The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast is a deep dive into what 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing mean for prosthetics and orthotics. We’re Brent and Joris both passionate about 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing. We’re on a journey together to explore the digitization of prostheses and orthoses together. Join us! Have a question, suggestion or guest for us? Reach out. Or have a listen to the podcast here. The Prosthetic and Orthotic field is experiencing a revolution where manufacturing is being digitized. 3D scanning, CAD software, machine learning, automation software, apps, the internet, new materials and Additive Manufacturing are all impactful in and of themselves. These developments are now, in concert, collectively reshaping orthotics and prosthetics right now. We want to be on the cutting edge of these developments and understand them as they happen. We’ve decided to do a podcast to learn, understand and explore the revolution in prosthetics and orthotics.
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
From Jungle Clinics To Print Farms, Material Extrusion Is Changing Patient Care with Brent and Joris
We trace how affordable, reliable material extrusion is changing prosthetics and orthotics—from student labs to jungle clinics—and why toolpaths, not just materials, will drive the next gains in comfort, strength and cost. Real patient stories show the economics and ethics of access at scale.
• season launch and mission to improve patient outcomes
• shift from tinkering to reliable, prosumer 3D printers
• material extrusion vs FDM and why terminology matters
• nonplanar layers, multimaterial potential, pellet economics
• toward truly digital extrusion with better sensing and AI
• application focus over generalization in O&P innovation
• case study on low-cost pediatric prosthesis with reuse of CAD data
• orthoses workflows moving toward “toaster-like” simplicity
• education pathways as students learn on clinic-grade printers
• materials outlook: TPU, TPE, silicone prospects, polycarbonate tradeoffs
• variable density, air pockets, and hybrid fill strategies for comfort
• polar kinematics and toolpath planning as the next frontier
• print farms, software orchestration, and scaling production
Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode.
Welcome to season 13 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.
SPEAKER_02:Hi everyone, my name is Yoris Peels, and this is another edition of the Prosthetics and Orthodox Podcast with Brent Wright. How are you doing, Brent?
SPEAKER_01:Hey Yoris. I'm uh doing well. Uh, you know, it was funny. Uh, we released that podcast last week uh with Adrian Hill, and it was one that we had recorded a while ago, and it was the new kind of the news, the little segment up front was it was it was interesting because uh point designs had just sold to hanger. And uh I thought that I thought it was I thought it was interesting, but you know what's interesting about all that is with the I thought it was just the right time to really get into the education side of the prosthetics side of things. And one of the biggest things in education is how do we get students starting in additive manufacturing? And I think I want to cover uh you you actually recently wrote an article and I, you know, I said FDM and you said material extrusion. I guess we're gonna go with material extrusion.
SPEAKER_02:That's the correct one. So that's the correct one. Yeah, everybody's trying to change, but every I think it'll stay FDM for a very long time. The corrector, the corrector even way to do it, is is uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I I'd love to cover a little bit about what you or a lot in that article, but then also maybe tie that into how material extrusion is changing the landscape of the orthotic prosthetic field as well, and maybe what we're seeing coming down in the future, specifically with some of the stuff that you wrote about in your article.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, that's cool. That's cool. And then and then so you're just interested, like so let's talk about the uh uh OMP more specifically because why not? Because although I think we we're just gonna get into the second, the same old stuff. Like OMP, I think is gonna benefit massively from these cheaper printers, right? Uh being available more and being and now it's easier for, like, for example, a student to buy a machine that actually works, for her to uh really print things and really make things, and for her to really get stuff out the door, let's say. That's a big difference. Like a couple years ago, you're great if you wanted to figure out the machine and tinker on the machine, but if you're only output motivated and just wanted to get stuff out the door and make stuff with 3D printing, it was kind of a not a great hobby. Right, right. It was more like a make the machine hobby. It was kind of weird. So that's a big difference. The the the old tools are are are are are expanding and getting better. The behind the scenes stuff, I think the stuff that's coming down the pike could be super interesting for specifically OMP is well stuff you're working on as well. It's like that non-planar stuff, which I think is really very, very exciting.
