Ryan Tromans

Additive manufacturing specialist with 7+ years' hands-on experience spanning tooling engineering, resin formulation, and multi-technology 3D printer operation (SLA, SLS, DLP, mSLA, LCD, and FDM), with additional personal experience in PolyJet and MJF. Built and managed a print fleet of 75 machines, taking additive manufacturing from simple jigs and fixtures through to complex medical device production. Skilled at isolating root cause across machine, calibration, and formulation faults, and at translating that diagnosis into corrective action.

Extends beyond additive manufacturing into hands-on robotics and automation: designed and built a 6-axis robotic arm integrated with injection moulding production equipment across 13 machines, and independently designs and fabricates functional hardware including a completed gesture-controlled articulated robotic hand with custom PCB control and cast silicone contact points — bringing genuine cross-disciplinary experience at the intersection of additive manufacturing and robotics.

3D Print Specialist — Resin Development - Makevale Group - Ware, UK

(2025-01)

• Study and calibrate prototype resin formulations across SLA, SLS, DLP, mSLA, and LCD printer platforms.
• Verify print outcomes and diagnose the source of quality issues, distinguishing between printer faults, calibration errors, and formulation-side causes.
• Determine and implement the appropriate corrective action for each fault category, working across process parameters and formulation adjustments.
• Produce technical documentation supporting resin performance, compatibility, and specification for internal and customer-facing use.
• Manage resin and consumable inventory, and inspect finished prototype parts for dimensional accuracy and cosmetic quality prior to release.

Tooling Apprentice to Tooling Technician - Polymermedics - UK

(2018-01 - 2025-01)

Progressed from tooling apprentice to tooling technician over a seven-year period, developing broad hands-on manufacturing and tooling expertise.

• Introduced and drove adoption of 3D printing within the business, expanding its use from simple jigs and fixtures to complex medical device components.
• Built print submission, prioritisation, and post-processing workflows from scratch as the fleet scaled, including resin-specific post-processing procedures, ensuring all parts met ISO 13485 quality standards prior to release to customers.
• Built and operated a 3D printer fleet spanning FDM, SLA, and SLS technologies that grew to 75 machines under personal operational control, sustaining ~89% fleet uptime through proactive maintenance and scheduling.
• Supported production and engineering teams with rapid-turnaround tooling and prototype parts.
• Trained apprentices from the shop floor to operate the core machine group in my absence, and ran day-to-day operations remotely by sending slice files for print, with trained staff handling part removal, post-processing, and build platform preparation.
• Designed and built a 6-axis robotic arm powered by an Arduino controller, initially integrated via PLC and later upgraded to a Euromap67 interface for direct robot-to-injection-moulder communication, creating a fully automated, seamless production setup — avoiding the significant cost of purchasing manufacturer-supplied robotic systems and delivering an estimated £200,000 in savings.
• Programmed the arm to unpack moulded parts and place them directly into packaging, including an automated sub-routine to set aside inspection samples at a cycle interval defined by company quality documentation.
• Ran a trial deployment achieving a ~1% failure rate, root-caused to operator error on machine restart, and rolled the system out across 13 machines to standardise automated part handling and inspection sampling across the production line.
• Contributed to part design for an AI vision camera inspection system, scanning both sides of each part live in production and flagging tolerance deviations as they occurred rather than after the fact.
• Evaluated ROS for the robotic arm's control architecture, and made the considered decision not to adopt it due to hardware integration constraints, instead delivering a bespoke Arduino-based control solution.

Founder / Lead Technician - Independent Prototyping & Prosthetics Workshop - UK

Run a small, self-directed additive manufacturing operation, including personal experience with PolyJet and MJF printing.

• Design and fabricate human prosthetic devices, combining resin/SLA 3D printing with specialised robotic components.
• Completed a fully articulated, gesture-programmable robotic hand: resin-printed structural components integrated with robotic actuation, allowing the user to select and hold multiple grip positions without manual reconfiguration. Working prototype available to demonstrate.
• Designed a custom PCB to drive and control the robotic hand's actuation and gesture-recognition system.
• Designed and manufactured silicone rubber contact points for the hand via custom-built moulds, cast in-house for realistic grip surfaces.
• Led technical planning and design discussions on combining SLA resin technology with robotics to deliver functional, wearable end-use devices.
• Currently developing a custom Klipper-based firmware controller for 3D printer operation, as a personal ongoing project.

Level 3 Apprenticeship in Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering - Tooling Pathway - Advanced Manufacturing Engineering Scientific Principles

BTEC in Advanced Engineering Principles

Level 2 NVQ in Engineering Principles