Jacob Moss | Production Manufacturing with HP’s Multijet Fusion 3D Printer

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
parts, machines, hp, golf clubs, technology, sales, company, engineering, engineer, print, 3d printers, 3d printing, prototype, design, moving, fixtures, people, thought, jacob, printer
SPEAKERS
Presenter, Jacob Moss, Aaron Moncur

Presenter 00:00
The Being an Engineer Podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. Enjoy the show.

Jacob Moss 00:16
You can learn from everyone else’s experiences, but until you actually try and implement them, that’s where you’re going to learn and grow the most.

Aaron Moncur 00:37
Hello, and welcome to the Being an Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Jacob Moss, who holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, has quite a lot of experience working with 3D printers and 3D printers sales, and currently serves as the Director of Sales and Marketing at Athena 3D Manufacturing where they operate as a service bureau 3D printing parts with hp multi jet fusion machines. Jacob, welcome to the show.

Jacob Moss 01:03
Thanks for having me.

Aaron Moncur 01:05
You bet. So tell me, how did you first get interested in engineering?

Jacob Moss 01:09
Oh, that’s a good question that actually goes back to when I was a kid all the way back to the Lego and connects

Aaron Moncur 01:16
Legos. Yep, here it comes.

Jacob Moss 01:17
So it’s that basic story.

Aaron Moncur 01:20
Boy, it’s Lego.

Jacob Moss 01:23
Yep. So it goes back to those days but connects I was always building roller coasters with those

Aaron Moncur 01:30
Nice.

Jacob Moss 01:31
I always loved making stuff.

Aaron Moncur 01:33
Did you use Lincoln Logs?

Jacob Moss 01:36
A little bit? Yes. Yep.

Aaron Moncur 01:37
Yeah. All right. I remember Lincoln Logs back in the day, I don’t have those anymore.

Jacob Moss 01:42
I haven’t seen them. I don’t know. But uh, use those. And then in school math just was came easy to me, everything clicked and made sense on why certain things were that way. And then I kept going that direction. And then come out of I took some engineering courses in high school, and then came out of there and went straight into engineering at Arizona State University. But from there, I actually had more experience with sales. I actually did door to door sales for quite some time. And inside sells throughout some of college. But I always had that engineering technical background.

Aaron Moncur 02:29
So as you were going through school, as an engineer, were you thinking to yourself that? Yeah, I’m doing some sales things now. But I’m going to graduate and be an engineer, or was it? I’m doing this engineering thing in school, but I know I’m going to graduate and go to sales.

Jacob Moss 02:43
I did not know what I was gonna do.

Aaron Moncur 02:46
Okay.

Jacob Moss 02:47
I had the ideas or thoughts of a sales engineer, which technically, that’s where I’m almost at right now. But I was going for it more for engineering. And then sales was just the way to get through college later.

Aaron Moncur 03:03
Got it, it’s funding your college education. Yep. Okay, so you graduate college, you had this degree, you’re mostly thinking to yourself, yep, engineering, that’s what I’m going to do. And then what happens?

Jacob Moss 03:16
I started out doing engineering, I got hired on as an engineer. And then with my background, the company I was with was actually the reseller for 3D printers. And from there was a simple transition into moving to reselling these printers. Because of that background that I had in that excitement, with cells, it’s, it’s a puzzle. You can look at it, of what pieces do, they put in place to help give the bigger picture to help the client see this in a way that benefits them and provides value. And so if you see little things that you can tweak, just like engineering, you can tweak little things, and it can work so it’s it’s almost like a puzzle in itself within cells.

Aaron Moncur 04:08
Did you ever watch that show House?

Jacob Moss 04:11
I actually have not.

Aaron Moncur 04:13
Oh, that’s a great show. I think you’d like it. But one of the things he’s he’s a he’s a doctor, right? He’s a pathologist, I think. But he people ask him, what do you do this? And he says, I like solving puzzles. I don’t care about people. I like solving puzzles. And that’s what he does. I’ve always thought that engineering was a lot like that. Not that we don’t care about people. But we like solving puzzles, right? Yeah. I’m curious. What was that conversation like when you’re an engineer, you’re doing engineering work and your boss comes to you? Or maybe you go to your boss and say, Hey, I think that you might be good at sales. What are your thoughts on that? Will you give it a shot? What was that transition like?

