About : printer furniture stands
Title : printer furniture stands
printer furniture stands
bre pettis: thank you. so i was here almostexactly five years ago. it might have actuallybeen may, 2009. i tried to look on my calendar. i couldn't find it. it was so far back. and i was introducedby this guy, and he said,replicators start here. and that was before weeven called the makerbot
a replicator. and so i thought, ok. like, i watchedthis this morning. i was like, this is kind oflike a really neat full circle moment, because five years agowe were three guys, a laser cutter, and a dream. and we'd gotten ourselvesinto-- we really thought five years ago that we wouldstart a business that we could do in like 10 or 12 hoursa week on this side.
and we probablyhad two employees. so there were probablyfive of us at that point. and now we're 500-- mergedwith the public company. and this is what a 3d printedbunny looked like on a makerbot at that moment. and we were so proud. we were like, this kindof looks like a bunny. this is great! and now we have 100micron layer resolution,
and it's kind ofabsurd that it works. and a makerbot replicator willgo head-to-head with a $300,000 mainframe-size machineand kick it's butt. and any company that doesproduct design probably has a makerbot. car companies, phonecompanies, basically anybody who's makingstuff uses makerbot. and it basically takesthe way you used to do it and smushes it up.
so the way people useto do product design is they used to have an idea,and then make a design, and then send it out. and it would take three weeksor a month to do an iteration. you'd get it back andbe like, the ears are too long, or thisneeds more cowbell, or whatever you wanted to say. and then you'd do it again. and with a three or fourweek turnaround time,
you could iteratemultiple times a year. when engineers get a makerbotand they put on their desk, they iteratemultiple times a day. so it means, one,because it's affordable, and because two, the material'saffordable, and three, we've made it easy to use-- goodux/ui, which nobody-- probably this is the best room thatunderstands how important ux/ui is. anyhow, it basically makes it sothat people can try things out.
they can explore. they can make something. and they don't evenhave to show their boss if they don't like it. they can just be like,oh, this was a bad idea. chuck it under thedesk in the bin. do it again. it's not a problem to try again. and that's probably beenone of the coolest things
to see as we've grown thecompany is watching all of the awesome makerbotoperators in the world take the technology and do waycooler stuff than we could ever have imagined. so when we talkabout makerbot, we talk about being aninnovation company. i talked a lot about whatcompanies do with it. the cool thing isit's affordable enough that when we started it wasseriously early, early, early,
adopters-- google boughttwo of the first batch. thank you for supportingus back in the day --and now it'sordinary people who just need more bracketsfor their kitchen will get a makerbot. all of it has todo is innovation. and we like to say we'rean innovation company. we innovate so thateverybody else can innovate. and back in the day if youwanted to make something,
this is an injectionmolding machine it's probably a 210 ton press. and pellets go in oneside, and there's basically two big pieces of metalthat are a mold that goes [crushing noise], with thatkind of noise and cranks out plastic stuff all day long. about 40 or 50 makerbotswill compete with that, just for fun. but now you can have--the way it used to be is
it was just a lotof infrastructure. you had to be a tycoon to ownthat kind of infrastructure to make things. now you just need a freakinglaptop and a makerbot, and game is on. so when we talk about leavingthe next industrial revolution. the first industrialrevolution was really around the factory--moving from everybody working on stuff in theirhome to everybody going
to the factory,centralized manufacturing. and it allowed everybodyto have things like spoons. well i'm sure peoplehad spoons beforehand. but you could producelots of spoons at one time in a factory,or garment making and all that kind of stuff. the second industrialrevolution is officially classified as being around therailroad and transportation. so when i talk about thethird industrial revolution,
i like to talk about allthese tools basically being on your desktop--the tools of manufacturing. a makerbot is amanufacturing education in a box on your desktop. and we've been doingit for five years. and so we built outthis 3d ecosystem. it's interesting. we actually startedthingaverse-- thingaverse.com is our website where peopleshare digital designs
--and we started thingaversebefore we started makerbot, actually. and i'll talk aboutthat more later. but we've got all thisstuff around the 3d printer, and in some waysgetting a 3d printer is sort of your ticket into thiswhole world that we've created. and it's just way morethan just a 3d printer. but the 3d printers are cool. these are our fifthgeneration machines.
