The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast

A Debrief from AOPA 2025: Are we witnessing a Digital (not just 3D printing) Renaissance?

• Brent Wright and Joris Peels • Season 12 • Episode 4

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Brent Wright shares his experiences from the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association (AOPA) conference, highlighting innovations in 3D printing, data-driven technologies, and revealing his groundbreaking polar printer project for prosthetic sockets.

• AOPA attendance exceeded 2,000 people with 165 exhibitors including 30 new vendors
• Digital Showcase featured case studies for prostheses and orthoses using scanning technology
• Blasingtech impressed with 3D printing capabilities, producing foot orthoses in 30 minutes
• AI-designed scoliosis braces are outperforming experienced clinicians with better correction angles
• Radii's socket design algorithms now match skilled clinicians in patient comfort and feedback
• Tennr software helps clinicians identify missing documentation needed for insurance approval
• Brent reveals the "Vortex" - a polar printer with non-planar toolpaths creating sockets in under 2 hours
• Non-planar polar printing produces significantly stronger sockets than traditional layer printing
• Vortex printers are already in production with three units being prepared for clinical testing

Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode!


If you are interested in the Vortex DS1 please follow this link: Vortex DS1 3D Printer - Advanced 3D

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Brent:

Welcome to Season 12 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. This is where we connect with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists and the vendors who help bring it all together. Our mission remains the same to share stories, tips and insights that help improve patient outcomes. Tune in and join the conversation. We're glad you're here and hope it's the highlight of your day.

Joris:

Hello everyone, my name is Joris Peebles and this is another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast with Brent Wright. How are you doing?

Brent:

Brent. Hey, joris, I'm doing well, man, I did have to drive back from Aopa so I landed in North Carolina, but it's about, I think, 700 miles, okay, okay. And I stopped one time, wow, and that was just to get gas. I drive a I call it a Ford Exploder, yeah, but yeah, so it likes to drink gasoline, so I had to stop. I don't think I could have made it 700 miles just because of biology, but you know, nonetheless it was a good drive. I didn't hit a lot of traffic, but you know I did have a question for you, Okay. So one interesting thing about AOPA is it does stretch into the weekends. Is that a common thing for trade shows or not?

Joris:

really into the weekends. Is that a common thing for trade shows or not really Not really. Usually a lot of trade shows, theoretically it stretches into the Friday. A lot of people are gone on the Friday, or gone on the Friday after breakfast or after the first meeting.

Brent:

Well, I can't say that doesn't happen here.

Joris:

It's also a commitment thing. You really see the difference between small startups where everybody's still there, right, and the boss is helping to put you know, she's helping pack in stuff and putting stuff into crates and other companies that are less committed. Wherever it's like gone or the stand is broken down on the last day of the show, you're like, hmm, right, right, right, okay, so it went in the weekend, okay, that's good.

Brent:

I mean, that's good it went into the weekend but, what was interesting, the exhibitors actually broke down Friday at 4 o'clock, so there were no exhibitors on Saturday. So I can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I can tell you that they had like 165 exhibitors. But I can tell you that you know they had like 165 exhibitors and they peaked on Thursday. After the registration Thursday morning they had over 2,000 people. It's like 2005. And then people keep on coming, so I didn't get to see the final count. Yeah, so I know it was more than 2,000. So I mean, that's better than they were pre-COVID, so that's pretty great.

Joris:

And also the visitor numbers and the booth numbers are positive right.

Brent:

Yeah, and over 30 new exhibitors. So that was interesting and it's always interesting, you know, of who's there, who's not there too. So there were a couple things that I know that we mentioned. Formlabs wasn't there this year. Rapid Liquid Print wasn't there that I saw at least. So it was interesting where people are choosing to do their time and energy and then on Saturday they do something really really cool, and there were a couple new vendors that came to it. It's called the Digital Showcase and what it is is you have a massive room and there's kind of case studies one for a prosthesis, one for an orthosis and you scan it and then you show how your software, hardware, whatever would treat that patient. And then, if you really don't have anything to do with that stuff, then you get to still showcase your digital technology. It was, it was very well attended, and I took a page out of your book. You said go visit blazing tech and see what they're up to, and how was it was interesting.

Joris:

I think it's really cool, oh very, very cool.

Brent:

Um super nice people, um Pretty innovative on the 3D printing side of things. They're doing some pretty large scoliosis stuff as well, as they have some automations and such, and then they're big into the foot orthosis side of things, so you can do a pair of foot orthosis. You get a kick out of this on their machine in 30 minutes. Okay, that's nice, that's NTPU right, okay, that's nice, that's nice. And TPU, right yeah, that's kicking man, so that's nice, I'll get off my bamboo.

Joris:

Well, it depends how big the shoe is, right? Sure, sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're not going to be size 13s, right?

Brent:

Right, right, and this is I mean I think you can do full length. I didn't look super close full length on theirs, but a lot of people and I agree with this you do a three-quarter length, so up to kind of where the bend of your toes are, and then throw a top cover on and you're off to the races.

Joris:

Pretty, pretty great.

