020 came in like a wrecking ball. We have the scourge of COVID-19 (the worst four syllables heard in our lifetimes), mass protests seeking justice, murder hornets, a plague of locusts, a tumultuous election, wildfires burning Australia, California, Colorado and Siberia. An explosion in Beirut’s port leveled nearly the entire city. We are experiencing lockdowns, quarantines and hybrid schooling.

Do you remember the near miss Earth had with an asteroid in September? Yeah, it was below the ring of geostationary satellites orbiting our planet. Luckily, it was only the size of a school bus and would probably have burned up in the atmosphere. We lost Sean Connery, Chadwick Boseman, Kobe Bryant and Eddie Van Halen. The Pentagon released UFO videos—no one even paid attention to that.

The good news is we know what we look like with long hair and gnarly beards (like Tolkien’s hobbits and dwarves), we learned to bake bread, we spent waaaaay more time with our children, took long walks in the park and rode bikes. We learned how to disinfect everything. We learned to WFH productively. We also learned how to reach out to others to combat isolation.

According to Arjun Aggarwal, Desktop Metal’s vice president of product and business development, Fulop recognized the shortcomings of existing AM methods and brought together inventors and experts in metallurgy, chemistry and robotics from MIT, among other specialists.

“The goal is to make 3D printing accessible to designers, engineers and manufacturers,” Aggarwal says, adding, “We are excited about the future of next-generation Additive 2.0, where you are able to produce parts in volume and at costs competitive with conventional manufacturing.”

n the website quora.com, people replied to an invitation to fill in the blank, “When life gives you lemons, ___________.” One enthusiastic young guy from India responded, “Ask for more. Become a lemon trader. Sell lemons at a price lower than the prevailing market price. Build a company which sells lemons. Become an international lemon selling brand. Have profits in billions. Keep asking for more lemons.”

That, of course, is a winning attitude. Jeff Haas, president of Cleveland Metal Exchange, and Hugh McNenly, president of CME’s Aluminum Division, are two leaders of a team that went through some dark days before they could figure out what to do with the “lemons” given to everyone by the coronavirus outbreak.

In the beginning of lockdowns, during early spring, barely controlled chaos ruled the day. “We worked from home almost three months. I would get a call from one sales rep, then another, then I would call the first one back, then the other. I was spinning in circles, and my head would pop off at the end of the day,” Haas recalls. After being pushed out of his home office into the basement by his young son, “I turned into Jack Nicholson from ‘The Shining,’” he jokes. “But what came with that was creativity.”