Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1073397
74 FLEX007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2019 the trials that I have had, and learn from them; hopefully, people can learn some things from me, too. Feinberg: That's interesting. This is the first time I've been to one of their events. Regarding advances, you're the second person I've spo- ken to where I've asked, "Do you talk with the customers and suppliers who make the stuff and have to make it work?" I find it impressive when they do. Blum: With the complexity of modern products, you need more information to make good prod- ucts, and that comes down to understanding who's going to use the product at the end of the day, and who's making every component in your supply chain. You need to have a strong relationship with them, understand them, and be able to work with them, which saves a lot of time and money at the end of the day. Feinberg: It's as though you were going to engrave a new type of metal and you decided not to talk to the metal manufacturer. Wouldn't that be crazy? Blum: Yes, you have to understand the design constraints you're going to be working with. Barry Matties: Interestingly, one of the primary comments we hear from people in the supply chain is the lack of communication, up and down, from the design phase forward. You're reinforcing that you're not using the linear design model, right? Blum: Understanding how the supplier is going to supply components or do some element of your manufacturing chain is important. I empa- thize with other engineers who have difficulty in those communications. I do too. Sometimes, I wish I could just live in a bubble and say, "Here's the thing I'm going to make. I'm going to design it, and then I'm going to kick it out the door, and it's going to come back perfect." The unfortunate reality is that the world is not like that, and the sooner you accept that and realize what the world is actually like, you can get better at having those conversations. You quickly realize that having them earlier is only beneficial. Matties: What motivated you to make this unit? Was there a void or an opportunity in the mar- ket? Blum: I joined Shaper three years ago. The orig- inal technology for our product spun out of a Ph.D. program at MIT where the two co-found- ers were working on it. The initial idea behind the product, as with most things, was that Alec—one of the co-founders—had a bunch of tools, tried to make something, realized he was terrible at it, and said, "Wait, I'm a computer scientist! Maybe I can use robotics or computer vision to help me." The first thing was to develop this technol- ogy. Then, it was figuring out if this technol- ogy had applications outside of just making folks less bad at woodworking. Are people interested in this tool? That's when he found there was a huge void in the market. The Jeremy Blum displayed the Shaper Origin during AltiumLive 2018.