Brent:

Any other stuff you saw, any other people you saw, were interesting, like new things like where you were, like oh wow, I never realized they existed or something. So we saw a couple things. There's some of the stuff you like the adjustability. So obviously Click Medical was around Vessel so remember having man her name's escaping me right now, but she is the CEO of Vessel which is kind of the puck thing that goes in the bottom and automatically adjusts to a patient via mechanical stuff Sydney, sydney Robinson and so they were exhibiting. This was their second year they were exhibiting but they actually had the product there and a user there at the desk. And then you had your usual suspects Ottobock, filauer, hanger, surestep I think this was the first AOPA that they were showing their helmet for kiddos that have misshapen heads and pretty cool helmet, very well designed. So I was very impressed with that. And then….

Joris:

And Loner was made by Additive as well.

Brent:

Yeah, so that's…. Yeah, they used the HP machine for sure with that and then…. And the other cool thing with that is, you know, hanger is big on data, and so I know that they're getting a lot of throughput of different patient heads and and and such and and, not not only the shapes but then the outcomes on the backside, and not only the shapes but then the outcomes on the backside, and so being able to crunch that data and make your product better, I think that is really, really cool. And now that I say data, I actually think that was more the theme of this show.

Brent:

There was a guy and I'll have to put it in the show notes but they did an AI or machine learning back brace and they have data that goes along with. It is a great way to get outcomes for patients. They were getting better results than skilled clinicians that have been, you know, 30 years in the field from their simulations. So, like by a significant amount. It was, like you know, they're getting something with a correction down to say, 8, 10 degrees, where the skilled person might be getting maybe 13 to 15. Definitely, significantly, statistically significant in the amount of change. His name Americ Guy, but I'll put it in the show notes. But it was an amazing presentation. The only problem is is it takes days to do the simulation, so that's something that he's trying to work on but nonetheless, so you have data there. Then you have the people from Radii. So we had Josh Steer on our podcast a little while back from Radii and they're starting to get more and more data through and they're expanding into the VA and such. But they had a couple clinicians talking about how they incorporate their product into their facility and one of the clinicians said they weren't necessarily trusting that they were going to get great outcomes from that, from their software. But what they started doing is they started doing not necessarily blind tests, but comparing what they did versus what the algorithm, let's just say their software, spit out. And the clinician said that the patient feedback is very close to the same, as far as what they liked, between a socket that was created by the clinician and a socket that was created by the machine learning, and so I thought that was very interesting, and so to continue grabbing that data is very interesting, uh so, and then I uh interviewed on the podcast.

Brent:

Um, we went live. The booth next to me was a company called Turner T-E-N-N-R and the guy's name was Jono Bridges, Jonathan Bridges, and so his mom. So this crazy story. So his mom is a physician and was having all kinds of problems getting the right paperwork for her patients to get good care for something that she was sending out. So it was like I guess he was maybe primary care, I want to say it was like for dialysis or something like that.

Brent:

So him and his team kind of created this workflow that takes a look at all the insurance documentations of what is needed and then intakes all the documents that you already have and it tells you where your gaps are and it helps you fill them. That's so nice and and so so nice, yeah, I mean. I mean, that's what's crazy, you know. So this person came to aopa with a software and a solution that's a massive pain point for for O and P, and that's getting the paperwork right and getting a prosthesis on a patient. You know, in a way that they're going to get paid for by an insurance company. It's it's as important as any other thing.

Joris:

Yeah, also. But also what I like about it it doesn't say, oh, we're going to automatically do everything, which would make me very worried, right, but finding the missing pieces, that's something that computers traditionally have been very good at and that's something I can get behind and with the person reviewing it at the end, that seems like the right approach as well, right.

Brent:

Yeah, yeah.

Joris:

That was really cool. That's cool.

Brent:

That was really cool. So when I'm thinking through the podcast stuff, so the first person that I had on actually was because I was dropping off a couple of things to go to the HP booth and Akash was there, and so we had a really nice discussion about some of the new stuff that they have coming down the pike. They have a higher recyclability PA11. So now you have a little bit more impact resistance and more of the factors that make PA11 a better choice than, say, a PA12. I think it's still a little bit more expensive than PA12, but it's becoming more of a lateral move. So that was interesting. And then Dimension was there with some of the color stuff. I thought that was very cool, and they had a beautiful booth right in the middle of everything too. Yeah, and kudos to them. This is their seventh year being at a show and that's impressive to me.

Brent:

Super cool dude Super cool and you wrote an article about them being at AOPA. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joris:

And about HP as well. It was about like HP and HP-related stuff and stuff, so that was really cool as well.

Brent:

Yeah, well, thanks for including us in there. You know that's good.

Joris:

I one. Yeah, well, thanks for including us in there. You know, that's good. I can't write about myself. It's like, by the way. You know what I mean. I can't do that.

Brent:

I can't like, by the way, like the way I'm going to be doing a live podcast from uh slovenia no, I can't do that.

Joris:

It's also just confusing in the article. Oh sure, sure, sure.

Brent:

To explain it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no.

Joris:

I can write an article about us for 3Dprintcom if you want, but it would have to be more like I'll interview you about you or something, what you're doing, or something.

Brent:

No, but so along those lines, though, Invent Medical, which you know very well was there, had a bunch of beautiful products, and they always have a good showing on the education side of things too. So that is very neat to see them and kind of what they're creating as well, and you know, to see these kind of validated long-term designs come to fruition is pretty neat, and so I think they're really doing a nice job.

