The Autodesk Factory Experience: Sustainable Design and Manufacturing

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: So welcome to AU 2024, everyone. Welcome to our class on the Autodesk Factory Experience or Fusion Factory. This is going to be an exciting class. I'm here with Jonathan Odom, who is the factory boss. And I'm Wayne. I'm on the Fusion tech team for Fusion Sales. Jonathan, how are you doing today?

JONATHAN ODOM: Doing good, Wayne. Thanks for having me.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for being here. It wouldn't be a great class without you, Jonathan. So this is going to be more of an interactive experience that we're going to share and walk through the actual exhibit with you to give you a little bit more insight and overview of what it's about. And as we go through, we'd like to-- or at least before we get started, I want to thank our sponsors, HP and Avnet, for sponsoring our Fusion Factory. We wouldn't be able to do it without you.

And as we go through, I want to make sure we're also doing a little bit more due diligence and talking about-- we didn't really plan on having any preliminary or talk about what's in development, but just in case anything anecdotally we might talk about, Jonathan and I, when something that we saw, we're excited about in the future of things that we'd like to see within Fusion, keep in mind, it's no guarantee that will be in the product.

So don't take our word for it. Please do your due diligence. Check and make sure that it's the latest product that you're going to purchase before you start a subscription to Fusion. So I just want to just keep in mind that we might talk about some things that aren't in the product. So with that, I'd like to get started and dive in and talk about what the project's about, the overall project itself. And thinking of last year, Jonathan and the team developed this awesome keypad that you can program. It was customizable.

There was a whole experience from his design all the way through using Fusion throughout. We found some places last year, and we talked about this year of redesigning and fixing some of those problems that we run into with assembly as well as the fit, form, and function of a design. This year is really around that, the redesign of the keypad itself. We kind took a look, and Jonathan tapped me and says, hey, would you be interested in joining and working on the design through manufacturing, kind of owning the design?

And I thought about it from a point of view of saying, well, what do our customers do? What do they follow? And generally, especially this day and age, thinking about sustainability. If you're going to redesign a product, why not lower your carbon footprint? Why not make it a little bit more sustainable? We're using sustainable materials, as well as instituting a quality management process like ISO9001. So we wanted to do this redesign and have this project as if we're actually a real company doing this the way our customers do every day.

So that's our approach. When you do join and you do go through the factory experience, this is like the workflow that-- I think Jonathan's inspiration was that concept, coming up with the idea all the way through to manufacturing, and showing that Fusion Family all the way through with our partners as well. And also talking about some of those manufacturing partnerships that we work with throughout the project, and then you'll get the experience live on the factory floor and see some of those partnerships in action.

And of course, Jonathan reached out to some of our influencers to come up with their concepts, their ideas, what type of different materials, what type of different designs would they make of the keyboard, the enclosure, the knob. And we'll get to see some of that in the experience. So let's jump in and start to do a little bit more exploration and a little more overview of what the project's about. So when Jonathan reached out, he mentioned some of the places that would really help this year to focus on for redesigning and focused in specifically on those places where the exhibitors were having some trouble putting some pieces together. So Jonathan, if you have more insight on that, that would be great to dig into.

JONATHAN ODOM: Sure. Yeah. You have it pretty well laid out here on the slide. So each one of these components listed there had its own issue that had to do mostly with ease of assembly. If you're talking about the enclosure, the tolerances there were pretty tight to some of the other parts and it didn't rest properly without a little bit of elbow grease. The key plate, we made that out of acrylic. That was laser cut. That, in hindsight, wasn't the right material choice.

Acrylic is a very brittle material, and another missed opportunity there was providing a part that would align switches in the right orientation so that users wouldn't have to figure out which way the switch needs to be turned to fit in the PCB. There was another interface part, the screen assembly. Fitting the screen into that part was difficult.

The tolerances there were very tight once the dying process had finished on that 3D printed part, and it actually posed a potential safety hazard. Nobody got hurt, but these screens are made of glass. And if you did push it a little too hard, you could potentially cut yourself. So we had to definitely deal with that. And then the other parts, we ran into some tolerance issues there as well. So as far as ease of assembly, those are the main things we tried to address with the new design.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: Yeah. So not only making it easier for exhibitors. So I think a lot of the team had to come over and help with screwdriver and kind of fudge some things. It wasn't that great of an experience from somebody being able to walk through and assemble it. We wanted to improve that this year, and that's one of the main drivers that Jonathan was mentioning. Part of that change was also looking at-- so since we're changing it, why not look at different materials?

