The CAD Insider

An Engineer Dreams of a SOLIDWORKS-Proto Labs Merger

As an engineer, I can totally specify a part. Concept, shape, material . . . done! I can render in glorious 3D . . . . It almost looks like the real thing. I can tell if it will survive in the field with stress tests, or drop it in an assembly and find interferences or animate it. I have singlehandedly created this part from thin air for someone who didn’t know what they wanted until I made it. I am a god! I am living the dream.

Now, I want the part in my hands. The dream is interrupted. To get the part made, I have to hand my design over, convey the part to mere mortals, in language they understand. Their machines that only they can talk to. I have to wait. And hope they get it right, not butcher it, not change it.

If only I could push a button and get the part!

Push button manufacturing could be the unsung lament of the mechanical design community. But as engineers, we dare not say it, voice it. We are not supposed to believe in magic — that a part can appear from our designs. We defer to our manufacturing counterparts for that. They need to specify the process, pick the right material and place the bits in the machine . . . right?

3D printing promised the dream of push-button manufacturing. We flocked to it, only to discover it usually couldn’t do the job. Materials are limited, plastic is weak, the chemicals are messy, it’s slower than grass growing. And the good 3D printers cost more than cars.

We are desperate. MarkOne stole the show with its composites part printer (see Best of Show). We’d been making composite parts for so long. But here was a chance to push a button to get a composite part — from the computer into my hands. No layups. No messy chemicals. No annoying humans. But Mark One is a one-trick pony. It only makes small carbon fiber parts.

Enter Proto Labs

There is one company with the imagination and purpose to make this push button manufacturing a reality.

Proto Labs, a Minnesota-based firm with multiple locations and thousands of machines (not just 3D printers), says it wants you to push a button and send it 3D part files. You get to select the material, the process, the quantity. The part lands on your desk a few days later. You’ll know upfront what it will cost. You don’t have to deal with anyone. Unless you want to. Proto Labs has manufacturing engineers who can step in to assist. They are like good waiters — invisible, but who pop up when needed.

Proto Labs tries to automate as much of the manufacturing process as it can. Its software will check for typical manufacturing mistakes (thin walls, overdrafts, etc.) and flag your design. You may never have to call on a live manufacturing engineer. As such, it comes closest to putting and manufacturing an engineer’s brain in your computer for a hands-off, rapid part creation — the closest thing to this-is-what-I-want-now-just-make-it push button manufacturing. For all of us Spock-types (RIP, Leonard Nimoy) for whom humans are puzzles, it can be a straight shot, a machine birth without human complications. At least some of the time.

For the design engineer who considers their part totally defined and ready, nothing at this moment would be simpler than sending their 3D part file to Proto Labs. No other company is as far down the road to push button manufacturing.

What about Autodesk and Delcam?

The biggest deal so far in the CAD/CAM world so far has been Autodesk and Delcam. With it came the promise that the worlds of 3D mechanical design would merge with part manufacturing. However, Autodesk remains scattered as to its approach to manufacturing. Delcam continues to exist as a separate manufacturing portfolio, its products operated by those on the manufacturing side, just as before. Though it adds to Autodesk’s top line, Autodesk is making little attempt to automate the manufacturing process from inside Inventor using any its acquired manufacturing software, either Delcam or HSMWorks — to create anything that resembles push button manufacturing. The closest Autodesk comes to push-button manufacturing is its 3D printer, one more in the growing sea of 3D printers available. And as with them all, it is a point solution in the spectrum of manufacturing possibilities.

All major CAD programs are tied up with CAM, somehow. Many are in 3rd party partner programs. Some CAM products are under the roof of CAD companies, yet they continue to be operated as separate camps. Autodesk maintains a third party CAM vendor list, though it has withered after its CAM acquisitions. SOLIDWORKS has its CAM partners, notably MasterCAM, GibbsCAM, CAMWorks, SolidCAM and others. PTC and Siemens also have long-standing, trusted CAM partners.

