June 1, 2025 • 22 mins
Printhead technology may not sound revolutionary, but what if it could radically transform the way we manufacture everything from electric motors to medical implants? That's exactly what Ben Harkoff and his team at Quantica have achieved with their breakthrough inkjet system that can handle materials 10-20 times more viscous than any conventional technology.
Starting in 2018 with a simple goal of printing electronics, Ben's team became frustrated when every existing printhead failed spectacularly when trying to eject viscous resins. Their solution? Design something completely new using piezo crystal actuators and compliant mechanisms that could amplify deformation. This innovation unlocked the ability to print materials with viscosities ranging from 250 millipascal-seconds at operating temperatures to 15,000 millipascal-seconds at room temperature, opening up vast new possibilities for manufacturing.
What's particularly fascinating is Quantica's journey from 3D printing visionaries to practical problem-solvers. As Ben candidly shares, the company discovered its most immediate impact wasn't in creating complete 3D-printed products but in revolutionizing existing manufacturing processes. Their technology now enables precision deposition of adhesives for e-motors, replacing inefficient dispensing methods and potentially improving motor efficiency. They've validated the printing of true platinum-catalyzed silicone (SYLGARD 184) without additives—a breakthrough for medical applications—and are exploring how viscoelastic materials enhance cell viability for bioprinting applications.
Whether you're interested in manufacturing technology, materials science, or how startups navigate the challenging path from invention to commercial success, this conversation offers valuable insights. Ben's advice for aspiring inventors? "Become obsessed and become an expert in research... train your attention span... and learn about politics, because part of the job is not only the technical depth but also dealing with people." Listen now to discover how printing the unprintable is creating entirely new possibilities across industries.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Lattice podcast, the
official podcast from 3D Heels.
I'm your host, jenny Chen.
In today's episode we travel toBerlin where I sat down with
Ben Harkoff, co-founder ofQuantica and one of the minds
behind a revolutionary printheadtechnology.
Ben's team developed a systemthat can jet ultra-viscous
(00:25):
materials, something no otherprinthead could manage.
It unlocked entirely newapplications in dental
electronics, e-motors and evenbioprinting.
We talked about the early daysof trial and error, the moment
they realized their breakthrough, and how Quantica has pivoted
from focusing solely on 3Dprinting to solving real
(00:47):
industrial problems likereplacing slow manual processes
in screen printing and adhesivedeposition.
Ben also shared his thoughts onthe future of medical-grade
silicone printing,functionalized scaffolds for
bioprinting and what it takes toturn technical depth into
commercial impact.
(01:08):
And yes, ben has some fantasticadvice for students and future
inventors.
Just a quick reminder thispodcast is for informational
purposes only.
Nothing shared here is medical,legal or financial advice.
Opinions are our own or ourguests.
Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hi Ben, good to see you in person, Hi Jenny.
Yeah, finally nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, last time I saw you was in 2022, through our
virtual event.
Exactly yeah, you were part ofthe biomaterial panel and I
learned a lot from you, but alsoit was a lot of information.
But I am so glad that on myjourney a venture this time to
Germany I was able to visit yourlab, your research areas and
(01:56):
really get to know Quantica alot more, and also quite excited
about the journey of thecompany.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, yeah, me as well.
Very unexpected.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I think most of the people probably are still not
very familiar about Quanticaoutside of Germany, so I would
love to hear your just a briefdescription of the story behind
founding of the company.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, sure, so it was founded in berlin in 2018.
So, yeah, by mid of 2018, acolleague of mine and myself and
, well, another sort of friendhad developed sort of the core
concept for what we wanted to doin terms of a printhead,
because prior we wereexperimenting around with
printheads, trying to make themwork for 3D materials, like
(02:47):
off-the-shelf resins essentiallyand they all broke down.
Nothing worked.
We tried to heat the materialthat was our path forward but
all the print heads just diedwithin minutes usually, so we
fixated on just doing our own.
We started with some piezocrystal actuated sort of
(03:09):
large-scale systems you can buyoff the shelf and had some
success with that.
So we were able to ejectoff-the-shelf resins and then
miniaturize these type ofpiezo-driven actuators.
So the piezo crystals theybasically, when you pass
electricity through them, theydeform, and we found that when
you have a compliant mechanismthat you add to them, you can
(03:31):
amplify the deformation quitewell.
And so we landed in a designwhere we had basically like a
metal strip and a piezo on topand it could oscillate quite
quickly and quite a lot and thatwas able to push, basically,
material out, and from that wecontinuously developed a printed
design that was more and morecapable and more and more able
(03:53):
to eject very high viscousmaterials.