Jacob Moss 04:55
Because of my background, it was simple and actually going into that job. I had the expectation of even moving into doing sales there, or helping that side of the department. So it was an easy transition for me and easy thing to pick up because of the understanding of the sales cycle. But then now understanding the technical side was the only thing that I needed to pick up of what was needed to talk about if we needed to go deep I could. But overall, with sales, it’s, it’s easy to stay on that surface and to keep the sales moving forward with that technical background, if needed.

Aaron Moncur 05:37
What advice would you give to an engineer who thinks he or she might be interested in moving from a strictly engineer role into a sales engineer role?

Jacob Moss 05:46
Um, that’s a good question. But really, the big thing is just try. Don’t be afraid to get put yourself out there. Because it’s when you continue trying different methods, different ways that you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. You can learn from everyone else’s experiences, but until you actually try and implement them, that’s where you’re going to learn and grow the most.

Aaron Moncur 06:13
Let me back up just a little bit and ask you about a company called Cool Clubs where you worked for some time. Apparently, you put together a machine that measures the loft and lie angles of golf clubs first about that, first of all, tell me a little bit about loft and lie. What does that even mean?

Jacob Moss 06:31
Yeah, so the the face of the club, it has a different angles to it, the face of the angle from the vertical to the face of the club. And then also the angle from the north, the house or the nozzle from the club, to the ground. So there’s those two different angles. And those are set determined on the club face. Or determined on what the club is rated at. So these machines were literally a fixture to help bend golf clubs at the angle they’re supposed to be.

Aaron Moncur 07:11
I like the sound of that anything fixture related, I’m a fan of.

Jacob Moss 07:15
Yeah.

Aaron Moncur 07:16
So were they used to to like adjust the the lay and light angles or once it’s once they’re set, can they not be adjusteda, and that’s so the machine was just used to set those angles?

Jacob Moss 07:28
It’s used to set it so within the golf industry, each, there’s a different ways of getting actually customized to it to golf clubs, to the player, their swing, their speeds and all that. So actually going in and getting fitted for clubs is something that takes your game to another level where you could be more repeatable, or whatever you have it and that’s the great thing with golf is you can see the math behind it, and see how you can get fitted to become an improved player.

Aaron Moncur 08:09
So your golf club is fitted specifically to your I don’t know, your body type, your height, your swing style, whatever, that kind of thing.

Jacob Moss 08:17
Yep, exactly. But the other thing too, is within the golf industry, each company, their standards are set differently. So at Cool Clubs, part of my role there was actually there’s this machine there as three machine where it tests five different parameters of the golf club. And we rank them within every industry. So that way we can actually tell because, for example, one company may say the shaft is stiff. We’re in reality, it’s regular size, okay, compared to everything else. So the standards are not standardized.

Aaron Moncur 09:01
That’s a funny way to say it. When you were working on this project, you were a pretty young engineer, I think, right?

Jacob Moss 09:07
Yep.

Aaron Moncur 09:08
And you built this machine that measured these two very critical angles for a golf club. How did you even know to build a machine so early on in your career?

Jacob Moss 09:18
So these machines actually it was the design was already done. These machines have been out for years. what it was was a lot on the manufacturing side though. So I actually use 3D printers to manufacture these and then assemble them. On site, so is more on the manufacturing and assembly. side of it if there was any improvements, we were looking to design improvements, things of that nature.

Aaron Moncur 09:44
So it’s a sustaining project or sustaining activities for the existing product. Exactly. And you use 3D printed parts on this. I have to imagine that aligning golf clubs requires some amount of pressure decision, and you found that 3d printed parts were going to work fine. How did you know that 3d printed parts were going to be an acceptable replacement to I don’t know, machined aluminum or injection molded parts whatever had been used.

Jacob Moss 10:14
Yeah, with this one, it’s actually pretty simple because the tolerances weren’t as defined or as small as needed, as per se, excuse me aerospace or any other industry that needs tight tolerances. This was more of a thing of putting the club at a certain position first. And then it was also supporting parts. There’s a lot of parts on that machine that we realize didn’t mean, the machined aluminum didn’t need those things. But we’re capable of 3D printing. So oftentimes, when engineers we design a part, and we’ve known with the experience, that metal would work, and it gives a great safety factor. However, in the end, you can actually design that same part using plastic and have the same or as not as diminishing safety factor for that product. You can design for that application, specifically instead.

