3DPOD: Insight from 3D Printing Pros

Ryan DeHoff is the Director of the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We talk with Ryan about the great people at the MDF and the different things they do. We talk about how to get into ORNL and how to work with them as a company. Ryan talks about what ORNL is doing in additive manufacturing, especially around understanding the LPBF melt pool. We discuss custom machine development and additive manufacturing more broadly. Ryan also helps us understand how to de

Thomas Feldhausen works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on hybrid manufacturing, DED, digital twins, and new manufacturing solutions. For years, he’s tried to marry traditional subtractive manufacturing with additive manufacturing for cost-effective, scalable production. Using simulations to improve results, improve tool pathing, and get better part properties, while using particle accelerators to improve results even more, has also been his bailiwick. Now Thomas is all about convergent

Alexander Plotkowski is all about developing new alloys. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), he’s the Group Leader for Computational Coupled Physics within the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division. He’s done in-depth research on controlling grain patterns, tried to predict the microstructure of parts, helped develop tools to predict and validate simulations, and developed DuAlumin-3D. We learn more about that material, which is interesting for many different reasons. But we also

Gordie Folin had deep experience in engineering at Pratt & Whitney, GE, and GE Aviation before becoming the Chief Product Officer at Beehive Industries. Among his achievements, he served as the Executive Director of the groundbreaking Catalyst engine program, which extensively used additive manufacturing. Now at Beehive, he’s in charge of making a family of 3D printed jet engines. Beehive is also scaling, placing significant orders for Nikon SLM Solutions and EOS equipment, buying machining comp

Dirk Simon had already spent years in the chemicals industry before joining and pioneering BASF‘s 3D printing effort. We get to hear how that firm looked at 3D printing and entered the market. We also look at Dirk’s time at Farsoon, where he pioneered their early entry into Europe and beyond. Then we talk about FKM and the economics of sintering. We discuss some history and look at when to use additive too before talking about how Dirk now wants to help people generate new businesses and grow ne

Stefan Joens of Elnik Systems sells ovens. Their debind and sintering equipment powers a lot of high-volume binder jet and MIM production. We learn about Elnik and its origins. But we also get a deep dive into sintering, debinding, shrinkage, and binder-jet part production. We talk about different parts, part sizes, where binder jet shines, and where it does not. We talk about the future of binder jetting but also of other processes such as bound filament. This is a super useful episode if you w