Joris:

That's super cool. And is there any FDM stuff as well? Because there's so much FDM innovation, I'm just wondering everybody's getting bought and stuff. Is it still ongoing or not really?

Brent:

So on the FDM side we've had Luke from Quadra and Equal on. They were showing an FDM brace and there seems to be a pretty large push to go into TLSOs, which are the back braces, via FDM. But it's FDM but not high flow because you have to do supports and this sort of thing. So I think that was an interesting thing. I don't know how I feel about it. I mean it's very cool but still like 10, 12 hours when you can carve and pull a brace in 30 minutes, I think it's still a stretch. I don't know if it's the right use of the technology, but it's what they're doing. I mean they're investing probably hundreds of thousands of dollars into that. And then Proteor Print, which was previously Filament Innovations, which we had some of their team members on, where they're showcasing some of their products, not only the Icarus but the materials and then they have what they call the Icarus Lite, which is a smaller printer, so very cool.

Brent:

They were doing some interesting things with sockets too. They were hydro dipping them and so you kind of get these cool patterns and such on FDM sockets. I don't know how I feel about it. One of the things with additive manufacturing that I feel is very important is that things. The idea is you want to lessen the amount of skill and post-processing as much as possible. So when you add hydro dipping to the mix, I kind of feel like you go the other way. Not only do you have to be skilled, but the prep for some of that you're talking an addition of days, rather than coming off the printer and fitting. So nonetheless, it still makes an attractive showpiece and that sort of thing.

Joris:

But I don't know in practicality if that's really a direction that we would want to go well, there's just some chemicals involved that are not so great depending on what you use, but the hydro dipping is really spectacular as well. It does look really amazing. That's the other thing yeah, so and I've seen some additively hydro-dipped parts. When they do the right finishes and stuff, it looks really, really super cool oh 100%.

Brent:

So hydro-dipping on high-flow sockets eh.

Joris:

No, it can be really ugly if it doesn't absorb it right. Yeah, you have to get it right.

Brent:

Yeah, so I don't disagree with it. I just don't know that that's the direction. Like to me, the attractiveness of FDM is that you can pull it off the printer and fit the patient. Yeah, okay, and that is the opposite direction, but nonetheless I didn't ask enough questions. Whether it was a showpiece or hey, is just what is possible, or or what have you that's cool so the other one and we had to.

Brent:

So, you know, you and I went live for roughly an hour. What was that friday? And, um, I think the, the, the group that kind of for lack of better term stole the show, was. We had what was his name? I think it was Walker White from Limber, the prosthesis that's all printed together FDM.

Joris:

Very impressive achievement, by the way, very difficult to do.

Brent:

Very difficult to do, very impressive. They are very data-driven too. So I mean, they not only have they created their own 3d printers with sensors and all that stuff, but then the design side of things. But you know, the proof is in the pudding. At least, that's what we say here in the us is the proof is in the pudding. Um, when you have a process and then you have video of the people using your device in a variety of ways, that is undeniable evidence that your technology works. And that's what they did.

Brent:

And so you know, we were talking with Walker on the show and I kind of finally had to have you stop because you were so enthralled with them. You know, yeah, so it was, but it was great. I think that they were. It was really neat what they were, what they're doing, what they're doing for the industry as a whole, and I think what they're doing you know, our insurance industry is definitely a mess here in the U? S and um for them to come in with an affordable prosthesis that can pay, be paid for in cash and function very well. I think it's. It's a, it's a niche that is not um filled, and I think there's also like my swim leg, a swim leg plus kind of thing.

Joris:

Yeah, and strategically, I love this where, because I know, you know, even with simpler stuff, I have this with backpacks. I have this really cool backpack, that's like the best backpack ever. I travel with it, right. But when I go do stuff that's like kind of sketchy, like we may fall off the mountain, kind of stuff, I take this really cheap backpack, right, right, you know what I mean. So my super mega adventure backpack has not been on the most mega adventure stuff.

Joris:

I've done Right, right, right, and I think this is the idea of having that.

Joris:

And if you do know that you're only allowed you have to wait two years to get a new one or you have to, you know, or you're limited.

Joris:

That opens up a lot of possibilities, especially if you want to, you know, take on a more active lifestyle.

Joris:

And we've had a bunch of patients on and a lot of these guys are somehow energized by the problems that they face essentially and, in that adversity, find a lot of things in sports and really find themselves and really push themselves and think about like, okay, if you're going to go dance again, right, think of doing that the first time.

Joris:

Or if you're going to go whitewater rafting or those really exciting moments, and maybe you take that kind of more expendable leg and that becomes then, you know, a really trusted source of a lot of joy in your life, if you manage to dance the first time on that thing, or if you manage to do water rafting again or for the first time in your life on that, you know. So I think this is a really exciting kind of way into uh, into the market, you know, especially with with regards to patients and and people trying to save money and people trying to save money but wanting the best care kind of, uh, I think it's a really, really wonderful kind of way in yeah, yeah, agreed, um, the other, uh, you know, just going through, I'm looking through the, the people that we had on the, uh, the podcast, or that I had on, so we talked about limber.

