According to stats from Women in 3D Printing, women make up just 13% of the entire additive manufacturing (AM) industry. Here, we speak to those who were there from the start.
When Elaine Hunt was called into the office of Dr Larry Dooley at Clemson University, the former computer technician at the College of Engineering presumed she would just be fixing another run of the mill computer problem. Instead, Dr Dooley handed over a small clear plastic cube and asked how she thought it was made. Elaine guessed milling before Dr Dooley explained it had in fact been created using a laser and polymeric resin on a new machine he had just purchased for the lab. He wanted Elaine to run it.
“Of course, I said yes!” Elaine recounted to TCT. “As I thought of all the things that were handmade or even machine made in our shops, I could see major benefits of quickly making things.”
With just a handful of 3D printing companies in existence, the technology was very much in its infancy. Personal computers were being installed on desks at the university but, as Elaine recalls, not everyone was ready to embrace the change, and 3D printing was a technology “struggling to find a name or niche that fit.”
Elaine began training in Valencia, California in the summer of 1989 and by August, an SLA 250, which had been retrofitted from an SLA 1, was installed inside the IDeRP (Intelligent Design and Rapid Prototyping) lab.
Come 1994, the lab was renamed as Laboratory to Advance Industrial Prototyping with Elaine as Director. The lab was supported by faculty and students from the university’s Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering departments, which meant the requests and files that came through the door encompassed everything from medical models to a trumpet mouthpiece.
“One of the first projects for the IDeRP lab was building an entire nuclear power mock-up,” Elaine shared. “These models took days to slice and days to build. When the customer came to receive the models, I managed to drop and break one of the tubes. The old 5081 resin made models that were brittle and easily broken. I managed to save face by building a new piece so the model could be shipped to a huge marketing event for this company. They received a large contract thanks to the new technology of rapid prototyping.”
Elaine Hunt, former Director of Laboratory to Advance Industrial Prototyping at Clemson University.
Under the influence of Dr Dooley, ample research was carried out around custom prosthesis and in 1991, the lab was able to use CT data from a donor to build its first hip model. Getting access to that data however, which arrived on a huge magnetic reel intended for a mainframe computer, presented its own challenge.
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“We were dabbling in the outer edges of trying to bring multiple technologies together that didn't usually talk to each other,” Elaine recalls, adding that it wasn’t unusual for Dr Dooley to come into the lab with two pieces of equipment and ask her to get them to communicate.
Regardless of application, challenges persisted around software. Not only was most of the industry stuck using Autocad, with some resisting the move to 3D, but the processing power available at the time meant simply slicing a file could take hours – that first nuclear power facility model, for example, took around ten days to build and plenty of prayers said to ensure the power wouldn’t cut out overnight. Turns out, there was a better way.
“One of the computers that came into the lab around 1991 was a 25 MHz Compaq desktop computer. It was the fastest desktop on the market and quite costly. After a few months of use in the lab, Dr Dooley asked me if I thought the Compaq would drive the SLA machine. I did a few checks on the internal system and told him yes it could. We had a maintenance contract which was costly on the SLA and tinkering with it could nullify the contract, but Dr Dooley said, 'try it out.' Making sure there was no scheduled maintenance call in the week, I removed the SLA computer and placed the Compaq in its place. I rebooted the entire system and built a model that I knew the build time of and the time was cut in half.”
A solution materialises
Over in Belgium, another solution was forming in a modest corner of the Catholic University of Leuven, where a small team had also just installed its first machine from 3D Systems. Having visited two 3D printing companies, 3D Systems and Quadrax, and secured support from two industrial partners, a young Hilde Ingelaere and Fried Vancraen set out to launch a company that would develop 3D printing applications and software to make the technology more efficient.
“I was super enthusiastic. I wanted to call the company Idem, which in Latin means ‘the same’ so you dream about something and you can basically print it,” said Hilde, now Executive Vice President Medical and one of the co-founders of Materialise. “Very naïve!”
But with a clear business hat on and considering the economics of what was still a very expensive technology, Hilde concluded 3D printing would be an ideal fit for prototyping and eventually spare part production. Though, even years down the line, it wasn’t so easy to convince others.
“There was a big difference between Europe and US,” Hilde explained. “When we were thinking about doing an IPO, end of 2013, we did some testing the waters. We did that in Europe, where every time we had to explain what 3D printing was all about. In the United States, however, where the customs officer always asks you, what are your intentions? Why do you come here? We would say, we come for 3D printing and we were very much thinking, here we go again, we'll have to explain everything. But the officer just said, ‘Oh, that's good to hear. Who do you advise I should invest in? Should it be 3D Systems or Stratasys?’”
For the first few years, Hilde’s role at the company was focused on business and finance which, alongside another part-time job, meant evenings and weekends spent getting the young company off the ground. But the atmosphere, Hilde says, was “just fantastic.”
“There were always people there, regardless of the fact the working day was done, and there were students there who are currently our COO and our CTO,” Hilde said. “Whether it was about setting up a machine or emptying bins, people just did what it took to keep the company going to make it a success. We were all kind of entrepreneurs.”
The Materialise team in 1996 - Hilde Ingelaere (Top row, third from left) and Lieve Boeykens (Second row, fourth from left).
