting stuff that I've seen printed is thermoplastic elastomers, which are all flexible, TPE. And that's some things that have some really interesting, it uses maybe with dampening or other things like where you need just a little bit of flex in your part. So, there's a lot of interesting materials to fit a lot of different jobs, depending on what you're going after.

Brandon Ellis  22:19  

And you talked about a little bit with the nylon having carbon reinforcement. And so there's a couple other reinforcing things. Now I mainly have seen, I don't know, maybe I've seen fiberglass as a reinforcing item with PLA or plastic types. Of course, nylon, I guess, qualifies as a

Matthew Stuckey  22:37  

Yeah, it's a

Brandon Ellis  22:38  

Plastic, but it's a higher temperature. I think of it as a higher temperature, a little bit a little bit more wear friendly, and temperature friendly and UV friendly.

Matthew Stuckey  22:47  

And it's got some desirable characteristics. It's got a little bit of flexibility where it takes a load a little bit better. And it really interacts well with either a chopped carbon fiber, which goes into the filament, and then you get that added rigidity from the carbon fiber in it. Or it plays nice with a continuous carbon fiber as well. 

Brandon Ellis  23:04  

Yeah. 

Matthew Stuckey  23:05  

Now there are, the downsides of something like that is yes, the printing temperature increases. You've got a little more wear on your nozzle and stuff like that. And of course, it's more expensive.

Brandon Ellis  23:14  

Yeah. So, let's talk a little bit about that - the equipment. So again, just to stay thorough here. We've already touched on this. So, I'm just gonna briefly slide by this. If you're doing metal, you need a MIG welding robot for the most part.

Matthew Stuckey  23:31  

That's a lot of things you'll see out there. Yeah,

Brandon Ellis  23:33  

Yeah. If you're doing the sintering, metal sintering, it's a it's really a powdered metal bed with a laser.

Matthew Stuckey  23:41  

A high-powered laser. Yep. And then they also you can see some of the laser and light sources in the plastic side of things with something like SLA printing, I think that's stereolithography (big word).

Brandon Ellis  23:52  

That's where the two, that's where the two lasers intersect in the fluid.

Matthew Stuckey  23:55  

It's more of a resin and it cures the resin when you shoot it. 

Brandon Ellis  23:59  

Because of the heat.

Matthew Stuckey  23:59  

Right. 

Brandon Ellis  24:00  

Yeah. 

Matthew Stuckey  24:00  

So, it cures that resin, either because of the heat or because of the UV. So whichever one you use. They yield beautiful parts. But it is a little more complicated. There's a little more involved than traditional 3D printing where you're just tracing out the patterns up and up. 

Brandon Ellis  24:17  

Right, right, right. And that's where we get now into the PLA and those type systems. 

Matthew Stuckey  24:21  

Right. Right. 

Brandon Ellis  24:21  

Well, starting with the hobby grade stuff and then moving on up to the industrial grade. And we didn't have industrial grades as much in the plastic industry, additive industry, I don't think, until probably what, two or three years ago.

Matthew Stuckey  24:36  

Yeah, the markets really increasing quickly. You know, you used to have things that were the size of you and me tall that printed beautiful parts but were extremely expensive. And that was what you saw in the industry probably five to five to six years ago. And now they're getting to the point where you can have a beautiful printing part, just as good as those rigs five and six years ago, where on your desktop in an industrial-type machine.

Brandon Ellis  25:02  

Yeah. Yeah. So what's the so So you talked a little bit about some of the advantages and disadvantages in terms of the PLA in the sunlight and that kind of stuff, and the, the ABS and the off gassing and, and those kind of things, but just in general material advantages, disadvantages, and let's, I mean, metal is metal. As far as the advantages or disadvantages of metal, there's not much difference with most, and of course, we're talking to trying to talk speak to 80-85% of the applications out there. And I would say, of most applications, the metal type stuff. I don't want to say it's new. I mean, it's been around for a while the powdered metal we talked about, it's been around for a while. But it's it just mainly, I think, because of expense and complexity.

Matthew Stuckey  25:52  

It's always a constant balancing game. How much are you willing to pay before it's worth going out and getting a mold made? Essentially.

Brandon Ellis  26:00  

Or, or machining it. 

Matthew Stuckey  26:01  

Right. Yeah. So that's what's great about PLA, dirt cheap. Prints, like, anybody can print it.

Brandon Ellis  26:09  

And now we're talking plastics. 

Matthew Stuckey  26:10  

It's a plastic. 

Brandon Ellis  26:11  

Yeah.

Matthew Stuckey  26:11  

But you know, you're, you're when you print PLA, you're willing to say this might last me a year. Especially in industrial applications, it's going to last even less. So that's where you just have to balance it out as like, what am I willing to go in with? And what am I getting out for what I'm paying for before it's worth taking it to the next level? That's why it's great for small businesses, the prototyping ability, the one offs, it's affordable, and it yields something that you can put out on the market. 

Brandon Ellis  26:40  

Sure, sure. So real quickly, some of the material advantages, disadvantages, attributes, things of that nature, we talked about temperature. So, PLA is PLA, this is the way I've always communicated it, the way that I can understand, my Forrest Gump way, the way mama would tell it. What PLA if you stick that on the dash of your car on a on a, you know, a 98-degree East Tennessee summer day, and go into you know, the store, when you come out, it's not gonna be the same shape. It's gonna be a puddle, or it's gonna be lopsided or something like that.

Matthew Stuckey  27:17  

You know, then a lot of the lower grade plastics will do that. Like I think the pliable temperature for PLA is 65 degrees C. So, if it's getting, you know, if it's hot. 

Brandon Ellis  27:25  

65 degrees C, what's that in Fahrenheit? 

Matthew Stuckey  27:27  

What's that around, 120? So, tell me a black dash on a truck ain't gonna get 120 degrees in East Tennessee on a sunny summer's day? Well, it will.

Brandon Ellis  27:37  

Even a beige dash will.

Matthew Stuckey  27:38  

So yeah, you can absolutely. And if you're doing an industrial application, if you got any heat production, you're going to be at risk of losing your dimensional accuracy. 

Brandon Ellis  27:49  

Right. So, then we jump up to and that that honestly, it gets a little bit better with some of the, the pt, PETG stuff. But it's still pretty close. I mean, an ABS I think probably, of those one of the highest.

Matthew Stuckey  28:06  

Yeah, ABS plays nice. It, it likes, it doesn't care necessarily about, like you said, the elements as much, you know, we use ABS sheets all the time. It doesn't mind the industrial and environments, but it is, it's a little more labor intensive to get off the printer. So, there's pros and cons with all those lower-level ones. And then you start getting into your nylons or polycarbonates where you're going to need a high temp nozzle to print that, you're going to need a good, good printer. That's precision, you know, and you're going to be looking at something that's more elevated.

Brandon Ellis  28:39  

Yeah. And so now we're getting into industrial grade equipment. And so if we divide that up into three attributes, temperature capability, maximum temperatures, before they're affected, that's the maximum deformation temperatures. And then the stability now when I call stability, talking about how it reacts to humidity and moisture, and and, and then then lastly, the accuracy now, now of those attributes, and you, Matthew and I were talking a little bit before we started the podcast here. And, and he brought up a great point. And that is there's these attributes have a place pre-print, and post print. 

Matthew Stuckey  29:17  

Yeah. 

Brandon Ellis  29:17  

And so pre-print means like when I'm storing the equipment or storing the material, I should say, and so I know nylon, absolutely needs to be in a dry box. 

Matthew Stuckey  29:26  

It loves the water. 

Brandon Ellis  29:27  

Yeah, it'll soak it up. And if it soaks it up, what happens?

Matthew Stuckey  29:31  

It starts to degrade a little bit; you lose some of your dimensional accuracy. And it traditionally gets a little brittle. It doesn't really like that. So

Brandon Ellis  29:40  

It'll also sputter out of the nozzle. 

Matthew Stuckey  29:43  

Yes. 

Brandon Ellis  29:43  

That's the other thing that we've seen. And so, for those of you guys listening that are welders out there, if you've got your little MIG, MIG setup with flux core, you know what I'm talking about. Flux core, meaning that it's a gas less you don't have to have the shielding gas, but flux core splatters, well, if you, if you impregnate plastic with small water molecules, and then heat them up.

Matthew Stuckey  30:10  

There they go.

Brandon Ellis  30:10  

They're gonna turn into steam and you're gonna have a lot of splatter and coming out of that, that nozzle, and so it affects your finish. 