Brent:

Um, let's see, I'm trying to figure out. Uh oh, katie leatherwood stopped by, you know, from latvia and and she was great and sharing just a little bit about her digital journey and she's a very, very talented clinician now getting very talented and a heart of a teacher. So her technicians are from the Ukraine and they are doing a lot of the digital modifications and rectifications for the sockets, the digital modifications and rectifications for the sockets, and one of the technicians is an amputee. I think both of them are amputees One's an above-the-knee amputee, one's a below-the-knee amputee. You know what a cool story. You can't ignore that.

Joris:

We'll have to check up with her and see how that's going. Because I'm really curious, because you see a lot of these people doing like. You see a lot of people like yeah, we're going to go to x name african country or whatever, and then we're going to go for two weeks and then go back, which is great and it's better than going to vegas, whatever, right, I don't know that I'm criticizing that, but to do a long-term process like that, like it's similar to what you guys are doing as well, life enabled but also to do a long-term thing where you're like okay, I'm going to train this person, that's going to take three years, right, and that kind of thing, I'm really interested in that. I'm really interested in the type of person that would persevere with something like that, you know.

Brent:

No, 100%, so that was very cool.

Joris:

Okay.

Brent:

I think she would be fine doing that.

Joris:

Awesome dude, I'm just really interested in how you do that, yeah, how you keep doing that, so that's super cool, okay, well.

Brent:

You really like point designs. You know, remember Chris Krascheck coming in, so he was there showing some of the new things, and then also after the acquisition by Hanger, so that was pretty fun. We had the knee brace guy, dave Johnson, from Icarus. That was pretty cool. That was you and I, and then I also had a Jack Kesselring from a company called IBT and they make sensors and kind of like a kit similar to what we talked about with co-op. So it's like this this array of sensors that go on somebody's arm, that can be, can create these patterns that allow you to interact with a prosthetic hand, and so that was a really neat thing as well.

Joris:

Cool. I think that's an overlooked thing, like putting sensors on, also just afterwards putting the sensor on the prosthetic and then seeing what data you get back how fast is somebody moving, how much do they actually move, or how active are they actually. I love that idea of just tracking behavior after the fact, maybe somebody moves a lot more or is doing a lot more stairs than you thought about, or is, you know, not wearing the thing for 10 hours a day. Well, that's, you know, interesting why you know that's right. That could be a real. As sensors get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, I think that could be a really, really cool thing to do yeah, yeah, so, um, the podcast was very well received.

Brent:

I mean, we were pretty busy. I think overall, we probably interviewed like close to probably 15 people, uh total and um, so, yeah, a lot of people came by. We, um, uh niles leonard, who makes a lot of the tools, uh allowed us to uh plug in our polar printer while we were there and that seemed to be really well received. And then we had a bamboo h2d printing uh the prosthetics and orthotics, uh keychains. So I gotta get you one of those actually too, because they're super cool like a printer that's true.

Brent:

That's true. 50 bucks of shipping and you could have printed it right there.

Joris:

You could, we could probably do that.

Brent:

I can probably try that um, so that was, that was really cool. Um, and, and it was just the polar printer.

Joris:

Talk to us about the pillow, because you haven't mentioned it. Talk about, like I didn't mention you on the show, you didn't mention your own polar printer as well. No, so talk to us about the polar printers.

Brent:

I think it's really cool yeah, so one of the things and and I and I almost gave up on the whole project you know, I've been trying to trying to make a product that could travel with somebody in the developing world, so specifically for, specifically for Guatemala, for me, and something with a small footprint but that was able to print sockets fast. And at first I started off with a Cartesian type of printer and it was great. But I don't know if it was you or somebody else and it was like hey, brent, there's plenty of cartesian printers out there that actually do a pretty good job. You know, maybe it's not quite high flow or whatever, but it's not necessarily novel, it's so it could be me, but it sounds very.

Joris:

I'd like to think I was more positive.

Brent:

It was uh yeah, but I mean, you know, with the this was about the time when bamboo was starting to come out with their stuff and you know, and and it was higher Z stuff and it's like you know you're right, like why do I want to be a machine provider of a machine you know made in the U S, trying to sell this expansion expensive Cartesian printer when there's plenty of them out there, like there's? There's really no reason. And then when I really started looking at the stuff that we print, most of the stuff that we print is round and so round, or would you say cylindrical maybe?

Brent:

so, yeah, cylindrical, yeah, cylindrical, correct. And so at at that point it's like, okay, um, there's got to be a better way to print cylinders, and there's not a better way to print cylinders other than printing a cylinder in a cylindrical shape. So you're, you're not using cartesian coordinates anymore, you're actually using a bed that spins. And then I had to listen to you again about vase mode, you know.

Joris:

So we don't exactly I've been waiting like maybe two years for this, so don't worry, it's okay but the the problem with regular vase mode. Let's just start there is there are some interesting people that don't know right. That's just like shapes For the people that don't know right. That's just like yeah, just for the people that don't know.

Brent:

First, yeah, so vase mode is continuous printing, round and round and round, same direction all the way up. There's no seam, and that's very cool and it's very fast. However, it's really low resolution, and so there are sacrifices that you have to make clinically to make vase mode work in a prosthesis. So we still wanted to have vase mode-like action, but with multiple perimeters, and so we had to not only have, you know, the hardware side with the polar, but then we had to do this the the software side, to have two perimeters, but it never stops extruding. So it's inside out, outside, in inside passes over top of the previous part, and then all the Z. There's no hop to the next layer, it all happens in the layers itself, and so I think that is a really great way to go.