you know, something abouthaving a black background and black machines,i think i just didn't do it justiceon this slide. important thing youwill need to know is that there's a smallversion, a medium version, and a ginormous version. the makerbotreplicator mini makes things that are about fourby four by five inches. so stuff you mightwant to have at home,
or you could make for your kids. we're exploring the frontierof consumer 3d printing, where ordinary people just makestuff instead of buying stuff. this is our sort of adventure. and the makerbot replicatormini is really our step into the adventureof making something for people who aren'tengineers-- one-touch 3d printing. the makerbot replicator,which i've got up here,
is fifth generationtechnology too. it's basically optimizedfor the engineer, the industrial designer,the architects of the world. and the makerbot replicatorz18 is ginormous. norman build volume is 12 by12 by 18 inches, so full-sized. if you need a full-size replicaof your head, we're on it. what's interesting is anybodywho has had a 3d printer or used 3d printingbefore wants this one. all the orders forthis are people
who already have 3d printers. it shops in may, orofficially in spring, so i can be flexible ifi need to push to june, but it should be may. and it's going to be superinteresting to see what people do when they have abig-scale 3d printer. and to get one of these-- it'slike the best volume to price ratio. if you want to geek outon how awesome it is,
it just blows everythingelse out of the water. the cool thing is is thateven though we just came out three new 3d printers, it'skind of like we just came out with one 3d printer, butin three different sizes. they all have an onboard camera. this means that you canpull it up on your phone and watch your model being madefrom another part of your house or the world, or if you're ina space station, then fine. they all have thissmart extruder,
which just swaps in and out,so if you need to replace it, and it's got alittle brain in it, so it knows when yourun out of filament and sends a messagesaying, i'm hungry. and they're all appand cloud enabled. i'm sorry this is an iphone,not an android device. the mobile platform launchesin about a month and a half, and android willfollow shortly after. the makerbot replicator andthe makerbot replicator z18
both have thissuper-luscious lcd display. and there's nothing like goingfrom-- the makerbot replicator 2, which is our fourthgeneration machine, has a little alphaalphanumeric display. and i've got to say, it's likewe're moving from flip phone technology tosmartphone technology. it's that big of a leap. i'm like, yes. more than whatever it is.
more than 100 characters,awesome, pictures, yes! so the small one is, likei said, for beginners. it's got all the same thingsthat all of them have. it doesn't have the display,but you basically use your phone as the control mechanism for it. and the makerbotreplicator-- kind of getting redundanthere --huge build volume for engineers, industrialdesigners, architects. and then this giant one'sjust out of control.
this is a heated buildchamber to reduce curling. if you've done 3d printing,you've battled curling. i can't say it makes it go away,because it's something that happens when you use athermoplastic where you heat it up and you extrude it. the way it works, ifyou haven't seen one, is it basically drawsa picture in plastic and then draws anotherpicture on top of that, and layer by layerit makes your model.
when you do reallybig things-- all thermoplastics shrinkwhen they cool. and if they curl--while it's being made, it kind of curlsup at the edges, so we've done a lot to reducethat with this machine, in particular. because with big thingsit's more important, because if it shrinks0.2% it doesn't really matter if it's just likethree centimeters long.
but if it's 25 centimeterslong, you've got a problem. so we make these in brooklyn. can we give it upfor new york city? so this actually isreally important. we did a lot of researchinto making them in all sorts of places. and it came downthat for us it was most important thatthe manufacturing engineers, the design engineers,could argue in the same place.
and so we've got a facilityin sunset park, where we've got a really ginormousfactory where we just crank these out allday long and ship them. and it's interesting. i think when you doa hardware startup you have to lovepacking and shipping. if you don't love packing andshipping, go into software. well, you have toship in software too, but it doesn't involve-- well,i guess it does sometimes
involve physical stuff,but it's different. we love to pack and ship. and it's funny--when we started, when i was herefive years ago, i did everything with my partners. we did everything. we laser cut the parts out. we call the suppliersand grumped at them if they were late.
we packed all the boxes,put the stickers on them, loaded up the upstrucks, and now i have a whole team thatjust loads ups trucks. it's awesome. it's one of the greatthings about growing is you're like, ok i don'thave to do it all anymore. we get to have teamsof people do stuff. so this is on our assembly line. so what you can see here is thatthere's parts for the makerbot
that come downthe assembly line. and they come on thesesort of cafeteria trays. and attached tothe cafeteria tray are all these jigs andfixtures made on a makerbot. there's more than1,000 jigs and fixtures at the makerbot factory, whichare parts that we made on on the makerbotto make makerbots. and this is actuallyone of those things that 3d printers, andmakerbots in particular,
are going to get used forthat is not as high-profile, but is deep. manufacturers, in general, whenthey make jigs and fixtures, generally have acarpentry section. and they just basicallyset people up-- they set all therestuff up, and instead of having these3d printed parts, it's usually like piecesof wood hammered together. it's very piecemeal.
this is just so much easierthan doing anything else. i mean the other alternative isto take a material like delrin and mill it out andmake these things. but when you start realizinghow much it costs to get time on a milling machine, it's justlike-- if the manufacturers hear this and watchthis google talk video, and their ears get prickedup, and they get it, then our biggest customer maynot actually be consumers, i'm planning on.
it may end upbeing manufacturers that use this to streamlinetheir manufacturing facility. so you know thathardware doesn't work unless software is great. and that's one of things thatif i'm anywhere and i say that, you all will get this. we've got a lot ofknockoffs, but most of them do not understand that tomake some hardware work, you, have to make it a greatexperience for the end user.
and that is almostentirely software. and so i love my software teams. and makerbot desktop is anapplication that you download. it sits on the desktop. and you get to enter theworld of makerbot through it. you can explore thingaverse. you can shop in themakerbot digital store. you can plan yourmodel on a virtual build plate, and sendit to the makerbot
and make it a full build plate. inside makerbotdesktop application is the makerware, which isthe tool for-- basically, you take it from whateverdesign tool you use. you can use anything. when i was here five yearsago, you owned google sketchup, so i did a big thing on that. now you've sold that, but reallysketchup, pro/e, solidworks, autodesk-- autodesk actuallyhas a great suite of stuff
if you're just gettinginto it with 123d. you can really make--if you want it, there's really noexcuse anymore. it used to be you couldsay, oh, i don't know cad. but now the toolsare easy enough that you can get into it, evenif you've never done it before. easier than photoshop, iswhat i'm comfortable saying. we've got it set up with acloud solution, so you drag, and you can basicallyorganize all your models.