Matthew Stuckey  30:17  

It does. And, you know, that's something you've got to really keep an eye on. I've been printing over at UT with the fibers in Composites Manufacturing Facility. We've got some really amazing materials like ULTEM, Carbon Fiber PEEK, Pack, which are like top-of-the-line plastics. They print at 350 degrees Celsius. It's like you're, you're really really pushing the limits of materials there. But the care you have to put into those, it's like, well, this has a stable shelf life, if it gets any moisture in it for like a day, you're ruined. So, you got to take care of stuff like that.

Brandon Ellis  30:52  

Certainly, certainly. And so then post print. So, post print, we talked about PLA temperature, it deforms pretty quickly.

Matthew Stuckey  31:02  

The UV light, hard, hard on that plastic, you know, you're going to have discoloration, you're going to have brittleness. So, you've got to make sure you're selecting the material that you think well, I'm going to put this on a line, what's it going to be exposed to? So, you got to make sure that it's something that's going to stand up to the test of time. I think that's why we lean on nylon a lot you know people have a good reputation with nylon, and they know that it's a durable plastic, it's something that they're familiar with. And with our ability to put some chopped carbon fiber in there, it really elevates that to the next level. 

Brandon Ellis  31:33  

And we've been using nylon for a lot for a lot of years, but usually in an injection mold type platform, things of that nature. And again, Matthew's point that this one of the one of the advantages of additive manufacturing, 3D printing, in this case is among plastics is, is that you, you don't have to have a mold. And by saying have a mold, that's that means you got to have a mold designed, and then machined and all the different things and it needs to be in tolerance and all this kind of stuff. So, if you're looking if you're if you're starting a company, and you're going to need to, you know, pay out, you know, 3000 pieces a day, you need to do probably plastic injection molding. But if you're a manufacturer or an end user, and you're curious, will this work? That's where additive manufacturing really comes into play. And a lot of times you find out we talked about this I know you're an avid listener to our podcast. So, we've talked about it in terms of cybersecurity. I've talked about it in terms of automating, what would you automate what you wouldn't. We talked about it with predictive maintenance and KPIs and all these different things. Everything is subjective. 

Matthew Stuckey  32:46  

Yes. 

Brandon Ellis  32:47  

And what we find, what customers find is sometimes when you print it, be it nylon, PLA, whatever, even ABS, it may be perfect. 

Matthew Stuckey  32:58  

Yeah 

Brandon Ellis  32:59  

It may be just fine. And so suddenly, the cost of getting a mold made, which can vary from a few $100 to 1000s of 1000s of dollars. If you don't need the throughput. I mean, you know that that's where your ROI comes into play. It takes a long time to print something. 

Matthew Stuckey  33:19  

It does.

Brandon Ellis  33:20  

Versus once the molds made. 

Matthew Stuckey  33:22  

You're making them all day long. 

Brandon Ellis  33:23  

That's right. And so, these are the trade-offs that I think you alluded to at the beginning. And so that said, what are some things this is kind of my this is my soapbox, some things that I'm wishing for. And every time I have a, get to have the opportunity to have a conversation with the guys over at Oak Ridge, I always remind them of what I'm wishing for. And this is what I'm hoping that those really smart PhDs over there, and all the folks that they work with will come up with and that's, that's basically the ability to print something. And this is counterintuitive, right? So, to print something that can handle a high temperature. Well, if you're going to print it, and it's going to handle a high temperature, then it's going to need to print at a high temperature. 

Matthew Stuckey  34:10  

Exactly. 

Brandon Ellis  34:11  

And so that's one thing that that's kind of counterintuitive on that I realize, but I could still wish for it. The second thing is something that's machinable. One of our common machine parts; we talked about aluminum. It would be fantastic if we could 3D print aluminum, and I'm talking about with a standard desktop style or nearly desktop style deal and not have to spend a couple 100 grand on it, on the equipment. But the also in the plastic side, polycarbonate side or actually what

Matthew Stuckey  34:44  

It's a, if you're calling it by its brand name, it's a Delrin but it's actually a polyoxymethylene. Which is a, you know, very machinable either you're working with something like that. If you want a very durable part, maybe an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene for something that's a little more slippy, you know, have some reduced friction that just really perform well on the mill. And that's something you know that with infill in the voids in the actual 3D printed part that allow you to have a part quickly, you're sacrificing the machine ability. So that's something that is definitely a drawback.

