The present and future of paperless AM production workflows, with AM Flow and Midwest Prototyping

VoxelMatters Podcast

Today’s episode brings together two companies that represent at the same time, the history and the future of additive manufacturing: AM Flow and Midwest Prototyping.

Midwest Prototyping is a leading AM service provider that started in 2001 with the purchase of a desk and one stereolithography machine. Both of these shared an office with founder Steve Grundahl, who is our guest today.

Steve got early exposure to rapid prototyping technology while studying at the University of Milwaukee’s School of Engineering in the early 1990s. Although his exposure to this technology was during its development stage, he never lost his fascination with it. As industries began adopting it as a valid option for rapid prototyping and product development, Steve took the opportunity to start his journey as a business owner.

Fast forward to 2006 and the company had built a new 18,000-square-foot facility with anticipation of future growth. In 2008, Midwest Prototyping acquired longtime competitor Manitowoc Prototypes adding even more rapid prototyping capacity. More acquisitions followed, leading to the ability to offer 6 distinct 3D printing technologies on over 40 machines with more than 40 materials.

More recently, Midwest Prototyping became part of the Prototek Group further growing the overall AM capabilities and continuing its acquisition strategy with ProtoCAM. Suffice to say that now the company has massive production capabilities and that’s exactly where AM Flow comes in

Last year Midwest Prototyping took its next step toward a fully automated additive manufacturing production plant with end-to-end product tracking and tracing by installing the AM-VISION and AM-SORT, in the AM-Flow production line at their Blue Mounds production facility.

The company is one of the first clients of AM-Flow using AM-Flow’s vision technology. This moment marks the first step to the brand new, next-generation VISION and SORT. With these production modules, Midwest Prototyping can automatically recognize, sort, and route their daily volume of SLS, MJF and SLA prints, in only seconds per part. With the placement of the AM-VISION and AM-SORT, fully MES integrated, the production workflow has become completely paperless.

Also here to tell us what AM Flow can do for AM companies with large production requirements is Carlos Zwikker. He has 20 years experience as an International Research-Based Consultant and joined Philips as a strategy & insight executive in the Philips Lifestyle Incubator, a corporate venturing unit of Philips.

Here, Carlos, entered the Additive Manufacturing market in 2006 as he co-managed several start-ups, including AM service provider Shapeways. In 2018 he joined the management of AM-Flow where he is responsible for global sales and marketing.