you can organize allthe things you've ever made on your makerbot, soyou can see what you've made. if you want to makeit again, it's easy. and we do 3d print monitoringfrom this application, as well. and then you canaccess thingaverse. let's see. i'll come back to thingaverse. thingaverse may be thecoolest thing of all of this. same thing with the mobile app.
you can cruise everything,monitor everything. and we just announced it, andwe're about to ship printshop. printshop is a toolthat is really-- if you want to design something,we're making a bunch of tools so if you can type youcan make a 3d model. so you just typethis in to printshop, and it makes athree-dimensional sign for your desktop, oryour door, or whatever. and then we've alsogot a bracelet maker,
so if you need to makesomething for your sweetheart, it's pretty easy. we made it easy. that's the whole idea. so many people-- i'm aformer school teacher, and i taught in the arts, andso many people go through, particularly public school,and come out thinking that they can't do anything artistic,because they didn't draw a house the same way that theteacher wanted them to draw it,
or they didn't dosomething the way they-- they got a c+ in creativity inschool for something that they weren't even attached to. if we can reignite-- if makerbotcan have any part in reigniting even just oneperson's creativity, i feel like we'llhave been successful, because there's just somuch that can happen when one person gets engaged,starts having ideas, and starts making things happen.
so printshop is our answerto get people who are just beginning into this jump startedinto the process of being creative. i've also hired thisexceptionally bad ass team of designers thatjust make cool stuff. so this is-- oh, we don'thave a picture of the-- we've just got apicture of the model. this is actually a full-sized,realistic samurai helmet, cuz. and we've launched themakerbot digital store
to basically make it so thatanybody, even if you're not a designer, can just go andbuy 3d models, make cool stuff, make your family happy. we're doing entertainment,and the next step, we're going to a bunchof practical stuff. but for right nowyou can basically-- you get an immenseamount of cool models. and we have a modelwhere you basically pay-- kind of like an appstore --$0.99 each,
or you could buy awhole set for $9.99. and then you canthen, of course, you can paint them--very satisfying. so this is a littlebit-- this is about two or three months old. there's significantly moremakerbots in the world than this, because,like i said, we're packing and shippinglike mad right now. and then-- oh good.
now i'm to the partof my-- now i'm talking about thingaverse again. so thingaverse iswhat happens when you take an engaged communitywho make digital designs, and you give them aplace to share things. we started thingaverse. and thingaverse is stillplace where-- it's actually interestingarchive.org just crawl the site andarchived everything.
and it's something like morethan 100 gigs of just models. so i think if you wanted tomake everything on thingaverse with one makerbot, itwould probably take you a couple hundred, if not acouple thousand, lifetimes. so it's just makethe stuff you want. so this is just so cool. one of my favoritethings to do every day is i go to thingaverse.com,our website, and i'm just like a power-fan.
i like to look at everythingand see what's new in the world that you can maketoday on a makerbot that you couldn'tmake yesterday. and, to be clear, we'reactually agnostic. if you have a differentkind of 3d printer, you can use the samefiles, so do it. there's a bunch ofstuff we're doing to optimize it to make itreally easy for makerbot users, but whatever you'vegot come and share.
and if you make coolstuff share it here if you're comfortable with that. it's a lot more than thisnow, but there's just a lot of digital designs. and just a lot-- our awsbill is kind of absurd. this is a project, thisis the robohand project. this is every once in awhilei got journalists asking me, so you just maketchotchkes right? and i would have toresist the impulse
to hit them in the face. and then i'd tellthem about robohand. so robohand is a project. it's a collaboration. two guys collaboratedto develop the hand that you see on thisscreen here for this kid. and it's a prosthetic handthat really anybody can use, but it's optimized for kids. kids who are born withamniotic band syndrome
don't have fingers. they have a palm,but no fingers. and they don't get prosthetics,because they grow out of them like sneakers, andthey cost like $50,000. so robohand is like$5 in material. and it will take you acouple hours to print out. and it's basically great forpicking up balls, picking up things, holding a pen. there's a younggentleman who went--
he has amniotic band syndrome--he went to his school. his name's leon. he used his school's makerbotto print out a robohand. and we were interviewed in thesame place, and he was asked, so are you going to change it? and he's like, yeah. i'm adding lasers. so this kind oftransforms kids' lives. now they get to go to school,and they're like iron man.
