Greg Cebular is the VP of Sales & Project Management at The Technology House (TTH). The Technology House is a Contract Manufacturer specializing in Additive Manufacturing, Cast Urethane Molding, Injection Molding, and CNC Machining. With its sister company, Sea Air Space Machining & Molding, TTH produces prototypes and production parts to all major industries but a majority comes from Medical with ISO 13485 and Aerospace with ISO AS9100D certification production. Greg started in 3D printing with TTH 2003 after studying at Ohio University. At TTH, Greg’s team of project managers work hand in hand with customers to help educate, design, develop, prototype and ultimately produce production parts based on the best material and process to meet the customer’s requirements. Greg will be a speaker for our upcoming Ohio event.

Jenny: When was the first encounter you had with 3D printing? What was that experience like? What were you thinking at that moment?

Greg: It was my first interview at The Technology House in 2004 for a project manager position. I answered a newspaper ad and I really did not know what “rapid prototyping” was at the time, but when they gave me a tour of the facility and showed me the Stereolithography (SLA) process and the light was creating parts, I was hooked. Immediately, I imagined the movie Back to the Future II when they order something and it just appears instantaneously in their house. I thought it was the future of manufacturing.

Jenny: What inspired you to start your career in 3D printing?

Greg: What I really liked about TTH early on was that they worked heavily in the medical industry, mostly making urethane molded, injection molded or machined components supported by 3D printing. But, we did a lot of work early on making medical models via CT scans to aid in cranial implants. I have always seen 3D printing as the future of manufacturing with the ability to solve problems that were not possible before.

Jenny: Who inspired you the most along this journey in 3D printing?

Greg: Many of the inventors of the technologies like Chuck Hull from 3D Systems and Scott Crump from Stratasys. Recently, I have been inspired by Joe DeSimone, with Carbon, pushing the plastics side further into real, higher volume production potential.

Jenny: What motivates you the most for your work?

Greg: I just enjoy working on products that help people as well as helping people succeed, learn and grow, whether that is our customers or our team at TTH.

Jenny: What is/are the biggest obstacle(s) in your line of work? If you have conquered them, what were your solutions?

Greg: Biggest obstacles are educating customers with what can or should be used in AM as well as promoting 3D printing as an actual production process, not just prototyping. Production AM is mostly an unknown with ASTM, ISO and FDA standards all in-process. It is really learning as you go, and every industry, customer, and product has its own unique requirements and challenges.

Jenny: What do you think is (are) the biggest challenge(s) in 3D Printing? What do you think the potential solution(s) is (are)?

Greg: Validation of the process and material as we try to ensure it is viable and readily available for 20-30 years. I also think the question of not if we can 3D print something, but “should we 3D print this” is very important as we push forward.

Jenny: If you are granted three wishes by a higher being, what would they be?

Greg: Time Machine, the ability to broker peace with anyone/anything at any time, and a 3D printer with the ability to print anything I want for free.

Jenny: What advice would you give to a smart driven college student in the “real world”? What bad advices you heard should they ignore?

Greg: My advice would be to spend time observing, listening, understanding and learning from experienced users and producers in the industry, you may learn something new. Also, be open to feedback from outside sources sometimes small changes yield big results. Ignore and challenge the status quo = “Get me the hero story”. There are challenges every day, some need new solutions, but some can be solved with old solutions.

Jenny: If you could have a giant billboard to promote a message to millions and even billions of people in our community, what message would that be?

Greg: Keep Pushing the Boundaries of Possibilities.

Jenny: What was the best investment you made in 3D printing?

Greg: I started attending the Additive Manufacturer’s Users Group (AMUG) 3 years ago. It is such an amazing conference and collection of adaptors from equipment to material and design across all industries. Everyone is there to learn from each other. I have learned so much and connected with so many people, it is really unlike any other conference I attend.

Jenny: What were/ was the worst investment you made in 3D printing?

Greg: The worst investment we have made so far is actually not investing in metal additive years ago. It is still on our wishlist, but our main focus is plastics today.

Jenny: What was/is the biggest risk you took in your career?

Greg: Changing from a prototype job shop mentality, and moving into contract manufacturing with ISO certified production.

Jenny: What do you enjoy in your spare time? What are you passionate about outside of your work/ 3D printing?

Greg: My wife and I have a 1.5-year-old daughter so I am loving my daddy time, dog walks, Cleveland sports teams/Events (Indians, Browns, Cavs, and Buckeyes), traveling/hiking (try to go a new destination in the US or World each year). I also enjoy concerts, sci-fi movies, and biographical books.

