Roger Spielman is something of a folk hero in the rapid-fabrication industry. Spielman spent more than 20 years at the Rocketdyne Division of The Boeing Co., where he came to oversee its rapid prototype operations. Among his many noteworthy accomplishment, Spielman and his team used SLS to create hundreds of parts for the International Space Station Program and the Space Shuttle Main Engine Program.

Twice since 2000, Spielman has been a keynote speaker at EuroMold, the annual trade fair for moldmaking and tooling, design and application development. This year’s fair will be held in Frankfurt, Germany from December 5, 2007 to December 8, 2007.Ahead of EuroMold, Dean Rotbart, director of the Low-Volume Manufacturers Association, conducted a telephone interview with Spielman, asking him what he would tell EuroMold if he were a speaker this year.What follows is an edited transcript of that interview. It is reprinted with permission of the Low-Volume Manufacturers Association, www.l-vma.org.——L-VMA: Roger, why is EuroMold such an important annual trade conference?SPIELMAN: Well, it’s certainly the largest in Europe. It dwarf’s anything I’ve been to in the United States by at least two to one; probably more than that. So, it’s got a huge influx of manufacturers, designers, all different types of machining products, everything you can imagine.L-VMA: Does that suggest that Europeans take the industry more seriously than Americans do?SPIELMAN: Yes, absolutely. L-VMA: And why? What’s the historical reason for that?SPIELMAN: Well, they are playing catch up. I noticed that when I first went over there in 2000 and then again in 2004 that they were coming with a vengeance, and their number one criteria is to take business away from the United States. A lot of the companies over there, like Arianspace, all of the French aerospace consortium, BAE [Systems], the entire government of their country is behind them, and they are all grouped together to try and take commercial launches away from American space programs and they are grouped together to try and take aircraft contracts away from American aerospace programs.L-VMA: Based on the news I was reading in today’s paper, they are having quite some success, aren’t they?SPIELMAN: Yes, they are.L-VMA: Especially with China and I see that President Sarkozy of France is in China today, this is November 27th, toasting the sale of some aircraft to the Chinese.SPIELMAN: Well, it’s not just the aircraft market, it’s technology in general, and they are out to develop it at a rapid rate, much more serious about this than the United States is.L-VMA: We don’t do that very well in the United States, do we?SPIELMAN: No, not at all. This goes all the way down the line. In 2000, I was working with an Italian Formula One racecar company, doing titanium investment castings, and their funding for the year on their Formula One team was more than we had funding for the Space Shuttle main engine contract.L-VMA: That’s a bizarre fact.SPIELMAN: Yes, it is, it’s kind of scary though.L-VMA: It is. Tell me this: When you first spoke at EuroMold, you were featured as a keynote speaker in 2000?SPIELMAN: That is correct.L-VMA: What did you tell them and what were they most interested in, in 2000?SPIELMAN: They were most interested in the evolution of rapid prototyping technologies, into rapid manufacturing and how we controlled those processes. What drove us to verify they were good enough to fly. So, basically, we showed them our whole layout on how to qualify materials, how to maintain that quality and how to inspect it during the build.L-VMA: Now, at that stage, I take it they were novices, or not even novices yet.SPIELMAN: They are still novices, but they are coming on quickly.L-VMA: And where was the United States in 2000, and have we kept a reasonable lead in that arena, or in fact have we fumbled the ball?SPIELMAN: Well, I believe we are in the process of fumbling. We still have a minute advantage. There were some very large companies like the Boeings and the NASA’s, doing development on this throughout the ‘90’s and early 2000, which they’ve [the Europeans] had a problem catching up with. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me that they are following our lead on everything, just not quite as far along as we are yet. That really doesn’t mean much. I expect them to go by us within a year or so.L-VMA: You next spoke to them what year, first in 2000 and then when was your next…?SPIELMAN: 2004.L-VMA: And had things changed significantly between 2000 and 2004 in terms of their sophistication and what they were doing?SPIELMAN: The biggest change I saw was on the metal development side. They were very focused on that, so their polymer had not gone very far, but their metal development arena had.L-VMA: Tell me a little about what you told the group in 2004. What were your comments, sort of a re-do of the 2000 speech or were you speaking in a different direction?SPIELMAN: No, actually the request was to re-hash all of that, because there is a huge amount of interest in aerospace parts and rapid manufacturing. The thing that made 2004 unique was that I had a chance to branch off and show them what was done in the private sector. By that time I was away from Boeing for several years and producing rapid manufacturing tooling for a packaging industry. So, it was a nice transition to show them that the technology really does transfer even though you are not at a huge aerospace company with endless engineering and deep pockets.L-VMA: Very interesting. And if you were going to fly over to Europe this year and address the group, what’s on your mind? What do you think would be of interest to EuroMold that you could share with them?SPIELMAN: Well, I’m getting a lot of feedback from a lot of key players in the industry that feel one of the gripes I had from 2003 up was really the manufacturing companies manufacturing this equipment are limiting the growth, because they want to control it and be the all-encompassing government behind this technology, they are slowing it down to such a crawl that very little new development is going on.L-VMA: When you say, “new development,” do you mean on the hardware side, hardware development specifically?SPIELMAN: No, absolutely not, I mean hardware and material. And they go hand-in-hand. If you want to branch into rapid manufacturing, you have to develop new, stronger materials that lend themselves to long-term usage. Generally, that requires modification to the machine.So it’s part and parcel, one leads the other, so to speak. And there’s been a handful of people out there, mavericks, that go ahead and modify the machines and do whatever they want, myself being one of them, to further the interests [of the industry], but large companies generally don’t do that anymore. They have too much to lose within the legal system.L-VMA: I’m not as sophisticated in all this, by any means, as you are, so give me a relatively lay person’s example of some kind of a material that would really benefit the industry, that right now none of the manufacturers have developed?SPIELMAN: Well, new materials are