SPEAKER_01:So I think like and I'd love to just take a little step back. So for OMP, some some things maybe maybe we can get into some of this. You see the what uh Prusa did with Bontech with that uh multimaterial stuff. That's seems pretty important. Important. I didn't get to see uh much of that on uh Form next, but I'm sure you saw it. We covered the non-planar stuff. I think that there's some interesting stuff coming down with the uh pellet side of things. Um I think that's interesting, and I think pricing of some of that may start showing up into let's just call it some of the pro serm prosumer, it's still gonna be higher end side of things. And then the one thing I don't know that you covered it in your article, but there are people actively working on this induction aspect hot ends, and I don't know how big a deal it is, but with this foaming foaming uh material, it uh does start getting interesting. But I would think that the math and the software side of things is gonna take a little whit to catch up with. I mean, I see the potential of the induction side of things, but I also see man, if if you can't uh debug that your you know your print failed and you got a string all over the place, how much harder is it gonna be with some of these induction type of stuff and pinpointing and troubleshooting your prints? Yeah, actually so okay.
SPEAKER_02:So, first off, if we're looking at what I call truly digital extrusion. So, so first when we got started with the this stuff 30 years ago and up until very recently, everybody was just pushing filament with some kind of pushing kind of mechanism, which was a couple of feet or a couple of inches away from an extrusion mechanism, heated to a certain temperature, and it went into a chamber and it melted to a certain degree at a certain pressure. And the regulation of the temperature and the pressure, there was a delay. And then so everybody was kind of like push, I call this prey and push kind of or push and prey kind of time. And we were actually there until a couple of years ago, three, four years ago. Bamboo changed this by making extrusion more digital, more digital drop-on demand, if you will, and more also like you you can calculate track width and you can look at really truly what you're extruding when. But if we look at, like for example, I'm testing a P2S at the moment and all these things, even the AI tools they have on those there to try and try to track uh extrusion, how fast it's going, and and the kind of uh over-under extrusion stuff, and and also kind of uh material sticking to the part or to the nozzle and stuff like that, even that stuff is is is not as fine-tuned as we'd like. And there are people looking at a better more digital form of extrusion where you really kind of apply pressure now and calculate when that effect is and calculate when the what temperature and what pressure is needed to get the same track width or the same drop on the same moment, right? And then you're combining that with the stepper motors or whatever motion control you have and the geometry to see when you need to have a certain drop at a certain place in advance already to build it up perfectly. And that would that'll get us to the next kind of level. Now, if we're looking at that, then there's a couple of things that that that really come into play. One is we may be able to print even faster. That could be cool. We don't know if that's possible, but it seems like it could be. The other thing is that we could be able to print with pellets, which has always been a problem, but it'll it'll be a tenfold decrease in in feed stalk, which is super nice, right? And in some cases it'll be like a 20-fold uh decrease in in feed stalk. So that'll really improve us, and we'll just get better results, more reliable, more repeatable, uh better parts. Now, as in, like you correctly already you're stating it already, kind of in a kind of really careful way, because you understand the difficulty of getting to this step from where we are. And it is a bit of a Xenos frog thing where every leap of the frog is like half the distance of the next leap and then the next leap. And then so every kind of thing we're doing now is is much more difficult than the previous steps. Um, whereas in the beginning, going from the initial rep reps to to to semi-reliable rep reps is already a huge leap in functionality for for and a huge game, game. And that's being reduced, let's say. So if we look at all these things happening at the same time, yeah, we need better cameras, we need better software, we need better kind of AI monitoring stuff, and we need better prediction capability to be able to do this really truly in a digital way. So I think it also needs to make sense. Like bamboo needed to make the leap to conquer, to eliminate everybody, and it's efficiently now eliminating most competitors or competing very strongly with them by just making increasingly better machines and improving them. Like on the P2S, the machine, the material feeding the unit got better. On the next one, maybe they'll allow you to dry better or dry while printing or pre-dry all the uh materials or something like that, right? Or automatically dry or something like that. So they're already in like now in incremental improvement mode across like five, six different printers. And they're you know, some of them are laser cutting and on some of them bigger and smaller, but they're really kind of improving it. They're not taking another leap, or they don't seem to be taking another leap for now. And that really we need another leap in imagination, and we need also another leap in in technical ability to get where you want you want us to be, I think.
