Meet The Team

Dane founded DK Additive Design Studio in 2024, after spending a significant amount of time designing, prototyping, and improving one of the most innovative products to enter the golf club market. The Proto Blade-01 is crafted from top to bottom with the end-user in mind. The additive manufacturing (metal 3D printing) method allows maximum customization and a consistent performing product.

Dane's background is in engineering product development, most recently leading the Test and Reliability team at Heliogen, where he focused on validating a fully functional and robust heliostat capable of being mass produced in automated production lines anywhere in the world. Coordinating test activities and liaising with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Design Engineers, and External Suppliers provided Dane with the expertise needed to develop a groundbreaking product in the Proto Blade-01 putter. The primary focus has been on delivering this product at the highest level of quality, while maintaining a lean and nimble operating structure to set the DK Additive Design Studio up for continued success into the future.

Before his time at Heliogen, Dane completed his undergraduate studies at Saint John's University (Minn.) receiving his B.A. in Applied Physics, and his graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison receiving his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Dane's research work at UW-Madison gave him the opportunity to collaborate with Raytheon Technologies in a project characterizing the thermal and hydraulic performance of an additively manufactured compact heat exchanger designed to reduce fuel consumption on board next generation aircraft by leveraging a waste-heat recovery system via the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle.

These experiences have set Dane up to fully leverage the capabilities of additive manufacturing using the latest technological developments in the industry: Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). This manufacturing process fuses 316L stainless steel particles together layer-by-layer vertically to achieve the fine resolution required in these products, while ensuring a fully dense structure. This freedom of design allows us to move more material (mass) towards the perimeter of the putter, increasing the moment of inertia (MOI) of the club, essentially providing the user with a larger sweet spot, and ensuring the club face stays square to the target - even on off-center strikes.