Aaron Moncur 11:20
So you you work as the Director of Sales and Marketing at Athena 3D Manufacturing now. And I think if I understand correctly, you folks use only the HP multi jet fusion machines. Is that accurate?

Jacob Moss 11:36
Yeah. As of right now, that’s been a huge focus of us.

Aaron Moncur 11:40
Okay. Tell us tell us a little bit about this. The HP technology, because it’s not FDM. It’s not SLA, it’s not SLS, it’s it’s its own. I mean, it’s multi jet fusion, right? MJP. What is that?

Jacob Moss 11:54
Correct. So it’s its own niche within 3D printing. 3D printing has different limitations within each one. But with the MJF, it is, like you said, multi jet fusion. So it’s a powder based system. So it puts powder layers down, and it prints in a volume, a cube, you can say, and this cube is lowered down, every layer will put a layer of powder. And then where you put the parts in, in the software, it will slice it just like FDM. However, with this, it puts down a layer of agent and these agents are then fused with UV lights. And this fusion actually occurs throughout the z direction, as well as x and y. So the parts are actually isotropic and strained every direction, which is unique for 3D printing, because a lot of times you hear point to point processes, where they just are connected at points with SLA, or SLS. And then

Aaron Moncur 12:57
Yeah, as you were describing this, it sounds a lot like SLS until you got to the point where they’re fused in all three directions, which I don’t think is the case with SLS.

Jacob Moss 13:07
Correct. Yep. And then, the other thing, too, is, it doesn’t matter how many parts on that one layer, that one layer will finish in roughly eight seconds. So you’re printing in roughly an inch an hour. And because of that, we can get into production quantities and speeds pretty quickly.

Aaron Moncur 13:25
Wow, that’s very cool. What kind of production quantities are reasonable to expect with that technology?

Jacob Moss 13:33
Yeah, so a good standard put for this is about 50,000 units, or so, plus or minus…

Aaron Moncur 13:40
Really?

Jacob Moss 13:40
Depending on the application, and depending on the size of the part.

Aaron Moncur 13:45
Wow, think that’s more than I expected.

Jacob Moss 13:47
Yeah. One thing that’s actually good is complexity is free with this, but size is where it’s actually going to cost you.

Aaron Moncur 13:54
Hmm, that’s a great point, complexity is free, but size is where it’s going to cost you. Okay. So you could have it’s a great process, then for a really geometrically complicated, but relatively small part is what you’re saying?

Jacob Moss 14:08
Yes.

Aaron Moncur 14:09
Okay. What are well, I think you may be just mentioned it right now, but maybe go into a little bit more detail. What are the shortcomings of MJF ? Why would an engineer choose not to use it?

Jacob Moss 14:21
Yeah, so a lot of times, when we think about designing or using a system, you have to think about how to design for it. Oftentimes, we get parts that are designed for injection molding, because that’s what everyone’s used to. So big flat parts. Those may not be the best depending on what’s on them what the geometry is because of warpage that can occur or the limited amount that you can actually fit into a space into the build volume. So that’s a big one with it. Other limitations are there still materials that are coming out and certifications So because of that, it’s limited. However, with HP’s technology, it’s an open source platform. So other companies are creating the materials.

Aaron Moncur 15:09
Oh, that’s great.

Jacob Moss 15:10
Now there’s roughly I think, seven, there was another one just released yesterday, actually.

Aaron Moncur 15:15
And what are the different material properties we use? We use some SLA printers. And you could do like a rigid material or a flexible material or a rubbery material. Are there those kinds of options with HP also?

Jacob Moss 15:32
Yeah, now that more materials have come out, there’s nylon-based materials. There’s TPU. So rubber base, like TPA was just released yesterday. I’m still getting more information on that one. And then polypropylene was released this year as well.

Aaron Moncur 15:49
What is TPA? I know what TPU is.

Jacob Moss 15:52
That’s what I’m interested in the read a little bit more about actually. So I just heard of it yesterday, I believe it’s very similar to TPU with a as a sugary hardness of 91, though, so it’s more harder

Aaron Moncur 16:05
A little bit harder, yeah.