SPEAKER_01:So, where in O and P do you see uh kind of the low-hanging fruit? Is it just access to these, like what you said, the low-cost printers? Or do you see it, hey, you're gonna be able to really drop your price or drop the cost of goods through pellet? What do you think is just the easiest thing if you're just looking at a macro right now? It's like, is it just because it's easy to get into right now?
SPEAKER_02:No, I think I think see the thing is what you're doing in Guatemala with just taking the A1s over there and printing that stuff, that wouldn't have been possible a couple years ago. And that is the biggest capability increase I see that someone you're able to do this and you're able to rely on this, you know? You're not gonna be sitting in the jungle for four days not doing anything because the things aren't working. They actually spit out parts, right? Right. So for people like you, especially the expeditionary, exigent, slash austere environments, that's I think it's the amazing thing. You could take a what two, three hundred dollar printer and like make it go in the in the jungle and and and and help people. For most people, it's still too tricky to print DPU and all these other flexible materials. It's annoying as hell on your current printer setup because it's not a main focus of the printer. You have to feed into a different thing, you have to change all your settings. It's not as plug and play as the rest of the things. So we're not exactly there yet for the elastomeric materials as compared to the other materials, you know. So the the the part where we're really, you know, what we're when we're seeing people advance in this market, they're doing it kind of by themselves. Like, like for example, my one of my favorite examples of this is Perry Products. They make those, I don't know if we talked about them before, but the the uh they make uh bump stops for vehicles, right? Oh, that's right. Yep. So so the it's an Apple engineer who had a and a bump stomp is a vehicle on the travel on your suspension of your car, especially if you're an off-road vehicle, you have a thing called a bump stomp. And that is basically it's a hard rubber, or it could be a piston kind of thing that's that's keeping your uh suspension from traveling all the way to the your car and and harming your car. And this guy printed it, he uses a pellet printer and of his own design. Uh, he says that it improves the strength. I don't believe him, but it's okay. And it's of course much cheaper. And they they kind of basically optimize these designs and some kind of proprietary kind of topology uh optimization stuff that they've made to make these really durable uh bump stomp type of things that really go on the bottom of your car and get knocked about as you go on the hills and stuff. And they sell these for 200 bucks. Um and the uh the alternative is a$400 uh uh car par from Teota or whatever, or uh an equally priced kind of piston type aftermarket product. So it's it's a really cost competitive thing. And if you can do that with 3D printing, of course, for that market, you can totally do it for all sorts of bits and bulbs of people for for for OMP. But but really what we're seeing here is that this guy focused on that application and that application alone and really made it happen, right? So what we're not seeing in OMP is people we're seeing the generalist kind of advanced, which is great, you know, but we're not seeing too many people say, Oh, I'm gonna make the best liner material and I'm gonna make 3D printed liners, and that's the only thing I'm gonna do. You know, it's mainly the people that are doing deep dives in additive manufacturing are using either like you guys are to make your customers work better, like their customers is in the OMP clinics you sell to, or to make the prosthetics that you can personally make or your customers can make better, right? Or to solve problems for your your OMP or your your kind of patient customers, right? But there's few people actually saying, oh, I'm gonna dive in the liner application and make like a heat dissipating liner that's better than anyone, you know? And that I think is what really makes sense in a bunch of other stuff. So we're not seeing that in OMP. And more people need to be like that period's guy and just own this this this one particular part and application, make all the material and everything fit for that. And instead of that, we're looking for these generalized solutions that'll kind of make all the OMP people's work easier and better, which is great, right? But it's a very different thing, right?