that's leon there. he's caught a touchdownwith this thing. this is john camp. this guy is hardcore. he's at lockheed martin. he's working on the james webbspace telescope project, which is so cool ifyou're a space nerd. and they realized thatthey had a problem. they had the space telescopein the cryo chamber--
i just like to say theword "cryo chamber" --which is super-cold, as close asyou can get to kelvin chamber with all the airsucked out of it. and the idea isto simulate space. and it stays there for like sixmonths, or something like this. they realized while itwas in the cryo chamber that there was a problemthat they had to fix. and there was a chancethat with the tolerance deck up cosmic rays couldget into the telescope
and ruin the sensor. they went ahead, andthey made a model. the white stuffthat he's holding is a model of thepart of the telescope that they were goingto have to modify. and the green parts inthe photo are the parts that they were going tohave to insert-- baffles. now, the trickypart is it's a way deep down in the depthsof it, and they're
going to have to send alittle snake camera down there and use a bunch of tools. so they printed out areplica of the telescope. printed out allthe parts that they we're going to haveto update it with. printed out replicas of thetools they were going to use. and they practicedfor a few months. and when it came out ofthe crowd chamber-- bam --i guess it was likea 20 minute procedure.
so he reckons it probablysaved them six months, because they wereable to do it while it was in the crowd chamber. and there's no officialamount that they saved, but it was probably millionsof dollars on the project. so cool. and it's interesting, hebrought in makerbots to do this. and he's in a cubiclea lockheed martin. and people are immediatelylike, what's that sound?
why do you get a makerbot? and so they sort of startedproliferating through. and actually at jpl--jet propulsion laboratory --when they have toprototype something that's within the buildvolume of a makerbot, they don't send it out first. they just buy a makerbotfor that engineer, because it's cheaper than buyingone prototype in one part. and it also is lessthan the minimum
needed forbureaucratic oversight on the credit card, so protip. uncharted play-- thesefolks are in poughkeepsie, and they are awesome. they are making toolsfor the developing worlds that basically are cool. this is one of their things. do i have the-- no. they also make a jump rope,that when you jump rope,
it's got a usb socketon the jump rope. and 15 minutes of jumping ropewill charge your phone totally. that seems not a lotuntil you've actually tried jumping ropefor 15 minutes. but this is a ballthat has a gyro in it. when you kick it around all dayit stores energy in a battery, and then you can doyour homework at night. you can't really seethis photo very well, but-- oh, it's ashame --right next
to her are twoinserts for shoes. and they're likethe kind of things you would get if yourfeet were messed up, and you went the doctor. what are those called? audience: orthotics. bre pettis: orthotics, yes. right next to herare two orthotics. she's super-happybecause she just
got back from theamusement park. she's 41 1/2 inches tall. those orthotics don'tdo anything for her feet except make herhalf an inch taller. so she could rightall the rides. so basically thisis a makerbot dad who's like-- makerbotoperators live for this moment. oh, you're not tall enough? i got that.
kacie hultgren in new york city. she is a set designer pioneering3d-printed set design. she's got shows on broadway. and she's a pioneerin set design. but then having abunch of makerbots stacked up in her closetrunning 3d prints overnight. and the goes in andargues with the director about what the setshould look like. she's also a pioneer--all the stuff she makes,
because it's all periodfurniture models. she has a wholeother business she started at prettysmallthings.comselling dollhouse furniture. so whatever your passionis, add a makerbot it and a littleentrepreneurialism, she shares these modelson thingaverse too. so if you have a makerbot,just download them, and when you're shrunkyou'll have good furniture. bitonti did a project workingwith students at pratt.
he's a legit, totallysuperstar fashion designer, and he's making dresses. we actually have one hangingup at our store right now on mulberry street,just north of houston. its hot. local motors isan awesome company that makes desertrally race cars. and they realized that thethe mirrors were not far out enough on their rally fighter.
so on every reallyfighter they actually print out littleextenders for the mirrors. see a lot of makerbotsin classrooms. and this is ryan cain. he actually hasstudents make houses, prints them out, and he hasa whole large diorama set up that everybody puts theirhouses right next a river. and then they take a hose andrun a hose through the river. and the kids learn about erosionby watching our house float
away. we're on a mission , actually,to put a makerbot in every school in the unitedstates of america. we started, and we'reactually working on our second stage ofbasically looking for funders. we basically givean amazing deal to funders who support ateacher in getting makerbot. we partnered withdonorschoose.org there's actuallystuff there now,
if you want to go upand see if there's a school in your neighborhood,or your school you went to, that wants a makerbot. and it's at the teacher's pull,and then they get support. and a lot of timesthey don't even need to wait for afunder to fund it. communities are using it kind oflike a kickstarter for teachers to just get thistechnology in classrooms. and i would equate it towhen i was a kid in 1981 ,
there was an apple ii plusin my classroom that gave me an unfair advantage over therest of the world as a nerd. and we're seeing thenext generation-- there's a different kindof nerd that shows up. in many ways, we've taken careof most of the computer nerds in the world. young people accesslike never before, especially in this country. there's the kids who liketo work with their hands.
and i'm not sure if youknow, maybe you're like me. when i was a kidi took auto shop. i took wood shop. i took metal shop. and there was even home ec. i liked home ec too. that's all gone. all those programshave been decimated. one of the cool things is,when you put a makerbot
in a classroom it usesall the technology that's available-- the computersin the classroom. and then allows youngpeople to actually do things that are physical,that are real in real life. and it just activates asection of the population that isn't being servedby schools now. it'll take us threeto five years to do, but i think it's actuallygoing to be one of the things that i think will basicallybe our legacy if we do it, is
getting this equipment, gettingthis technology in schools. so if there's the rightperson in the room, or you can point meto the right person, i would love to connect andamplify that with you all. and so you can just go tomakerbot.com/academy to learn more. that's the end of my talk. i've got a bunch of stuffhere that i can show you. and then i'd loveto take questions.