Jacob Moss 16:08
To look at the datasheet when that comes out and understand that more

Aaron Moncur 16:11
Interesting. Okay, well, this multi jet fusion technology, would this be an appropriate technology to use one, you’re in that in between stage between prototype quantities and production quantities, maybe you have a new product, and you’re not really sure if it’s the right product, you want to do some market testing, maybe, maybe you want to produce a few 100 of these is that a good place for the the HP machine to help?

Jacob Moss 16:39
Definitely, that’s actually the sweet spot for the technology. HP when they came out, they went for low volume production, 3D printing, so taking the low volume injection mold, and taking that space, and then also the from the prototype up to there. So having this technology allows you to be a bridge production, technology of moving into justifying testing the marketplace. But that also because this world is so connected, now, you get constant feedback from a customer within seconds. So because of that your iterations can change pretty quickly due to additive, you’re not stuck with one mold, you can actually change and keep moving forward until you justified that part into moving into molds.

Aaron Moncur 17:31
Nice. Are there any strategies that designers should employ? From a geometric standpoint, in their CAD models? What What do we need to be aware of and cautious of as we’re designing?

Jacob Moss 17:49
Definitely. So one of the big things that actually helps out that we’ve been getting some parts from lately is the density of the parts, meaning if they’re big, bulky fixtures, it’s actually not necessarily best for this technology. FDM, it can work pretty well, because you can print it flat, and then sparse fill it with this technology. When you actually print you’re printing, whatever the model is. So if it’s a solid part, you’re printing a solid plastic, not spars filling in. So we don’t have the parameters to change it like FDM

Aaron Moncur 18:27
Is that a software change that might appear in the future?

Jacob Moss 18:31
No, I don’t see it being a software change rather than a design change. So the cus the engineer can actually design that lattice structure inside. There’s a lot of software’s now that law or to hold the part out. Okay, you can keep the powder inside. And that decreases the density, which then allows for more parts to be put inside the build. Because it’s a thermal management system. If you put too many parts, you’re gonna put too much heat in that build, and that’s going to cause different effects to it.

Aaron Moncur 19:05
Oh, interesting.

Jacob Moss 19:06
Part quality things and anything like that.

Aaron Moncur 19:09
Okay. So what what are the what are the prices? Like? I mean, if this is being touted as comparable to other production technologies, I mean, what are you what are the prices like for the right part, right, obviously.

Jacob Moss 19:24
some parts we’ve gotten are very tiny to where we’re putting about 70 500,000 parts per bill. And that’ll print in 11 hours. And those will come out to be 25-50 cents range.

Aaron Moncur 19:38
Wow. So you can really get I mean, for a small part, you can get pretty cheap.

Jacob Moss 19:42
And then depending on firm up there, you’re looking at fist size roughly or smaller 15 to $20 range, 20 to 50. So it really depends on geometry, how many parts we can fit in the density of the build And then post processing technical or post processing steps that may be in place to

Aaron Moncur 20:05
So from a price standpoint, it’s not going to compete with injection molding. But if you need a more complex geometry, something that you can’t really injection mold, that could be one use case where there’s really a big benefit. Or, again, like you said, if you’re in that, that bridge area where you’re doing a few 100 parts, maybe 1000 parts, that could be another good case, good use case for this technology?

Jacob Moss 20:28
Definitely. And the other is the injection molding. Oftentimes, we just think about the mold costs, and then shooting the first batch. We don’t think about the reset up the shooting another batch or the storing of the mold. There’s a lot of other costs that are hidden, that a lot of people don’t actually think about. So the whole supply chain, you have to have to think about where with us, you can stop and then start back up without additional setup fees.

Aaron Moncur 21:00
Yeah, okay. Well, let me take a quick break here and share with the listeners that testfixturedesign.com is where you can go to learn more about how we help medical device engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. We’re speaking with Jacob Moss today. And Jacob, the HP technology, do you find that people are using them as actual saleable parts versus what 3D printing has historically been used for, which is mostly just prototyping?

Jacob Moss 21:45
Yeah, that’s what they’re designed for is actually end use, we have 1000s of parts being in use today, that a lot of people may not know that it’s an actual 3D printed part.