At the time we didn't even knowthat that was such a big deal,
we just wanted to have morenozzles.
We started with eight and thenwent to 24.
And then we slowly realized,okay, this is a big deal
actually, because none of theprint heads that exist can eject
very high viscous materials,and with that I mean there's a
(04:17):
large scale difference.
So 10 to 20 millipascal is sortof the unit it's usually what's
considered even higher values,and but we could do materials
that were hundreds, so like 150to 200, 250 empaths, so that was
quite a big deal.
And this even translates tomaterials when they're at room
(04:39):
temperature being much higher,like 15 000 amperes, and so this
opened up a huge amount ofchemistry for us.
So adhesives, even inks withlarge particle loading, like
conductive inks, resins that canbe used in dental applications
with like glass filler in them,so they have much higher break
resistance, and so slowly werealized that this is very
(05:03):
fundamental and that we couldreplace a lot of different
applications, but still thefocus was mostly on 3D printing
at the time and then suddenly werealized, okay, we're getting a
lot more customers from 2Dprinting.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Well, let's rewind a little bit before we go into the
juicy part of the developmentBack then.
What motivated you to looking?
Look into the space.
You said you were trying tosolve a problem with resin.
What were you trying to print?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
uh, basically, uh, we're trying to do an
electronics printer that coulddo like pcb substrate and also
conductive inks in the beginning, so, but then we really mostly
focused on resin because we hadearly investors from the resin
printing space.
I see yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
But you didn't grow up wanting to be a printhead
inventor.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
No, no, no.
I was always fascinated withtechnology in general.
Physics and chemistry were mymain focus, and I've been
researching all my life,essentially, but before that I
actually studied film, so yeah,guys, if you notice, our
background is completelyprofessionalized filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
And so how did you?
What is the dot, the thingthat's connecting these dots of
your change of interest ordevelopment of interest?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So yeah, basically I always wanted to do the things
that I found to be very hard andchallenging, and I think making
a large movie and filmmakingand knowing about all of the
technological aspects, such asbasic camera technology and
lighting and how to go alongwith people, was always sort of
(06:48):
a nice challenging outlook.
Before that I had studiedphysics, but then I wanted to do
something more meaningful withmore impact, and then basically
this was combining two thingsright being able to develop with
good friends in a high dynamicenvironment and then also
possibly having something thatcan generate like a real
(07:08):
fundamental impact on onmanufacturing, essentially yeah,
I do see some parallel of thesetwo storylines yeah is.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
You are a highly technical person I think anyone
who's meeting for five minutes,who can tell?
Yeah you are filled withphysics and science and
terminologies, but you are verydriven by the applications
behind the technology.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That what you can do so right now.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You know, in the history of quantica, I see a
parallel storyline, which is you.
You had a technologicalbreakthrough essentially in 2018
.
And ever since, like many othertechnological startups, people
are trying to find the killerapp that the technology can use.
Yeah, so what was that journeylike?
(07:55):
You started with 3D printingfor electronics, and then, at
some point, quantico wasfocusing on life science
applications, and now you'recertainly at a different
location, focusing mostly onindustrial.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah.
So it basically started, ofcourse, with like an idealized
and sort of naive approach,let's say, which is very useful
and very needed in sort of theearly phases of technical
development useful and veryneeded in sort of the early
phases of technical developmentand of course we wanted to
always have some real productsthat we could print with 3d
applications.
That was sort of the mostdisappointing part to us back
(08:32):
then, that nothing of the thingsyou printed were really like a
useful end product.
Right, it's quite hard to dothat in this manufacturing space
.
You need like much higherresolution and much more
material capability andmulti-material capability.
And we figured, okay, all thesethings are there, but of course
(08:53):
there's many things that youhave to be first that you're
tackling when you're taking thatapproach.
So nobody before, even in themulti-material jetting space,
had to look at actual materialcharacteristics, like the
physical sort of brakeresistance, for example.
It was always in a very lowsort of field, but we now had
(09:14):
the capability to go much higher.
But then you have a lot ofprocesses that interfere with
that and make it sort of toughto deal with.
And so we realized at somepoint okay, there's many more
people coming to us from.
I mean, we had a dental playerthat was coming to us and we're
still developing for that.
But many more people werecoming from the 2D field, where
(09:38):
just materials were notresilient enough.