i'm expecting good questionsfrom this audience. so i've got a jet engine. this is one of thedesigns that-- chunky trucks --that you can buy. it's really awesome. and it's all one print, andit prints without supports. two-color, geometric thing. this is a voronoi vase. you know what, actually?
there may be somecommunity models here. i think this one mightbe a community model. i'm going to haveto attribute this, and in the commentsof this video i'll make sure everybodygets attribution. that's important to me. a really nice bud vase, ishowed you the robohand. this is cool. this is printed in one print,but it prints everything
just with enough tolerancesaway from each other that when you snap it off itturns into like a necklace. easter was big on thingaverse,oh man-- that little bunny. you got one ofthese little things that's like a distraction tool. this is a big version of that. it's the exact samemodel, just scaled up. for the makerbot academy stuff,we're creating curriculum. so we also created-- this isthe great pyramid of giza,
but when you open itup, you can actually see there's alittle map in here, where you can see allthe secret chambers. we also did a 3d-printeddissectable frog. saving frog's lives. and a chip bag holder. so let's see. so i'll stop. i'll say thank you andthen we'll take questions.
thank you very much. you know what? before i do thatthough, can i just ask-- i was here exactly inthis spot five years ago. i know there's at leasttwo people in here --can you raise your hands ifyou were here five years ago? one, two, three, four. oh, that is-- audience: may 22.
bre pettis: what's that? audience: it's may 22. bre pettis: that's wheni was here is may 22? audience: 2009, yeah. bre pettis: oh, cool. thank you. ok, first question. audience: thankyou for your talk. i have a replicator 2 at home.
bre pettis: awesome machine. workhorse. audience: yes. so two related questions. first is, your new print head. do you-- the problem ofextrusion, sometimes. and the problem is thatyou have a long print, and it stops in the middle. so your new print head, whichis a very low, low detail here,
it just makes sure thatif you run out of filament it tells you. but there are so manyother the problems. i cannot tell-- i have a list ofthings, and it stops printing. and it runs. it makes noisesand does nothing. does your new print headactually either stop or actually prevents aproblem from happening? bre pettis: so one of the thingsabout-- so the replicator 2
has a tool head that'swhat's called "open loop." so that means that itdoesn't have a sensor that knows-- if it runs out offilament, it doesn't know. it just keeps going. if it gets a jam. if there's a bunch ofdust on your filament that gets in there, clogs upthe nozzle, it doesn't know. and it's come along way, actually, from when we launchedthat print head.
but the new smart extruder--there's three sensors in there. there's a hall effect sensorto make leveling a lot easier, so it knows where theextruder is in relationship, so you can make the buildplatform very flat, which is another challengewith the replicator 2. very doable. it just takes a little bitlonger than you would like. and then we've gotsensors in there that both sense whetherthe filament is there
and how fast it'sgoing in there. so we're trying toaddress all the things that we wish we'ddone back in the day, so there's a lotwe've addressed there. have we addressed everything? i'd love to say yes,but i think we're going to find as we're shippingthese that there's probably something that we'll needto do for the next one. the cool thing withthe smart extruder
though is it just pops off,and it's held on by magnets. so if and when we ever do doan upgrade to the extruder, you can just by an extruderrather than a whole new 3d printer. audience: ok. follow-up question-- ifyou have replicator 2 and you want to upgradeto a new technology, the problem is you have tobuy new stuff from scratch. do you have anyidea for trade-in?
bre pettis: you know, i'vegot an android 2 phone that we can talk about. audience: it's $2,000 thing. it's not just a smartphone. it's a $2,000 uhh-- for people-- bre pettis: i'm not sure ifyou were here at the beginning. we've got adam here. there he is in the back. we do have a special thing forpeople who are in this room.
bre pettis: ok? talk to adam in the back there. great. next up. over here. audience: have youdone much thought about how this affects thingsin the developing world context, because it is transformative,but the biggest problem they have is oftenjust getting the pla.
bre pettis: yeah,and then there's also juice-- electricity. so there's a group,ilab, that is super-cool. they needed umbilicalcord clamps. they had a makerbot. they just make them. and it's actuallynow the local supply for umbilical cord clamps. there's huge opportunity there.