Aaron Moncur 21:56
I’ve seen some of these some of these MJF parts before and they are they’re strong. They’re like, rigid, beefy parts. The surface finish is a little bit on the rough side, which for a lot of applications might be just fine. Is is surface finish, something that that HP is concerned with, that they’re improving over time or the way it is now. Is that how it’s always going to be do you think?

Jacob Moss 22:23
So that’s up in the air, I would say with HP on that side. However, there is technologies that are coming out right now to improve the surface quality. It’s the same thing with the metal industry, there is post processing technologies to improve the surface quality of parts already. So there’s…

Aaron Moncur 22:41
What are they doing for post processing?

Jacob Moss 22:43
There’s some of them out there, the fiber Tory systems, tumbling systems, and then there’s even the vapor smoothing technologies. So there’s a few out there right now that are developing some post processing to improve the surface finish of these parts.

Aaron Moncur 23:00
That’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought about that before. But there could be a whole market for like an aftermarket post processing finishing service for 3D printed parts. Very cool.

Jacob Moss 23:10
Definitely expanding and growing really big right now actually.

Aaron Moncur 23:15
That’s great. That seems like a needed market. I’m excited to learn more about that. Before you were selling HPS multijet parts, you sold 3D printers manufactured by a company called Markforged, which I know very well, because we have several of them and love them. How are the the the the Markforged machines, different from the multi jet fusion machines? What are the pros and cons of each?

Jacob Moss 23:46
Yeah, so Markforged, that’s great for strength in close to near aluminum strength, because you’re putting in carbon fiber strands inside depending on how you design it in their system. And without one, you’re giving an FTM so it’s a slower process. You can get a quick turnaround on per se. quick and dirty of getting a part turned around pretty quickly compared to HP is because when HP when you run one part, you got to run the print up to that z height level. Because it doesn’t matter what how many parts are in the x and y, it’ll do z height. An inch an hour is what we’re talking about. So with just getting one part FDM is nice to be able to prototype quickly. mjf you could still do quickly. But you can also add in other customers parts or other parts within there too. So you can actually get a little bit more volume print at the same time. The other thing too is with any FDM style printing. There’s that D lamination. Or

Aaron Moncur 24:59
Uh-huh

Jacob Moss 25:00
A lot of times FDM, you get stuck with prints not turning out?

Aaron Moncur 25:05
Yeah

Jacob Moss 25:06
Just the layer to layer adhesion may not work to where you get a bundle a nest, a bird’s nest, when you come back to the printer sometimes. So with FDM, any type of thing like that is the D lamination. With HP, you don’t have that you have the fusion at the atomic level.

Aaron Moncur 25:28
So that brings up a good point. If if you’re running your own 3D printer, then yes, D lamination. And prints failing, that could be a problem. But if you’re just outsourcing it to a 3d printing service Bureau, you don’t really care about the D lamination. Because that’s their problem. Right? That’s the service bureaus problem. At the end of the day, they’re gonna deliver you a nice part. So the question then is, are the HP machines attainable too? Small, or design shops, like the markforged machines that we use, they’re anywhere from 15 to I think $70,000. But at $15,000, you can get a really nice Markforged 3D printer that puts in continuous carbon fiber and the great, the HP machines, they look pretty big. And I’m guessing they are not inexpensive machines. Are they? Do you see many companies buying their own HP MJF machine? Or is it really just the service bureaus that have them?

Jacob Moss 26:31
Yeah, that’s great question. The good thing is, is I actually worked for the reseller for both of these technologies. So I sold HP and Markforged. So I have a perfect understanding of both sides of this and what the customers dealt with.

Aaron Moncur 26:44
Yes, let’s hear all about it.

Jacob Moss 26:46
So with the Markforged system, the Mark Two, which is the 15,000, now, I think it’s 20,000. That’s a great one to get in and get started and have it in house. There’s some learning curves of just learning how to lay out the fiber correctly, or orientation. But those are simple things that you can be able to pick up on. facility wise, you could put it on your desktop right next to you. Yeah, and just plug it in and play. So because of that, it’s very simple to just bring that one in house and start working. HP on the other hand, they have a different portfolio, they have a prototype printer, and then they have production printers. So we have their production lines 4200 aand 5200 series production series, they have a 580 and a 540 to 500 series, that’s more of their prototype, the smaller build envelope. And we actually go from print, to cool to unpack and process. And that may take us two days or, or more depending on how we call the system. Because when you’re heating up plastic, you’re heating it up past melting. So you have to let that build volume, cool on the side after so that takes some time. And you can fast call it or natural cooling. With this prototype system, you can do all of that within 18 hours for a full bill.

