Nine years of freemelt

Nine years ago, freemelt started. We had the idea to make the best research and development oriented electron beam powder bed fusion AM-system, and then see where time will take us. Close to fifty units of that system has been produced and time has taken us somewhere. Therefore, it is time to summarise the first three chapters of freemelt.

Chapter 1

I remember the bench I sat on when I first heard about freemelt and got the question if I were interested. I remember the sofa I sat in when I told my girlfriend (now wife) about it and asked her opinion. I remember the chair I sat in when the authorities explained that I have been sued, suspected to have stolen company secrets. I do not fully remember the armchair I sat in when I read the e-mail that the legal battle would end, but it was a comfortable chair in some friend’s apartment, and it was during a Canadian Halloween party.

Nine years ago we started out with large sheets of paper on a table, sitting around with a pencil each, drafting and discussing ideas. Sketching, iterating, laughing and arguing, a few days later, we started receiving laptops. To be on the safe side if anything were to happen, we designed the system around publicly known solutions, things that has been around for decades. I based the design of our deflection amplifiers around an old lapsed patent for an MRI system, and the design of the coils that control the beam lends a lot of ideas from beam lines like CERN.

The legal debacle came upon us, it cost a lot of time, money and energy but in the end we were able to prove that we have not stolen the design of our system. During the debacle, we also proved to our investors that we as a team were committed (potentially crazy) and strongly believed in freemelt. The involuntary pause in development let some ideas to slowly grow, and in the end the system got better in some areas when we restarted development.

Chapter 2

After a first chapter where we had sold three systems and a slowly growing team, things started to feel like a real company. We had attracted new and larger investors, and the future felt bright. This is when we lost Patrik, a person without whom freemelt would never have started. Now he was gone (though his picture still hangs at freemelt) and for a long time I had a packet of a spice mix pinned to the kitchen fan with a magnet. The name sounded like a weird translation from German, a perfect thing to discuss with Patrik, but I never got around to do it.

We had experimented a bit with remote service, especially how to connect to the PLC remotely through the machine computer. As we had a really small service department at the time, we hoped to be able to use this to not have to travel as much. The timing could have been better, as Germany locked down due to covid, and we had a system going there. In the end, we and the customer managed to install the system and get it running with no one from freemelt on site.

With covid waned into the background and the market as markets can be when they see the light at the end of the tunnel, freemelt was ready for something bigger. With a proven core technology and a team that had grown and got up to speed, and something that might look like the start of a sales trajectory. The freemelt stock went public, we rang the bell at Nasdaq and started to develop AM systems for mass production.

Chapter 3

With each chapter and year, freemelt has grown, but has never transformed like during the last years. Freemelt is going through adolescence and as for any parent or founder this can be turbulent but necessary times. By the end of the next chapter, I believe that freemelt will be a proper adult. A company that contributes to society and that stand on its own legs.

At first glance, it can sound like an easy task, take a core technology and package it to produce parts instead of research. It is, and it is not, and the largest change is in spirit and mindset of organisation. The technology side is more or less extrapolation. Now there are several eMELT systems delivered, to places I never thought to see one of our systems nine years ago.

Now as the number of people that has made a substantial contribution to freemelt far outnumbers the small team of founders, change is everywhere. The ever-changing and ever-growing organisation can become tough to keep up with for a person that handles changes slowly. But change is beautiful, and freemelt has changed into something that is more than I ever imagined when we started this.

In the middle of all this change are the electrons, these lovely little particles are the core of our technology, and they are constant (but can be quite quick). With all the surrounding change it is easy to miss that this is still the same, the core of the new freemelt is the same as the core of the old freemelt, and the core is where I belong. Why did I ever let my self be stressed over change when the constant part is what I truly care about?