SPEAKER_01:So I think one of the other neat things that I I think uh has happened specifically for the FDM side of things, just like what you said, like TPU is definitely hard to print, but once you get it dialed in, you can print and print and print uh multiple different types of applications. We just had a situation um where a young child had it's just an unfortunate situation, really terrible insurance, and the they're on like the kind of the welfare insurance, I guess we call it Medicaid here. And for their prosthesis, it's it's next to nothing what the reimbursement is. So they would get probably a pretty terrible product if we were to traditionally fabricate it. But the fact that we can design it and 3D print it, the complete thing at a very low cost, we're gonna be able to work within the cost constraints of what we have. And he's gonna get a very advanced prosthesis, and there's still gonna be a spread of money to where we can stay in business, right? So it's not that we're making a ton of money, but at least we're covering our cost and a little bit to cover design. And uh and then we have that file. So if he grows, which he will grow in the next six to 12 months, guess what? We can size it up a little bit. We already have the alignment, and we've now lowered the cost because we already have a lot of the data in a digital format that we can just say, okay, we're gonna go into a bigger foot, but we're staying with the same alignment, or we're going a little taller. We already have all that information, so it's gonna be very easy to iterate on top of that. And to me, that's super exciting.
SPEAKER_02:No, exactly. I agree. I mean, I think I think it needs to still be better. Uh, we talked a little bit about the Ray Craig thing where they have a different nozzle diameter and different material diameter, and they say that's gonna solve most people's problems, right? That could be interesting as well, right? And innovation making it a little bit to me. It's still difficult, but I understand if you master it, you're you're you you can you can do an all amazing stuff with it. I think to me, the the real it's waiting really for this the the orthosis or or to people to notice how big and and what the potential is for additive for for orthoses uh and orthotics for just making that a hundred percent additive. And I know people that run print farms of hundreds of machines that are printing these things, and it's just it's cheaper than anything else and better. And and usually uh that's exactly what we saw with hearing aids, that's exactly what we saw over the ortho uh certain classes of orthopedic implants, uh, that's exactly what we saw as as well with certain dental uh parts as well, where it was just if we're if it's a specific geometry and we're uh and it's also like kind of easier to produce and it's easy for several members of the value chain, then we see really quick adoption. Uh uh, and we saw that in in a number of years. I think that I know a lot of people that are printing orthoses and orthotics and and and and there's a lot of people develop kind of systems around that, like workflow and and the system, but I think we're not exactly there making it like a toaster-like kind of experience, but a little bit like you know, imagine a couple of years from now, one to two years, it should be a toaster-like experience. And it's just a box in your in your practice that makes money, right? Or it's a box in someone else's practice that makes money, right? The doctor or some other kind of uh hospital or somewhere else, right? And and and that's a thing where I could really see that this could be not maybe a hands-off process, but a very hands-like process for you to just make money, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, and I do think going back to our original podcast about, hey, this is how you get started in O and P, there's also tools and and things of that nature um that you can make your job easier.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. No, I don't. And that's happening all the time. But I think I think literally it's gonna be like as close as passive income is ever gonna get for OMP. You know what I mean? Uh a person will walk in and the scanning element will be there, maybe, but that maybe hopefully will be a bit easier. And that's after all what materialized and HP wanted to do this years ago and didn't couldn't crack, right? So there is uh still a little bit of uh difficulty there. Um but at the same time, you know, I I think it it could get to a point where it's really like a point-and-click kind of press and print kind of thing. So it could be really much easier and a fairly easy way to make money compared to other all the other print 3D printing stuff, which requires DFAB and patience and risk and all that stuff. Right, right.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I I I I and it's a great way to understand different properties of stuff. You might need some something that's you know soft to do something, something rigid to do something else, and you get to learn just the basics of the materials and the printer.