Despite CAD tie-ins, CAM exists as a specialized discipline. Few design engineers can hope to match knowledge with a manufacturing engineer, or even a machinist. It’s a whole different world, with machine code, speeds and feeds. It’s messy, the cutting fluids, chips are flying . . . . Engineers can scratch the surface of this world, many dabble in it, some even make a hobby of it, but in the end, our day job is at a desk with a workstation with design software.

Let’s Get Together

It’s been a while since we looked at Proto Labs (Get Real - Proto Labs One Off Parts Made with Actual Engineering Materials, Feb 10, 2011).

I am reminded of them at SOLIDWORKS World 2015, where it occurs to me that . . . Proto Labs could be the answer to my dreams! Push button manufacturing comes true!

But for push button manufacturing to happen, there has to be a merger of the companies. Proto Labs was the first SOLIDWORKS manufacturing networks partner (Proto Labs Joins MySolidWorks Manufacturing Network ). (Could this be a dance before that wedding?)

Proto Labs’ functions need to exist in a SOLIDWORKS menu, as SOLIDWORKS commands. SOLIDWORKS is already a common, comfortable interface to more than a million users. It is a trusted design tool. To take a part out of SOLIDWORKS and send it to Proto Labs still seems like throwing it over the wall, with the uncertainty of dealing with a new company, a new process. Getting a new vendor is work. To work inside of SOLIDWORKS, better than one of its Gold Partners, talk in the language of design engineers, not machinists, reduce the number of pop-up warnings one can get in Proto Labs, increase the automations with less back-and-forth . . . . This can only happen if the developers of both companies meet under one roof, with one goal: push button manufacturing from a CAD program.

Buy Proto Labs Already

	Proto Labs	Dassault Systemes
Annual Sales (2014)	$185M	$2.7B
Market Cap	$1.74B	$14.8B
Employees	749	10,764

source: Forbes 

An acquisition by Dassault Systemes (SOLIDWORKS’ parent company) seems doable. Let’s say Proto Labs could be had for 3x revenue,* a very general rule of thumb for acquisition, its price would be $555M. DS is used to deals this size, having just paid $750M earlier this year for Accelrys, maker of molecular modeling software. It bought RTT, maker of visualization software at the end of 2013, which had about the same number of employees as does Proto Labs. It paid $350M for SOLIDWORKS in 1997, which judging from more recent acquisitions and SOLIDWORKS ongoing success, seems to have quite a bargain and its best deal ever.

Happy Ending?

The dream now has a happy ending. Both sides of the equation are solved. I imagine tens of millions of part orders raining down on Proto Labs from all of the SOLIDWORKS users, who now can go all the way to a physical part, rather than be interrupted by having to deal with a manufacturing process, which only slows them down. It gets better, if you can imagine. Their creativity unleashed, the engineers only too happy to be masters of their own destiny, create more, better designs, more often. Proto Labs can’t keep up and has to increase their capacity, buying more manufacturing machines, more 3D printers to meet demand as it is now handling the production from the vast majority of engineers out there. As Proto Labs has to ship physical parts to customers, it must locate its facilities to avoid borders, taxes and tariffs and reduce shipping costs. Engineers find that their designs are actually being manufactured in their own countries. Manufacturing returns to its own shores, rather than it being sent to cheap labor markets in Asia. It is the manufacturing of today, fast turnaround, one-offs and custom products, small production runs — but all done on a ridiculously large scale, as everyone becomes a manufacturer as manufacturing is suddenly accessible to all who have access to design software.

Will The Marriage Take Place?

Acquisitions are difficult to predict with any certainty. Applying a logic and reason or exposing a crying need is insufficient to close a deal. Companies do secret dances and engage in back room discussions which are never revealed. Often, a deal in the works can be derailed due to “cultural incompatibility,” greed (acquired company execs want to get too rich in the transaction), or some business issue. Even the most obvious matches-made-in-heaven just never happen and we never know why.

Software vendors, even big ones, are in the habit of saying “they are not in the hardware business” and Proto Labs is essentially a hardware company. As if saying that you would not want them to try to make a product they had no experience making, all the time planning acquisitions that lands them smack in an industry they know nothing about. (PTC buys Arbortext, Dassault buys Accelrys, Autodesk buys Socialcam, to name just a few). CAD companies refer to their products as “solutions.” But a real solution solves a problem or fills a need. The picture on the screen, no matter how pretty, is only a means to an end. An engineer needs a part he can hold and use. Design and manufacturing are interlinked to the point that neither can function without the other, yet both exist as pieces of the solution. A true CAD visionary with means needs to lead the way for Proto Labs acquisition — and practically everyone who uses CAD, now or in the future, will thank him.