Brandon Ellis  35:20  

Right. And then, of course, as far as tool steels go, we mentioned this earlier, it'd be nice to have it be able to do steels and not just necessarily tool steels, but steel's like aluminum stuff at a lower cost. 

Matthew Stuckey  35:29  

Yeah. 

Brandon Ellis  35:30  

And but you bring up a good point. And from an engineering standpoint, one of the things that I had to get my head around a few years ago, as we started in down this road with additive manufacturing, is I was I had the tendency to put it in the box of a machined part, just machining. And, and it's a lot different subtractive manufacturing, and what you end up with in terms of, I guess, you would call it finite element analysis, this, the, you know, the strengths that how everything ties together, I'm not getting on the micro level of grains, and all that kind of stuff. But just in general, if I machine a block into a shape, how that handles the force, and when it's going to shear, break, you know, whatever, is a lot different for the same shape, but 3D printed.

Matthew Stuckey  36:19  

Yeah. And that's something you really have to consider in your part design is how am I going to orient this part and not have to struggle with layer separation or cracking or collapsing of the actual cells in the infill? And that's always going to be something that you can account for, but it's never going to be perfect, you know. Once you have a machined part, you've basically got that part.

Brandon Ellis  36:41  

Well, the big difference is one's laminate, laminated, and the other ones not. And when I say laminated, that is what we're doing. When we're doing additive, we're adding layer by layer by layer. And so, we have a series of layers or is laminated at that point, and you bring up so so in machining, and I know you've been around some machining, I don't, I don't know if I've been around more, I've probably been around more machining in my career than, than 3D printing, you've been around more 3D printing than I have probably, we do we do that here. We'll talk a little bit about that in a bit. But one of the things is, when you're machining a part, deciding how you're going to, you know, have the part oriented when you machine it, really comes down to the geometry, and maybe the tooling or the type of equipment that you're, your milll, that kind of thing. But in 3D printing, it's the the orientation of machining a part, has little to do with the design.

Matthew Stuckey  37:41  

Right. You put it how you can cut it.

Brandon Ellis  37:43  

Right, it has to do with the equipment or the cutter, the end mills, things of that nature. But when you're orienting how you're printing your part, that has a lot to do with the design. Because if if your if your if your laminates are in the wrong direction, or in a shear direction, that part will fail. But if you just rotate it 90 degrees, all of a sudden, it may be rock solid.

Matthew Stuckey  38:09  

Exactly. And that's, you could talk about 3D printing part design all day long. Because whether it's finding which way is the best print for the strength of the part, finding what's best for the support content of the part, what's going to cost the least and the light, least amount of time especially. That's like, half of your part design is how can I do this the best way, when, like you said, for traditional machining, it's like, this is what I have to work with. Let's make it work.

Brandon Ellis  38:37  

Right. And, and so now all of a sudden, when you're printing versus machining, you got to look at a hole differently. Because in a, in a block of plastic or metal, I can make a hole fairly easily and pretty much in any orientation. But in 3D printing, you've got to support the arch. If you're printing on you know, if it's on its side, or you got to build up around it or something like that, anything, any edge that overhangs those kind of stuff. So, we refer to those as supports. Support and supports require material. And of course, with most systems, you can decide yes or no with supports. But if you decide No, a lot of times you end up with

Matthew Stuckey  39:18  

Birds nests.

Brandon Ellis  39:19  

Yeah. And so, and that's because the material falls away. It's kind of like trying to ice a cake. You know, put icing on the cake while the icing still hot and you're trying to you know, create an arch.

Matthew Stuckey  39:31  

And there's no cake under you.

Brandon Ellis  39:32  

There's no cake under you, that's right. And so, it's gonna fall away. 

Matthew Stuckey  39:35  

Yeah, and that's something that, you know, it's very difficult to print in midair, you know, it's, it's near impossible. So, when you're designing your parts, you're thinking, how can I maximize the strength of this without sacrificing any dimensional accuracy. Think of a Cartesian robot system. Robots can do circles in the X-Y plane all day, but as soon as you get into the Z plane, it starts going in a little funky, you know, they start having to think, how am I going to elevate to the perfect height, get a perfect circle and then come back down when you're only building - what micron at a time, 50 microns at a time. So, it's pretty insane to think that just the orientation of a hole can make you a perfect circle or a perfect oval. So

Brandon Ellis  40:24  

Well, and that certainly comes into play because printing a, printing a hole, even in the X-Y plane is certainly more natural for most printers. 

