Where New-Wave Manufacturing Is Headed; Carl Bass of Autodesk on How 3-D Printing Will Move Far Beyond Prototypes

Where New-Wave Manufacturing Is Headed

Carl Bass of Autodesk on How 3-D Printing Will Move Far Beyond Prototypes

DON CLARK

June 1, 2014 4:48 p.m. ET

Many people have now heard about 3-D printing. Carl Bass has been tracking it for 25 years.

As chief executive of Autodesk Inc., ADSK -0.61% a maker of design software for companies in manufacturing, construction, and media and entertainment, Mr. Bass pays close attention to manufacturing technology. So he waited eagerly during the long gestation of 3-D printing, which builds objects by depositing layers of plastic or other materials.

His company operates a workshop on San Francisco’s waterfront where 150 engineers and artists experiment with 3-D printers, milling machines and other tools. In May, Mr. Bass announced plans for Autodesk to sell its own printer—its first-ever hardware product—and related software.

The Wall Street Journal recently spoke with Mr. Bass about 3-D printing and other trends in manufacturing, including the emergence of new companies and ad hoc gatherings called meetups that entrepreneurs and hardware hobbyists organize on the site Meetup.com to trade ideas. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation.

The Role of 3-D

WSJ: How do you view 3-D printing?

MR. BASS: I think there’s been a huge amount of press—and probably an excessive amount of press—around the idea of consumer home 3-D printers.

I think equally true is people have underappreciated the value of industrial 3-D printing. Over time, it’s going to become a much more substantial tool for production manufacturing.

WSJ: In what ways?

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Engineers and artists use a collection of 3-D printers, milling machines and other manufacturing devices to create almost anything you can imagine at Autodesk’s fabrication facility in San Francisco.

MR. BASS: Right now, 3-D printing is widely used for prototyping: I’m making a valve. I’m making a new phone. I drew it up in the computer, and now I just want to hold one in my hands.

Next is where you start seeing things move into low-volume, high-value applications. Things like a hearing aid. It’s important that it fits my ear.

WSJ: Something customizable.

MR. BASS: Right. The third one is more mainstream, things like braces [for teeth].

Those are 3-D printed products that are just starting to cross into more of a mass market. But I don’t think there’s been any breakout 3-D printed product yet.

Part of it is, if it’s not customizable, when you reach a certain threshold in terms of the number of units you’re going to sell, there are more efficient ways to make it today. If I’m going to make 10 plastic parts, printing is a great idea. If I’m going to make a million, I’m going to build a mold and injection-mold it.

One place where people are doing really interesting new work is they are doing the 3-D printing of metal along with CNC [computer numerical control] milling. They print a quarter of an inch and then they mill it [remove material as needed to meet the product specifications], and then they do that repeatedly.

WSJ: It’s one machine that’s designed to do both?

MR. BASS: Yes. What you get is the efficiency of only putting down as much material as you want, while adding the precision of subtractive technology, which has been perfected over decades.

I’ve also seen companies that are doing printing of carbon-fiber parts. So you can get incredibly strong and lightweight parts.

WSJ: Things like heart valves seem likely.

MR. BASS: Hip replacements, knee replacements. When you talk about mass customization of medical things, it makes a huge amount of sense.

Startup Culture

WSJ: Talk a little about startups in manufacturing.

MR. BASS: You see the ability for very small companies to compete in ways that were never imaginable before.

I’ll tell you about one company called Cambrian Genomics. They built a machine that 3-D prints DNA.

So if you were a scientist working in a lab and needed DNA to do your experiments, you would send them a text file with the description of the base pairs, and you would send them this description and they would send you back a vial. This is real biological printing.

This company has less than 12 employees, and has done it on raising a single-digit number of millions of dollars.

Another example is Quirky, this New York City-based company that crowdsources design.

If someone has an idea, they take it to a certain point, and then the community gets involved in designing the rest, naming it, choosing colors, helping to set the price, and then it’s brought to market. One Quirky product was brought to market by General Electric.

WSJ: What other interesting examples do you see?

MR. BASS: One place to look is at these hardware meetups, literally hundreds of people getting together in all parts of the world. And every product is being reimagined.

Willing to Share

WSJ: What do people do at these events?

MR. BASS: People are fascinated with what are you making, how are you making it, what tools you’re using, have you raised money? How are you going to bring it to market?

There’s been a long culture of software startups or Web startups. Hardware has a different set of challenges. The worst day for a hardware startup is when some big company says, “I want you to make 10,000 of these for me,” and you don’t have the cash flow to support it and maybe you can take a bet on it, but if it doesn’t pan out you might be out of business.

So I think there’s a whole different set of problems that are common, and it’s so new that people are willing to share.

WSJ: Many hardware startups are using crowdfunding.

MR. BASS: I have funded too many Kickstarter projects for sure.

With Kickstarter and these other crowdfunded places, a contributor is saying I want this thing to exist in the world. It’s no different than when you come out of the subway and someone’s playing music and you give them a couple dollars.

WSJ: How many would you say you’ve put money into?

MR. BASS: I’d say two dozen.

There’s film projects. I’ve done a 3-D printer, a CNC machine, plants that glow in the dark, genetically engineered. I’ve done some stuff for building tool sets for rural economies. But it’s not like a huge financial investment.