Amazed at the huge exhibition floor of the 2025 Rapid + TCT conference in Motor City, I stopped in front of a sleek-looking metal powder-based 3D printer, getting into conversation with technical salesperson Alex Cairns about its features and how it works to produce versatile commercial metal parts that can be used in automobiles, airplanes, etc. Lo and behold, Alex works in a Fitchburg-based M5D, a distributor of leading 3D printing companies including HP, One Click Metal, 3D Systems, AMT, Trinckle, and Ultimaker.
Specializing in Materials Science and Engineering, I got into additive manufacturing one year ago, mentoring our University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Engineering’s senior capstone student design teams on their 3D printing projects, diving deeper into our college’s tremendous 3D printing capabilities:
- The 2024 mechanical engineering senior capstone design team, Wristify 2, successfully developed a 3D-printed wrist orthosis using hydrogel soft materials to enhance comfort and usability for patients requiring wrist support.
- The 2024 mechanical engineering senior capstone design team, PEEKy Badgers, optimized a commercial 3D printer to enable it for high-temperature 3D printing of PEEK products.
- Dr. Lianyi Chen, an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering, focuses on Laser powder bed fusion, in-situ monitoring, and defect mitigation in metal 3D printing. His postdoc, Dr. Luis Izet Escano Volquez, and Dr. Chen co-founded the 3D Powder Tech company, specializing in metal powder qualification under real-time production conditions. The team, advised by me as the industrial advisor, is scheduled to complete the NSF I-Corps entrepreneurship training program in June for customer discovery targeting powder manufacturers and 3D-printed part manufacturers.
- Dr. Dan J. Thoma, professor of Materials Science and Engineering, focuses on metal additive manufacturing, alloy design, and materials processing. During Wisconsin’s Fusion Energy Week event, his doctoral student Caleb Hatler led an informative tour of his lab’s high-throughput 3D alloy design and testing processes.
- Dr. Xiao Kuang, an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, specializes in 3D-printing biomaterial parts for medical procedures and advanced ultrasound-cured technologies for underwater marine maintenance.
- Dr. Lennon Rodgers, director of UW Makerspace, showed me the comprehensive collection of 3D printers so that our students could practice their design skills. He expressed the need for more industrial-grade 3D printers, robotics arms, and automation equipment as our college continuously increases our engineering class cohorts to meet industrial demands for our graduates.
After a few virtual meetings with HP, M5D, and our UW faculty, staff, and students, we decided to develop a strategic partnership by visiting M5D’s site in Wauwatosa, WI, for an in-depth look at their rich collection of metal and polymer 3D printers and vendor base. The visit also included HP, one of M5D’s key technology partners, offering insight into their latest metal jet printing systems and materials strategy. Our UW delegation included AMIC director and OCR research engagement manager Xiujuan Jane Zhang, Professor Lianyi Chen, Dr. Escano Volquez, CEO of UW spinoff 3D PowderTech, and two graduate students. We brought a multidisciplinary lens to the future of academic-industry collaboration in advanced manufacturing on capstone projects, equipment purchases, research collaboration, and entrepreneurship development.
We were welcomed by Kevin Carr, President of M5D, other staff members, HP’s business executive, Sandeep Rana, and his team members. HP representatives Scott Mossner, David Johnson, and Sandeep Rana offered deeper technical insight into HP’s material qualifications, binder dropping, sintering, and other key post-processing techniques of their Metal Jet S100 system. Over lunch, we had an open dialogue about potential opportunities for translational research, co-marketing, and workforce development in additive manufacturing field. After lunch, Kevin, David, and Alex showed us their One-Click Metal, HP Polymer-Powder, and 3D Systerm’s 3D printers. Finally, Dr. Escano Volquez presented 3D Powder Tech’s patented powder spreading and qualifying device, which can enable power manufacturers and part manufacturers to test their powders quickly before production to ensure high-quality printed parts. The device can be an effective tool for HP and One Click Metal since they provide exclusive powders to the clients who purchase their equipment. We appreciate that Kevin can connect our university startup team with more powder and part manufacturers around Wisconsin and beyond.
This visit underscored our shared priorities between UW–Madison and industry partners like M5D and HP: advancing next-generation AM technologies, strengthening students’ capstone design experiential learning in this area, and accelerating the transition from prototyping to production. We look forward to building on the connections formed during this visit, exchanging information, and identifying research collaborations that support Wisconsin’s growing industrial AM ecosystem. If your company would like us to visit your site, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at xiujuan.zhang@wisc.edu.