Why not think about the way that we would approach this from a holistic design when it came to more of a sustainability and eco-friendly materials? If we can reduce that carbon footprint, at least from the experience from last year-- and I think this is another big driver for customers is thinking and making their designs more eco-friendly, not only from manufacturer point of view, but also materials and consumption.

And we do have some partners that we work with who have integrations within Fusion, and we did work with some of the team who did some studies and was able to help us look more deeply into this design. So Jonathan reached out to some of our team. I think Matt was one of the people we worked with. He was able to build into that some of those studies.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah. If you look at this slide a little more closely, you'll see that the total embodied carbon on the first one was around 41 kilograms of CO2. And then we've got that down to 21 with the new device, which is pretty remarkable, really. And yeah, some of our partners enabled that change. We'll talk about that in a bit here.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: Awesome. Yeah. I think less material, looking at and focusing and taking-- less components too but having less material. And I think we even looked at different alternative materials along the way. So again, having that integration, being able to do that with Fusion and tools where you can take your design and look at making it much more eco-friendly. Another part was thinking of a quality management process where our customers would use Fusion-- and many of them make different products, whether it's plastic, metals.

And again, depending on how large the assemblies or different parts they may make, they want to be able to keep under control, like revision control, keep unique identifiers, like all your item numbers, specific to each component, being able to have a check in to make sure that it's the latest version, and also an approval process that, before you release something for production, this way you want to make sure you have the latest one that's released.

And we were incorporating this into this design this year, again, to experience, just like our customers do-- so like somebody once said, drink your own champagne. So we get the experience exactly the same way and some of those hiccups and some of the places that might help that process. Also, there's some places we can see where we can get a little bit better in that process.

So again, looking at it from a Fusion Manage point of view, using Fusion Manage as well as Manage extension in the design. Now another part of the factory experience is talking about the concept, the look of it, the feel of it to make it more professional look. And I know Jonathan reached out to our extended team to really start to develop and redesign it from that concept all the way through. So I think, Jonathan, you have some more background on that.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah, for sure. So when we first did this design, just a little bit of a background. My background professionally is architecture. That's what I did before I got into this stuff, product design, Fusion, and all that. So design is something I'm familiar with, but it's a very different skill set from industrial design. There are just different considerations there. There's a different body of knowledge. So frankly, there were a lot of missed opportunities. There were things leading that design that I missed.

Like Wayne said, going through this for a second round, we brought in Jeff Smith, who was kind of our resident industrial designer at the company, professional in the industry for many years, educator. He's about as good as it gets when it comes to this kind of work. So we went to him early this time and said, could you work with us on this and just come up with some concepts? Here's the idea. Here's the original one we did. Improve it. Take this and give us a version two that solves some of the problems we're talking about here and gives us something that's more elegant.

And with that, Jeff took to sketching and going straight into Fusion modeling, and he gave us a form that, like I said, is more elegant, but it also solves some problems, like giving us a thin profile while also hiding some of the electronic components that you don't really want to see. Affordances, ergonomics, those kind of things. They're very subtle at this scale, but you'll see when you compare the first device to this one, that it's really a major improvement in terms of the concept.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: I think the look, the feel, especially having that redesign in such a way that it's more of an elegant way of putting it together as well. So the team did a great job of coming up with that concept, making some of the prototypes, 3D printing, some parts were machined. And really, that communication, getting back and forth and honing in that design from concept to actually having a prototype, which actually here I have a prototype that the team sent over for me to use.

I'm actually clicking through as we update our process and going through our tour today. So it's a pretty amazing workflow, and love to see the communication and the open dialogue between the team. It's awesome. Cool. And as well as the design methods themselves. So I think we're trying to look at more of a holistic point of view of the way Fusion works and all the different aspects, like the different extensions, the integrations we have with other tools and other software.

And I think that was one of the influences, or I should say one of the inspirations that Jonathan had in this project is thinking all things that Fusion can possibly do. So I think that was one of the main goals is to try to connect some of those pieces along the way. Awesome.