Jenny: What is your favorite quote? Why?

Greg: I have two. First is “Be the change you want to see in the world” and “Be quick with a smile”. They remind me that I have influenced every day on the people around me, and I can either make their day better or worse. If I want a better, kinder, happier world, then it starts with me and the people I can affect my family and friends to co-workers to the cashier at the local store. It also reminds me to smile, because you never know you really need a smile that day, smiles are infectious.

Jenny: What does the word “3DHEALS” mean to you?  =)

Greg: 3DHEALS, to me, means how 3D printing can be used to make an impact to improve our health and help solve the issues of our world.

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(Image above: “This case was a patient that endured an accident that resulted in multiple fractures to the face. The original CT had all the bone fragments out of normal alignment. what we did was to separate the different fractures (different colors) and re-align them to their natural position. Afterwards, we proposed the osteosynthesis plates that can be seen in the picture and 3D printed a model with the fractures align that was used in the operating theatre as a template for the surgeon to guide the procedure and achieve the best aesthetic outcome.” )

“This product/service is specifically used for a pathology called craniosynostosis, where one or more cranium suture closes before time, this leads to deformities of the skull in newborns. What we do with this cases is to virtually plan the osteotomies and virtually place the bone fragments in an almost perfect position, that eliminates potential problems of a closed suture and improves the aesthetics of the patient. Of course this wouldn’t mean anything if we only did it virtually, so in order for the surgeon to replicate what we do in the computer, we 3D print a set of custom-made cutting guides that allows them to cut the bone exactly where we predicted and a set of custom-made positioning guides, that in turn help the surgeon shapes the bone fragments and place them in the positions predicted earlier. We have been receiving amazing feedback on this service, and we are of course very proud of what we managed to achieve.”
 
João Correia Leite from BRECA Health Care Design and Development Engineer, with a background in Biomechanics, currently Director of the Medical Engineer department at BRECA Health Care. Specialized in patient-specific solutions, virtual surgery planning, and additive manufacturing applied to the medical sector.
Q: How did you first encounter 3D printing? What was the story?
A: The first time I saw a 3D printer, I hadn’t quite realized what it was. It was in the first Jurassic Park movie, they called it back then a rapid prototyper. It came to me years later when I started studying Biomechanics in 2006, 13 years after that movie came out.
Q: What inspired you to use or work with 3D printing?
A: I always wanted to work in the medical field. While studying I was introduced to custom-made solutions, 3D printing was the logical next step in that equation.
                   
Q: What is the biggest motivation for your work?
A: You know you are helping people, no need to say anything more than that.
Q: What is the biggest challenge in your work?
A: Breaking the stigma associated with patient-specific solutions, regarding price and old techniques, it is hard to get rid of old habits.

“In this case, we also worked with patient-specific instrumentation. First, we started with the segmentation of the bone tumor (red), then we designed a set of custom-made cutting guide for the dissection of said tumor. For the reconstruction of the defect left behind we design another set of guides that were used in a donor, assuring that the surgeons could take a fragment that perfectly matched the patient.”

Q: How do you plan to conquer this challenge?
A: The benefits will eventually speak for themselves.
Q: What is your vision on the potential impact of your current work to the future of medicine?
A: I think we will see a standardization of the custom-made approach in medicine.
Q: What is the biggest change/improvement since last year this time?
A: The word is starting to spread, more and more medical professionals are open to introducing patient-specific solutions.
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: At BRECA we are passionate about innovation. Today we are making patient-specific devices, but we are already researching on how to improve them as well. We are already thinking about the next steps, devices enhanced with bio-degradable materials, bio-printing, and tissue engineering.

 
 
 
“This is probably the more common case of those that were exposed during the interview. This is a patient-specific jaw plate. We wanted to show that we could achieve a better product via 3D printing, a product that matched the patient and did not require any manipulation from the surgeon. We achieve this great titanium plate, the image doesn’t really make justice to the device, it almost looked like a piece of jewelry.”
Q: What is the biggest risk you took in your career?
A: Personally, four years ago I moved to a new country to start work at BRECA, a start-up was in the very early stage. Today, we are well recognized in the market for personalized medicine and tissue engineering. One could say, it paid off.
Q: What do you enjoy in your spare time?
A: A lot of things, if I had to choose one, probably racing.

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