Why This Moldmaker Thinks Every Shop Needs a 3D Printer

It’s not uncommon to see a desktop polymer printer in a machine shop, but is it a necessity? Steve Michon, founder of Michigan-based moldmaker Zero Tolerance, argues it is. For him, 3D printing has gone from a personal fascination to a side hustle to an integral part of his business.

At the same time, the shop’s 3D printing technology has expanded from desktop polymer printers to models that handle carbon fiber to its latest 3D printer, a laser powder bed fusion machine from Xact Metal. See how Zero Tolerance uses 3D printing around its shop and find out how it combines metal 3D printing with its machining capabilities (which range from three- and five-axis machine tools to EDM) in the video below or read on for the transcript.

Transcript

Steve Michon 

We got started, actually, in Kansas in 2011 and up having three kids and no family around, and started a shop. And my wife was just like, if we're going to do this, we need to have some support.

Julia Hider 

I’m at Zero Tolerance. They're a mold maker and injection molder.

Steve Michon 

Moved home, ended up living in the basement with my parents for about three years. Had another child while we were there, so we had four kids got involved with molding, and not only building tools and prototypes, but we also started molding parts.

Julia Hider 

And they found a way to set themselves apart by using both plastic and metal 3D printing in their shop. So let's go check it out.

Steve Michon 

So welcome to Zero Tolerance. Thank you. We are glad you're here. This is our office we can kind of walk through. We have some of our printers that we use for prototyping and all kinds of different things, mostly for end of arm tooling is where we initially got the benefit out of it, other than me playing with it, because I think it's very cool.

Julia Hider 

What are some other applications around the shop? And I hope we'll see some when we get out onto the shop,

Steve Michon 

yeah, and I have, I have a few things right in here, actually, that we've done. There's silly fixtures like this. We didn't make this, but this was came from our customer, and just spawns more ideas like, how do you use this technology? So we ended up doing a whole bunch of things. We had a part break on our CNC that holds our hand wheel. So we reprinted that. I'll show it out there. Fun things that we saw out on the floor. We also ended up making a lot of pad printing fixtures for a customer, and we had some other things that got really complicated.

Julia Hider 

So you were, in addition to that, in addition to stuff just for your own internal use, you've actually printed parts for customers that they're using?

Steve Michon 

Yes, yeah, once we explained that we had a printer, or showed that we had a printer, they were like, Oh, can you print this? So can you do this? And some of it, we asked. Some of it, no, but the ones that we did were familiar with were like, well, sure, we can do that. And they were more than happy to have us, even if we weren't familiar. They were happy to have us try. And ended up working out well. So we've been able to do pad printing fixtures, secondary op fixtures, end of arm tooling fixtures. We've actually done a few that were pretty complicated, that we weren't sure. Boy, is this even going to work. So you have to merge it with your regular machine shop. So you're drilling holes. You're making things precise. If it doesn't come out perfect on the printer, you can go out in the machines and make it, make it work. This is our, our newest printer. This is the Xact Metal. It prints for what we need we're looking to print cavity and core inserts, potentially with conformal cooling circuits in it. And I can show a sample of that as we go. But this is a very small unit. It fits in the office. It's got a lot of moving parts to it.

Julia Hider 

It’s kind of crazy to see a metal printer in the middle of an office environment.

Steve Michon 

Yes, yes, and, and there is some precautions you have to take. So this was printing aluminum or titanium. It would not be in this in this particular office, so it would have to be dedicated. What is it printing material? This is stainless steel, and it's called Corax, or OODA home makes it so we'll walk through. This is Stevie. She is actually helping us install the machine and get familiar with the software. She's extremely intelligent on how everything works.

Julia Hider 

Oh, what's this?

Steve Michon 

Okay, this is a story, if you want to know please. This is actually high school project from in the 2000s so I had, we had a shop teacher at Chippewa Valley, him and the students took two years, and they built this all by hand. No CNCs, no computers. It still kind of functions. He gave it to me years ago, and I'm just getting it out. But this is my kids love this thing. So we have our CAD department over here. We got four guys programming make, designing electrodes, making tool paths, and then we have the machines that they are feeding with their programs. So you have our wire EDM, that's the Mitsubishi. It does a phenomenal job. It's probably the most accurate machine in the shop. We got our five-axis, yeah, yeah, our five-axis Makino. It's doing a it does, it does a ton of work. We got involved with five axis about five years ago, and it's amazing how much more you can do. It's more accurate. It's less set up. We get into some very interesting parts. We have some real accurate and intricate inserts. Was that? EDM, yeah, this is all wire. EDM, insert pockets, the whole ascent. Believe It's Not here. Here's here's another tool. It's a, this is for a gun component, but it's got slides that go in and make the part we're doing an engineering change on it, so we do all of our roughing and finishing in this area for hard milling the five-axis machines, they've been really helpful. Now, when you don't have them, you're afraid, intimidated, and when you have them, you're like, how did I do it without it? And we're looking to combine the technologies.