And as far as different manufacturing methods and methodology, we were able to use and work with some of those partnerships that we have that we're building and some that you'll see here at AU on the actual exhibit and having some more insight along the way of making some changes, trying to hone in that design from Jeff Smith's concept as the team was building it out. And Jonathan was looking at how those pieces were fitting together and redesigning it in such a way. And also working with some of those partnerships on 3D printing. What was your experience there, Jonathan?

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah. I mean, each one of these partners is really an integral part of the process. So if we're talking about Xometry, they do the production run of everything except the electronics. They haven't quite got into that yet. But everything from injection molding, CNC milling, turning. They do sheet cutting. They do basically anything having to do with manufacturing. If we're talking about Prusa, we use Prusa printers to do prototyping.

So a lot of prototyping went into this. You got to check fit and interfaces and all that stuff, so there was quite a bit of that throughout the whole process. Adafruit provided the PCB. So we gave them a design and they gave us a custom production circuit board that was all made in Fusion. Mazak is on-site. They're going to be providing three axis milling for the tray part, which is that rectangle you see down at the bottom. SMEC, turning. So that's for the knob, in this case.

A pretty modest part compared to what that machine's capable of, but nonetheless, an appropriate part for that machine. Formlabs. They actually did some production parts on this one on their Form 4 SLA machine. And we also used their Form-- I'm sorry, their Fuse 1 is what we used, their SLS machine for production run for one of the parts. But then we also used their SLA machines for prototyping specifically for parts that needed a really high level of dimensional accuracy to check tolerances. And then Haas is a pretty-- that's our reliable workhorse when it comes to this kind of stuff.

They're on-site. They're going to be providing the enclosure, which is the part that you see on the top there. So they'll be doing an aluminum version of that which is going to be really cool. And then HP, the HP Multi Jet Fusion technology was used for some of the production 3D printed parts. So those are parts that need a high level of dimensional accuracy, durability, and also some material properties, particularly flexibility that's kind of hard to find in some of the other 3D printing technology.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: And I think it's important, as you mentioned, the tolerances and the flexibility. Even some parts being more rigid makes it a much different experience for assembly. It looks better. Those parts fit together much tighter and it's a much more professional product that you're producing. And I think, as Jonathan had mentioned, he started those partnerships early in the process.

The earlier you could start to build those relationships when it comes to production parts, like 3D printed production parts as well as through Xometry with injection molded parts, even machine parts with Haas and SMEC and Mazak, think about those not only as Autodesk cares, but think about your product and how you can get it quicker to market by building some of those relationships with good partners.

Now, before we start diving in, because we want to cover what those partners are, what you're going to experience in the exhibit today. Before we do, I did mention also that we are working with some of our influencers. A little bit of background. I know Jonathan had some experience and worked a little bit closer with some of our influencers who we've reached out to come up with different concepts and different ideas of their designs. Jonathan?

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah, this is an exciting part of this project. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while is bring in some other Fusion users who are, in the case of these three, more well known. They've sort of got some maker engineering design prowess that we can showcase, and also just giving us an outside the box approach to this particular product. So PyottDesign, that's Charlie Pyott. He's actually been on my podcast, Shop Talks. Just a shameless plug there for a minute, on our YouTube channel.

And he's a really accomplished industrial designer. He's had some really big clients and he's done some very cool products that have made it to shelves over the years. And more recently, he's been doing some social media work. So he's been doing a lot of long form videos on YouTube, and he does these really nice, well thought out, very creative capital I industrial design kind of projects. So he's going to be working with us on this. He's currently developing his own design for the product.

We gave him and every other influencer some basic constraints. So you got to use this tray. We're going to pre-make all of those. The holes have to be in a certain place. The PCB, obviously, we can't change anything on that. And basically from there, the rest is up to you. Come up with something cool. And then same goes for Bob from I Like To Make Stuff, as well as Pete from petesquared.

So if you're not familiar with I Like To Make Stuff, it's a very big channel. It's been around for quite some time. Bob's a great guy, and very creative. His channel is all about just being curious and making and coming up with cool new projects. Also a Fusion user, obviously. His wheelhouse tends to be a little bit more, 3D printing, a lot hands on making kind of stuff. So we're excited to see what he's going to come up with.