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And a lot could come from that, and a lot could learn a lot of people could learn. So if you're and if you're like talking about before, if you're a kid now, you could actually be getting a printer that is the same printer that you go to Guatemala with, you know? Right. Uh and and and and so somebody right now, Sarah at home right now is getting a printer, she's 12 or whatever, she's making stuff with it. She's gonna get familiar with the same printer you take to to help people on the front lines of this of this profession. And and to me, that is a huge difference where we're seeing that that that means that she could just kind of walk into this profession knowing already kind of a lot of the technical stuff she would need to know. And then by the time she's done with her uh high school and then her education, further education beyond that, you know, the printer's gonna be better even and faster. But the architecture of that will still be very familiar for her. But whereas before, you know, you were talking about purging and nozzles and calibrating and doing all sorts of things with pieces of paper, all sorts of crazy stuff that that you don't need to know anymore. And instead, what you would need to know is like FA and CAD and all the other stuff that would let her to like be more creative. So I think that's to me is a um is is a really interesting thing about the new people coming on that they're right now learning things that are relevant for making the most cutting-edge devices, and they could do that to make like a name tag for their their their house, their their door, their bedroom or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right. Now, what is your feeling on some of the like the materials coming down the pike specifically for O and P, and maybe it's available in pellet or something else. What what are you liking from the the kind of your perspective?
SPEAKER_02:I think I think I'm seeing a lot of new TPU variants, which may not be there's so many classes of material that it's really kind of confusing. And then there's other stuff like TPE kind of stuff, and there's kind of much much harder than we used to materials as well. So the library is huge, and more of that is coming on on stream, apart from the recast thing and recast thing, which is basically a newer way to print and would be you know much more advantageous, I think, uh than a lot of these other materials. I don't I don't see a lot of stuff that's that's in the software elastomeric stuff that's immediately gonna be available that I'm like mega, mega excited about. So I don't know if if you you beg to differ, but apart from, of course, if we manage to get silicone to work, right? So that's a silicone two thing, uh static mixing with silicone as well. And silicone is a great interface material, of course, and it's very soft and it's a it's a great material to print. What I'm more excited about is is is what I think people will do with this eventually. Now people are just printing it kind of in a dumb way. And I think if you print it with a uh a variable density way, and also print it with air pockets, customized air pockets at certain locations. So on the bone, you make it more dense, and around the bone, you make it softer. And if you wanted to be move forward, you make that uh those walls of those infrastructures, you make them either bigger or softer or bigger walls or something. It's really very advanced design thinking about this and saying, wait, we're gonna really architect that, not that surface, not that topology, but we're gonna architect that performance at every layer. That to me, I think, for OMP, especially in a comfort and an interface type of way, like where your leg meets the prosthesis, that could be a huge advantage. And that's and but that's not even like a new material or anything. That's just a new way to create a new material for every single OMP patient. And that's the the exciting bit, I think, on the design side. And then and also on the material side for me. So the most exciting side is for me to see how people would use TPU for encapsulated air pockets, which we know already for about 10, 15 years can be done, but no one's doing it really to a great effect where you can make a custom air pocket for your foot or your particular amputation or whatever, and your weight and how you place it on it. So I think that's super exciting. And you can also think of other stuff like filling it, like filling a uh an air pocket with per or uh with a latex or an epoxy or with a rubber or a natural rubber, or using it in combination with like a material like Gutta Percha or something, where you can put it in the shaft. And printing it that way. And to me, also like the idea of, for example, you print all these infill shafts, call them shafts, uh, where, well, what if you had another kind of material that or another printer head that just filled them, right? With different materials, right? And there, of course, then you're talking about really radically changing the cost structure as well, because you're not taking this expensive print material. You could take like some kind of really cheap material or some kind of two component material and then fill it. You could fill it with uh epoxy or purr or something like that, right? And and and so filling prints is also something that now you have to do it by hand, of course. You're not going to do it in a practice on thing. Um, but if we automate that a little bit further, then within the technological paradigm, you just it's just positive, right? 