Blake Teipel rushed into the back office door of his company's Formnext booth. He apologized for being late, made a few jokes with his colleagues, chatted in our 30-minute interview, glanced at his watch, and visited briefly Stand outside his next date.

Two weeks later, the reasons for the elation and busyness of the Essentium CEO became clear. Essentium not only successfully launched the 280i HT and 240 HT machines this year, expanded its material portfolio and acquired Collider, it also announced its upcoming public listing and entered the metal 3D printing field in December.

"We are pleased with the [public listing] announcement," Teipel told TCT. "For the company and our customers, this is a truly positive step forward. Most of the customers we serve are multinational companies and/or large government entities. Providing large-scale services to these customers requires resources.

"We are very pleased that our customer base likes Essentium products, and we are working hard to fund the continued development of more and better products. Going public is an opportunity for us to join an amazing SPAC team [acquisition of the company on the Atlantic Coast], and then let us go ahead."

In Teipel's view, becoming a public company has always been a plan. Essentium was established in 2013, and its direct goal is to develop high-performance extrusion materials. In the background, its high-speed squeeze 3D printing system is under development — which later became the subject of a trade secret lawsuit filed by Jabil, which was resolved through a non-disclosure agreement earlier this year — and then officially announced in 2018.

Essentium focuses on industrial applications and a firm open material concept, quickly becoming a leader in the field of polymer additives. It showcased three versions of its HSE 180 platform (LT, S, HT) at the 3D printing trade show in 2019. It is one of many platforms that will deploy its technology for COVID-related applications in 2020, and then announced this year. Major additions to polymer products: first the 280i HT printer, then the integration of Collider, and finally the 240 HT system.

There is no doubt that there is a demand for our products. To be able to go out to meet that demand and target that execution is something we need to accelerate.

While focusing on the technology available to the market, Essentium has also strengthened its leadership team. Co-founders such as Brandon Sweeney and Elisa Teipel were promoted to executive positions, Blake Mosher joined as chief commercial officer, former Jabil executive Jeffrey Lumetta was appointed chief technology officer, and Jonathan Baliff was appointed interim chief financial officer. Both Lumetta and Baliff bring extensive experience working in public companies, while Chief Development Officer Elisa Teipel is in charge of a team of additive manufacturing engineers and scientists called EssentiumX, which does most of the development of Essentium's metal 3D printing work The work is attributed to the team.

"We are a very experienced team," the CEO said. "We have people with 30 years of semiconductor background, operating background, and financial background. We have a team that knows what they are doing. We have been adding people to the team who know what to do in the public company field so that our technology And our products can enjoy this vector, that is, the financial capability vector, so as to succeed in the open market."

With the "weak market" and Essentium's decision to go public, Teipel and his colleagues saw an opportunity to "get the necessary funds" and seized it with both hands. At Atlantic Coastal Acquisition Corp, he believes he has found a SPAC team, which will help "accelerate the construction of many pipelines."

"The pipeline we have been building commercially has generated more than $3.4 billion in confirmed demand, which comes from the 280 identified customers we are talking to," Teipel said. "You look at the ten-year life cycle value of customer opportunities based on the probability-weighted basis of the customer channels we have. There is no doubt that there is a demand for our products. To be able to go out to meet that demand, and for that execution, is what we need to accelerate So we need to go out and build a team and build capabilities to meet this demand.

"In terms of products, you can think of us as Tesla in 2013. At that time, Tesla had a Model S, and they had a Model X on the drawing board. The world didn't know Model Y or some other things. We There are a lot of things in the pipeline, and thanks to more resources, we will be able to speed things up."

Essentium was exhibited at the recent Formnext event. 