And then Pete from petesquared. Pete kind of came on the scene fairly recently. All of a sudden, his work was just kind of blowing up all over the place. And he's just got these really creative projects that are very heavily about problem solving. He started getting into making, 3D printing, design, and all that stuff and started noticing opportunities in his own shop to improve things there. And then his channel just kind of exploded into all these really cool little gadgets and space saving devices and cable wranglers and just ways to make your shop a little bit more usable. But also just fun stuff for the home.

Little consumer product type ideas, things for his kid's toys. So yeah, we're really excited to see what he's going to do too. All three of these creators are going to have designs that'll be showcased at the factory. We'll have dedicated assembly stations for each of their designs. So that'll be a first come, first serve kind of thing. And the other stations will all be the production models. Hopefully, we'll make quite a few of each of these, get enough people out there should be able to get one and enjoy it.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: Yeah, that's exciting. And they do come up with some really interesting designs. If you haven't been to any of their YouTube channels, I highly suggest going out to see them and do check out some of the Shop Talks with Jonathan and a few of our Autodesk team. Do some interviews, and you can learn a lot about the inspiration, what inspires guys like this, and some of the neat concepts that they come up with and how they're used. So I highly recommend checking them out.

And as Jonathan mentioned, we're going to see some of their work at the exhibit at AU. So yeah. I think it's like a first come, first serve. If you want to get one of their unique designs, you have to get there early and put it together so you have a keypad that's unique. So with that, I want to start getting in-- and we'll walk through a tour and start talking about some of those partners and those partnerships that we started to build, and Autodesk is nurturing as well as they're nurturing with us.

But yeah, let's jump in. We'll first start, I'll talk about Avnet. Avnet is a PCB development as well as a connector, resistors, and all those different components that you need to be able to put together your design, but they're there to help you initially. So think about what you need your design to do. Start reaching out. As we mentioned earlier, reach out to a partner early in the design to start to build out and get it so you can make it better for production.

So that's Avnet. They do have a really good website and support and service to help expand what you guys can do with your designs. I think, Jonathan, you have some experience with these guys as well.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah. So I'll just preface this by saying that having done, at this point, five different consumer products with custom electronics in them, that their products are-- it sounds like a cliche, but they really are a game changer, what they're able to offer. I've spent countless hours biting my nails and receding my hairline, worrying about electronics.

Just getting through the procurement process, identifying parts. Normally, the way this works is you go through, you have a PCB that fulfills a function, you make some assumptions about the parts that will make this work, you prototype with that. And then when you get it to the ordering phase, you just kind of cross your fingers and hope that those parts are in place, that you can actually get them.

What Avnet is able to do with their direct Fusion integration is get that stuff front and center in the very beginning. So they have this app that integrates directly with Fusion. And as you're doing your design, you're able to get real time BOM optimization. It gives you suggestions for parts that could be alternates, might save you money, might save you a headache of the supply chain being in place for whatever that part is.

There's quoting and purchase order all built into it so you don't have to have that as a separate process. And then there's an API automation option so that you can really customize this for what you need. If I'd had this years ago, I would be-- yeah, I would have saved a lot of headaches. So really impressed with this partner. If you're in the electronics world, I really hope you give them a try.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: It's great that they have an integration directly into Fusion so as you're building out your design, you get the real time information on BOM and information on the components as well as, as Jonathan has mentioned, suggestions on good components that will bring into production. Cool. So another one of the exhibits, when you go into the next booth, if you will, is Makersite.

So Makersite is, again, one of those AI produced-- or I should say AI powered lifecycle intelligence. So when you're thinking about-- we did. We thought about how can we start to reduce that carbon footprint, how do we start building in sustainability into our design, how do we check to make sure that the suppliers that we're getting our product from are also thinking eco-friendly as well.

So Makersite is another one of those integrated tools that you can work with as well, and it covers a lot of your focus on making your designs more eco-friendly. And I think there is a integration, as I mentioned, within Makersite directly inside of Fusion to be able to work with. And I think, Jonathan, you also had some experience with the team working on this as well.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah. Yeah. So Matt from our team is the resident expert on this category of the design world. So just looking specifically at sustainability. I think the real game changer when it comes to Makersite here is this real time integration lets you make decisions as you're making the design. It's similar to what Avnet has to offer where they say, OK, here's another suggestion. Like, this component costs so much and maybe it's kind of hard to find. Try this one.