Brent:

Um, but then I don't know why I'm such a glutton for punishment. Uh, I connected with some people that do non-planar and I was like well, polar printer and I have a cantilever printer. It's a perfect setup for non-planar, but man is non-planar a crazy math problem but I did it nonetheless. And now what we're finding is that polar non-planar, with our cantilever style, is way stronger than just regular layers, linear layers, and shocking, shocking, my goodness should we just call it?

Joris:

you're the only, you're the only people in the world doing this right. Is it you? Who's on the team? Is it you and some you know?

Brent:

yeah, yeah, um, so, so I mean we're so. So Advanced 3D is definitely borrowing some horsepower from East Point, because East Point does the clinical stuff. But we are using some slicing from some people, but they don't necessarily do it for Polar, so we've had to modify some stuff via Python. So after it's been sliced, then we run it through a Python script to make sure that we don't have any overlapping or whatever. So pretty cool setup and we're getting sockets down definitely under two hours and we're going to be pushing probably like an hour and a half, um, potentially even less.

Joris:

We're going to be limited by the extruder and cooling yeah, but okay, the coolest thing about this is you're the only people that are doing this in this way, or there's only people work on non-polar uh, but they're usually doing it differently, or they're doing, uh, the robot arm or other kind of ways, right, and then the offset non-polar kind of way you're doing it and and and then and then spinning at the same time is is, I think, at least as far as I'm concerned, unique to you guys. I think you're the only people in the world are doing this for any application, not only like for prosthetics and stuff, but for anything, and so this is really cool and and and that's one thing that's really cool, which is always nice to be the only people doing something uh, um. The second thing is that this is actually, if we look at it, if we look at how these tracks or these layers are made and they come together, you're the only people doing the logical, logical kind of socket printing, kind of a printer, right, right, um, to get a really, really strong socket, specifically, because if we could, we could have made a delta type printer, right, where we got a tube printer and then it moves the head, uh, very, very quickly in a c direction could have done something like that, but that would not have made the parts as strong as the non-planar toolpath thing and this spinning platform thing. So I think what you're doing is really, really amazing.

Joris:

I don't know where you find the time, and I think this could be an incredible kind of innovation for a lot of people going forward, if you have the time to bring it to market, which I hope you do or at least have the time to make a few of these things and get them in the hands of customers to test it out, because I think, yeah, it could be the kind of really compact printer you need for Guatemala, but it could also be a really compact printer for a lot of workplaces to make sockets again and again and again throughout the day, very inexpensively, you know. So I think that's, yeah, I think it's amazing what you guys are doing. I think it's really great, really really cool.

Brent:

So yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of curious, Like okay, so, and it works, so that's the cool thing is that we were at the show and we're literally cranking sockets out in front of people's eyes. And we're literally cranking sockets out in front of people's eyes, non-planar, polar, like it's ready to go Now.

Joris:

I'm having to make a decision of do we want to bring it to market? I'll help you.

Brent:

Well, the thing is, I'm not afraid of the manufacturing side of things. I'm actually more afraid not afraid is the right word but is to make it in such a way that it's simple, and I think Bamboo's done a good job. But man, they have like a 1,500 page wiki on their website and customer service and all that stuff.

Joris:

Bamboo started really simple 50 million euros and 300 of the best engineers dji. So this started really simple. Right, it was like 300 and like one guy with a hand pick could hand pick the best 300 people at dji. I was like this guy, this guy, this guy, right, and that's the guy that invented that, did the gimbal for for the age, the dji.

Brent:

Oh my goodness, yeah, he's the guy that did the gimbal for the DJI. Oh, my goodness yeah.

Joris:

He's the gimbal camera dude, right, he's the guy that keeps the gimbal stable and did all the sensors and then he got like 50 mil initially, yeah, so. I don't have that you probably won't get that, I just don't know, no ever. And if you had the 50 mil, you couldn't pay for 300 engineers in the States anyway.

Brent:

So I think, yeah, I think it's simpler, but what do you worry about? So I think, like what would be my go-to market? Like you know, we don't have a massive team, right so it's, but I feel like we have. So a lot of people ask well, how can I be sure? You know, we've been running the Cartesian version of this printer without the polar bed for about seven years now. So everything is the same other than the polar bed, the bed. So I feel good about our choice of not only electronics, linear motion, that sort of thing. The only thing that's different is the polar printer, the, the spinning bed, which is not complex. You know, it's one motor and a couple pulleys. So I feel really good about our combination I think that's a key thing.

Joris:

That component could fail a lot, so that's, or could require a lot of calibration yeah, uh, well so.

Brent:

So we're not asking people to print a bunch of tchotchkes or benches or whatever like these are. It's, it's purpose built. We're only doing sockets, and so I don't think and it's not like we're going 100 millimeters a second. We're still. We're still maxing out probably 60 millimeters a second, but we're pushing sometimes upwards of 80 millimeters cubed per second out of that nozzle, which is unbelievable.