and there's hugeopportunity for people who are connected sothat they get there and they can knowhow to use it, have the resources, andenough material. the good thing is actually aroll of makerbot pla filament goes a long way--390-some-odd chess pieces from one roll of filament. so in theory, someday youmight be able to make your own, but right now the machinethat makes filament
is the size of a semi truck,so probably not this year. but there's all sorts ofroom to innovate there. audience: sort of to follow on--you explored it a little bit, is there any hopeof getting something to make filamentout of pet bottles? bre pettis: funny you ask that. one of the challenges--so i had an idea we first started thecompany to use an apple corer to take to bottlesand just make strips
that then you could feed in. the downside isthat would only work on bottles that are morethan like 30 years old. because since then they'veoptimized the bottles, and all the bottles aredifferent thicknesses depending on how muchstress they're under. so there is a group,though, that-- this is so cool --there's a groupat the university of washington that entered this contest orthis-- th milk carton derby
on the lake washington. and the idea is you have tomake a boat out of milk cartons and race it. and they're pretty loose on whatyou do with the milk cartons and how you do that. so this group took abunch of milk cartons which are made out ofhdpe-- thermoplastic --and they actually had a reallyhard time keeping quality, because every differentkind of milk carton
doesn't necessarily havethe same quality plastic. and anyway they put thoseliterally in a blender, and then made an extruder thathad a really thick nozzle, like 1/2 an inch. and then they extruded a boat. and when they show up theysaid, no, no, no, no, no, no. this is for boats made out ofmilk cartons and milk jugs. and they were like, uh huh. i think they probablychanged the rules next year.
but there's all sortsof opportunities there. audience: thanks. bre pettis: yeah. audience: so i've got awhole list of questions, but i'll just ask one for now. what are some of those short-and long-term issues impeding the progress of 3dprinting, and what are you or others in yourindustry doing to solve them. bre pettis: hoo.
one of the biggest oneswe have knocked down. we've done. so when i was herefive years ago, i had to explain what 3dprinting was as a concept, because nobody understood it. and when i talkedabout 3d printing, i might as wellbeen talking about like-- i don't know--teleportation or something. same thing, but yeah,i feel like we've
done a pretty goodjob, because we took it on as our primary mission firstand foremost to educate people about the possibilitiesof the technology. and i feel like we'vedone that, actually. i think once we got on the coverof "wired," we're like, ok. i think most people haveat least heard of it. now i think our big challengeis how do we get people to the point where theythink it's not just for early adopters.
that it's normal touse a 3d printer. so i think that's ourbiggest challenge, is how to educate the publicto just be like, yeah, i just whipped itup on my makerbot. no big deal. i want that to be normal. right now there's 44,000 ormore people with makerbots. that's like they're alreadyliving in that future. and i think sometime thisyear, we'll get to the point
where more than 50%of the population knows someone with a 3d printer. how many people here knowsomebody with a 3d printer? ok, for this room we mayhave already gotten there. but that's, i think,the next big hurdle. and that's more ofa social engineering hurdle than a technical hurdle. audience: could you expandon technological problems you might be facing, not justcultural adaptation ones?
bre pettis: i think the questionyou're asking is sort of like, can you tell me all the secretstuff you're working on? and the weird thingis, though, just-- i hate to give you asocial engineering answer. the other thing, onthe technical side, it's actually making it easy. i don't know how many of youare early adopters, who've bought stuff on kickstarter, andyou get it and it doesn't work. but making thingsto work easily--
and this is where i lean onmy software department really heavy --is the hardestthing so good ui, good ux. we take a lot of pride in it. we're working really hard on it. and that to us, webelieve, is the key to unlocking makerbotsfor everyone everywhere. bre pettis: sure. audience: hi. bre pettis: oh, i'mgoing to come over here,
and i'll come back to you. we'll go back and forth. audience: i'd read recently thatthe core patents around laser centering have just expired. i wondered if you guys weregoing to have any plans? bre pettis: i heard that too. so laser centering,just for everybody, is where you take a bedof powder and a big laser, and you laser the powder,and it fuses one layer of it.
and then you make avery fine layer of power over on top of that layer,and you fuse it again, and it fuses to thelayer underneath. and this is super cool. at makerbot we're focusedon-- where did you go? oh, there you are. at makerbot we'refocused on-- i'm like what --we'refocused on making stuff that you can havein your living room,
on your desktop, thatcan be truly universal. and with the lasercentering stuff, that powder's so fine that youhave to wear basically a gas mask when you're around it. i don't foresee afamily wearing gas masks to do something creativegoing to happen anytime soon. so for us it's notreally-- i can't say we'll never do it,because i never say never, but it's not ourprimary focus right now.
yeah. so, thank you forcoming, and my question is are you exploring any new,different types of filaments? bre pettis: maybe. we have a couple. so we have a makerbotpla, which is-- pla stands for polylactic acid. it's a renewable bioplasticderived from corn, so it smells goodwhen you make things
with it, which is--you'd be surprised how important that is, actually. like our the firsttwo 3d printers we had were primarilyfor abs, and even though we did thetests, and it's not bad, it smells like hot plastic,which is not awesome. having pla in your home is kindof like you're making pancakes, is what it smells like. and it turns out that does--i think in some ways smell may
be one of our mostimportant purchase factors. that being said, we've alsogot-- so we've got abs. we've got pla. we've got makerbot flexiblefilament, which is super cool. and then we've got adissolvable filament. it dissolves in limonene, whichis like a nontoxic cleaning product. smells like oranges. again, smell.
there is a whole frontierof different materials. and we have somelimitations on how much heat we can have into theextruder, which limits it. and it's one of those thingswhere it's very frustrating. we've done a bunch ofresearch on a bunch of different materials. and we're like, okhere's the new material. is it better than pla? no.