601 or something like that. Uh, and then you pause it height, you fill it with a different material, and then you get hugely different characteristics and wear resistance and strength and stuff like that. So also, so I'm not really that excited on the on the elastomeric side, not mega excited about like new materials, but very excited about how combining these materials with injecting them into those shafts. And then on the harder material side for the desktop printer at home, I'm super excited about polycarbonate. I think it's amazing. And I really make a ton of stuff with it at the house. And I think it really is a material that needs a lot, it's way too expensive. The fish is like 50 bucks a kilo, which is ridiculous. But but still for something that has to be hard, but it does would shatter, right? This is like the one reason for OMP, it's not great, maybe. But for like a hard kind of impact resistance thing, it's really, really nice material to play around with, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So as far as machines go, what are you what are you seeing? I mean, I know you said like some of these less expensive printers. We also have the Vortex, which is the polar printer, which is a little novel. You have some robots that are doing end-of-arm stuff that that may be interesting. What kind of gets you excited about where some of that stuff may go for O and P? No, uh what you're up to is is one of the most exciting things.
SPEAKER_02:It sounds really stupid. Oh, my dear podcast, what you're doing is one of the most exciting things in direct trees. What you're doing is really exciting because with Polar, uh, we can really print layers that fit better on each other, right? And if we can do that in a relatively affordable printer, we can all make tougher, especially elastromeric parts uh made out of one solid design with different properties in it. And that to me is really exciting if you're looking at a socket or if you're looking at beyond the socket to all sorts of other more complex even devices. So what you guys are doing is really super exciting because that has that's doing something that bamboo in and of itself won't be able to do or won't even care about doing, you know? Because it would take, you know, too much away from from them making different materials and and making stuff go in in rigid materials and making stuff go in, you know, for them the value add is not exactly there to redesign their whole ecosystem, the whole way they do things. And and just you know, of course, base mode is the best mode.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, but also like the idea Come on, you had like right towards the end of the podcast.
SPEAKER_02:I hear you know, the it allows you to toolpath plan very, very differently and just for adhesion, right? And I know you've been doing a lot of work on that, and I think that's just the most exciting stuff. On the on the so that I think what you guys are doing is amazing. I think I think you really need to to be pushing that forward because because I think it really could change a bunch of the way this community makes prints. And it's specifically very interesting for this community and outside this community, not so much. So it would be something that that that's very valu, uniquely valuable to MP, what you guys are doing. And then what you alluded to, the other stuff, the yeah, cobalts with extruders mounted on them could be interesting. We don't know yet. Like at the moment, there's there's a lot of the the quality isn't great on them. Uh, but these cobalt things are getting cheaper all the time. So the hope there is to really make like you know, think of a like a larger structure, like a scoliosis brace. Uh, think of being able to make that form fitting around your back and and how that that brace would be constructed. That could be a really very interesting kind of uh application for that, especially very large parts as well. We don't there's not that many people working on that really. There's a ton of people working on like the medium large format, like the meter by meter, yard by yard by yard kind of size. But there's not that many people working uh in the cobalt type assisted printing space because they just think, oh well, for the trouble, I'll just make a you know, I'll try to 3D print a speed boat or whatever. Um, so that that to me is also quite exciting, but I don't I see little in the way of progress there. Um, and that that's on the cobalt side and stuff, and then there's also there's there's still some yeah, it's still weird. We don't know if this is gonna happen, but the the interest around shoes has been letting like I think Creality has a specialized shoe printer, right? Uh the other printer we talked about the other day was also there's a specialized kind of shoe-ish kind of printer, these kind of specialized kind of shoe belt printers. It seems to like it was like a big hype, and now it's kind of like not