coming along all the time. Many of them were started in the mid to late ‘90’s and metal development is the most prominent, because that’s huge, everybody buys into metal parts.Of course by doing that you need much more finite control with the machines that is not offered. High-strength polymers is another one. We are using polymers now that are third and fourth generation off of what were experimenting with in the ‘90’s, and they require more control.Now, what the manufacturing companies are doing, they are coming back and automating the controls on their machines so that, rather than have the adjustability that you would want in the equipment like you used to have, now you have to buy a license from them. What that limits you to is their development. If they don’t write it into their software, you can’t do it. So it’s turned into a cash cow for the equipment manufacturers.L-VMA: And again, I’m a lay person, but in essence, they have a lot to gain. It’s like the razor blade and the razor companies, right? Not only do they sell the razors, but they make a lot of money on the blades?SPIELMAN: Well, right now a lot of your leading companies are making up to 40% of their total profit margins on material sales. That’s a very controversial point in itself. Should the machine manufacturers be selling materials, or should they be selling machines? And how can one propagate the other? If they make the materials cost-prohibitive, then why should they build new machines, or any more for that reason?L-VMA: It’s an interesting question. There are similarities in the consumer desktop printing business. A company like HP really makes a huge amount of money on the ink for its printers, but not necessarily the physical printers itself.SPIELMAN: Well, that’s very good, but that’s where the commonality stops. You can buy an HP printer very affordably; you can buy toner cartridges that most people can afford and will purchase. With the rapid manufacturing/rapid prototyping companies, not everybody can afford a $750,000 machine and then ludicrous material costs to go along with it.L-VMA: Well, so it sounds like the industry in some ways is its own worst enemy.SPIELMAN: That’s exactly right.L-VMA: Tell me this: you have migrated now to Tangible Express, which is really an innovative rapid manufacturing/rapid prototyping/rapid tooling company that also offers fractional ownership. What was it that attracted you to Tangible Express, and where’s the challenge for somebody who has literally put parts and designed things for outer space use, what’s the challenge for you? What was the attraction for you of migrating to Tangible Express?SPIELMAN: Probably the first and foremost thing was Tangible is focused on rapid manufacturing. There are a lot of buzz words going around the industry. Everybody wants to do it, but there are very few places that are 1.) capable of doing it; and 2.) willing to do it. So by focusing on rapid manufacturing, that indicates you are going to be a major player in the system. We need more, right now we do not have enough suppliers for even the aircraft industry here, not even close, less than you can count on your hand. So another player in the industry is a very good thing I see.L-VMA: What is the potential for rapid manufacturing? Will it always be short run? Will it always be 100 pieces or 1,000 pieces, or someday are we going to see, in your mind, manufacturing on full-production scale?SPIELMAN: You’ve got process limitations. The process right now is uniquely capable of short run production. That’s really where it shines, it’s going to be in that arena for an awfully long time. Other technologies subtractive technologies, CNC technologies, turning technologies, milling technologies are very well developed, they’ve been being developed for over 100 years. So they’ve got those guys down to a fine science, and they are doing a very good job. I see layered manufacturing, SLS, the new technology, being another tool in the drawer.L-VMA: What, specifically, are you doing for Tangible Express?SPIELMAN: We are bringing the SLS operations up to aircraft standards, which means we have a lot of machine work to do and a lot of training work to do on the personnel, a lot of procedural work to put in place, and then we intend to certify Tangible Express with AS-9100 approval so we can actually go after some of these aircraft manufacturing parts contracts.L-VMA: Let’s assume that our conversation is broadcast to the folks attending EuroMold, any key messages you would like them to come away with?SPIELMAN: Focus on materials and material properties, and how to get those machines to repeat those acceptable properties every time.L-VMA: That’s a big challenge, right?SPIELMAN: It’s a huge challenge, because a lot of that entails new machine design. Now the problem is, if the machine manufacturers today don’t have the talent internally to develop new materials or new designs, that’s really going to be strung out over a period of years, rather than months.L-VMA: How does this work historically? Is it more likely that the folks that are making the existing machines will innovate? Is it more likely that new manufacturers will come in and see the need, or is it more likely that end-users frustrated by the lack of the kind of equipment that they most need will develop it themselves? What’s the most likely scenario here?SPIELMAN: Absolutely, the end-users will develop it themselves. With the manufacturers making 40% profit margins off material sales, they really don’t need for you to change a whole lot of materials or make it better. They want you to use a lot of materials, so they’re very comfortable in the niche they are in now.L-VMA: What do you think, if you were appointed king and you could rule the world, would be the kind of a.) profit margin that would elevate the industry? and b.) what would the stance of manufacturers be in terms of developing these new materials?SPIELMAN: I think it would be competitive with any other professional industry out there. You look at the profit margins there are on machine manufacturers for CT’s for the medical industry, or MRI’s, or some of the advanced equipment out there. Those people aren’t hurting for money. They’re doing quite well, and they aren’t supplying any materials, they are supplying machines that work for the betterment of society.Look how fast the technology is going. Is there room for everybody? Certainly there is. It just takes a different mindset. Is there money to be made by everybody? Certainly. But, why limit the technology? There are so many different uses we can use this on now, from aerospace to automotive, to even medical applications. Once we start replacing bones, that’s going to help out mankind and it’s going to spool up very quickly. Right now we don’t have enough machines on the planet to do that.L-VMA: Thanks for taking the time with me. I appreciate it.SPIELMAN: No problem, anytime.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 1:18 pm and is filed under News of Note ..., Rapid Prototyping & Rapid Manufacturing, Dean Rotbart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.