After studying design and art, Marylou began her career in prototyping and 3D printing for a French car manufacturer. Today, Marylou is still a designer and production manager at Fabulous 3D, a consulting and support company based in Lyon and Paris. Due to her position and experience, she has a good knowledge of the 3D printing process, materials and parts design.
Marylou, could you let us know your background and what brought you in 3D printing?
I firstly studied industrial Design and then Fine Arts and finally prototyping process.
I started manufacturing with traditional physical mock-up technologies, like machining, milling, laser cutting, modelling, cutting, sanding, moulding .
3D printing quickly became an indispensable tool.
At school’s workshop and at different companies where I worked, I had access to 3D printing machines, including SLA, FDM and SLS.
What was your first experience in 3D printing?
Firstly at school, to try and learn, there was a FDM machine at the school’s workshop.
When I worked for the design studio of Renault Trucks France, we used it every day to materialize our ideas. We printed shapes after we made a lot of post-processing like sanding, painting, varnish, sticking ..
Could you explain furthermore what Fabulous 3D is and the services you provide?
At Fabulous, the objective is to support the company towards additive manufacturing, most of our customers come to us wondering how they could use 3D printing in business and what benefits it would have.
We carry out audits to answer their wishes and tell them what is relevant or not.
We also do a lot of project management, it means we take care of manufacturing the ideas of our customers in 3D printing.
Our two main roles are to advise on the application of the technology and design products dedicated to AM.
You working at Fabulous as Designer and Production manager. Could you explain your role and let us know with which material and processes are you working with?
My current missions are mainly project management, design, conception and writing technico-economic study about additive manufacturing.
I manage the production for our customers, I am daily in contact with customers and production workshop.
I also do a lot of technical watch on professional fair, conferences meetings and events.
At FABULOUS we are working with all processes available to produce from 1 to 10Â 000 parts. Most of the time we design parts for polymer and composite materials , but sometimes we have topics with metallic parts, more rarely about ceramics.
You also had your own business for a few years. Could you tell us a bit more about your activity and why you chose to create your company?
It was a few years ago , I was mainly a furniture designer, I also made arrangements for restaurants and exhibition, at that time I worked mainly with the carpenter and the cabinet maker, I did not know the 3D printing very well. But at I already drawn on 3D software.
What makes the 3D printing industry particularly interesting for you as a designer?
I think it’s a fantastic tool ! It redefines design rules and allows a new creativity. Thanks to 3D printing  we can now freely design and produce parts, we can now make the impossible possible.
On the other hand, it is not magic, do not forget the technical limitations. Because there are also technical and design requirement as all manufacturing processes. Requirement are just different from substractive manufacturing to additive manufacturing.
For me, if AM is cleverly use it put value in project.
Have you run into any challenges from being a woman in 3D printing?
That is true that there is very few women in 3D Printing , as in the industry in general !
But I do not feel it too much in my daily job, because we work on very different kind of project. But is true that often, we have to proved our skill to be well listened.
My point of view is : if you know well your subject, gender has no importance.
Can you share a fun or interesting story about your career in 3D printing?
Often I explain the technology in a simple way to customers or students, sometimes I mime the nozzle of deposit of wire or a build bin full of powder with parts hide inside, it makes often smile my audience.
Anything exciting coming up you’d like us to know about?
Stay tuned about FABULOUS actualities, new projects will be shown soon !
What do you think of the 3D printing industry today? And how would you like to see it evolve?
I think additive manufacturing is not yet mature, the market is still very unstable and moving, During the coming years, we will need standards about machines, materials, prices, files ..
Today there is no rules to get a price, you can buy the same part from simple to triple, it is confusing for customers.
Technology needs time to become an integrate skill in every design studio.
In your opinion, how could we encourage more women to become involved with 3D Printing?
Those technologies are particularly high in progress, with daily innovations, it’s a new way of design. Go! Get started!
Thank you for reading and for sharing!
We invite you to join Women in 3D Printing on LinkedIn and to like our Facebook page for further discussion.
