It’s said you should never make predictions, especially about the future.
But it can be difficult to suppress a belief when there is so much passion immersed within it.
Avi Reichental would typically wax lyrical about the potential 3D printing had in your home, moreover, every room in your home. He did so in this magazine, in fact, in 2013. In this moment, he was the CEO of 3D Systems, the oldest, and still one of the largest, vendors in the space, while the industry had reached the peak of its hype cycle. His was one of the loudest voices in its climb there, and one of the last remaining when doubt superseded.
“Our position is that consumers are asking for access to 3D printing and it is our job to provide the tools and the content,” he said in 2013 when questioned on the increasing scepticism in consumer demand. “We intend to reserve judgement and let the consumer decide about 3D printing.”
A mathematical equation had formed in Reichental’s mind, in which the sum was consumer demand, and the addends democratisation and education. Democratisation was ‘key’, education was ‘the most fundamental change that needed to happen’. His calculation was supplemented by some workings out: pricing would come down, machines become easier to use, they would be integrated into the curriculum at primary, secondary and higher education, and ultimately, people wouldn’t know how to live without them. Every broken part replaced by a 3D printed one, every child’s desire addressed with a desktop machine.
Reichental chased the consumer market, championed it and believed in it, and in 2015, he and 3D Systems parted ways.
“I was wrong about that,” he told TCT. “I used to say it’s not going to be a matter of whether or not you will have a 3D printer in every home, the question will be in what room in your house would you like to have a 3D printer and for what purpose. It didn’t happen the way I envisioned it. The democratisation of 3D printing happened, we can buy printers today for 198 dollars, the migration to schools and libraries happened, [but] the migration to the home I was totally wrong about.
“Something very interesting happened. We see many of these would-be home printers [have] become good enough for small engineering firms. The democratisation of that class of printers that started with the whole Makerbot movement ended up giving professionals a better, cheaper tool.”
Reichental made these comments at Formnext 2018, where XponentialWorks, the company he now heads, exhibited the capabilities of a selection of the start-ups it represents. Nexa3D debuted its industrial-grade SLA systems, which will be made available this year at price points between 20,000 USD and 50,000 USD, and sample parts like engine blocks and pull handles. NxtFactory showcased its QLS 250 and 350 SLS machines, priced at 80,000 USD and 120,000 USD, along with some printed shoe soles and a differential hub produced with John Deere. And Paramatters was demoing its generative design software, which boasts finite element analysis capabilities, and is being used by Ford, Renishaw, and Stanley Black & Decker. The stand’s centrepiece was a Mini with a selection of concept applications. The standout was a 3D printed trailing arm suspension, designed to deliver the same performance as its casted counterpart but with a weight reduction of 47%.
He believes the price points and performance of these technologies serve to address his long-held view on democratisation and supplement his more contemporary fixation around Industry 4.0. As we look outwards from his stand tucked away in the corner of Hall 3.0, GE, Trumpf, and Desktop Metal are all in eyeshot. They’re companies who see the place additive manufacturing (AM) has on the factory floor, its potential – real potential – to disrupt the wider manufacturing market. But similar barriers remain, and this trio are not alone in still having work to do on the democratisation of their technology.
“The throughput and the total cost of ownership have to be comparable or better [than conventional methods]. Then you really democratise because for the first time you really unleash much more effective designs for additive manufacturing that don’t require set-up, that don’t come with some costly tooling, that give you the flexibility to make millions of identical parts or millions of one-of-a-kind parts without any additional penalties,” Reichental assessed. “That gives you digital inventory instead of warehouses stuffed with goods that don’t move. That gives you the ability to teleport products across borders digitally without getting encumbered with all these trade wars and so forth. That’s democratisation. Giving customers access to high-speed, cost-effective design and manufacturing.”
It’s the start of manufacturing becoming sexy again, Reichental believes. Parts being generatively designed and manufacturing with the aid of automation processes: ‘These technologies have been around for years, but now we have the computational power to do something about it,’ he notes. This is to be aided by familiarity of 3D printing technology, ensuring the next generation has the adequate digital literacy to maintain this next phase of industrial revolution.
“We are sitting here with 50 companies that can deliver you a 3D printer to a school or library for a few hundred dollars,” Reichental said. “We see a real explosion of not just design curriculums to learn digital fabrication, but we see how 3D printing in elementary schools and middle schools and high schools and universities of various complexity are being integrated into other curriculums, which means we’re getting to a point where people understand that 3D printing doesn’t exist for the sake of 3D printing. It’s a tool that unleashes creativity.”
He continued this train of thought and it led him back to a path already tread: “It’s an instrument that enables all of us to become digital craftsmen.”
The more he sits and ponders, the more his mind wanders. He was wrong, he conceded as much, and yet as he debates the 3D printing/ consumer poser, even today, he begins to think he might yet be right. Amazon Web Services’ majority stake in Shapeways means he can imagine a world where the consumer’s Amazon Echo sits beside a desktop 3D printer: “You will say, ‘Alexa, print me a Christmas ornament,’ and Amazon will send you a file and you will print it.” It’s what can happen when passion intertwines with enthusiasm, even when other passions surrounding 3D printing’s implementation in factories co-exist, and even if the enthusiasm is rash: “I am encouraged by the tell-tale signs and I’m not giving up on it. I’m optimistic, maybe foolishly optimistic, but optimistic,” laughed Reichental.
The dream lives on, but the pursuit, for now at least, remains dormant. His enduring optimism in the consumer market is not immediate per XponentialWorks’ Formnext Booth. Similarly, and despite the consumer focus that developed, 3D Systems’ large play in industry throughout Reichental’s tenure cannot go unmentioned. His downfall was that his optimism in the consumer market didn’t dwindle when that of the majority did. He fell foul of chasing a target audience when the applications, by and large, didn’t exist. Sure, you could 3D print a spare part for your utilities and furniture, but how often do you need to? You can hope that by democratising and educating, the next generation will be so obsessed with 3D printing that a desktop machine is as commonplace as a television or a laptop, but not everyone wants to be a digital craftsman. Perhaps we should leave it to those that do.
As a leader of the new school in 2013, Reichental said democratisation was key, education was too, that the consumer would decide about 3D printing, and the demand was there. Through the endeavours of his new venture, there’s acceptance that he was right, and he was wrong.
This article was first published in TCT Magazine Europe Edition Volume 27 Issue 1 as part of a wider feature titled ‘Leaders of the New School: Where are they now?’ which documented the journeys and development of a host of the most renowned figures and companies in the industry.
You can click through to the other interview pieces that completed this series below:
