"Yes, we also do plastic.” It’s a common refrain at Met-L-Flo Inc. of Sugar Grove, Ill., where President Carl Dekker and his team of 20 oversee five of the seven ASTM-recognized additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. These include vat photopolymerization, material extrusion, material jetting, binder jetting, and powder bed fusion (the latter in both metal and polymer). Within this list are several AM subcategories, such as Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) and 3D Systems’ MultiJet Printing (MJP).
As if that weren’t enough to keep this small company busy, Met-L-Flo also offers machining, rotational and plastic injection molding, and more. “We’re primarily a low-volume contract shop, and utilize additive manufacturing and AM-enabled technologies to develop parts for end-use applications,” said Dekker.
For example, Met-L-Flo employees are currently producing metal castings for various automotive applications. They’ve made fiberglass layups for trucks, vacuum-formed pieces for aircraft, and built countless tools, jigs, and fixtures for their customers. They also provide design validation services and guidance on making designs more manufacturable. In a nutshell, Dekker explained, Met-L-Flo team members take a customer’s application need, drill down to whatever manufacturing process will deliver the best possible result, and put together a proposal. If successful, they then manage that program for the client until completion.
It’s an eclectic mix that even many large manufacturing firms can’t lay claim to, yet Dekker is anything but boastful. When asked how they keep up with it all, his answer was straightforward. “Our focus is on meeting our clients’ demands and helping to make them successful. That’s it.”
He freely admits that not all of his printers are state-of-the-art. But at the end of the day, he suggested, owning the latest and greatest technology isn’t going to make a better part. That’s where having “really knowledgeable people” comes in. With that is a willingness to let machines sit idle from time to time when demand ebbs, and an understanding that the “latest and greatest” crown grows tarnished within a year or even a few months in the 3D-printing industry.
“New equipment is great, as is a high-level of utilization, but success boils down to one basic question: How do you make a better product that will give you a stronger position against your competition in the marketplace?”
So why the mismatch between the company name and its service offering? It’s a long story. In 1969, Dekker’s father started Met-L-Flo Engineering as a consultancy to the metal-forging industry. Dekker joined the firm after a two-year stint with a Japanese import/export company attempting to advance silicone molding in the U.S. market. The year was 1991, and his stint was ending, so Dekker began looking for ways to develop what he had learned into the family business. He discovered what at that time was a novel prototyping technology—stereolithography. Within a few years, the consulting side of the company branched off to become Met-L-Flo Inc., one of the first 3D-printing service bureaus.
“Back then, we were still very focused on the casting and forging markets, so there weren’t any branding issues at first,” said Dekker. “That began to change with the introduction of direct metal systems in the early 2000s. By then, we’d expanded into other areas, so we started playing with the idea of a name change, but ultimately decided to leverage our brand recognition and continue with Met-L-Flow.”
No matter the company name, Dekker has more AM experience than most. Early in his career, he began presenting at seminars for SME in and around Chicago, an opportunity to “get the word out and connect with others in 3D printing.” These efforts led him to a group known as the Rapid Prototyping Association, which soon joined forces with SME, and which Dekker chaired at one point.
Today, he’s president of the Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG). It’s a post he’s held for the past two years, preceded by two years as vice president. Dekker is also the current chair of SME’s Direct Digital Manufacturing Tech Group. “When a technology changes as quickly as additive manufacturing, it’s important to stay current,” he said.
About twenty years ago, Dekker noticed a shift in the way that products are sourced and produced, and the term “direct manufacturing” was becoming more widespread. Met-L-Flo responded by preparing for AS9100 certification, which it achieved in 2010. The company also moved to its current location, a facility with better environmental controls and much more floor space for the growth in contract manufacturing that Dekker saw coming. Finally, with a goal to pursue more defense and aerospace work, Met-L-Flo added ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) certification to its expanding accreditation list.