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*Should the CAD CEOs panic at the thought of being left behind, a bidding war for Proto Labs could increase the price well over 3x.

Autodesk Buying Delcam Ignores Hottest Trend in Manufacturing

What will Autodesk buy next? It's a game CAD insiders play: pondering the next move of a cash-rich market leader.

Oh, it would have to be company that has great technology and a bright future. If you've been listening to CEO Carl Bass, Autodesk would have to be looking for a company that would help the future generations, kids or their adult(ish) counterparts, the makers. The company, lock-step behind their leader, is embracing new business models. Design apps, not monolithic software on archaic workstations, but apps for their mobile devices. Cloud based, preferably. And helping design was just getting started. Let's make things, they say. But in a new way. Let's make what you (the consumer) wants to make, be it a copy of a sculpture you like, some furniture, something frivolous, a replacement for the knob that fell off you oven and broke...The company with an overabundance of design tools seemed itching to help the entire population be able to hold in their hands whatever may have popped into their heads but may have lacked the design/engineering/manufacturing/financial skills/resources/expertise. No worries, Autodesk was going to make it happen. Mass customization. The very democratization of creation. It had to be simple enough for the person off the street.

Autodesk would just have to buy a 3D printing company, right?

On November 6, Autodesk announced it would be buying Delcam (see press release). Old school CAM at its finest. Picture metal shavings on shop floors and skilled machinists running hulking metal cutting machines. Delcam, a market leader in mainstream CAM. Even with the fanciest multi-axis CNC set up, the state of the art in subtractive machining, is basically the way things were made. Metal gives way to plastic. More parts are made from composites for which no surface machining is required. But the latest generation doesn't even want/need any of that. They want to hit a button and have the part come out.

Even 5 years ago, it would have surprised no one if big CAD bought big CAM. But now, a different way of making things had all of us in rapt attention. 3D printing everything from guns to livers has certainly captured the public attention, but the advancements show promise of 3D printing in manufacturing.

It is a promise from which Autodesk seems to have diverted.

Manufacturing 2.0 - Courtesy of Autodesk

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Sep 12, 2013 - Autodesk officially opened a 27,000 sq ft 2 floor dream workshop on San Francisco's waterfront, close to its Market St office. The Autodesk Workshop at Pier 9 has in it a boat load of shiny new machines - saws, 3D printers galore, water jet cutter, CNC machines, welders, sewing machines... The whole list is long. It has everything you might need to make something, maybe anything,  Even food. Its commercial test kitchen has a Sub-Zero gas range. I want one. The mayor, his honor Ed Lee is on  hand for a "ribbon-grinding" ceremony. When do you see that? 

Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk (the tall one) gets ready to grind the steel ribbon, officially opening  Autodesk's waterfront expansion, with hizzoner, mayor of San Francisco Ed Lee (the short one). The press is kept a safe distance away.

Autodesk has made incursions into the manufacturing of products recently, though for most of its history it been content to aid design. It has partnered  with Tech Shop, courted the maker movement and bought CAM vendor HSMWorks. But this dream shop, more than anything, signifies a serious intent to move into the manufacturing realm.

But it is manufacturing unlike your father's manufacturing. There is not reek of cutting oil, not a floor of curly metal chips, not the rows of towering milling machines and armies of uniformed machinists, not the reaming of 8 cylinder in a V8. This is not the stuff of Detroit but the cutting edge (no pun intended) of San Francisco. Not a warehouse of old machines and old men but prime real estate down the street from the gourmet shops at Ferry Building. The stuff of San Francisco is hi-tech, of VC money, green buildings. The shop intends to be 75% reliable on solar power. It is LEED certified.