There's a lot more boundariesthat exist in analog fields like
screen printing or dispensingor slot die coating are huge
application fears, each one ofthem much larger than 3d
printing in itself, and all ofthem have major restrictions.
So the materials are not asresilient and not chemically
(10:01):
compatible, or they want to useyou know, you want to use
coatings with elastomers orsilicones, for example, and all
of these chemistries are notreally available or not scalable
or not digitizable, and sobasically now we're focusing
much more on replacing screenprinting, digitizing processes
(10:22):
that are currently sort of supermanual, very slow, like
dispensing, where you have onenozzle to fill, like large
surfaces, which takes minutes,which you can do in potentially
a single pass when you're usingInkjet, right.
So we're working now with a lotof customers to do undirected
application development Some ofthe largest players in
(10:46):
electronics, sort of lifestyleproducts, then also largest in
the aerospace field and, yeah,as well as, yeah, electronics
and also automotive.
Automotive is especiallyinteresting because we've just
(11:06):
printed our first sort oflab-grade silicone.
We've validated that it worksand now we're moving to sort of
high-degree medical-gradesilicones and we want to also
see that work for 2Dapplications but then eventually
also for 3D applications.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Absolutely, and I think the transition, though,
from you know, originally veryfocused on the 3d material and
3d printing, because it was soexciting, I would say a decade
or so ago at least um.
How did you make thattransition as an overnight
transition?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
no, it was long-term transition, like it's.
Yeah, it took a while, took alot of convincing.
We grew to, you know, 50 peoplealmost, uh, that work here and
yeah, it took a while.
Basically, the customers thatwe interacted with was the
deciding factor over time.
So we got more and morecustomers in the field of
(12:03):
adhesive deposition, for example.
So we've done e-motor stackswhere we coat them with adhesive
much better than you could withdispensing units, for example,
and that was like okay, this ismuch easier for us than a full
3D printed product.
This is directly available andwe can scale into that.
And that is the thing theapplication focus that we
(12:26):
realized at some point that wasmissing in the 3D field, the
total application focus.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine when you founded the
company, everybody was veryexcited about 3D printing.
Yes, the vision is that we'regoing to use 3D to change the
world.
When you change that vision alittle bit, does that impact
your team cohesiveness or peopleleaving, or something like that
?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Not too much, I would say, because if you just look
at it rationally, we still haveall that opportunity open.
It's just that this is along-scale process, requires
more funding and more time, andso that's the thing when you're
a startup.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
You have to survive.
Agility yeah, exactly.
And so that's the thing whenyou're a startup you have to
survive.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
You have to be agile.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Agility yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
You have to be agile and you have to survive, and
everyone knows this.
There's no secrets within thisorganization, so everyone is
aware where we need to go andwhat we need to do in order to
just have the biggest impact.
And still, the technologyimpacts then a lot of very large
(13:33):
areas and it's yeah makes adecisive difference.
So it's always good to keeppeople around you that are
mentally flexible enough to dealwith all these things but it's
not easy yeah, it's certainlyquite a hard thing to to do,
yeah and how were your investorsreact to the change, or pivot?
quite well, actually, because wealready had it because we
already had so many customers inthat space and that's a good
(13:57):
thing.
Of course, that's a reallyimportant sign to go towards
that and move ahead with thosethings.
And also, we're extremelyupfront with our customers,
exactly telling them ourcapabilities, and we only go as
far as we need to.
We never overextend anything.
We stop if we see, okay, itdoesn't work.
But we have enoughopportunities with very large
(14:21):
players that we can still pursuebecause they're technologically
viable.
And really that's the thingthat actually works.
Right Is to be completelyprecise, upfront, have very deep
technical analysis of theirmaterials, pre-characterizations
and then test their jetabilityand then, of course, the next
step is to continue thedevelopment process and to scale
(14:43):
it up together.
That's where we are currentlywith a couple of our customers
with like a couple of ourcustomers.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So, ben, would you mind sharing with us a success
story of this kind of customercollaboration and then to a
successful product?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So we're not yet at the fully developed product
stage with everyone.
We have basically validated.
For example, one thing that wedid quite in a quite short term
was one of the biggest e-motormanufacturers in europe or also
in the world, came to us withthe task of depositing adhesives
(15:21):
between the layers of thee-motor rotors and stators, and
this deposition is currentlydone with dispensing, so like a
shower head that just pulls onbig droplets and then they get
pressed together, the materialgets pushed out a little bit,
and so it's not ideal the waythat these things are adhered.
