Pedal to the Metal

Jun 14, 2023

Melanie Lang, Advisor, SME Additive Manufacturing Technical Community, Co-founder and CEO, FormAlloy Technologies Inc.

Melanie Lang never planned to live in San Diego. An Illinois native, she and her husband relocated to the Golden State after she accepted a new job assignment with Lockheed Martin. That was 13 years ago, and although she might complain at times about the West Coast's high cost of living, the area's beaches, mountains, and enviable climate keep her there. So does her job.

Lang is the co-founder and chief executive officer of metal 3D printer manufacturer FormAlloy Technologies Inc. of Spring Valley, Calif. Since 2016, the company has designed and built directed-energy-deposition (DED) equipment boasting five axes of motion, closed-loop control systems, multiple wavelength lasers, and powder feeders able to deposit up to 16 different alloys in the same build or even within the same layer. Such capabilities open the door to 3D-printed parts with gradient or multimetallic structures that would otherwise be impossible to create.

As with her becoming an erstwhile Midwesterner, her decision to go into business with Jeff Riemann, chief technical officer, was a case of turning life's curveballs into home runs. "If you include my first position with Boeing, I’d been in the aerospace and defense industry for about 10 years when I started exploring additive manufacturing as a hobby," Lang said. "All these maker fairs and spaces began popping up in California and around the country, and I thought it was a really cool technology. So I bought a 3D printer kit, brought it home, and began making little polymer objects for fun."

That was in 2010, and it wasn't long before her newfound pastime took a more serious turn. Her experiences at Boeing and then Lockheed Martin taught her that supply chain challenges were common in these industry—as she put it, "You can't just drive down to the local hardware store or machine shop for replacement parts." This statement is especially true on seagoing vessels and forward deployments, where failure to predict equipment breakdowns and plan for spares can put military personnel in a world of hurt.

Thanks to her tinkering at home, Lang soon realized that additive manufacturing (AM) could help alleviate this risk, particularly if the parts could be printed from metal. "Our military has some extremely sophisticated systems, but ultimately, service members often depend on nothing more than dumb hunks of metal to keep those systems running," she explained. "And in wartime, their very lives might hinge on the ability to produce or repair parts in the field."

She should know. Although Lang has never been in the military, since 2016 she has served as vice president of legislative affairs for Navy League San Diego, an organization with a mission "to give civilians, veterans, and active duty service members the opportunity to serve those that serve others."

As with any 3D-printer manufacturer, Lang looks forward to the day her equipment resides on seagoing vessels, yet her involvement with the Navy League is far more altruistic. She said that her sole interest is in supporting the sea services, whether that's the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, or Merchant Marines. For example, if a sailor or spouse has a baby, the Navy League will donate items such as car seats and other essentials.

"When you get to know some of the service members, and you listen to their stories and hear about the sacrifices they make being away from their loved ones—there's a special place in my heart for all of them," she said. "Because of that, my goal is to make their voices heard in terms of funding for a range of programs and ensuring that the people who serve are well taken care of, along with their families."

The Navy League is but one of Lang's many volunteering experiences, and for someone who has spent countless hours over the past six years launching a successful startup business, it's both surprising and admirable that she still finds so much time for others.

Lang has worked with Father Joe's Villages, a San Diego-based nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness, and she supports Animal Rescuers Without Borders (ARWOB), an organization that rescues homeless cats and dogs throughout San Diego and Baja, Mexico. More relevant from an AM perspective is Lang's work on the America Makes executive committee—a position she's held since 2019—as well as her ongoing efforts as a Women in 3D Printing (Wi3DP) ambassador.

"Shortly after we started FormAlloy, I saw that they (Wi3DP) were holding events in San Francisco, New York City, and Paris," Lang said. "And even though I would have loved to fly out there and meet others like me, we didn't have the budget back then for extra travel. So, I reached out to Nora Toure, who started the organization and was president at that time, and I told her I wanted to host some meetings in southern California."

Toure not only helped her with setting up some events, but also worked with Lang to launch a Wi3DP chapter in San Diego. The group's members recently toured Intrepid Automation, a developer of industrial-scale AM systems for high-volume production and were planning to visit powder metal specialist and service bureau GKN Additive (Forecast 3D) in nearby Carlsbad. "Their operations are pretty awesome," she exclaimed. "If you want to see additive manufacturing in action, this is a great place to go."

The Wi3DP presidency has since passed from Toure to Kristin Mulherin, founder of 3D-printing strategy and business development firm AM-Cubed, yet Lang remains firmly committed to the group's mission. She's equally committed to her own mission, one she's been working on for nearly a decade—the continued growth and maturation of DED technology, which in FormAlloy's case, builds part layers via blown metal powder that is then laser-fused to the workpiece.

"It wasn't too long after I built my own printer that I began thinking about metal parts and investigating the different technologies for making them," Lang said. "I was really focused on understanding the limitations for each technology—some are quite hard to deploy in the field, for instance, while others are either very expensive or difficult to operate, or both.

"I found that directed energy deposition, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward," she continued. "We call it the triathlete of additive manufacturing, since it can form, enhance, and repair a broad range of metal parts on a single platform. It's a powerful technology."

Lang and her team at FormAlloy are working to make AM even more powerful by introducing a "revolver style" specialty powder feeder system—the ADF Alloy Development Feeder—that can deposit 16 different metals in a single build. And, as its name suggests, it is intended for the development of multi-material, functionally graded alloys.

There's also FormAlloy's standard PF Powder Feeder that utilizes a planetary drive for precise metering of up to four materials, together with its AX deposition head for "state of the art" deposition with a single or multiple lasers. All are available on one of two platforms—the X5 and L2 series DED systems—and supported by the company's DEDSmart digital twin technology.

"Sometimes you might want to perform a direct cladding operation, such as fusing a nickel alloy over copper to increase its strength," Lang noted. "That combination provides a nice bond, but let's say you need to go from steel to titanium. That's not going to happen without a third or even fourth transition metal, which can be introduced at any point during the build or in any area.

"We’re also able to add multiple materials simultaneously, perform hardfacing, create complex geometries, and produce high-quality, repeatable parts up to 100x faster than competing systems," she said. "And because our system is equipped with significant in-situ monitoring and our powerful DEDSmart control system, we automatically generate a digital twin and build report of the finished workpiece for validation and material development purposes."

Advanced capabilities aside, Lang suggested that the AM community has plenty of work left to do before widespread adoption can occur. She said the industry has done a good job of developing its technology readiness levels, but that it's now time to begin focusing on manufacturing readiness levels. This will help streamline the qualification process and make what has traditionally been a lengthy and costly process into a more streamlined data-based approach, comparable to when a company goes out and buys a new CNC machining center, laser cutter, or any other piece of manufacturing equipment.

"Overall, additive remains very challenging, and if a customer wants to get into it, they have to jump through quite a few hoops," Lang cautioned. "There's the material and process qualification part of it, which is getting easier, but the act of building parts is still fairly difficult for the average shop and requires significant investment in time and resources. Similar to when I first started making stuff at home 12 years ago, you had to be fairly technically savvy.

"Now almost anyone can pick up a low-end printer for a few hundred bucks and be printing plastic chess pieces within a few hours," she continued. "We need this same level of usability to enable additive—and especially metal additive—to become mainstream. That's something that we at FormAlloy have worked at, and I’m proud to say are close to achieving. It's been an exciting journey."