Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Ultimate Guide to 3d printing 2015: Open Source Setbacks”.
Hi, my name is matt stoltz from rhode, island uh, and i am the organizer of 3d printed providence in that’s in addition to being a community organizer and really bringing people together and education on this is, i spent a lot of time doing materials testing. I did some research a while back on on soluble support material for desktop home 3d printers and figured out the abs hips limiting solution that is now being widely adopted to be able to take 3d printing to a different ability set. And since then, i’ve been spending a lot of time, testing out new materials since they come to market beta testing materials for different companies. You know, there’s an evolution every year as things go on, you know we’re seeing a lot of things. You know generally in the market, but this this weekend, one of the real kind of noticeable things is his design is really making sense. Now people are really looking at how their printer looks. They realize that that the market isn’t just the the nerds who don’t care, it needs to be engineered well and it needs to be pretty um.
So you know things are looking a lot more thoughtful, a lot more polished the fit, and the finish is there and that’s that’s really good to see it. We’Re really excited to see machines that that feel like they can be in somebody’s home. You know, and and we’ll continue to see how things go on you know we still have the the the rugged engineer, bots, that you know really are the tinkerer’s bots that you know are there and that’s great we’re happy to see that those are still in the Market, because some of us still want that kind of thing, but you know there’s there’s some nice ones that i can see sitting in someone’s living room. You know.
Happily, the ease of use is catching up. Um, it’s it’s not still. You know that the thing i often get running these groups is people still want that that thing that they are expecting out of their their desktop home 2v printer. You know their paper printer, you know, i just hit print and it just happens, and you know i i think people forget. I think people forget about the old days when, when you know you had edge edge fed, you know paper and that would get misaligned and you know printers weren’t reliable, desktop printers, weren’t, reliable and you know we’re getting there we’re starting to see ease of use come, But you know it still has a long ways to go, but definitely companies are starting to think about it. I think i think kickstarter has has been a real boom for the industry, but it’s also been a real pain for the industry too. You know i’m a big believer in the open source projects, the rep rap projects um and things like that, and it seems now that you know there’s been a couple success stories out there there’s a lot more of the everyone. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.
Everyone wants some of the money out of it um. You know when, when we run when we run build classes in my in my group, um they’re at cost um we’re we’re interested in getting things out to people and changing the world. Rather than saying you know, i’ve got ta grab cash and unfortunately we’re seeing a lot of kickstarters where they’re they’re they’re using open source technology they’re. Adopting this they’re saying that a lot will eventually be open source, but not until they funded their kickstarter. And you know it would be nice to see the community really rallying about doing things for the community again like it kind of was before the kickstarter movement really took off. I still believe that the bill process and the kit process is is still really important. You know that that it is really nice and i understand why manufacturers are starting to to lean towards fully assembled machines. You know it opens up to a different market um as well as it uh. It allows uh the machine to really come the way that the the manufacturer expects it to run. You know they get, they get a chance to test it and make sure everything’s working before sending it someone.
So it really lessens support, but kits are real, still really important for the learning aspect. You know a lot of people are still interested in the technology itself. You know they may not have been. The early adopters have gotten in right on the ground floor, but they still want to know how these things work, really how they work the best way to really know that is to get your hands in, and you know, let’s face it, there’s still a new technology And they break, and you know the people who know how to fix their own machines tend to be much happier with their machines than the people who say it’s broken now.
I’M contacting support, and now my machine’s not working for a week two weeks, three weeks until support gets back to me and then i still have to probably get apart from them and get inside and put it in myself. You .