The adhesive has to beisolating, and so it's quite
(15:46):
tough for them to implementthese things on a larger scale
and they lose some efficiencyduring the production process.
So with us, we basically theytasked us hey, can you print
this on top of these metalsheets?
And we did it.
We did it quite quickly,immediately and right away.
There's a material that is13,000 ampers at room
(16:09):
temperature, and so no otherprinter technology can do that.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Of course, it's a better thing to glue things
together.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
in other words, yes exactly, yeah, and because you
can also change where you haveadhesive and you don't, and
where you have conductanceacross the layers and where you
have isolation across the layers, etc.
This is quite an importantelement for the efficiency of
the motor.
So actually you can increaseefficiency and have better
(16:37):
design variability and now youhave a system that actually
scales better as well in termsof speed.
So we're still pursuing thatand we're still in the
application development processand currently we only sell the
sort of application developmentprocess and currently we only
sell sort of these tools forapplication development.
But we are moving towardsselling large-scale print
engines, as we call them forinline, sort of printhead arrays
(17:01):
that can do inlinemanufacturing or just
large-scale, large-surfacemanufacturing.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Since, I mean my audience mostly are interested
in healthcare applications,would you like to elaborate a
little bit of what you guyspotentially can get into from a
healthcare perspective?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Sure, yeah, we have multiple things that we're
pursuing.
One is basically researchtowards cellular deposition.
So, basically, this researchteam based in Berlin found out
that viscoelastic materials havea big impact on cell viability
during the printing process,because the energy gets
(17:39):
dissipated in the material andnot directly transferred onto
the cell walls, for example, andso we are sort of testing
different type of media in whichcells can be transported, and
this media can actually befunctionalized as well to create
structures, and with themulti-material capability we're
aiming then to do multicellularstructured prints.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
So these will be acellular scaffolds rather than
with the cell in it.
Yeah, or scaffolds rather thanwith the cell in it?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, no, you can.
So there's multiple approaches.
We can either load the cell ona per layer basis after sort of
the scaffolding deposition, oryou can have the cells loaded
within some of these functionalscaffolding materials because of
how they polymerize and don'thave they still allow cell
viability after the deposition.
So that's the type of thingthat excites me quite a bit.
(18:30):
I think everybody is veryexcited about that kind of thing
in our industry.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But it certainly is more exciting to see there is an
inkjet process that we canactually use for bioprinting
application.
Because, this field.
While very exciting, with ahuge vision in front of us, the
technical advancement has beenslow and painful and needs a lot
of funding, so it's great tohear that you guys are working
on it.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
So if you're going to be this future fortune teller
or maybe not fortune teller,because you probably know what
do you hope the company canachieve in the next three to
five years?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I think for us it will be important to break into
different sectors andessentially we want to replace
analog processes.
I think screen printing is abig one.
It's currently widely usedwherever you need uneven
surfaces covered with inks thatneed to be resilient against
touch.
We're currently validatingthese types of materials and
(19:34):
then further, I think, focus onadhesive deposition and
digitizing sort of coatings,adhesives, and then also
breaking into silicone.
We've just validated our firstprintable true silicone,
basically a platinum-catalyzedor catalytically polymerized
(19:57):
silicone, which means that thistype of silicone can be used for
medical-grade applications,because we have no evidence of
any other additives, it's just apure lab-grade silicone.
It's actually SILIGARD 184, soone of the most popular lab
scale silicones available, andwe are now aiming for a higher
grade sort of high elasticity,high tensile strength silicone.
(20:21):
And yeah, that's that that willbe usable in a huge amount of
applications, also in themedical sector, of course,
because these type of elasticinterfaces are critical in many
applications.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
What's your origin?
Was it trying to printelectronics?
Would the screen printtechnology that you were
envisioning can also be used forprinting electronics like
wearables and stuff like that?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yes, yeah, so that's the cool thing you can combine
different substrates or modelmaterials with electrically
conductive materials as well.
We've tested that as well.
We've ejected some of thehighest grade uh conductive inks
on the market, uh, so with veryhigh particle loading and even
larger particle sizes, and thisallows basically, yeah, also for
(21:11):
all kinds of crazy things.
But the thing is, with this, Ithink the horizon is always a
bit further ahead, because, yeah, just to get the right
conductivity on substrate, toget it right every time, this is
quite a challenge and requiresdifferent types of curing modes
as well.
So, yeah, but we're lookinginto it as well.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
One final question for you, Ben, is what kind of
advice do you have for a collegestudent right now who are
looking into the industry?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, basically become obsessed and become an
expert in research.