With Makersite, it's a similar process in that it's constantly calculating whatever it is you've got there. So you tell it, OK, this is the physical material for this part is this kind of plastic. Here's the process. Injection molding. Here's country of origin. And what it does is takes all of those things into account and gives you an estimate of what the carbon footprint is going to be or other considerations there having to do with sustainability.

So what you're able to do is start to do a cost benefit analysis and see, OK, well, if I had this made in the US, it would bring carbon down this much and increase my price by this much potentially. And you can start to make those trade-offs. We all know that at the end of the day, we're making products to make a profit. That's not going to be a surprise to anybody. But we want to be responsible with them as well. Our customers want that.

And what this allows you to do is make those decisions and make those trade offs in an intelligent way so that you're not wasting money in a place where the return really isn't that great. One thing we were able to do with this was to take down the volume of some of these materials, thinner wall thicknesses for some things. Find those places where we can make compromises for less material, and then it also brings in opportunities for alternative materials. So if you were to use recycled plastic for this part, for example, this is how much you'd save there. Maybe it's worth it for the change in the price for that part.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: It's pretty amazing that it's-- oops. It's pretty amazing that it is integrated directly into Fusion. So as you're making your design changes, as Jonathan mentioned, let's see what happens if I make this wall thinner on this plastic component, and you see a live update. It gives you that information right in your design.

So as you're moving into full production from that concept design, it gives you a lot more confidence, a lot more assurance that what you're changing is going to be not only good for the environment, it's also going to lead you in a place where you have a consistency in your manufacturing process. That one view that I wanted to jump into, there are some classes to check out at AU while you're here. Please do check out some of them.

This is one class that you can learn a little bit more of what's happening inside a Makersite directly from our partners themselves. So another aspect or another integration and another partner that we've been building and working with is PaperlessPARTS. So they do a live AI supported quoting process to get an idea of, if you're designing some components working together as assembly parts and you want to get an idea of the geometry, you can use that integration.

You can find out from the geometry itself, get an idea of what the parts would cost, and get a more integrated view and flow of your design. Also, I think, Jonathan, you were working with an integration here, and I think the team is going to see as we get into the actual exhibit some of that integration with tools like MSC as well.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah. The MSC integration is a pretty important part of this from our point of view, because what this allows you to do is it's not just quoting software, but it also, with that integration, lets you see what you're doing with parts that you need and knowing that you've got a supplier there and seeing prices and inventory and all that stuff.

Having that dashboard handy makes a really big difference there. It has custom pricing logic, so you can adjust that for whatever your needs are. It's not just some one size fits all, this is how you're going to figure out how your pricing is going to work on this project. The collaborative environment was really helpful with us as well because when the team gets bigger, people start to specialize on different things and you may have an expert there that has a better idea of fasteners, for example.

So maybe this fastener isn't the right one. I know this is what's specced here, but we probably could get away with an M5 instead of an M6, and knowing that you can connect that to part pricing as well as manufacturing pricing is a big deal.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: It's great that it's integrated as well when you have the model update, just like if you're using a quality management process and you're changing something out, you're updating it, it'll give you that live feedback to see that that change you're making is available, what it's going to cost you, if it's going to add to your design or reduce the cost along the way. So it's really good to have PaperlessPARTS on your side. Another one of our partners we work with a lot is Formlabs.

They make these SLA and SLS 3D printers. They're really good quality and they do offer a lot of different focal points for when it comes to material database. You can go online, find out what's available, what type of materials that you want to try to use for your design. Again, getting that relationship early in your process, coming up with the concept, finding the different materials that would work as you create, that's getting closer and closer to that actual finished part that you're going to have at the end of the manufacturing process.

So it was a really good experience working with Formlabs. I know a lot of the parts that you guys are going to see and experience were made on the Formlabs, and it did start with Jonathan's concept and idea. He went through a couple different iterations, tried it, printed it, tested it, checked it, worked with Miguel and Alana on the team, and did some verification testing, which we caught on the quality management system process.

It's building out that trust, building out knowing that there's different parts that your 3D printing are really going to reflect those tolerances and what's important to your design fit, form, and function at the end. And Jonathan definitely has some good points along the way when we were developing and thinking about that designing the holistic point of view and 3D printing those parts.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah. You said it all there, Wayne. Their machines are very reliable when it comes to dimensional accuracy. One of the things that's really important about it from my point of view, the way I've been using them, is that, as opposed to an FDM machine, for example, the lack of layer lines you would get on an FDM machine makes it possible for you to do dry fit tests regardless of what the orientation of the part was.