Aaron Moncur 28:22
Oh, wow.

Jacob Moss 28:23
So you can actually do it for a short build of five hours and have the whole print cool. And start unpacking in five hours or so. And now you can actually do color as well. The thing though, is facility requirements are a little bit more on that. But if you’re comparing an X7, at 75, I think it might be up to 90 now. 1000 versus their prototype printer. The prototype one is 85,000 to 110. So you’re actually getting close to price there.

Aaron Moncur 28:56
Yeah

Jacob Moss 28:56
Only thing is a facility requirements needed for it.

Aaron Moncur 29:00
Interesting. Okay

Jacob Moss 29:02
So that gives a little bit of side to side comparison.

Aaron Moncur 29:05
Yeah, yeah. Something I thought that was really interesting. You wrote on your LinkedIn page. And this is going in a new direction now. As a sales rep at a company called Vantage Marketing, this I think was even before you started your education as an engineer, you wrote that you have experience at taking overwhelming rejecting situations and creating comfortable situations. I thought that was just a really interesting remark. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Jacob Moss 29:35
Yeah, so when you go door to door, you run into different individuals and different times of their lives different even times of their days, where you might run into a situation that is uncomfortable. For example, I’ve been spit on I’ve been sworn at…

Aaron Moncur 29:56
Oh my goodness

Jacob Moss 29:57
Whatever, I’ve knocked on someone’s door. I was selling pest control. So training that even just the first 10 seconds of someone doing that, turning that into a positive. It was like a game, like instead of a puzzle of how can I actually turn this around and make it. So just being polite and kind to them, that helps a lot. That’s one of the biggest things really to do is just being kind to people, helps, even when they’re in rough situations in their lives.

Aaron Moncur 30:33
I love that. Yeah. Yeah, we have a core value number one at Pipeline is we treat our customers Well, we treat our team members better. I think that’s such a hugely powerful tool, right? Just being nice to people, it seems so basic, but it’s hard to do sometimes as well. I mean, when you see the person on the other side of the door gearing up to Hawk a loogie at you how like, what is your mindset? How do you convince yourself to still be kind to that person?

Jacob Moss 31:01
Yep, with that one, I did just have to, per se turn the other cheek. And what I just had to do is really just turn around and walk away. And that situation, I knew there was no way to be able to continue the conversation. So sometimes there is those moments where you just turn around and go to the next door.

Aaron Moncur 31:23
Cut your losses and move on.

Jacob Moss 31:25
Uh-huh. And a lot of sales is mindset. So instead of going to the next door, I went to the next block, because then I didn’t have that mindset of thinking rejection, or someone’s going to spit on me now.

Aaron Moncur 31:40
Oh, that’s a very interesting strategy.

Jacob Moss 31:44
And that could be a lot of times within engineering, too, is going to the next solution, there’s, we always try to come up with different solutions. But sometimes we just had to look at it at a different block, or change our mindset of this project. Maybe we’re struggling and having a hard time. So instead, take a step back, look at it a different angle, and have a different mindset about it.

Aaron Moncur 32:10
Most of the people listening to this podcast are not going to be sales professionals. However, as engineers, we all have to sell our ideas to some extent, whether it be be to our team, or our bosses, or maybe even to ourselves at times, are there any tips that you can share for how to sell an idea? How can we promote our engineering ideas within our teams and our companies?

Jacob Moss 32:37
Yeah, the simplest solution for that would actually be pulled from the tech, or like, pulled back away from the technical. It’s weird to say that because we’re engineers. However, what really matters is the value. And the solutions that this problem is solving. Those two things are really what the end consumer, the business individual, the manager, whatever they’re, that’s what they’re going to care about, is what does this solve? And if it does solve this issue, how does it improve my life? What are the benefits that I get from it? Not the features. So don’t tell me the features. Tell me the benefits.

Aaron Moncur 33:23
Yeah. How is this going to improve my life.

Jacob Moss 33:26
Exactly.

Aaron Moncur 33:28
What are some of the biggest challenges that you have at work?