So just reading papers everyday is really worth it.
I think you need to train yourattention span.
You need to just be verymindful and also learn about
politics, because part of thejob is not only sort of the
(22:06):
technical depth but also dealingwith people, interacting with
them.
I wasn't too good at that for awhile, I would say, but now I'm
very thankful that I couldbuild such a great team around
me.
We have an amazing team inBarcelona, we have an amazing
team here in Berlin, and if youlook for the right people as
well that are just driven andhave high goals on their own and
(22:34):
that are open and mindful to tosort of achieving things
together, then that's really theway to go and that stabilizes
everything.
That's really critical that'sgreat advice yeah well, thank
you, ben.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I look forward to more crazy things you're going
to be able to print with yourtechnologies thanks and hope to
catch up some other time thankyou so much.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Thank you all, right, thank.
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Lattice podcast, the
official podcast from 3D Heels.
I'm your host, jenny Chen.
In today's episode we travel toBerlin where I sat down with
Ben Harkoff, co-founder ofQuantica and one of the minds
behind a revolutionary printheadtechnology.
Ben's team developed a systemthat can jet ultra-viscous
(00:25):
materials, something no otherprinthead could manage.
It unlocked entirely newapplications in dental
electronics, e-motors and evenbioprinting.
We talked about the early daysof trial and error, the moment
they realized their breakthrough, and how Quantica has pivoted
from focusing solely on 3Dprinting to solving real
(00:47):
industrial problems likereplacing slow manual processes
in screen printing and adhesivedeposition.
Ben also shared his thoughts onthe future of medical-grade
silicone printing,functionalized scaffolds for
bioprinting and what it takes toturn technical depth into
commercial impact.
(01:08):
And yes, ben has some fantasticadvice for students and future
inventors.
Just a quick reminder thispodcast is for informational
purposes only.
Nothing shared here is medical,legal or financial advice.
Opinions are our own or ourguests.
Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hi Ben, good to see you in person, Hi Jenny.
Yeah, finally nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, last time I saw you was in 2022, through our
virtual event.
Exactly yeah, you were part ofthe biomaterial panel and I
learned a lot from you, but alsoit was a lot of information.
But I am so glad that on myjourney a venture this time to
Germany I was able to visit yourlab, your research areas and
(01:56):
really get to know Quantica alot more, and also quite excited
about the journey of thecompany.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, yeah, me as well.
Very unexpected.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I think most of the people probably are still not
very familiar about Quanticaoutside of Germany, so I would
love to hear your just a briefdescription of the story behind
founding of the company.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, sure, so it was founded in berlin in 2018.
So, yeah, by mid of 2018, acolleague of mine and myself and
, well, another sort of friendhad developed sort of the core
concept for what we wanted to doin terms of a printhead,
because prior we wereexperimenting around with
printheads, trying to make themwork for 3D materials, like
(02:47):
off-the-shelf resins essentiallyand they all broke down.
Nothing worked.
We tried to heat the materialthat was our path forward but
all the print heads just diedwithin minutes usually, so we
fixated on just doing our own.
We started with some piezocrystal actuated sort of
(03:09):
large-scale systems you can buyoff the shelf and had some
success with that.
So we were able to ejectoff-the-shelf resins and then
miniaturize these type ofpiezo-driven actuators.
So the piezo crystals theybasically, when you pass
electricity through them, theydeform, and we found that when
you have a compliant mechanismthat you add to them, you can
(03:31):
amplify the deformation quitewell.
And so we landed in a designwhere we had basically like a
metal strip and a piezo on topand it could oscillate quite
quickly and quite a lot and thatwas able to push, basically,
material out, and from that wecontinuously developed a printed
design that was more and morecapable and more and more able
(03:53):
to eject very high viscousmaterials.
At the time we didn't even knowthat that was such a big deal,
we just wanted to have morenozzles.
We started with eight and thenwent to 24.
And then we slowly realized,okay, this is a big deal
actually, because none of theprint heads that exist can eject
very high viscous materials,and with that I mean there's a
(04:17):
large scale difference.
So 10 to 20 millipascal is sortof the unit it's usually what's
considered even higher values,and but we could do materials
that were hundreds, so like 150to 200, 250 empaths, so that was
quite a big deal.
And this even translates tomaterials when they're at room
(04:39):
temperature being much higher,like 15 000 amperes, and so this
opened up a huge amount ofchemistry for us.