To confirm this metaphor, Essentium already has the metal 3D printing capabilities officially announced last week and has been invisible for one year. Since Christmas last year, the development of metal extrusion technology has been in progress and was born in response to user needs. In particular, the U.S. Air Force-one of Essentium's main partners at this time-"really came to us and asked if we could extend the HSE franchise to include metals." Essentium not only made this request. Respond positively and maintain close contact with the Air Force during the first 12 months of development. During that time, Essentium decided to focus on the range of refractory metals, including molybdenum, tantalum, tungsten, niobium, etc., and ensure that its technology is powder and sinter-free. Teipel explained why.

"Although I won't go into the details of the technology itself today, we hope to develop a technology with no powder and no sintering workflow. Powder has many benefits. You can make industrial parts, rocket nozzles and other things. I really respect being able to do it. This company-I think VELO3D is doing something very interesting-but the powder has its limitations. It is very expensive and requires a lot of energy to produce the powder. The powder cannot spread well. If the powder is entrained in the air, it will There will be explosion hazards and health risks. So, for various reasons, we don’t want to do anything in the powder space.

"We also want to develop microstructures. This stems from my background as a mechanical engineer at Caterpillar and John Deere. I have designed hundreds of metal parts [but] I have never designed a sintered metal part. Not one . The reason is that the sintered parts are not strong enough. We need castings, forgings, ingots, and weldments. These are the types of metal production processes that can produce strength, toughness, ductility, crack mechanics and crack propagation, and all these you actually need to produce fly Things to walk, drive away, safety-critical components."

Although Essentium maintains a good relationship with BASF, its metal extrusion technology does not rely on the company’s Ultrafuse wire, because Essentium focuses on "a more scalable workflow" that is compatible with any other products on the market. Different and completely different". In order to achieve this goal, Essentium has deployed its team of EssentiumX scientists and engineers in the project, and added a number of metallurgists with experience in AM and flight critical components. This will allow the company to use the same material methods as its polymer technology-and hope to achieve the same success.

"We have a dedicated metal team, but we will also rely on expertise in the field of metal materials," Teipel explained. "There is a good and mature industry. We will be able to learn from low-cost metal solutions. We will adopt a customized approach. But, in the final analysis, the supply chain already exists and the cost of the supply chain is very low. We are very thoughtful in how to integrate a method that we believe will generate ownership of any metal [additive manufacturing] technology that we believe will be the lowest total cost."

Essentium currently expects that metal technology will be put into commercial use sometime in 2023. But the company's customer base does not need to wait too long to obtain the results of polymer development.

Earlier this year, the company launched the HSE 280i and 240 systems, the former designed for the "core of the product life cycle", and the latter to address the "early stages of the life cycle." The 280i is named for its two-material function, 80 cm build tray and true IDEX function, while the 240 has two material functions, with a single print head running on a 40 cm build tray.

Essentium expects that its 240 system can meet the manufacturing needs of small and medium-sized specifications, allow universities to adopt HSE technology, and at the same time assist commercial companies in product development. The 280i, like the HSE 180 launched a few years ago, is geared towards the production of jigs, fixtures and tools. These applications are still viewed by Teipel and his colleagues as a key opportunity to squeeze 3D printing. 

"There are approximately 100 million factories in the world," Teipel said. "One hundred million. So Stratasys, the largest existing player has 140,000 system installation bases, which is nothing. 500,000 CNC milling machines are sold every year. So, what are additives doing? Compared with actual manufacturing, additives are a small and stupid Small industry."

Therefore, Essentium has been working hard to add string music to its bows. With the IDEX function, the 280i is independent on the X-axis and Y-axis, while being able to introduce multiple material flows that are insulated from each other. Although it cannot accommodate true IDEX functionality within the smaller build size of the 240 machine, Essentium has sought to provide dual extrusion through a single dual nozzle print head.

Essentium was exhibited at the recent Formnext event. 

"When you integrate multiple materials into the same machine, you can do all kinds of new things," Teipel explains. "The most classic example is that we can now also fully support water-soluble support materials, which can print more complex structures and provide a more seamless post-processing experience. The second process of double extrusion is that in the case of IDEX In copy mode, you can do two parts, but the main difference between full IDEX and half IDEX is that you can now print independently, you can have different motion telemetry, and you have to solve the different Z-axis timing in the software. Because your XY mode is different. So you can start to solve this problem, and then in the future state, we will build collaboratively, and then you can build on the same large part."