Matthew Stuckey  40:34  

Right.

Brandon Ellis  40:34  

But it's still not accurate. 

Matthew Stuckey  40:36  

No. 

Brandon Ellis  40:37  

And then when you're trying to print it, layer by layer by layer, you have to do the support material, but you got to make support material that falls away. So now all of a sudden, and of course, the gracious thing is that there's a lot of fantastic software's out there that does a lot of that for you. And honestly, even with machining not many people are writing G-code nowadays. 

Matthew Stuckey  41:00  

No, they're going in their software and tool pathing.

Brandon Ellis  41:03  

Yeah, that's right. And so, we're using, we're using a lot of stuff. Cool. So, in 3D printing, we have 

Matthew Stuckey  41:07  

Slicers 

Brandon Ellis  41:08  

Slicers. That's right. That that's the software that utilizes and builds the layers and things that nature. And so, and that really comes down to the manufacturers, a lot of different ones, even with a hobby grade stuff, there's a lot of different ones out there. And there's some you see a more so I think with the hobby grade, and understand when I say hobby grade, I'm not putting hobby grade down, I'm just classifying it. It's not; usually it's less expensive. 

Matthew Stuckey  41:31  

Yes. 

Brandon Ellis  41:32  

Usually, the materials that it's going to utilize are the lower cost materials, but also the lower attribute rated materials such as PLA, and things of that nature.

Matthew Stuckey  41:42  

It's something that's definitely aimed at people who are looking to have one in their home, you know, it's like, I need to print one thing, and this is a really cool thing. And I may do engineering during the day. And so, I would like to do this at home. So that's it's not saying that you can't have wonderful prints on a home game printer you can. It's just that's what they're designed for.

Brandon Ellis  42:03  

So, let's talk a little bit about some of the things that we've done. 

Matthew Stuckey  42:08  

Yeah

Brandon Ellis  42:08  

Now at elliTek. elliTek, we made a very serious investment in 3D printing about two, two years started into it about two years ago. And so, we have quite a few printers now. They print various materials. We started, like a lot of people in this, I don't know, it was my, it was a benefit to me or my mistake, I don't know. But I started in PLA, because that seemed to be what was out there. And honestly, we've had probably pretty good luck with PLA. And the way we've always used PLA is more for prototype. PLA is cheap. And then a lot of times the PLA printer is not being used. And so, if you need to knock something out, and you're not wanting to wait on the other printers which are running, you know, we can do it in PLA. And then of course, we also have we do kind of jumping ahead here, but we do some of the printed nylon, and we'll talk about some of those things that we offer in just second. But as far as applications, some of the things that we've created. We've done a lot for customers for extra applications. And most of these were, I'd say, all of these were nylon. Actually, let me get into the PLA first. 

Matthew Stuckey  42:08  

Yeah. 

Brandon Ellis  43:22  

So for PLA, where do we use PLA a lot? Well, we do on our robot, on our robotic systems and Cartesian robots, articulated arm, SCARA robots, things of that nature, a lot of times we'll use PLA for a quick proof of concept. 

Matthew Stuckey  43:36  

Yes. 

Brandon Ellis  43:37  

So, one of the things that we do for our customers is if they've got an application, they want to see if this will work, then we can 3D print, gripper fingers, things of that nature. And a lot of times we'll do that out of PLA. Because it's plenty strong enough, usually, unless we're trying to reach into an oven or something. But usually wouldn't do that for a proof of concept. So usually, it's just fine. It may not have the wear tendencies we want. But we're just looking for the shape and the usability and so we use PLA for that a lot. But as far as applications of what we've done for customers, and you've been part of some of this.

Matthew Stuckey  44:11  

Yeah, 

Brandon Ellis  44:12  

We do a lot of part nests. And so, part hold down nests, so stick a part in there, and it's gonna support the part while you do some other operation to it. It may actually, according again everything's subjective to your tolerances, it may actually act as a Poka Yoke to make sure the right part goes in and have sensors integrated into it to say yes, it inserted fully or it didn't. And so it's the right part of the wrong part. We've done like I said, end of arm tooling type items out of a lot of that out of out of carbon reinforced nylon, and then a lot of guarding, custom guards. So, you get some kind of weird shapee looking guard. That you need to block something from something hitting it or something like that. Maybe it'll damage one of our vision system cameras or some type of sensors or, or something along those lines. That's, that's a quick and easy way to do that.