So adhesives, even inks withlarge particle loading, like
conductive inks, resins that canbe used in dental applications
with like glass filler in them,so they have much higher break
resistance, and so slowly werealized that this is very
(05:03):
fundamental and that we couldreplace a lot of different
applications, but still thefocus was mostly on 3D printing
at the time and then suddenly werealized, okay, we're getting a
lot more customers from 2Dprinting.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Well, let's rewind a little bit before we go into the
juicy part of the developmentBack then.
What motivated you to looking?
Look into the space.
You said you were trying tosolve a problem with resin.
What were you trying to print?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
uh, basically, uh, we're trying to do an
electronics printer that coulddo like pcb substrate and also
conductive inks in the beginning, so, but then we really mostly
focused on resin because we hadearly investors from the resin
printing space.
I see yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
But you didn't grow up wanting to be a printhead
inventor.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
No, no, no.
I was always fascinated withtechnology in general.
Physics and chemistry were mymain focus, and I've been
researching all my life,essentially, but before that I
actually studied film, so yeah,guys, if you notice, our
background is completelyprofessionalized filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
And so how did you?
What is the dot, the thingthat's connecting these dots of
your change of interest ordevelopment of interest?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So yeah, basically I always wanted to do the things
that I found to be very hard andchallenging, and I think making
a large movie and filmmakingand knowing about all of the
technological aspects, such asbasic camera technology and
lighting and how to go alongwith people, was always sort of
(06:48):
a nice challenging outlook.
Before that I had studiedphysics, but then I wanted to do
something more meaningful withmore impact, and then basically
this was combining two thingsright being able to develop with
good friends in a high dynamicenvironment and then also
possibly having something thatcan generate like a real
(07:08):
fundamental impact on onmanufacturing, essentially yeah,
I do see some parallel of thesetwo storylines yeah is.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
You are a highly technical person I think anyone
who's meeting for five minutes,who can tell?
Yeah you are filled withphysics and science and
terminologies, but you are verydriven by the applications
behind the technology.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That what you can do so right now.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You know, in the history of quantica, I see a
parallel storyline, which is you.
You had a technologicalbreakthrough essentially in 2018
.
And ever since, like many othertechnological startups, people
are trying to find the killerapp that the technology can use.
Yeah, so what was that journeylike?
(07:55):
You started with 3D printingfor electronics, and then, at
some point, quantico wasfocusing on life science
applications, and now you'recertainly at a different
location, focusing mostly onindustrial.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah.
So it basically started, ofcourse, with like an idealized
and sort of naive approach,let's say, which is very useful
and very needed in sort of theearly phases of technical
development useful and veryneeded in sort of the early
phases of technical developmentand of course we wanted to
always have some real productsthat we could print with 3d
applications.
That was sort of the mostdisappointing part to us back
(08:32):
then, that nothing of the thingsyou printed were really like a
useful end product.
Right, it's quite hard to dothat in this manufacturing space
.
You need like much higherresolution and much more
material capability andmulti-material capability.
And we figured, okay, all thesethings are there, but of course
(08:53):
there's many things that youhave to be first that you're
tackling when you're taking thatapproach.
So nobody before, even in themulti-material jetting space,
had to look at actual materialcharacteristics, like the
physical sort of brakeresistance, for example.
It was always in a very lowsort of field, but we now had
(09:14):
the capability to go much higher.
But then you have a lot ofprocesses that interfere with
that and make it sort of toughto deal with.
And so we realized at somepoint okay, there's many more
people coming to us from.
I mean, we had a dental playerthat was coming to us and we're
still developing for that.
But many more people werecoming from the 2D field, where
(09:38):
just materials were notresilient enough.
There's a lot more boundariesthat exist in analog fields like
screen printing or dispensingor slot die coating are huge
application fears, each one ofthem much larger than 3d
printing in itself, and all ofthem have major restrictions.
So the materials are not asresilient and not chemically
(10:01):
compatible, or they want to useyou know, you want to use
coatings with elastomers orsilicones, for example, and all
of these chemistries are notreally available or not scalable
or not digitizable, and sobasically now we're focusing
much more on replacing screenprinting, digitizing processes
(10:22):
that are currently sort of supermanual, very slow, like
dispensing, where you have onenozzle to fill, like large
surfaces, which takes minutes,which you can do in potentially
a single pass when you're usingInkjet, right.
So we're working now with a lotof customers to do undirected
application development Some ofthe largest players in
(10:46):
electronics, sort of lifestyleproducts, then also largest in
the aerospace field and, yeah,as well as, yeah, electronics
and also automotive.