Julia Hider 

Speaking of combining technologies, will you be machining some of the metal 3D printed parts on the five-axis or the three-axis machine?

Steve Michon 

Yes, we already have done that. We had some stuff sample printed for us. We were impressed with it. We were able to machine it and actually send it out to the customer, and the customer is happy with a couple different products that we've done. So gun magazines with curved slides, conformal cooling circuits in it, stainless steel. So that makes it works really well for us. The printing does such a good job, but it's not everything. It doesn't make it perfect, and we like to make everything perfect here. So it's like, that's the goal is to bring it as close as we can. Utilize that for overnight runs, the weekend runs, bring it into our machines, do the final cuts, and then we can be farther down the road, more complex, with less less error. We also do EDM services, sinker and wire, and we do some machining services too, but majority of it is mold building, design and build, and that leads to other things. So there's, obviously, hey, can you sample the parts? Can you do this? So we've been, I guess, increasing to what we're capable of doing. We've got a CMM now. A lot of our out of the main customers I'm going after for medical and firearms, they're looking for CMM. This is kind of where the our EDM area is. And we assemble the molds here. So we have two sinker EDMs and one trode machine that just cuts electrodes. The Makino is super accurate, and it does a really good job for us. And we get into all kinds of different shapes, shapes and electrodes. So we get into having to cut copper, tungsten and graphite electrodes. And we do, we do some very, some really cool firearm products. So not only do we just make molds, but we also do EDM outsourcing, where people bring something complicated, or they need a bigger machine or something. So we do a lot of EDM work for other companies, and that's that's been a good fill in. So when we're if we're slow in one area, we have a couple different ways to keep everyone busy. But here's, here's a an example of a mold we just finished for the Shot Show. It is a two cavity Glock magazine, hydraulic slide and a mechanical slide. And this will end up going to the customer, and they'll actually mold it at their facility. And we'll we will do the sample run here, and any kind of fill in molding that they might need. Our main product is selling the mold, design build complete, and then send it to the customer, and they'll run them we do some tooling where we build it and mold it here as well. This is actually one of the advantages we've had, is with the 3D printer from the Project Diamond. I My My challenge was, how can I use this thing, and can it really work for us? We were inserting a tool. I'll kind of show you, I'll show you what he's doing, and then I'll explain what I did. So he's got a load. He's got a load, six or eight of these inserts by hand. And we used to do it by hand, just putting them in one at a time. The tool is sit 275 degrees. So he's got to be careful. I was doing I was doing it myself. So I burnt myself a few times. So I designed this in this printed fixture to make it easier to load them here and then load them in the tool in a couple seconds. So it took like 25 seconds off our cycle time. Wow, just because you have mistakes, and it dropped. So this saved a lot of time. So it doubled, almost doubled what we were doing in a day overnight. So I thought that was gonna fail, and I was out to prove it's not gonna work. And it worked. The material works, the Onyx material from Markforged. I was impressed. So that did a really good job. And then there was. The two other molds we decided to do that with, and we even got a little, just a little bit more creative with the other parts, and we were able to make the 3d printed that we could print these in a week and be using they look like after they come out of the injection molding machine. Yeah, before and after is what that looks like.

Steve Michon 

Nice. So we could do quite a bit through here. We've been doing it manually, and now we've got a robot, and we're going to be integrating, hopefully integrating that our design right onto the robot itself. What kind of robot is it? It's a Whitman.

Julia Hider 

So it's just like one of the three-axis, like gantry style.

Steve Michon 

But these are tools that we run here. A lot of the stuff we make, we send out, some of the more the larger tools we're trying to focus more, more on our medical customers, our firearms and defense and aerospace, we've seen a lot of good activity with aerospace, especially in EDM, they like to get things EDM just right.

Julia Hider 

So now, can you walk me through your use of 3D printing and where you started with that, whether it was just as, like a hobby or an interest, and then how you started to implement that into the shop, and then how you ended up with a metal 3D printer.

