Panel discussion in NYC (July 16 2013): 3D printing, what's it good for?

[joergen 1]

If you happen to be in NYC next week, please join me for a panel discussion about the realities of 3D printing.

On the panel are:

 

• [*]Duann Scott, Designer, Shapeways

[*]

Lizabeth Arum, Education Coordinator, makerbot.org

 

[*]

Matthew Griffin, Director of Community, Adafruit

 

[*]

Joergen Geerds, Founder, Freedom360.us

 

 

 

Moderator: Christopher Mims, Tech Reporter, Quartz, qz.com

 

Tuesday, July 16th from 7:00 pm to 9:30 pm

General Assembly East

902 Broadway (at 20th Street)

New York, NY 10010, USA

presented by General Assembly+Quartz

Tickets and info at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/7273903441

 

[joergen 1]

And here is the short summary of the evening: http://qz.com/105063/3d-printing/

 

[illuminarti 18]

That's really cool, Joergen - and I'm glad that you're still willing to share your huge 3D printing brain with us mere mortals here on the forum ;-)

 

[nick-foley 5]

Joergen -

Really great to see a summary. I wanted to be there but had a prior commitment. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on that last point they make - that printers are good for prototyping, but not production. Did you end up doing production runs of your 360Rig on an Ultimaker? I'm gearing up to do some (relatively) large volume production on our Ultimakers, and am trying to figure out what pitfalls might lie ahead. We've had crazy good uptime and output so far, but I'm still holding my breath for things to go wrong.

 

[joergen 1]

Hey Nick, you're right, the 360Rig was printed all the way on a single Ultimaker... it was a bit stressful at times to get enough parts together for all orders, but we managed... all the prototypes for the Freedom360 (including the explorer/submariner model) are printed on the UM as well... to save on postprocessing, I created all manual support structures that take the quirks of the UM into consideration. But the prototypes were just those, and all prototypes that were in the hands of customers have been updated to the normal production version (SLS Polyamide), since the appearance wasn't as nice as I wanted it to be, and I had to pay attention to what people think and say about it. in addition, the smaller parts are incredible difficult to print, they would warp like crazy if the printer profile wasn't totally tweaked. so, to test a product, even with consumers, printing on the UM is fine, mass production with my model just wasn't worth the time&trouble.

But to summarize the event, it was really about all kinds of 3D printers, from stainless steel SLS to chocolate and vat-grown burgers, and all kinds in between... Matt's opinion often veered towards desktop printers, while Lizabeth really takes the printer-agnostic platform of makerbot.org at heart, and really cares about 3D printing in schools and education. The general consensus was that mass production is well done with normal production methods (which also allow for multi-material), where 3D printing really shines at custom and individual parts (parts, not finished products).

Hey Illuminarti, I am still a very mere mortal, but we should discuss this over a beer... let me know when you are in NYC :smile: and I'll share all I know, anytime here for the community.

PS: anybody know a good script dev? I need help.

 

[illuminarti 18]

That sounds good :-) I hope to be there in September.

 

Hey Illuminarti, I am still a very mere mortal, but we should discuss this over a beer... let me know when you are in NYC :smile: and I'll share all I know, anytime here for the community.

PS: anybody know a good script dev? I need help.