Automotive is especiallyinteresting because we've just
(11:06):
printed our first sort oflab-grade silicone.
We've validated that it worksand now we're moving to sort of
high-degree medical-gradesilicones and we want to also
see that work for 2Dapplications but then eventually
also for 3D applications.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Absolutely, and I think the transition, though,
from you know, originally veryfocused on the 3d material and
3d printing, because it was soexciting, I would say a decade
or so ago at least um.
How did you make thattransition as an overnight
transition?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
no, it was long-term transition, like it's.
Yeah, it took a while, took alot of convincing.
We grew to, you know, 50 peoplealmost, uh, that work here and
yeah, it took a while.
Basically, the customers thatwe interacted with was the
deciding factor over time.
So we got more and morecustomers in the field of
(12:03):
adhesive deposition, for example.
So we've done e-motor stackswhere we coat them with adhesive
much better than you could withdispensing units, for example,
and that was like okay, this ismuch easier for us than a full
3D printed product.
This is directly available andwe can scale into that.
And that is the thing theapplication focus that we
(12:26):
realized at some point that wasmissing in the 3D field, the
total application focus.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine when you founded the
company, everybody was veryexcited about 3D printing.
Yes, the vision is that we'regoing to use 3D to change the
world.
When you change that vision alittle bit, does that impact
your team cohesiveness or peopleleaving, or something like that
?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Not too much, I would say, because if you just look
at it rationally, we still haveall that opportunity open.
It's just that this is along-scale process, requires
more funding and more time, andso that's the thing when you're
a startup.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
You have to survive.
Agility yeah, exactly.
And so that's the thing whenyou're a startup you have to
survive.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
You have to be agile.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Agility yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
You have to be agile and you have to survive, and
everyone knows this.
There's no secrets within thisorganization, so everyone is
aware where we need to go andwhat we need to do in order to
just have the biggest impact.
And still, the technologyimpacts then a lot of very large
(13:33):
areas and it's yeah makes adecisive difference.
So it's always good to keeppeople around you that are
mentally flexible enough to dealwith all these things but it's
not easy yeah, it's certainlyquite a hard thing to to do,
yeah and how were your investorsreact to the change, or pivot?
quite well, actually, because wealready had it because we
already had so many customers inthat space and that's a good
(13:57):
thing.
Of course, that's a reallyimportant sign to go towards
that and move ahead with thosethings.
And also, we're extremelyupfront with our customers,
exactly telling them ourcapabilities, and we only go as
far as we need to.
We never overextend anything.
We stop if we see, okay, itdoesn't work.
But we have enoughopportunities with very large
(14:21):
players that we can still pursuebecause they're technologically
viable.
And really that's the thingthat actually works.
Right Is to be completelyprecise, upfront, have very deep
technical analysis of theirmaterials, pre-characterizations
and then test their jetabilityand then, of course, the next
step is to continue thedevelopment process and to scale
(14:43):
it up together.
That's where we are currentlywith a couple of our customers
with like a couple of ourcustomers.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So, ben, would you mind sharing with us a success
story of this kind of customercollaboration and then to a
successful product?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So we're not yet at the fully developed product
stage with everyone.
We have basically validated.
For example, one thing that wedid quite in a quite short term
was one of the biggest e-motormanufacturers in europe or also
in the world, came to us withthe task of depositing adhesives
(15:21):
between the layers of thee-motor rotors and stators, and
this deposition is currentlydone with dispensing, so like a
shower head that just pulls onbig droplets and then they get
pressed together, the materialgets pushed out a little bit,
and so it's not ideal the waythat these things are adhered.
The adhesive has to beisolating, and so it's quite
(15:46):
tough for them to implementthese things on a larger scale
and they lose some efficiencyduring the production process.
So with us, we basically theytasked us hey, can you print
this on top of these metalsheets?
And we did it.
We did it quite quickly,immediately and right away.
There's a material that is13,000 ampers at room
(16:09):
temperature, and so no otherprinter technology can do that.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Of course, it's a better thing to glue things
together.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
in other words, yes exactly, yeah, and because you
can also change where you haveadhesive and you don't, and
where you have conductanceacross the layers and where you
have isolation across the layers, etc.
This is quite an importantelement for the efficiency of
the motor.
So actually you can increaseefficiency and have better
(16:37):
design variability and now youhave a system that actually
scales better as well in termsof speed.
So we're still pursuing thatand we're still in the
application development processand currently we only sell the
sort of application developmentprocess and currently we only
sell sort of these tools forapplication development.