Steve Michon 

3D printing has been really interesting to me. First time I saw it was like in ‘99 then when they became, like commercially available, like the maker bots and all that, I was interested enough to spend some money on them at the time, and and I ended up building some parts for my kids’ toys. And then the kids were like, having fun with it. And I'm like, I bet you other people would like that. So I put it on eBay, and we ended up printing hundreds and almost thousands of them on a MakerBot in the base. My wife's starting it for me while I'm working. And I'm like, Okay, it's time to build a mold. So So I learned a ton just by playing with it, and then I realized that they the technology's gotten a lot better. Materials gotten better, and the applications are endless now. So in the shop, I see ways. I'm always looking for ways. How do we make that easier? You know, less cost, less effort.

Julia Hider 

Do you have any more examples of 3D printed like tools, fixtures, like anything around the shop that you can show us.

Steve Michon 

I have some sample parts that we did in the past. Yeah, you're so this this plastic, and this is a mold that we built two cavity tool with slides. It's on our website. But we actually had to make this printed core. Oh, metal three. This was metal 3D printed, and it had a conformal cooling circuit. This is just a sample piece. This wasn't the one we actually ran. We actually had it print. It was a much finer print. Actually, Jason at Next Chapter, did this. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he did that for us. Yep, some of the stuff we've done has been real simple. Most of it is been good for 3D printed or pad printing fixtures that we made for custom that the customers have those but simple stuff like this, yeah, yeah, exactly like this right here. We wanted a spot to hang that, and we drew that up and printed that, and had that done in a day, and we've used it ever since we got it. So it's been three years. This is actually cracked right here. And on that machine, we have the same one, and we have a printed version that's been working for two years. So, and it seems like the silliest thing, but it's, it's super helpful to have, because when, if we something broke, we print it again. I mean, it's that it's that simple. So it's not that it's a super profitable but when it, when it fixes a need in the shop, and you're more productive overall, it is. There's, it adds up to the point where it's like, wow, it's almost impossible not to have the printing in your in your facility. Now it's like having another tool in your toolbox, and it's, it's easy to say, and a lot of people don't use them that have them, which, and I think it's frustrating to hear that, because I'm like, Oh, I'll take your printers. There's stuff to make. I we make. We make little the silliest things that hold screws, that hold pictures. I got a whole drawer over here. I'll show you. But those things we made same, they kept breaking, and those I printed them once they've not broken. So just getting organized with this is all 3D printed. I mean, you could buy trays, you could but what we were getting was we wanted something custom, so that that's something this little screw organizer. This has been a wonderful machine, if you pull on this. This shows some of our stuff in here. I. When you're trying to this whole thing moves. Well, every time you pull it, it's open. So Brandon printed, our guys printed this to lock it so it wouldn't come out. So when he grabbed the edge, he can pull it. It's so simple. It's just some silly things that you don't realize. Man, that's I made a difference. Combining it with metal, for us is a big, a big advantage for tooling, but also for holding and fixturing. And that's, I think the largest part of moving forward is, is being able to fixtures as best you can, for teaching someone, for cutting down mistakes. It just makes a lot of sense. So the metal I was looking at them, but the cost was so high. The cost is so high, and there's a lot to it. There's the argon gas. You got to have your respirator on. You got to be careful with it, with the powder. I'm not as afraid of that as missing out on the technology. I really don't want to be left behind, but I also don't want to be out of business, so you have to take that fine line, when, when, as we've gotten more customers demanding or asking for that, that was more of a trigger than anything to say I should really get something going, and we offer it by outsourcing someone else that does it, like Jason Murphy. Ooh. Oh, I mean, that's just something that we you can see the pressure pushes it back up. EDM, yeah, it's wire. EDM, yes, yeah, it's a gift, or just a fun thing to actually get some people to train on doing something, and then we can sell them, and it works. So this is our CMM machine we just got recently as well. And our goal is to take some of the stuff that we 3d print and really figure out where it's at, location wise, so that can we can better integrate it into our machines with less setup and less error.

Julia Hider 

Do you print fixtures for the CMM, or do we have?

Steve Michon 

Yeah, we've done it for other customers. I don't have them to show you, because we sent them, but yeah, that the 3D printing is it's just become part of it. Now. I mean, you're, I look at this, this old school Circus here, and I think about all the creativity to be able to do what they did, yeah, and taking that to today's tools, then you can do a lot more. But I don't think I think it's really how we think it's how you're thinking about it. Because they weren't thinking they were limited. They were thinking, well, this is amazing, and I have all the tools I need. So I think it's a matter of realizing that it's really the limits in our minds that's really that simple. The tools make it easier and faster, the CAD the ability to draw it all and take your vision and put it in into reality is the key.

Brent Donaldson 

Hey everybody. Brent Donaldson with Modern Machine Shop here, and if you just watch that video and you're thinking, Boy, I'd like my shop to be featured in the view for my shop series, then just send us an email at shop video@mmsonline.com and tell us what sets your shop apart you.