Starting out of college with a degree in mechanical engineering, Hayden took a job at Boeing Corporation as an entry-level developmental composite tool designer in 2011. After just a year he found himself with an impossible challenge:

“It was taking at least 6 months to get new tooling fabricated and certified for shop floor use, and for a new critical project, the tooling was needed immediately,” stated Hayden. “I had been curious about the additive manufacturing lab at Boeing and thought it might offer the potential for reducing that 6 month iteration and development time.”

Hayden introduced himself to the team at the AM lab and presented the problem. Working with them he ended up with functional factory tooling additively manufactured in stainless steel in a matter of weeks. His continued curiosity enabled him to pursue design and production with additive technologies at Boeing, ending up as the company’s youngest Boeing Designated Expert (BDE) in 2017, in the field of additive manufacturing.

His job further evolved to being an educational instructor and consultant in additive manufacturing at Boeing, enabling and advising on new implementations across the company, and delivering focused AM certification courses from MIT. Hayden completed his time at Boeing with more than 20 patents related to additive manufacturing in his name.

“It was an amazing job and filled with a number of firsts – we made the first ever factory-certified metal 3D printed tool at Boeing Commercial Airlines, I used the first beta laser sintered metal system by EOS in North America, I was first ever BDE of my age,” said Hayden. “During my time there I saw and helped additive manufacturing evolve into production-grade manufacturing for Boeing. It went from being ‘research’ into part of the shop floor.”

By the time he finished his work at Boeing, Hayden’s experience covered a multitude of additive platforms ranging from laser sintered metals and polymers, large area polymer extrusion (BAAM & LSAM), many types of smaller-scale FDM machines, wire feed DED, stereolithography, binder jetting, and direct energy deposition.

Now that same curiosity has brought him to Dyndrite to help improve the additive manufacturing software ecosystem and workflows.

“The Dyndrite technology is amazing and that’s what attracted me initially,” he said. “But the great working culture and environment that the Dyndrite team has created made up my mind.”

“The friendly and positive team, with so much support, diversity, and collaboration, makes me smile every time I walk in through the office door.” he adds.

When Hayden is not working, he turns to outdoor pursuits – camping, woodworking and gardening to name a few.

“I love the outdoors and after 9 years working in windowless buildings, I realized that I had to make a change,” said Hayden. “So on top of the great technology and culture at Dyndrite, I now have a killer view of the Seattle coastline from my desk.”