as interesting anymore. But still, that is an architecture that is like really, really quite beautiful, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I think when we can end with this, I think one of the things interesting things that you mentioned is toolpathing. That is really a frontier that nobody's really talking about. Toolpathing makes all the difference, not only with strength, how beautiful the parts are. And I think that is a frontier that we're definitely trying to tackle in the prosthetic and orthotic realm that can make all the difference using wild materials or great materials, strong parts that are comfortable for the patients. Any thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_02:No, that's that's totally things like filling in a particular design in a particular way, uh, printing for a particular material, but also printing only like why would you have a slicer? Why not just have only a slicer that's for um, for example, for uh test sockets or whatever, right? You could make a slicing software that just gets you the best design for that one thing all the time, right? Uh and that and you could design G-code in such a way to optimize that just to get that one part in different geometries and different sizes out. You know, there's not going to be infinite. As much as we'd like to think everyone is unique, we all are unique snowflake, we're not that different. So we found that out at this, you know, the enable hand thing where it was supposed to be like all custom, and then we find out there's like actually like exposive, like only like I don't know, like 50 sizes for everyone. Oh, okay. Well, then we could maybe you know, you know, just make 50 CAD drawings, then everybody just picks one. And we were thinking it was like an infinitely customizable universe, but apparently it isn't that we're not that different, also biomechanically. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And certain other things, of course, we are, but but but in that kind of you know, in those that respect, not as much as we thought anyway. So so to me, that is like a really exciting, and you're right. Uh there's not enough people working on on that given the the differentiation. If you look at what Coupel is doing, uh those guys that are doing the the light helmets, you know, and they're basically saying, okay, we're gonna take a regular 3D printer, we're gonna take CPU, probably a specific formulation, and we're gonna make the best football helmets because we control the geometry and we control the way that geometry is built up, and we understand what will minimize that impact. And then for football helmets, they are cared about the really sharp, fast impacts and the really heavy impacts, like fat dude falling on you, and you get a cleat against your head, right? Those are the two like the the scariest ones, and so they're able to optimize for those two catastrophic impacts the most, and that would get them better performance. And we're seeing that with the NFL kind of helmet testing thing, but the 3D printing helmets are are consistently winning. But they're saying, hey, we're mastering that impact stuff with that toolpath for TPU in helmets, and you can easily see how they could really take that canvas, if you will, that they've been constructing or that palette that they've been making and apply that to well, all sorts of sports equipment and all sorts of OMP stuff as well. So I think I think you know, also given the business opportunity, I think they're you know, companies like Carbon and HP and stuff should focus much more of their attention there. They are, they have lattice engines and and they're working on FEA and stuff like this. But but still they should focus more attention there because that's really where the rubber meets the road. Let's try. Yeah. Well, I I think this was good. I think it was and then one thing that we didn't mention that that we should maybe is is is just the 3D print farm idea where you used to have just service bros that had big expensive machines that printed tens of thousands of things well. And now we're we're seeing people develop software and machines for hundreds of just print farms or inexpensive machines. And there's like, for example, 3D farmers that make the software where you know you're they're actually bending, they're causing the and software in a couple of 3D printed parts, and it causes your uh your your bamboo printer to you run the software for their bamboo for your bamboo printer, and then it causes the you know you're to bend automatically your build plate, stuff like that. You know, that could really push a lot of people further and make it a really low cost thing as well. Awesome. Awesome, yeah. Anyway, so cool podcast. So the thank you for for for for for being here the uh today again, uh Brent.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh well this was great, and uh uh you know I'm gonna start calling it material extrusion so I sound sophisticated. No, I I forget all the time as well.
SPEAKER_02:Everyone forgets, I think. Everyone forgets, but anyway. Um, so thank you so much for for being on this uh podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast and uh have a great day.