While all this was going on, Dekker began working on another more fundamental problem: a lack of standards within the AM community. “Back then, most of my customers had developed their own sets of procedures, technical processes, material specifications, and so on,” said Dekker.
“Following each of them, many of which were inconsistent, was becoming a serious complication for Met-L-Flo and others like us. That’s when we as a group started pushing for a standards body to take on the activity of developing what was initially a set of established guidelines for rapid prototyping, but that would soon become a much broader series of industry-wide additive manufacturing standards.”
That standards body turned out to be ASTM International (formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials), which formed the ASTM Committee F42 on Additive Manufacturing Technologies in 2009. Dekker has served on the committee ever since—first as vice-chair, then chairperson, and now past chairperson. Knowing that wide-scale adoption of such standards is critical to the future of manufacturing overall, he and his colleagues have continued to grow the organization, while looking for ways to increase AM adoption and further develop the F42 standard.
In an attempt to bring F42 to other countries, the ASTM committee joined forces with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and developed a presence in Europe. Together, they help direct any company wishing to establish its own standards back to the collaborative activities of the F42 committee, ISO, and the ANSI Additive Manufacturing Standardization Collaborative (AMSC).
This move has brought a high degree of AM conformity in Europe, said Dekker. Unfortunately, the U.S. has been slower to climb aboard the standards bandwagon.“We don’t have a mechanism that designates F42 or any other document as the official standard,” he said. “In fact, there are more than a dozen SDOs [standards development organizations] at work here in the U.S., any of which is free to publish its own AM guidelines.”
Until everyone is singing from the same AM hymnal, Met-L-Flo and other additive manufacturers will struggle with ambiguity and inefficiency. “How do we get to the point where our customers can say, ‘I want my parts made via this standard’? Once you have that, we’ll be able to respond with certainty, ‘Okay, we understand how to print the part. We understand how to inspect and post-process it and what materials we can use in its construction.’ Without that, universal conformance and part qualification will remain a question mark in certain applications.”
As the industry continues to gain steam, such scenarios will become increasingly common, especially as 3D-printer ownership expands to the consumer market. Dekker described a futuristic scenario in which a parent prints a bicycle helmet. The child gives said helmet to a friend for his birthday, the friend falls off his bike, the helmet breaks, and the friend’s family sues for damages. Who is liable? The 3D-printer manufacturer? The raw material provider? The internet site that provided the design model and printing files? Or the well-intentioned consumer?
Said Dekker, “I served on a GAO panel that was putting together a report on 3D printing for congress, and one of the members raised some of these same questions. We’re not yet at the point where people will be making safety-critical items like these on a home printer, but that part of the discussion really resonated with me. It provided some insight into the industry’s maturation level and how far we have yet to go.”
Manufacturers grapple with similar liability questions, he added. Without robust process controls, reliable equipment and materials, and a well-established set of standards to follow, the legal waters can quickly become murky. “As a contract manufacturer, it’s my responsibility to prove that any parts we produced were made according to the customer’s data set and requirements, and that we followed agreed upon and documented procedures,” he said.
Other questions abound. Dekker mentioned growing concerns over industrial cybersecurity, and the need to comply with NIST 800-171 requirements and the DoD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification as additional burdens in this brave new manufacturing world. Add to that the ongoing struggle to find and retain qualified employees, people who not only have the right skill set but also the right attitude, and a desire to grow with the company.
Training and workforce development is a huge issue, he noted. So is the need to continually reinvent yourself. “When all you have is a hammer, everything’s a nail. That’s why manufacturers need diverse capabilities. I can’t tell you how many times a customer has called us to say, ‘Hey, sorry to tell you this, but we just bought a 3D printer and no longer need your services.’ My response is always, ‘Congratulations, but your machine is only good for certain parts and materials. Can we help you with any of the other six additive technologies?’
“Throughout our history, we’ve always invested in whatever’s needed for the application, learned everything we could about it, got it producing successfully, and then added it to our capabilities list. That’s how you grow as a manufacturing company.”