But we are moving towardsselling large-scale print
engines, as we call them forinline, sort of printhead arrays
(17:01):
that can do inlinemanufacturing or just
large-scale, large-surfacemanufacturing.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Since, I mean my audience mostly are interested
in healthcare applications,would you like to elaborate a
little bit of what you guyspotentially can get into from a
healthcare perspective?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Sure, yeah, we have multiple things that we're
pursuing.
One is basically researchtowards cellular deposition.
So, basically, this researchteam based in Berlin found out
that viscoelastic materials havea big impact on cell viability
during the printing process,because the energy gets
(17:39):
dissipated in the material andnot directly transferred onto
the cell walls, for example, andso we are sort of testing
different type of media in whichcells can be transported, and
this media can actually befunctionalized as well to create
structures, and with themulti-material capability we're
aiming then to do multicellularstructured prints.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
So these will be acellular scaffolds rather than
with the cell in it.
Yeah, or scaffolds rather thanwith the cell in it?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, no, you can.
So there's multiple approaches.
We can either load the cell ona per layer basis after sort of
the scaffolding deposition, oryou can have the cells loaded
within some of these functionalscaffolding materials because of
how they polymerize and don'thave they still allow cell
viability after the deposition.
So that's the type of thingthat excites me quite a bit.
(18:30):
I think everybody is veryexcited about that kind of thing
in our industry.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But it certainly is more exciting to see there is an
inkjet process that we canactually use for bioprinting
application.
Because, this field.
While very exciting, with ahuge vision in front of us, the
technical advancement has beenslow and painful and needs a lot
of funding, so it's great tohear that you guys are working
on it.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
So if you're going to be this future fortune teller
or maybe not fortune teller,because you probably know what
do you hope the company canachieve in the next three to
five years?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I think for us it will be important to break into
different sectors andessentially we want to replace
analog processes.
I think screen printing is abig one.
It's currently widely usedwherever you need uneven
surfaces covered with inks thatneed to be resilient against
touch.
We're currently validatingthese types of materials and
(19:34):
then further, I think, focus onadhesive deposition and
digitizing sort of coatings,adhesives, and then also
breaking into silicone.
We've just validated our firstprintable true silicone,
basically a platinum-catalyzedor catalytically polymerized
(19:57):
silicone, which means that thistype of silicone can be used for
medical-grade applications,because we have no evidence of
any other additives, it's just apure lab-grade silicone.
It's actually SILIGARD 184, soone of the most popular lab
scale silicones available, andwe are now aiming for a higher
grade sort of high elasticity,high tensile strength silicone.
(20:21):
And yeah, that's that that willbe usable in a huge amount of
applications, also in themedical sector, of course,
because these type of elasticinterfaces are critical in many
applications.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
What's your origin?
Was it trying to printelectronics?
Would the screen printtechnology that you were
envisioning can also be used forprinting electronics like
wearables and stuff like that?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yes, yeah, so that's the cool thing you can combine
different substrates or modelmaterials with electrically
conductive materials as well.
We've tested that as well.
We've ejected some of thehighest grade uh conductive inks
on the market, uh, so with veryhigh particle loading and even
larger particle sizes, and thisallows basically, yeah, also for
(21:11):
all kinds of crazy things.
But the thing is, with this, Ithink the horizon is always a
bit further ahead, because, yeah, just to get the right
conductivity on substrate, toget it right every time, this is
quite a challenge and requiresdifferent types of curing modes
as well.
So, yeah, but we're lookinginto it as well.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
One final question for you, Ben, is what kind of
advice do you have for a collegestudent right now who are
looking into the industry?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, basically become obsessed and become an
expert in research.
So just reading papers everyday is really worth it.
I think you need to train yourattention span.
You need to just be verymindful and also learn about
politics, because part of thejob is not only sort of the
(22:06):
technical depth but also dealingwith people, interacting with
them.
I wasn't too good at that for awhile, I would say, but now I'm
very thankful that I couldbuild such a great team around
me.
We have an amazing team inBarcelona, we have an amazing
team here in Berlin, and if youlook for the right people as
well that are just driven andhave high goals on their own and
(22:34):
that are open and mindful to tosort of achieving things
together, then that's really theway to go and that stabilizes
everything.
That's really critical that'sgreat advice yeah well, thank
you, ben.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I look forward to more crazy things you're going
to be able to print with yourtechnologies thanks and hope to
catch up some other time thankyou so much.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Thank you all, right, thank.
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