Jacob Moss 33:32
at work? I’m really it’s because we are startup still, it’s actually the fast growing stages. So because of that it’s the fast acting. And we’re also we’re still pretty small. So it’s multi hat wearing company here. Yeah, yeah. So it’s balancing and prioritizing, which I think that’s always a struggle that we all will deal with. But when you’re fast moving, it’s you got to make decisions quickly and accurately. So sometimes it’s thinking about that and making sure I spent enough time doing that.

Aaron Moncur 34:11
And you can’t always be fast and accurate, right? Sometimes you’re just going to drop the ball if you’re really truly moving fast. Any strategies that you found to be useful in mitigating the risk of making a bad call when you’re when you have to really move fast?

Jacob Moss 34:25
I’m mitigating that. Here’s the simple pros and cons thing to write down for any decision that you do. But in the end, it’s also a thing of, you know what, let’s decide this. Move forward. Figure out from there, how that decision turned out, and then keep moving. A lot of times I’ve noticed is similar to the sales question that you asked earlier is you just gotta go. You got to try it. Because so many people get caught up and not going for their goals. Not going for those things. And the other thing is, is that decision going towards your goal? You have a vision or a goal in mind. If it’s not going towards that, then there’s your decision. And then the other thing is, can I make that decision now? Or do I need to wait? And if I can, if I need to make that decision now let’s learn from it, keep going. And then if we need to readjust, we can readjust.

Aaron Moncur 35:32
I think that’s a really big point you made about the bias towards action. I have I have fallen into the the rut myself at times of analysis paralysis, right? You’re you keep bouncing back and forth between well, should we do this, but we could do that. But if we do that, then this happens. And at a certain point, you just need to do something. And I have found over the years, I am much more bias towards action. At this point, maybe even too much. I bet some of my team members would say that, that I just throw caution to the wind and and do things too quickly, without thinking all the way through. Maybe that’s just an aspect of being an entrepreneur. But I think there’s a ton of value in being willing to just do something, of course, don’t don’t bet the whole company on it, but do something, see if it works, and then recalibrate, right? Figure out where to go from there. I had another thought, what was it? Oh, it this is just tangentially related. But I find sometimes that I will spend a lot of time looking for a solution that is already out there. For example, books, I do this a lot with books, I’ll have some problem I’m working on. And I’ll say, Okay, what book can I buy and read to figure out how to solve this problem. And sometimes there’s a good book out there for it. But oftentimes, I almost, I use that as a crutch. I let me spend, a day finding the right book, and then a week reading that book, and then I’ll have the answer versus, if I really just sit down with a pen and a piece of paper, and like, brainstorm for an hour, I’m probably going to come up with some pretty good ideas on my own. So it’s easy to look for an answer somewhere else, but it’s not always the best answer. Anyway

Jacob Moss 37:29
Yep

Aaron Moncur 37:29
That was the thought I had.

Jacob Moss 37:30
It’s that old saying it’s trying to remember exactly, but it’s wisdom to learn from others from their own experiences and their own mistakes. So it’s wisdom to learn from that. But then sometimes it’s also smart to just learn from your own.

Aaron Moncur 37:46
Right

Jacob Moss 37:47
And actually go through it yourself.

Aaron Moncur 37:49
Yeah, you’d be surprised how much knowledge and wisdom has begun around your own head if you stop and give a long enough to bubbled to the surface.

Jacob Moss 37:56
Yep.

Aaron Moncur 37:57
Well, Jacob, how can people get ahold of you?

Jacob Moss 38:01
Yeah, you can get a hold of me, our website at athena3dmfg (as in manufacturing).com. And then we also have a phone number 480-454-5037. And that you can get in contact with our engineers, our manufacturing team or me individually on the sales. There’s also our LinkedIn page, as well. We’re pretty active on LinkedIn, and posting content. So feel free to share, like, share the posts or comment on there because that’s where we’re gonna show a lot of the products that are coming out of here.

Aaron Moncur 38:39
Excellent, excellent. That’s Jacob Moss, M-O-S-S Thank you so much for spending some time Jacob and teaching us all about HP and a little bit of engineering sales.

Jacob Moss 38:49
Thank you, Aaron.

Aaron Moncur 38:55
I’m Aaron Moncur, founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team’s expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com Thanks for listening.