The dream shop means to be filled with the inspired young ones, eager to make whatever is their whim, such as a most unlikely wine bottle holder for their Chardonnay, or whatever might look good wrapped around their iPhones, or some project that will be a big hit on Kickstarter. Those with imagination of the next big thing but without the patience for engineers to design it and machinists to cut it., they can have it in their hands today. Think it. Make it. Manufacturing 2.0 is personal. It short circuits traditional manufacturing.

Room with a view. Autodesk houses "artists in residence" in their new Pier 9 offices.

Who Gets In?

Unlike TechShop, the other dream shop which is sold like a "gym membership" to the public and has already stamped itself in several cities, Autodesk's shop is open currently to "select" Autodesk employees who have passed a safety course and undergone a short training for each of the machine they plan to use and "Artists in Residence," a program brought over with Instructables.com, the how-to-make-or-do-anything website acquired by Autodesk two years ago. The term "artist" is to be applied loosely, I'm told, offering hope to those with more prosaic projects.

Who Lives There?

Housed at Pier 9 is the Autodesk Consumer Group, which includes the entire Instructables team, the 123D team and the somewhat stealthy advanced research group who we are publishing papers on synthetic biology, nano-technology and programmable matter, whatever that is.  About Autodesk Research.

What Business is This of Autodesk?

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, an avid woodworker (pictures in WSJ) who speaks passionately about being able to making things, rather than just designing them, has now steered his ship even further into uncharted waters. Clearly, Carl considers design a job only started. CAD insiders have long speculated that Autodesk would buy up CAM companies. Autodesk did finally buy a CAM company (HSMWorks) but it was a small one. Autodesk was not attempting to buy its way into CAM, like it did with CAE, gobbling up one analysis software vendor after another for a total of $500 million. No, it is chasing artists, craftsmen, hobbyists, inventors... who collectively represent millions of people, maybe tens of millions if you count every one who has even an inkling of wanting to make something.

Carl has been building a go-cart for his son. So he says. I notice the rails on the go-cart allow the seats to go way back. Carl is  well over 6 feet tall. He has been "calibrating" the machines in the shop, he jokes, not able to wait til the place officially opened.

Fishermans Wharf,  Alcatraz and... a Machine Shop

There was talk of a revolution in manufacturing. "This technology is infiltrating everything we do" and "redefining manufacturing." says Mayor Lee. Sure enough, growing replacement organs was mentioned. 3D printing of guns was not. Manufacturing "onshore" was possible now, a wishful answer to years of offshoring. "New economy" may be a reference to repurposing Pier 9, once a transit shed. What seemed like a crazy idea -- a machine shop on some of the most expensive real estate on the world, San Francisco's waterfront, was made to sound like a natural, almost necessary partnership. Clean, modern, young.. a perfect marriage of the Bay Area's high tech and the next big thing --3D printing, a fever that is gripping so many and fueling imaginations.

How Much?

Nobody is mentioning what this all costs. Millions, but how many? Waterfront space in a city already known for sky high rent is about as expensive as it gets. Unless Autodesk got a sweet deal from the city, $5/sf per month would put the rent at $135,000.

Luckily, the groups assembled here are not pressured by pesky demands of profitability. A showcase of a workshop is all that is expected of young, bright minds. Assemble a hundred of them and one might maybe one will make the next iPhone, or at least the next widely funded Kickstarter project.

So they don't shoot horses - a 3D scan of a race horse tendon results in a model, hopefully to expose defects and suggest treatment.

When one 3D printer jus won't do. Autodesk new Pier 9 facility has 10 of them, each loaded with different print material.

Carl Bass' new ride. Autodesk CEO made this go-cart for hsi son at Autodesk's new manufacturing facility.

A balanced finish. 