At this point, Teipel mentioned Tesla again, implying that the double-extrusion capability makes its 3D printer lineup look forward to the future, while comparing it with software upgrades that can enhance Tesla's autopilot capabilities.

The automotive industry, especially electric vehicles, is one of the places where Teipel sees great opportunities for Essentium polymer technology. In a recent "Apple-to-Apple comparison" conducted by the company, it proved that HSE can scale to tens of thousands of parts when producing 1 pound of nylon parts at a price of $17 each—in contrast, another aggregation The extrusion technology can only be expanded to 1,700 pieces at a price of US$84 per piece. Teipel believes that the quantities calculated at these costs are very suitable for luxury and electric vehicle platforms, which typically require less than 100,000 parts per year.

"Actually, why don't you use additives in these automotive applications? We are talking about the applications behind the dashboard or the internal applications. People say,'Well, extrusion is not the most beautiful technology. Absolutely. I don't care, Because there are so many parts, you don’t care about the surface finish at all."

For those applications that really require a good surface finish, Essentium ran into collider trouble earlier this year and integrated their "amazing technology", which includes a three-step process in which a water-soluble shell is printed and a high viscosity is injected. The epoxy material is then dissolved in water to leave the parts. The benefit of this technology is to achieve "A-level surface finish" while still being able to take advantage of the design freedom of additive manufacturing, such as conformal cooling channels.

Essentium is also working to expand its material supply in polymers. After launching PPS-CF on Formnext, the company's product portfolio now has more than 50 grades of materials, and the latest product has solved "80% of today's PEEK and PEKK use cases." The material was developed jointly with LEHVOSS, and the relationship with companies such as BASF is still in progress. Most importantly, the company also has an open materials ecosystem, which is a philosophy it has adhered to from the beginning, and it is great to see others catch up.

"I heard that there are other companies that think open architecture is a good idea. Because it is. This is how the actual manufacturing industry has been running for decades," Teipel quipped.

Essentium is working with the US Air Force to develop 3D printing applications for tools, ground support, maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), and flight certification parts for military aircraft and ground vehicles.

As additive manufacturing catches up with decades of manufacturing methods, Teipel is also looking at how it will move forward. One of the other announcements made on Formnext was the launch of a mobile application that will allow users of the HSE 240 system to remotely monitor parts production. This feature is enabled by the integrated camera in the HSE 240, which is "the tip of the spear of a broader digital ecosystem." Essentium is building this ecosystem based on a roadmap that focuses on making its products as safe as possible. The mobile application "is designed to be the control point of the machine", but this is only the first of many developments in the future.

"The problem with Industry 4.0 is not about capabilities, but about security," Teipel said. "If we think about the next five years, the next ten years, and think about Industry 4.0 and what needs to happen, this is not just a digital solution, but a security solution. If you can securitize the intellectual property that people design-no matter You are developing parts for F35 and iPhone 15, and you need to solve network security issues. We at Essentium really focus on this."

Therefore, when asked what the future of Essentium is, in addition to becoming a listed company, it also provides polymer and metal 3D printing solutions. The answer is: "numbers, numbers, numbers".

"This means on-board software, software that supports applications, and also means network connection, which means that machines are connected to each other, and machines are connected to local users on land, but it also means that machines are connected to users and spaces separated in time," Teipel Finished. "All the things I just mentioned, you can hear from anyone you talk to. What you will hear about Essentium is that the US government is funding us to do this because they connect our printers to their network , And push the edge of qualified parts in pre-certified geometries through a digital repository, two production assets. For the Department of Defense, they are talking about edge production, edge maintenance, and these workflows that support cybersecurity. This is what we are now focusing on the key of."

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