Joris:

I think at first it's like you need to productize it more, it needs to have a manual, it needs to work.

Joris:

So you need to be able to, for example, put it in a box, get it to work in the sense of you should be able to put it in a box, get it to work in the sense of you know somebody, you should be able to put it in a box and you should go to somebody who doesn't know the project, who isn't familiar with printers, and they should be able to unpack it and plug it in and get a result out of it.

Joris:

That's, I think, the first thing, the test you can do with an intern or with somebody new or whatever, just to see you, because you've been working on this for so long, are oblivious to what's difficult, right, right, and once you do that, you need to be able to make it safe, right, and make sure that it's safe once it gets transported and once. Then I would just make three of them and see if you have interest in your network of people that want to kind of, you can ask, maybe somebody say, hey, we have a printer that is experimental but spits out sockets. You could somebody say, hey, we have a printer that is experimental but spits out sockets. You could rent it for a month for 500 bucks or something like this. Okay, because it's always better to have when people are skinning the game to wear, uh, as opposed to get something for free. Right, I have free printers that I haven't unpacked for ages.

Brent:

I'm the test of this uh, and then.

Joris:

So I ask if people out there would like to test this thing for 500500, would like to give you examples and try to seek out people that you know are on the forefront of this and then see what they find and see what works and what doesn't, and then we don't have to do a Kickstarter.

Joris:

I don't think this is necessarily a product for a Kickstarter and, within your own kind of LinkedIn-ness and with us and all those people you know, just ask people to say, hey, now we've taken that feedback, we've made the new product version. Who's willing to put down $3,000, whatever to buy this thing? You know you don't have to necessarily do big. You know a lot of people are focused on big, big. Think about filament innovations, where they perfected this thing, and we're kind of pushing out relatively few of those people, relatively quietly for a very long time, because they were very focused on the product, right, and I think that's why they got acquired, I mean. So it's been a very successful company, I think. But they could have blown up much earlier by making all sorts of outlandish flames and craziness and that's not you anyway right you know.

Joris:

So that's not your type, because I think I think you're much more kind of like uh, you know a guy that just wants to make a good tool with a group of people that works, you know, yeah. So I think, just, you know, make three, get them tested, use that to make the second version and then ask people to prepay uh, you know, to get one for $3,000 or whatever is a good price, right and then, but limit that amount to $10,000 or something that's completely manageable, right. And then make a third version and then limit that to $50,000. And then you push out the product and then you make the. So the fourth one, if you will, fourth version based upon now, would be the one that you make commercially available.

Joris:

Okay, that, I think, would be the way I would do it, and just do it really slow, really limited and in a very much more kind of manageable way, and work towards a fact where you could you know you could get one passionate person to go full-time on this, because that's going to be the next problem that you know, if you've got 50 customers, it's okay as long as the thing works well, but then you know, if things go wrong or if you go beyond that, then all of a sudden, you're going to need some people that are full-time on this, and that's where you need to make a decision to.

Joris:

You know, open the floodgates and take more risk if you will. So that's how I would do it Go to market, okay, okay, but yeah, and that's also in keeping with your personality. I think, you know, as in you know, we could try for the big Kickstarter, make the cool video and get the, the consults, you know. But yeah, I don't know, I don't think that's you, and I think that the risks there would come not from the design, but would just come on the execution in that timeframe.

Brent:

Yeah.

Joris:

Uh, you know what I mean. And then we just come from or it wouldn't come necessarily from the manufacturing, we just come on. Oh, now, now we have to make a thousand of them or something. Yeah, uh, uh, and necessarily, I think if it works, it's going to be a good product that'll sell for a decent margin for a long time. I think that's much more. Uh, you know that carver bolt in the in the back that people bought my dad bought it. You know that's the kind of thing you're going for. I think much more than, uh, let's raise a million dollars on kickstarter and have headaches for for 12 months, you know right, right.

Brent:

Well, and I think so I think that the difficult part of all this is not the hardware side. The hardware is is is the slicing side. So that is a part that is it is very computational. Um, so that's, I would say that's the problem. Most people are used to slicing for quote-unquote free. You know they can use the bamboo slicer, they can use Prusa, or you know you buy Simplify for 150 bucks or whatever. That's not this Like. If you want to go non-planar, this is intense computation that actually can't be done on a normal computer. So we have to pay for space elsewhere for it to be done. So there's a there's a continuing cost to slicing this stuff for non-planar. What are your thoughts on that?

Joris:

well, so you can give people a subscription or give people a pay per model, as long as you, if that's clear to people, if you're doing from the outset you say, look, the, we expect the, this is the cost of the machine, this is the cost of material. You could change the outset. You say, look, we expect this is the cost of the machine, this is the cost of the material. You can change the material whenever you want, but we recommend this one. But hey, go for it if you want, as long as they don't have that lock-in. And you can tell them hey, look, this is the path to slicing it. If you want to do it yourself, totally cool, right, as long as they don't have a lock-in on the printer side, on the material side or on the software side, right, as long as you tell them look, if you want to do it yourself, this is the open source project, this is the repository, this is all the stuff, right? Or this is the company that does this commercially for you. As long as they don't have that, then you tell them look, right now we have a service for this much lower than if you do it with MJF, much lower if you do it with another printer. Now, this pays for you. Once you do 10 a month or whatever, right, then it makes sense. If you do two a month, well, maybe it's easier for you to get a bamboo, right? Yep, and it'll be simpler, and yeah, but you know, for $5 for per slicing event, then we'll, you know we can do this for you, and then you'd pay that, you know, at the end of the month or something like that. You have to look into doing that, depending on how many. For the first 50, I would just keep it really simple. You know, we count manually how many and I'll charge you at the end of the month. No problem, right? Nobody's going to slice 10 000 things, right, right, uh, uh. But later on you'd have to come up with a model where, where that's viable and that could just be a subscription, okay, right, uh, 100 slices for, you know, 20 bucks, you know. And then you'd have to calculate with aws or whatever server provider you have to to make that possible for people. But that's okay, I mean, people are used to that.

Joris:

Now, as long as you make it fair, you, you don't want to make it too expensive, you don't want to break your business model too much, so that you know that it's too expensive to slice, so that people will worry about the cost of slicing, you know Right, so it should be just like $5 per model is the basic thing we can do. There's an open source path or a free, without us path to take if you don't want to like us anymore. And the third option is to pay us a hundred bucks a month, but then you get up to a hundred and then yeah, then you're, then you don't care anymore anyway, uh, uh, because you're you're making so many of these legs that you you couldn't care less, so you're paying a hundred bucks for per month in the, in the, in the software stuff. People just don't like paying subscriptions, so give them an option to not pay subscriptions. And people don't like being locked in, so give them an option to not be locked in.

Joris:

I think those are the two things you're afraid of. And also, that's also a good thing to tell people Say, look, this is a startup, this is new, but even if we would fail tomorrow, you could still continue to build your own software tool chain and do this without us, right? You're not stuck in Dallas forever. Yeah, that's most of the people you're going to get with this are going to be people that it's probably not going to be someone's first printer. It's going to be people who are know what they're doing. They're looking for the edge of where things can be done. They're looking either for big volume or big savings or to be the first to do something. So these kind of guys know this kind of stuff and if you do risk it for them, you know on by saying this is what you pay for the machine, this is what you pay for the software and you can do all this stuff without us, then I think a lot of people would go for it, or at least enough people for you to get enough data to move forward.

Brent:

Yeah well, and I think that's the biggest thing. So, to move forward, yeah well, and I think that's the biggest thing. So, like you know, most people are uh interested in the in, in printing, right, and when you're printing polar, especially with this stuff, it it's pretty important. The design side of things. So, like, having a design guide is definitely important. But I can definitely my my biggest fear probably is, um, somebody coloring outside the lines that don't necessarily know what they're doing as far as design, and then they use a inexpensive slicer and then there's some sort of you know, whatever, whatever happens where it's not necessarily the fault of the machine but it is a design slice issue, and and then they have a bad experience, right, and so that you know that's a worst case scenario. But what do you? What do you do for that?

Joris:

Yeah, Well, this is, don't worry about it, this is people that do things on on. I'm really into cooking, right, you know, but this is people that do things online. They'll do stuff like. You know, I made your quiche and I left out the cream and instead I use almond milk, you know, and, and it tasted terrible and then the pastry kind of like just kind of fell apart. You know, they do this right. And then we just like it would just drive me absolutely mad.

Joris:

You make a recipe and then somebody would then just like leave out stuff and then blame you for it. Kind of you know that happens. I think most people would think, oh wait, I left out milk or I left out cream and used another substance instead. Yeah, yeah, it's my responsibility going forward, but not a lot of people do, and you kind of have to let that go.

Joris:

But the cool thing is, if you just have three printers initially and then 50, you can control the people. You just have a list, initially, of people who want to do this and, uh, you know Excel or whatever. You can go through these people and say, okay, who's going to push me? Right, you want people to push you. You want people to innovate. You want people to be annoying, you know, uh, who's going to push the product you know to its limits without, like you know, pouring coffee over it, and who are the right people for this, you know. So the people are going to be kind of annoying. There are going to be the people that color us out of the lines, right, they're going to try to slice it differently, right, but they are maybe the same people that say, hey, this could actually work in Cura, or whatever, I don't know.

Joris:

Or we could slice it on a different system. So there are actually people who say, hey, with this weird kiss slicer mod, I found we can actually do this and it's cheaper right. Maybe, or they're going to say you know what? I actually didn't use a server, I used an old machine I had lying around and it took a day. But I only do one of these a day. So who cares? Right, you know those are. It becomes somebody else's right. You are going to get people doing all sorts of stupid stuff.

Joris:

But there's just this thing, you know, I just remember that on the bowden tube printers I did a whole project thing on this and the major failure mode was people right we were telling people all these things to do and all these these things to change on us, but the the major, major failure mode was actually like, for example, people crushing the bowden tubes while shipping and moving around the printer. That was a major failure mode.

Joris:

Nobody told people about that because we didn't realize right but it's of course, logical if your filament goes to this little tubey thing and if you crush the tube it becomes harder to squeeze the filament through. Yeah, duh, but no one in the world knew this and instead everybody was making their printers things or they were making the increase in the temperature and all this other crazy stuff. So you just never have any control over that. But the cool thing is the first three guys you know you can get into, the three people you know and trust and that know enough and that also will question you enough. And the next 50 is a little bit more difficult.