Matthew Stuckey  45:05  

Yeah. And the great thing about a 3D printed solution to that is, if you have a model of what you need, you can make it fit exactly. It's almost like a mold fit. But you're not paying for a mold to fit.

Brandon Ellis  45:17  

That's right. That's right. And, and so the guarding, what else toolholders.

Matthew Stuckey  45:22  

Toolholders. Lots of jig pieces and part nests, lots of harnesses and brackets to for electrical harnesses and such. You know, and it's things that you don't really think about, but if you needed to make 50 of them, it would cost a lot of money. So, it's, it's pretty good for us. And the good thing about our resources is that we have the high precision carbon fiber nylon, high rigidity, really nice properties. And we have stuff on the PLA side, which like I said, it's usually fine for proof of concepts, prototypes. And the good thing about those cheaper printers is they print fast, you know, you're sacrificing a little bit of accuracy. But you can have a prototype in a couple hours, and you're done.

Brandon Ellis  46:06  

Right. Well, and then the cost so that's the other thing, it's a lot easier for us to, to justify the cost of a PLA prototype, then it is to justify a carbon reinforced type type deal. And so, so that said, Beth, always makes sure that that, that we talk about what we can offer. And this is not, of course, this podcast, is not meant to be a sales podcast. So, this is not selling - educational transference of information. And so elliTek does offer 3D printing services, we do have a number of 3D printers in our facility that are available for use. And so, the folks have asked us how do we do, how do we utilize that? And so, the easiest way is if you have a solid model, or an STL, or something like that, that's ready for 3D printing or needs to be converted, we can probably convert it even if it's coming from 3D modeling software, such as you know, AutoCAD or SolidWorks,

Matthew Stuckey  47:10  

Inventor, SolidWorks. We've got it all. We can get it worked out.

Brandon Ellis  47:12  

Fusion. Yeah, we can we can convert those file types over if we need to, and, and make that happen. And then the second thing is we have an engineering group that can help assist in designing if you're trying to determine a design or, or as Matthews pointed out, decide how can I make this stronger or work better in this application, that kind of thing. We can certainly, we have those those services. But as far as the printing themselves, we talked about PLA, we can print PLA. We print most everything else we print is nylon.

Matthew Stuckey  47:44  

Yes, very desirable characteristics and nylon for industrial applications. You know, we've got the carbon, chopped carbon fiber reinforced, which we can get out to you really fast. We've also got continuous fiberglass, reinforced carbon, nylon, and that's like, you know, that's gonna be your rigid stuff that's not gonna go anywhere. And same thing with the continuous carbon fiber. It's kind of like a tape layup system, where you lay it out, and it's going to be rigid.

Brandon Ellis  48:08  

Well, I think of it as fiberglass. 

Matthew Stuckey  48:10  

Yeah. 

Brandon Ellis  48:10  

And so, with fiberglass, if you've ever done fiberglass, of course, there's chopper gun. There's hand laid, where we're doing the strips, but yeah, basically, you're putting resin down and then you're laying fiber down, and then you're putting resin down, and then you're laying usually in different different orientation, you're laying fiber down those kind of things. And you can get some really, really strong things. And this is, that's what these systems do. By adding a layer of nylon and then adding a layer of either fiberglass or carbon, the chopped, the reason that the chopped carbon is faster, and less expensive is because you're not having to do layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of each. 

Matthew Stuckey  48:50  

It's an integrated filament.

Brandon Ellis  48:51  

It's integrated into the material. That's right.

Matthew Stuckey  48:53  

And you know, that's something that with continuous carbon, a lot of people like the continuous carbon fiber, because it's, it is a little more expensive than fiberglass, but you have a lot lighter of a part and a lot stronger part at the end of the day. That's something that's really beneficial.