 

Better articles and photos here:

Autodesk Opens Pier 9 Workshops, Patrick Hoge, SF Business Times

Inside Autodesk’s New San Francisco Workshop, Signe Brewseter, gigaom.com

 Autodesk Opens New Workshop for Advanced Manufacturing & Making in Port of San Francisco - In the Fold, by Autodesk, Sep 13, 2013

Mayor Lee Celebrates New Autodesk Offices at Pier 9 - cull coverage of ceremony on YouTube, 21 minute video

 

Related articles

Inside Autodesk's new San Francisco workshop, which opens up design space for artists (photos)

Inside Autodesk's new San Francisco workshop, which opens up design space for artists (photos) [GigaOM]

Mcor 3D Printing - Paper Goes In, Strong Cheap Models Come Out

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 25 2013 - In the suddenly overwhelming offerings of 3D printers and dropping prices, Mcor offers a unique proposition. It makes models using paper. Ordinary copier paper. Most 3D printers use vats of chemicals, resins, polymers... and more expensive specialty materials. Not Mcor. Just grab a ream of paper and drop it in, the same paper you put in your laser, inkjet printer or copier, 8 1/2 x 11". Mcor machines have a paper tray, like a copier. No lenghty instruction, no training, no chemicals, no gloves, no funnels, no spilling, no special ordering from proprietary sources. Maybe no fumes, maybe better for the environment. Your model is created one paper sheet at a time, each sheet essentially glued to the previous one and cut with surgical precision.

Mcor made this bottle opener with its IRIS 3D  printer, which uses reams of copier paper as material.

Models made out of paper. How strong could they be?

Gary Fudge, Mcor Sales Director, gets that all the time. He hands me a multi-color bottle opener made by an Mcor machine. He does not hand me a beer bottle. Oh, well, it's early. Thinks wood, not paper, he says. Isn't paper wood particles? Mcor's resin bonds the paper together and makes it into wood, again? Sort of. Maybe more like an engineered wood product. Think MDF*

"Cost of models with Mcor is 1/20 to 1/5 of the cost of other 3D printers," says Gary. I think of the poor suckers who will buy cheap 3D printers only to discover the high cost of materials. Not unlike the shock of buying your first ink-jet cartridges. Or razor blades? When did they go up to over a dollar each? My razor was cheap.

Mcor sells the IRIS (for color models) and the IRIS, both use reams of paper as input, for $40K to $50K.

Mcor is the only 3D printer manufacturer that uses ordinary copier paper as material for its models.

Mcor signed a deal with Staples recently, and Staples will be using Mcor in its stores. Is that not a perfect symbiotic relationship?

More information at http://www.mcortechnologies.com/

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*medium density fiber board, used in construction and furniture

Get Real - Proto Labs One Off Parts Made with Actual Engineering Materials

ANAHEIM, CA (Pacific Design and Manufacturing Show), Feb 7, 2011 - Though 3D printers are all the rage -- and took up a lot of floor space at the Pacific Design Show, they are not without their limitations. For one thing, they are limited in the type of material they can use. That may be fine for show-and-tell design reviews, but many are tempted to bolt the part into its service environment. One would hope that would only be to test fit -- not function. Putting a weak plastic part where a tough metal part was would be to invite disaster. Of course the temptation to press RP parts into service exists because 3D printer are becoming increasingly accessible  -- and because the common perception of one-off parts done otherwise is that it is way too expensive.

Not so, says Proto Labs. They might be able to make a real part for only a few dollars more than a rapid service bureau, and Stacy Sullivan, media manager at Proto Labs, was only to happy to show me.

For one sample part, the "3D print" cost $125 and was made using FDM technology, such as used by Stratasys machines. Proto Labs would quote the same part in Delrin for only $146. Want metal? Aluminum is only a few dollars more ($150).

We used Proto Labs for our Innovate3D service. The quoting process is automated and can be done without human intervention, though humans are available, like the self service check out at the Safeway. If you don't know what you are doing, the process can be a bit daunting, as warnings are issued for this and that (example: improper draft angles) but on the other hand, you can get a quote quickly without having to have a salesman call you back in a few days -- if at all, commission in one off parts being what it is.

It does take a bit longer to get the part in your hand (1-3 business days) and Stacy cautions that if 2-3 parts are being made, 3D printing may be less expensive since RP parts can be stacked or nested in the working volume, whereas with Proto Labs parts, the prices are roughly proportional the number of parts.Has this caught on?  Proto Labs won't tell me how many hundreds of machines are in operations but I manage to find out that 3 buildings on the 160,000+ sq ft Proto Labs campus in Maple Plain, MN are humming around the clock. They also have full scale facilities in England and Japan.