and i don't know,like, material science you're limited, frustratinglyenough, to the periodic table. and so when wefind better things, we'll absolutely release them. and i wish i couldmake that happen faster and add elements tothe periodic table. audience: thank you. bre pettis: cheers. back here
audience: hey. so, hp announcedthey would soon enter the market of 3d printing. so i was wondering, what areyour thoughts about these either traditionalprinting company, or bigger consumer electronicscompany coming into the market? and what's theimpact for makerbot. bre pettis: so we've been doing3d printing for five years. and stratasys is ourwe-- that merged with,
our sister company, hasbeen doing it for 25 years. and stratasys is sort of aunified group of the smartest people in the worldpioneering 3d printing. and in many ways it was socool to get together with them, because all of our engineers gottogether with their engineers. and we were like, we'vegot these problems. we're wondering ifyou have solutions, because you've been at forlike 20 more years than us. and they were like, no thoseare just hard problems.
we've got them too. so i think that when you thinkabout competition in the world, people entering themarket, it's-- well, one, it's still so early,so fricking game on. but i'm not reallyworried about it. we're an innovation company. we're focused on empoweringpeople to innovate. yes, over here. audience: so i have two things.
one is a follow up to thefilament question earlier, and there's a separate question. are you familiar with filabot? audience: ok, so your responsedidn't seem to indicate that. sub-$600 filament creationfrom plastic shards and you can grind up previous prints fromyour existing replicator. bre pettis: so, idon't really like to talk trash about anybody. and it's a really cool thing.
and there needsto be more of it. in fact, people needto get these, find out that they need a lot ofwork, and then do the work. and it's a cool project, andpeople will absolutely do that. it's one of thosethings though, that you should look into whatyou spend on energy. you need to do it. you need to spend theamount of electricity you pump in to make it happen.
and the whole experience,and how fast you can make it, and decide if that's whereyou want to spend your time. the other thing that weobsess on pretty hardcore is ultra-high tolerances. and it's bothtolerances in terms of diameter and roundness. we have a roundness tolerance. and neither of thosethings are trivial. and, again, our setupfor making filament
is the size of a semi truck. so we're not doing that justbecause we like big things. it's because we'rereally obsessed with making exceptionally highquality filament that will just work and maintainhigh tolerances. so exciting possibilitiesare out there. i think it's exciting. i think that so many peopleget excited about recycling filament.
i think it's justnot a one liner. it's not a one line solution. audience: all right,separate question is, replicatorscost a lot of money. how much work are youputting into trying to get affordableprinters out to people? you talk about trying to targetschools and things like that, but it's difficult to getthese into people's homes if people don't have$2,000 to spend.
bre pettis: how muchwas your laptop? audience: my current laptopor my previous previous? bre pettis: let'ssay previous laptop. audience: around $500. bre pettis: ok. well, i guess you could get achromebook for like $1 now too. so i'm not goingto win on that one. we took a product that was$100,000 and we made it $2,000. so 50 times reduction in price.
it turns out that to get lowerthan that-- it's possible, but there's a few thingsyou have to do to do that. one, you can go theraspberry pi way, which is the way mostkickstarter products go, where they don't realize howmuch build materials are. and raspberry piis a great computer you can buy that costs $35. and it's at cost. and the company thatmakes the chip on it
wants you to use raspberrypis, because then you're going to prototype anotherraspberry pi and by that chip. and raspberry pisare super-awesome. they're empowering people to dowonderfully stupid things that are super innovative, thatmove the world forward. but they have amotivation to do that. so if you don't mindnot making any money or building asustainable business, you can build a reprap,which is actually,
if you want to get intolow cost 3d printing, and you don't mind spendinga couple hundred hours-- audience: i have a prusa. it's kind of broken at themoment, but i have one. bre pettis: right,see-- that's the trick. and prusa actually,to its credit, built a platform whereyou can make your own 3d printer-- a lot of themwere made on a makerbot, but you pay a price infussiness basically,
and there's no support to call. so it depends on wherethe value is for you. i mean at some pointwe may get to a point where the hardwareis a commodity. to make that work,as a business, we have to figure outother ways to make money to make that work. so i can keep hiring people. so is that a goodenough answer for you?
does that make sense? audience: good enough. bre pettis: i would love to havea more affordable 3d-- i mean, i believe we areaffordable compared to the way it used to be. and i know we have to keepmaking it more affordable. audience: hey, two questions. first, cool talk. second, i have like a300 square foot studio.
i don't have any room to put oneof these even if i wanted one-- audience: move to brookylyn. audience: --and i kind of do. is there any ideaaround 3d print shops, like we have 2d print shops. bre pettis: so if you come inwith a usb stick or whatever to our mulberry store, we'lljust make something for you. i mean, we'll chargeyou for it, but it's cheaper than amakerbot replicator.
audience: that works. bre pettis: sothat's accessible. you could also goto the workshop. audience: and the other thing. is there any-- i don'thave a good intuition for how strong these are. how do you learn that? just making stuff that breaks? bre pettis: yeah, break it.
you'll have to get a makerbotand build another one. but really, i mean, it'ssurprisingly strong. we built a chain. and we hung from itand tried to break it, and we couldn't break it. it has some torsion challenge. if you torsion it, like ifyou were to take a chain, and you were togo like this, you would use less energy than ifyou pulled on it to break it.