One of those early staff members was Lieve Boeykens who joined the company in 1996 as an Application Engineer for medical software and now leads go-to-market strategies and innovation programmes as Market Innovation Director. Lieve recalls that same start-up spirit which would often see staff members sleeping next to machines just to get parts out of the door.
“We just didn't care,” Lieve remembers warmly. “We were so into that new technology and that willingness of making it work, and I think that attitude is still there a bit in our DNA.”
Today, Materialise has around 200 machines in operation and, with its software tools, has cemented itself as a backbone of the AM industry. But, like Elaine back at Clemson, Lieve and Hilde can attest that even getting a part geometry to the machine and prepared for printing was a challenge they needed to solve, particularly in medical where much of Materialise’s early innovations and expertise lay.
“Many people think of software as a necessary evil. Of course, I am a pure software girl so I think it's definitely the accelerator,” Lieve said. “We started out of necessity with the software ourselves in these early years. We just needed these tools and we immediately put them in the market [...] it was about making it work. [...] I think providing these fixing tools in the beginning enabled the usage of the machines a lot more.”
“If we have good applications but machines that don't work, it doesn't work, but it’s also the other way around,” Hilde added. “We came up with things like automatic support generation [..] I remember the days you had to design each and every one by hand. It takes forever. If you have no way to actually nest the things that you are printing, it's just not economical. A lot of the value is in the software and even today, machine vendors are amongst our biggest clients.”
Going bigger
Lee Dockstader
Diana Kalisz, VP, Engineering at 3D Systems.
Meanwhile back at 3D Systems, a vacancy had opened up for an engineering project manager that would take SLA hardware to another level. The role was filled by Diana Kalisz who found herself managing the SLA 500 large-format stereolithography programme to double the machine’s 250 mm cube build size, in what Diana describes as a “great lesson in the level of difficulty in scaling both size and speed” and “the coolest technical challenge” she had ever seen.
Early applications were those from early CAD adopters in aerospace and automotive, and some medical device manufacturing. “Simply having data to turn into part files was a real hurdle,” Diana, now Vice President, Materials, said. But in the years that passed, as CAD became more common and capabilities grew, so did the possibilities.
“Being in the industry from the beginning, it’s been exciting to watch the evolution of not only the technology but the types of applications it can address,” Diana elaborated. “AM has taken us beyond prototyping into making parts we see every day, in quantity, and with the longevity of those produced using traditional manufacturing methods.”
Diana points to materials developments that have enabled the industry to progress from brittle white prototypes to applications that aren’t what you might expect from plastics, including long-term stability shown in 3D Systems’ recent Accura AMX resin. But like Elaine, Hilde and Lieve who each highlighted AM milestones in the mass manufacture of hearing aids and surgical planning, Diana is most excited by applications in healthcare, particularly bioprinting and regenerative medicine.
“When I joined the industry, I never imagined the bioprinting applications like we’re doing today,” Diana said. “There are plenty of challenges both from the biology and 3D printing perspectives to make it both real and viable. [...] We know so much about 3D printing now, we can bring all that expertise to bear on this new application. Biology and 3D printing coming together as 3D bioprinting is an amazing opportunity to positively impact human beings, and that’s the best thing ever.”
The next generation
Marie Langer, EOS CEO.
For EOS CEO Marie Langer, the origins of the AM industry were told in stories around the kitchen table as her father Dr Hans J. Langer, founder of EOS, brought home parts and anecdotes from early AM users. Now at the helm of the company, diversity is one of EOS’s strategic pillars thanks to Marie’s commitment to equity and inclusion.
“Both academic and corporate research have shown that diverse teams lead to better outcomes, financially and professionally,” Marie told TCT. “Diversity for EOS is not just about male and female. It is much more.”
Marie points to women like Monika Gessler who joined EOS’ material development department in 2000 as one of 18 women out of a staff of 110, just as the company had decided to exclusively focus on powder-based polymer laser sintering technology and, as Marie describes it, as customers “started to think bigger – beyond rapid prototyping and towards manufacturing.” At the time, Monika was often the only woman in the room but believes change is evident, not only at EOS but customers too. Now, with a firm belief that diversity can “drive productivity and innovation,” the CEO envisions a team that’s inclusive to all but emphasises it’s “committed to shaping a new future together, at the same time recognising that we still have a lot to learn.”
How the wider industry achieves that, is largely down to education. For Elaine, who remembers being one of only a handful of women out of 70 members at early AM user group gatherings and even standing up and asking, “where are the women?” during male-dominated department meetings, the key is to inspire at an early age: “We need to break the educational notion that boys are better at math and science and help young girls achieve competence in those skills. I firmly believe that the earlier a technology is provided to children and the more comfortable they become with using it, the more competent they become. Connecting 3D technology whether it be CAD, desktop printing or even basic manufacturing, girls will have a chance to break the cycle of male dominance in science and technology.”
Hilde agrees and argues there’s an “evolution” happening across all engineering disciplines. It’s about encouraging all children, not just girls, and the company receives many requests from schools for tours around Materialise HQ.
For Diana, the entry of more women into the AM industry has been a natural progression which reflects the industry’s growth, and while that 13% hasn’t drastically shifted, the idea of educating early is a common thread.
“To encourage more women to pursue this path, it’s important to start early with good STEM education, making science accessible, interesting and fun,” Diana offered. “People who love those subjects will find the wonder of AM. It’s such an amazing combination of mechanics, electronics, light sources, software, and chemistry.”