Joris:

But I think you know still enough people that have a lot of competence and and and do things correctly. And a couple of those guys are going to color outside lines and a couple of people are going to hate it. Not everybody's going to love it. It's not going to be for everyone, just like mgf isn't for everyone, or a filament innovation machine or even a bamboo isn't for everyone, right? Or a prusa machine is for pretty much everyone, but still some people just think they're too finicky. I think they're amazing, but you know you have to commit to it to do it. It's a kind of you know, it's a kind of like there's a different horses for courses, you know.

Brent:

Yeah, it's a tool right Tool in the tool box.

Joris:

Learn the I'd be able to disappoint. Now you're going to be able to minimize that initially. So that's a good part, I think. But at the same time, get ready for just people doing really stupid stuff and complaining that this thing is your fault. That's always the issue there. But I don't think.

Joris:

I think if this is printing one geometry, like you say, all the time, all day, every day, and people still have weird files for it, have files with flip normals or whatever crazy stuff, right, they'll still have scan files. They'll try to throw it at you know that kind of stuff. It'll still be pretty crazy from a file point of view. But the machine, the machine operations are going to be the same for everyone and the material is probably going to be the same for everyone as well. Pretty much Some people do polyprop, maybe TPC, whatever, but generally I think mainly people use the same material. So I think you're going to have a lot less variables than the guys at Bamboo have or the producer guys who just throw this thing out there and then watch people do all sorts of make ceramics with it and all the kind of stuff. Right, right, alright, this thing out there and then watch people do all sorts of you know, make ceramics with it and all the kind of stuff you know.

Brent:

Right right, all right, do it, I'll help you, okay, all right, well, I'm moving in that direction and here's the funny part yours okay guess what? I have three in production. Oh, I have. No, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, I know I did. So now that you threw that number out, I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe we're on to the so I have one that's going.

Brent:

I can't say where it's going, but it's going to a good place that I'm really excited about. It's a biomedical engineer that has a part of a clinic and it's not East Point okay, so it's out of state, but they will work good together. So I'm excited about that. And then I have two others that there's potential homes for those, and I'm excited about as well. Let's see where that goes and then we'll kind of go from there. I think here's the other thing we're looking at putting pellets on it, and that will drive the cost, material cost down.

Joris:

Thank you, flushing for another episode.

Brent:

That was really difficult.

Joris:

You're going to have to, okay, there's another thing you have to do is freeze it at one point, right, Take it from an ongoing project saying this is our shippable thing. So that's going to be a really important decision to make. But, of course, pellets does you know? It's a 10th of the cost or something, so that's a really big thing, but it's going to be really difficult to maintain accuracy and speed with that as well, of course, as we know. So, but it's a really exciting development, I think.

Brent:

Yeah, so well. And here's the other cool thing you know, once the prosthetic stuff you know is done, I stuff, um, you know is done, I think it's going to be very interesting for people that want to do other things that are around you know. So, artists, that that sort of thing I think there's. There's potential, other other applications, um, that are going to be off label. You know from what I'm doing that that may find it interesting as well well, that's super exciting news.

Joris:

Any help you need, I'm here for you okay really cool. Yeah, all right. Um so guys, uh, so you watched the birth of uh, whether the the kind of like the one of the first launch things of uh brent's secret project, which I don't think even has a name oh, it's called the vortex oh, the vortex.

Brent:

Oh yeah, okay, all right, that's cool so vortex, yeah, so what do you think I mean? You, you are a name like connoisseur, so you, you typically give people a hard time vortex.

Joris:

It sounds like a slide. I like six flags. I still have six flags, it still exists.

Brent:

It sounds like a slide well, it's felt like it, for sure yeah, okay, it's seven year, six flag slide.

Joris:

Yeah, okay, it sounds cool. It sounds a bit creepy, but it sounds cool. I think so. But yeah, you're the one that has to say it, like 10,000 more times.

Joris:

Yeah, you have to be comfortable with it, but it sounds cool enough. People will probably spell it the same way, so that's good and it kind of has to do with what it's doing. It's not super forgettable or anything. It's it kind of works in different languages or in a different culture. In spanish is going to be. Spanish is not going to be great, by the way. Vortex, uh, it's not going to be. It's going to be pretty difficult to explain. I think language wise it's okay. Yeah, I think it's all right.

Joris:

The Vortex makes it kind of like cool and no, I think it's all right, okay, okay. Most of all, I'm just about the idea of quickly and a compact form factor be able to make sockets reliably and repeatedly. I think you've got the right architecture and no one else is doing it. So I think that's the most exciting thing here. I think the name is you know it's fine, but the architecture and getting that right and getting that slicing portion right so everyone can do it with the right UI, you know, to make it easy, and getting the printer so that you know new people can man it.

Brent:

let's say I think that's super good.

Joris:

I think that's going to be really difficult, but I think it's going to be really rewarding.

Brent:

Yeah.

Joris:

Okay, all right.

Brent:

Well, I appreciate it man.

Joris:

All right, and thank you for listening to another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics podcast. Have a great day.

People on this episode

Contributor

Brent Wright

Co-host
Contributor

Joris Peels

Co-host