That makes it a lot faster to be able to check these parts, to see how something's actually going to go together, whereas in other contexts, you might need to print something in three or four different orientations on an FDM machine to see if that same tolerance is going to work there. And another thing I really like about them, the direct Fusion integration is great because you can customize your support structures, you can really get a good picture of the way this thing is going to print and predict how you might approach cleaning up the part to get the support structures off and so on.

As with everything else in Fusion manufacturing, you make a change in the model, you don't have to do exports and all that stuff. It just updates when you update it in the manufacturing workspace. Their materials are also pretty spectacular in that they do all that stuff in-house. They have materials that have very specific engineering properties for very specific uses. They have RFID tags that tell you, when this thing was bought, when it's supposed to expire, and so on. There's a lot of options with their resins and the different things they're able to do there.

And then the Fuse 1 for SLS powder prints, the nylon material that comes off of that is very durable and we're able to use it for production parts because the way those machines work, you can pack a lot of different parts within the build volume and not need support structures. They've got a great clean out system that comes with that machine or it might be a separate thing. But anyway, it complements the machine. And yeah, we've been using them for years for this stuff. They're a very important part of this design process, for sure.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: Lastly, when you're coming up with different concepts and trying different materials, that leads you, again, to that one part that you're going to be able to make that you're going to make thousands of. So before you pull that trigger, think about making sure it's the right size fit form, that the pieces do fit together. Now, you mentioned FDM. Now, there is a different process and a different type of tolerance you will get. And sometimes we do have parts that are using both.

They'll do the SLA. Some of them might be going through FDM. And in fact, we did work with one of our partnerships to start making some of those more FDM parts, as well as thinking about the resin parts as well. So this is another partner that we work with on some of the parts, and you'll get the experience and see them as well at the experience, at the Fusion factory experience. So I think, Jonathan, you've worked with these guys in the past as well.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah, absolutely. I've got one in my garage. I use it all the time. They make great printers. The MK4 is probably their most popular printer, and you can see why when you use one. It's very straightforward. Auto bed leveling. I'm sure it's even improved since the version I've got. One of the cool things about them is that they produce parts of these printers using the printers. So the production printer you get from Prusa, if it's a MK4, for example, has ASA or ABS printed parts that were made on Prusa machines.

And the tolerances are there, the rigidity is there. They make great parts and the price point is very competitive, especially compared to just about anybody else in that same class. You got a lot of different options with the kinds of parts you can print on those. And again, it's a different process if you're talking about SLA. They have those as well, but just different use cases there. FDM 3D prints are more forgiving, they're less brittle.

That's why you would use them in a production context. But it's also a great machine just for prototyping stuff. If you need to quickly see what's the general fit going to be on this part, it's going to be injection molded, so I'm going to print that on the Prusa machine so that I can actually use thread forming screws in there. And it's not going to break the thing apart.

If I were to use an SLA machine, that wouldn't be the right use case for that because if I start putting thread forming screws in there, it's going to break the bosses that would say-- it's less similar to an injection molded part, for example. So these FDM machines or FFF machines, whichever terminology you prefer, they are a critical part of any prototyping process. You're not going to find a design shop or an engineering shop that doesn't have one. It's got to be part of your design and manufacturing process.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: It's great how it's integrated early. Again, making some parts that are going to represent what's going to be in the real world if you're going to make, again, tens of thousands of them. It's not only about prototyping, of course. You can use these machines to make those finished parts. Just like you mentioned, the components that actually make the printer itself were printed on one of their machines. I love that concept.

I love the idea of you can get production as well as consumer quality end results to high tolerance right off the printer itself. It's one thing to think about, as we mentioned, drink your own champagne. Use those tools that you have to better your product. So it's great that we work and have such partnerships with Prusa as well as working with Formlabs. We're going to switch a little bit, talk a little bit on the CNC side of things.

One of the partners we're working with is a new partner, Toolpath using AI as a capability, thinking of using brand new technology, developing and innovating in a new way where we can develop but it does take time to build out your Toolpath workflow. Thinking about how you would approach different parts of the CNC machine, whether it's the Haas or the SMEC or the Mazak we're working with at the factory. But thinking about a more streamlined approach.