Brandon Ellis  49:09  

Well, in some of the other things that we're doing that that may be will make for another podcast one day that I'm really excited about. And so I was a slow adopter into 3D additive, but now that we're in it, boy the wheels start turning, and that's what I love about it is is when we're sitting in when the engineers and you sit with the engineers, because you're about to be one, the, when they're talking about things somebody inevitably somebody says Well, we could 3D print that. And and then it's like a whole light bulb goes off, we see a whole new dimension in perspective. And so as those are beginning to grow, some of the things we're we're starting to utilize, is one of the main things is spray on finishes.

Matthew Stuckey  49:50  

Exactly. That can take your surface quality, a lot of people have concerns about the surface finish on 3D printed parts that can cure it all - literally and figuratively - we cure it on. It really does make for a really beautiful part. And something that is going to work just fine to your tolerances.

Brandon Ellis  50:08  

Yeah. And we refer to that as a Class A finish capability. I mean, you can actually polish it.

Matthew Stuckey  50:13  

Yes.

Brandon Ellis  50:13  

To to a very, very nice, nice finish. So, surface spray on surface treatments are really nice. Also, they can increase temperature capability. So, you can take a material that's, that's not necessarily has a deformation temperature, and then by adding a spray on treatment to it, you're basically adding a layer of protection to that. And that can increase that temperature capability. And then we have not so as common yet, but we're doing, it's more of a thicker application of coating. But once it's cured, we now have a machinable surface. 

Matthew Stuckey  50:51  

Right. 

Brandon Ellis  50:52  

Now, that doesn't mean the whole parts machinable. But that means you have basically an inner skeleton, which is the 3D printed shape. And then you apply this material to the outside. And now all of a sudden, that material once cured, allows us some level of machineability. And so machineability now gives us the ability to to adjust and get us to flatness specifications, angular specifications, things of that nature, and that it's very much stable. So those are some of the services. So Matthew, you seem to know a little bit about additive manufacturing.

Matthew Stuckey  51:24  

There is a whole world of it. And that's just a little bit and don't take my word for it, get out there and learn something for yourself because it's a lot of interesting stuff. And it's absolutely it's growing by the day. So, there's changes and new things that are coming out every single day. So 

Brandon Ellis  51:38  

So, what we'll do is if you've got, I assume you've got some of your favorite reference sites, websites and things of that nature that you look at.

Matthew Stuckey  51:45  

Yeah, actually, I'm, I'm actually building my printer right now you can find almost anything in the world on YouTube. I found somebody who's building a ground up printer. It's called Tom's 3D Comm (www.toms3D.org). You know, you can either look at that. FCMF which is the Fibers Composites Manufacturing Facility at UT. We work it all the time with Oak Ridge and their manufacturing demonstration facility. They're great resources, they're local, and they're always willing to help. You know, there's people who get paid to get new ideas and try them out. So absolutely reach out to them. Reach out to us, we can get you connected with stuff like that. And we would love to have some new ideas coming in. 

Brandon Ellis  52:23  

Perfect. Well, listen, guys, I want to also do a little shout out to Beth Elliott, even though she's absent today. We have because of you because of your faithfulness, and following and subscribing and getting the word out about our podcast, which just started this is our total of, I think 10 episodes. The second episode of season two, we did eight episodes last last year, but we have exceeded 500 downloads. 

Matthew Stuckey  52:50  

Perfect. 

Brandon Ellis  52:51  

And so that's awesome. And so that that that really I attribute that to you all but also to Beth Elliott and her hard work. Thanks, Beth. You are fantastic. So that said let's go ahead and wrap up. The way to get in touch with us. The website is www.ellitek.com that spelled e-l-l-i-T-e-k, certainly pick up the phone, give us a call 865-409-1555. We're in Knoxville, Tennessee, but we deal with customers all across the planet. So certainly, give us a call and let us, as Beth said throw a problem at us. There's comment fields, fill those out as you listen, as you stream. Thank you very much again for for subscribing and for following us and for getting helping us get the word out. Matthew, thank you very much, man.

Matthew Stuckey  53:41  

Thank you for having me. It was a blast. 

Brandon Ellis  53:42  

So, let me see if I can do this. So, ladies and gentlemen, Matthew Stuckey.

Matthew Stuckey  53:47  

Thank y'all.

Brandon Ellis  53:49  

So, all right. Well, guys, thanks for joining us today. Hope you got a lot out of this 3D manufacturing "Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To... Be Machined." We look forward to the next podcast so we'll see you then. Take care

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