Tackle box holds memories of first additive manufacturing experience

Contributor Kip Hanson learned about AM while enrolled in a training course in 1993, during which he operated an SLA 250 from 3D Systems.

While cleaning the garage last weekend, I stumbled across a plastic tackle box. Inside sat a Dremel tool, some abrasive wheels, a few files, and a pair of rubber gloves. The box was dusty and the lid a bit warped from years of summer heat, but other than that it still looked the same as it did in 1993, when I emerged from a week-long training session at the 3D Systems facility in Valencia, Calif.

The tackle box and its contents were intended for postprocessing the parts I was expected to make on my then-employer’s SLA 250, a 3D printer not all that different from inventor Chuck Hull’s first commercial machine, the SLA-1.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has since designated the SLA-1 a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, and Hull was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. (Congratulations, Chuck, you’ve earned it. I hope to shake your hand someday.)

I never did build many parts on the SLA 250, or any other 3D printer for that matter. I left the company shortly after my training in California, which didn’t make my boss too happy.

I wish I’d done more with that machine. And, to be honest, I’m a little jealous of the current generation of 3D printer operators. If I’d known the tremendous impact Hull’s work would have on the industry I love, I might have made some different career choices.

Still, I get to write about additive manufacturing.

Like a good friend of mine, I once thought that 3D printing was little more than a novelty. And I found the hype over the possibility of it replacing machining and other conventional manufacturing processes laughable. While that day has yet to come—and certainly won’t arrive in the short time I have left on this planet—I must admit that I misjudged the technology. AM is changing everything.

I can’t speak for my friend, but I have a hunch he would agree with me.