What would AI think of if I have a tool, it's going to learn, if I'm thinking about using a specific tool to remove chips and try to get as efficient as I can as well as saving tool life? And if you're using an AI tool that can learn from your process, so as you start to develop, it really expedites that learning curve, if you will, of honing in your skills and learning how you can really effectively use your machine. And all the while, you have AI on your side thinking and learning as you go.

So there is a direct integration for toolpath.com that you can use within Fusion. It does give you a lot more insight. It does automate a lot of tools. And again, it uses an innovative approach in thinking of a more holistic design to manufacture approach you would do for CNC machining. And I think there is a class going on and I highly recommend jumping into that class to see a little bit more about toolpath.com. I know I kind of jumped ahead there. Jonathan, I think you might have some insight as well.

JONATHAN ODOM: Yeah. I mean, the cool thing about Toolpath, again, direct Fusion integration. You're seeing a theme when it comes to the partners here. But the cool thing about it that I've noticed is that it being integrated with Fusion means it has access to your tool library. So it can give you suggestions based on what you've got in your library and what the geometry is on the part. So it might find somewhere a radius that's a little too tight, for example, or maybe somebody forgot to radius something that's an inside corner.

What it can do is go through and suggest, say, hey, you've got this 8 inch end mill here. Do you want to use that with this tolerance fit? And it sort of gives you these suggestions as you go through and helps you catch things you might not otherwise catch. And yeah, I mean, just all the demos that I've seen for this are pretty spectacular. It's no surprise we're partnering with them. Definitely recommend you check them out.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: I agree. I think there is a theme, and I do see that as well. It's a good theme. It's helping us especially get to where we're at. Yeah, so you're going to get to talk to the team. You'll be able to see it in action on the exhibit floor. Also, we would use it to program a machine like this. So Haas or Haas Automation will be there. They do make CNC machines. They're one of the biggest tool or CNC machine tool builders in the US.

They do have a range of lathes and mill turn machines, live tooling machines, as well as multiaxis mills and hybrid type machines as well. So yeah. So they also have a really good, easy to use control interface. Pretty much any Haas you walk up to, you see the controller, you know instinctively, if you're a programmer, exactly how to program those machines. They're easy to learn and easy to use. Working with Haas, there is an integration. You can connect directly to your Haas. You can get information.

If you're getting a little bit more vibration or if your tool is starting to wear, you can get that data, bring it right back into Fusion. Inspecting a part. So if you have in-process inspection, you have a probe on it, you want to check to make sure that those dimensions are in spec before you take the part of the machine, you can get that information directly back into Fusion. So it's a really good integration tool to use. And you'll get to experience that on the shop floor, on the factory floor. We will be running some parts. Jonathan, which parts are we going to run on the Haas?

JONATHAN ODOM: We're going to be doing the enclosure on the Haas. So it's the most complex part. Definitely calls for five axis the way it's designed. Making some slight alterations to it to fit this as opposed to a injection molded part, which is what the production is going to be. But you're really going to see this machine shine with that part, I think.

Yeah. And the direct Fusion integration thing, it's next level when it comes to Haas. Like Wayne said, there's this talkback between the machines and Fusion that really lets you dial in exactly what's going on in your shop and use that data to save a lot of time and money in the long run.

WAYNE GRIFFENBERG: When it comes to multiaxis, especially that one enclosure that you're going to see running there, there is some integration, some toolpaths that we'll be using from some of our manufacturing extension in Fusion. So it'll be great to see it in action, get an idea of how you would approach such parts, holding that part in the machine. I know Haas does offer some of their workholding, but that does lead us to our next exhibitor.

Fifth Axis does make some really good high quality vises as well as multiaxis. And they do also have these trees that you can make multiple parts for mass production as well. They're very rigid. They do offer a lot of variety for multiaxis as well as standard three axis type machines. One of the things I really like working with the risers on these, especially there's an automatic lock system that makes it easy to swap out.

So if you have one job set up for making three different parts, it's a really quick disconnect mechanism, and you can align it and it's really, really tight on tolerances, like really close. So their locking system makes it easier to swap out from one job to another where you don't have to reset the entire job, makes your production line run a lot smoother and a lot quicker. So these are some of the vises you'll see at the show or at the exhibit. And I know, Jonathan, you had some good insight as well, working with Fifth Axis.