My Rediscovery of 3D Printing

I have been on a tear this week looking for information about 3D printers. I’m fascinated with the idea of printing things at home. So why not get a 3D printer?

Well for one thing they are not cheap the MakerBot 5th Generation sells for 2,899.00. That is not small change. My interest stated to justify this cost. I started reading more about this model.

3D printers need more finessing that you might expect. It is not as simple as sending a document to a regular printer then your text and graphics come on the page. With 3D printers you need to constantly tweak and fix. This is not a bad thing if you have the time and love to do this. However if you are busy, like I am, it can get frustrating.

I have read online here and here about many issues with the new 5th generation MakerBot printers. Ugh I’m disappointed. Seems like they are not ready yet. The geek in me wants to get one now and the practical me says to wait. Luckily there is somewhat of a solution to my dilemma.

Last June I attended a build your own 3D printer class at Hack Manhattan. I was able to build myself a workable 3D printer called the PrintrBot Simple. The time is right for me to find it and get back into the flow of configuration and tuning.

Here is my baby 3D Printer:

WordPress is taking a long time processing the video so I uploaded it to youTube:

Hardwired NYC Meetup February 2014, Hosted at Quirky

The walk was long (Ugh, from 7th ave to 11ave) , but I finally made it to the Hardwired NYC Meetup February 2014 event, Hosted at Quirky. Even though I was late I was early. People were just flowing in to Quirky’s offices located on the far West 28th street. As a life long New York’r going this far west is a trek. I am not sure I could get use to that commute. LOL

Before going to the event I noticed a link on the event page. I am did not see it before. So I may have missed it. The link was to Quirky’s NDA. I read it and it was simple, but strange that they would imply the use of this for this event. I have heard other people complaining about these NDA’s at events at the Makerbot offices. They require you to sign the NDA before you enter. At this event you did not sign anything, but the NDA was implied. I have no idea how Quirky could in force this, but anyway. We are here to hear peoples hardware startup stories. Of which I love to hear.

Brian Garret and Bram de Zwart, co-founder, 3D Hubs: 3D Hubs is world’s largest platform connecting 3D printer owners with people who want to print. We are on a mission to make 3D printing truly local and accessible.

First up are the gents, Brian Garret and Bram de Zwart, from 3D Hubs. 3D Hubs helps connect people that need something 3D printed to the people that have the 3D printers. They do this globally and by building a community of enthusiast that are in the know about 3D printing. They realized the need when they were working for Cubed. They saw that most 3D printers are idle about 98% of the time. Damn, that is a lot of idle time. I later asked them how long do you think it would take on average to use 3D Hubs to help pay for your 3D Printer itself. They said it was about 100 prints or about 2-3 months of constant use of 3D Hubs market place community. That is amazing. Makes me want to go out now and get a 3D printer now!! This could push me over the edge. I do own a Printrbot Simple, but I have not been liking it lately.

Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie (marketplace for hardware and “indie tech”)

Next up was Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie. Tindie is a market place for all things hardware and tech focused. An artisanal hardware market place. I have bought things on Tindie before. The interface is very simple and easy to use. He talked about how Tindie started. It started via a Reddit post. He asked the Reddit community about his business idea, got feedback and then knew he should try it out. If I remember correctly he mentioned he did a trial of this at an Apple WWDC event. Please correct me if I got this wrong here. Tindie does remind me of Etsy. The difference and similarity is that they both do products that focus on a type of product category. Handmade verus Artisanal Hardware. The value in this business is the audience (eyeballs) Tindie brings to their customers that setup a store front on the website. I am wondering though if after the uniqueness of this blows over what will they do to keep the eyeballs coming back. I hope they have thought of that. I love the idea of these market places. They give the maker-going-pro a place to tip their toes into ecommerce in a safe environment.

Alice Taylor, founder and CEO of Makie (custom 3D printed dolls)

The fabulous founder and CEO of Makie, Alice Taylor was up next. You have to love her. The Brits talk very smoothly and eloquently. Even with the jet lag she gave a great presentation. They make customizable 3D printed dolls for girls. I have hear very little of her company. I give them a lot of credit for entering into the toy business. Wow. Just wow. Their product is very very professional looking for a 3D printed product. I wonder, I forgot to ask, which 3D printer they use. Her presentation was a mix of how she got started and lessons learned. Their two revenue stream business is fascinating. They sell the customizable dolls and they are now starting to go into online gaming. Their first game is a dress up game. They may have a boy’s doll in the works. I know little about the toy business, of what I know is that it is a very hard business to break into. She has done it. I think it is cool that she has used 3D printing to create such a unique toy.

Hugo Fiennes, founder and CEO of Electric Imp (hardware and software connectivity platform for the IoT)

The last presenter, before the interview with the CEO of Quirky was Hugo Fiennes, founder and CEO of Electric Imp. Electric Imp is a platform for IoT. I have heard of them before, but never heard his startup story. He worked at some very important companies like Apple, Nest and IBM as an Electrical Engineer. He started Electric Imp while he was working at Nest. The idea of having a platform for how smart things communicate over the web is brilliant. It makes the job of the electrical engineer easier. From my standpoint our customers will get an IoT product prototype quicker. However, the downside is when you want to go to production and scale to higher quantities. As the number of products increase the manufacturing cost don’t scale because you need to include the SD card package in your product. However if they can shrink it down to a chip package and manufacture that in large quantities the costs will definitely go down and scaling will happen. He mentioned they are looking into that. Quirky is a partner of theirs and uses the Electric Imp in their smart plug. Check out some of the pictures below in the gallery section of this post. In them he shows a diagram of how Electric Imp works. I like it. Again I would love to give it a try.

Matt Turck interviews Ben Kaufman Quirky Founder

The interview of Ben Kaufman Quirky Founder by Matt Turck was interesting. Ben’s story is one of those “it is great to not know anything and just jump right in” stories. Just do it as on your Nikes says Ben. The interview was a bit uncomfortable at one point as Ben mentions how FirstMark, the VC firm that Matt works at, screwed him. From what I see from Quirky’s fab offices, they are not hurting in the least. The Quirky offices are beautiful. The comments got some groans and laughs from the audience, but obviously you could feel the energy was a bit tense. Matt was great at continuing and asking Ben questions to get the interview on track. Some Ben did not answer. Ben did talk about the Quirky process of which everyone knows about. I do think it is interesting that Quirky has created a global manufacturing community in which they do all the product development and heavy lifting for the manufacturing process. They even do distribution. If you are a manufacturer you have to admire them. Ben has a sense of pride in that they treat the designer and IP maker as king. Quirky owns the IP and the designer has a forever license. This creates a lot of value for Quirky as they bare all the risk. I admire them, their capabilities, their relationships with GE and their retail distribution channels. Way to go Quirky!!!

After the stage act was over the networking began. I saw a lot of old faces that I have gotten to know on the hardware scene. Until the next Hardwired NYC event.

Check it out. I have more pictures of the event below. Sorry for the low light conditions, but you should be able to make out the slides and the speakers ok. I did my best to caption the images. Enjoy.

Hardwired NYC #7 Feb 2014

Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie (marketplace for hardware and “indie tech”)

Alice Taylor, founder and CEO of Makie (custom 3D printed dolls)

Hugo Fiennes, founder and CEO of Electric Imp (hardware and software connectivity platform for the IoT)

Matt Turck interviews Ben Kaufman Quirky Founder

Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie (marketplace for hardware and “indie tech”)

The Joy of 3D Printing at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

This past Saturday I spent the day at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014. It was a perfect day for an indoor activity because of the snow was falling sideways and would hit you in the face if you were walking west.

The show was in a small event space called The Metropolitan Pavilion. The space gave the event a cozy fell. I did not attend any of the speaker events as the nothing on the schedule was of interest to me. The discussions were of topics I had heard before many times over. So I thought it best to hit the showroom floor and see if there was anything new to be seen.

There were a few interesting things that I had not see before. I had not experience getting myself scanned so I tried it at the Fuel 3D.

Fuel 3D at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

Fuel 3D is a low-end or Prosumer 3D scanner. I have seen a lot of these do a Kickstarter. Fuel 3D was no exception, they did a very successful Kickstarter. Luckily there was not much of line which meant that I became second on the list to get my face scanned. See title picture above for how it came out. It looks very detailed. The operator took the 3D image in seconds, then transferred it to a computer and then manipulated it so that only my face was showing. The software looks very very easy to use.

I then stopped by a high end machine that cost thousands of dollars. While the imaging was a bit more detailed it did not needed to be. The low end technology is catching up to the high end. Below is my image scanned by the higher-end machine. Take a look at the detail, but also see how more complex the software is. The UI could be made to be more user friendly.

I saw a hugemungus 3D Printer company called BigRep. Their 3D printers can print full-scale objects. What I saw were prints that looked like they needed a lot of finishing. And some prints that looked like they had problems being printer. The object pictured below being printed would take up to a week to complete. This is not ready for primetime yet. Nice idea and maybe it will happen, but not now. The prints were very bad looking.

BigRep at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

I stopped by another booth that had some amazing 3D prints of what looked like complex textiles. I would say it was sort of like chainmaille, but close to being made into clothing.

3D Printing Services using laser sintering at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

The feeling of these 3D prints was excellent. They had great detail. You could make this into a garment if you could print enough of it. The company uses laser sintering machines. These machines use lasers that solidify a powder. After printing the print goes through a finishing process. The process unfortunately produces 50% waste of the powder. That is a lot of waste that gets produced. What a shame. 3D printing is suppose to be good for the environment and not produce waste, but the reality is that not all 3D Printing methods can do that.

There was fashion gallery and an art gallery. Both rooms housed some interesting 3D prints. The fashion gallery looked like it had mostly accessories and 3D prints mixed into text tiles clothing. One of the most interesting ones was the 3D printed glasses. See picture below.

Fashion at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

Imagine the possible designs you could do. The designer created ones that fit on your nose snuggly and ones that had flexible temples. The flexible temples looked like they were the most practical.

The lamps in art gallery were amazing. The organic feel and look of them made it like they just grew there. See picture below.

Art Gallery at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

On the way out of the show I could not help come away with the feeling that the market for consumer/prosumer 3D printers was getting crowded. Makerbot is the big gorilla in this market and they are sucking the air out for the competition. While I did see a few new players they did not have anything new to offer that would be any better. There are still the two markets at this point, the maker market that wants to tinker and maybe build a 3D printer like PrintrBot and there is the consumer/prosumer market that wants it to work with good detail out of the box. It will be interesting to see if expired patents will spur any more innovation into the market to produce anymore viable players. It would be great if someone could figure out how to combat the 50% waste problem.

Printing Metal Jewelry

This article and video got me thinking of how 3D printing can, will and has changed the jewelry business. The flexibility that the computer aided design software gives is just incredible. Some hard to make intricate designs can now be easier to make. I took a look at the Solidscape T76 3D wax printer that is used in casting parts. The printed wax is used to make a cast. Turns out this is an elaborate five stage process, including the pouring of the molten metal into the cast, cooling and then polishing. The other way of printing jewelry is to use a printer that prints in metal. This process uses glue and a powder form of the metal. The glue and metal are printed in layers and then it is heated, then polished. This video that shows how GE is using 3D Metal printing to print newly designed parts for the aerospace industry. Imagine what you could design when prices come down on these printers.

The Tech Chronicles

A blog about startups, business, hardware and Science. Just about anything business and technology related — Really.

3D printing

My Rediscovery of 3D Printing

Hardwired NYC Meetup February 2014, Hosted at Quirky

The Joy of 3D Printing at the 3D Printshow NYC 2014

Printing Metal Jewelry

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