and the good thing is basicallyall the industrial designers are like, oh i'm not sureif that's strong enough. and then they test it,and it's strong enough. so i can say basicallyit's strong enough. but if you actually wantto know how strong it is, yeah you'll have to break it. and go for it, please. i encourage-- that's howwe all have to learn. i mean, i don'thave more for you.
so you can't break itand get another one, but please, yeah, explore it. try it out. audience: all right. i actually have a cupcake 3dprinter, and i really liked it. now the thingyou're talking about with having the socialor consumer level in the home, where it's justsomething that you would have. i still haven't seen the--what i could potential
make in the futurethat would justify the cost of even a $500 thing. i've made littlethings, like i've made a holder forthe [inaudible] for my mom or something,or something like a hook to hold headphones, andother things like that. and they're really cool. and i can justify that as ibought the printer as a toy to play with, buti couldn't really
justify it as ibought it to make this little holderfor the [inaudible]. i bought it to makeholders for my headphones, or something like that. where do we have to go to get itso that you we can make things like that peoplewill be like, ok? bre pettis: that's mychallenge, right there. so first of all, thank youfor being one of-- there's not many cupcakeowners in the world.
so thanks to google, andthanks to you for personally supporting us when we weremaking our early 3d printers. they were so fussy. i'm so glad we're past that. and yeah so there's all sortsof-- so thank you for that. i think i'll throw thequestion back at you. i would say that whilei'm sure that-- there are a lot of thingsyou can make. we literally have highschoolers who get makerbots,
to go into business and makeback the cost of the makerbot replicator in likea month and a half. protip-- make phone caseswith your school's logo on it. game on. so there's stuff like that. but i would saymaybe you just need to develop a productthat everybody wants. and then you go intosmall-scale manufacturing, and then use that as ajumping board for going big.
do you have kids yet? audience: i do not. bre pettis: so i have a daughteris 2 1/2, and i come home, and she basically says whatdid you make me on the makerbot today? i'm screwed. eventually i'll belike, do your homework. but i get to basicallybe a superhero around the housewith the makerbot,
and that justifiesit pretty well-- basically being able to makestuff like coathooks, fixing the drain when it breaks,and all that kind of stuff. but, honestly, thestuff i love to make is all the weird,artistic stuff. i just printed out a model ofthe antikythera device made by cosmo wenman,designed by cosmo wenman. and it's not a workingantikythera device for the other ancientcomputing nerds in the room.
it's a model of what theypull out of the ocean. antikythera device issomething that they pulled out of the ocean about 2,000 yearsago that is a working computer. i think it's just 70different gears in it, except for the fact thatgears weren't invented for another 1,500years, or used. so either there'sa time traveler, or somebody was really smart. super-cool.
anyway, get ye to wikipedia. so it kind of depends onwhat you're passionate about. i think when people reallyget crazy with their makerbot, it's when theyfind their passion. whether it's a dollhousefurniture, like i showed, or starting a business,or getting into something. the quadcopter fanatics onthingaverse are out of control. there's close to 1,000 mountsyou can connect to a gopro that you can printout on your makerbot.
so i would ask what'syour obsession, and then go from there. audience: i've beendoing robotics, right. bre pettis: ok, great. audience: what it seemslike you're really saying is the 3d printer wouldbe less like the 2d printer, where it's somethingthat you'd have. and it have thesame function of, i need to print out thedocuments so i can hand it
in at school, or whatever. this is more assomething to inspire you to do somethingnew and different that you couldn'thave done before. bre pettis: you're hired. good. male speaker: so let's makethis the last question, sorry. audience: so 3dprinting is cool, because you can print whateveryou want within reason.
but two groups that mightoppose certain uses for it are copyright holders,like maybe disney doesn't want you to printout a bunch of mickey mouses, even though you could. or governments youdon't want people to print out weaponry or guns. so do you see them ashaving a legitimate claim to preventingpeople from printing whatever they wanton 3d printers,
or what's your take onthose sorts of impediments? bre pettis: i'll askyou a couple questions, and then i'll tellyou my answer. first question, did you everhave a cassette tape recorder? bre pettis: ok, did youever have a vhs machine. right ok, maybe not? a vhs machine. bre pettis: ok, phew. and then did youever have a cd-r?
audience: of course. bre pettis: have you everwatched anything on youtube.? bre pettis: bam! so just like youtube, frankly,we're absurdly dmca compliant. so it's not going to bethat different from issues youtube has. and in fact we get them. we have one companythat makes little tanks that tabletop gamers-- itcosts less than $1 in filament
to make them on your makerbot,but when people post them on thingaverse and theyuse the brand name, the brand sends us a dmcatakedown, and we're complaint. we comply. and it'll be interesting. so far on youtube,actually, you've had a pretty interestingride with this. i think, in fact, you're sortof the test case for this here, in that, there'sa whole procedure--
and i'm not a lawyer--but there's a procedure that once something comesdown, the person can say, no, i really did makethat remake of "sleepless in seattle." and it looks exactlylike the original movie. put it back up. and the only way it comes downafter that is from the courts. nobody's taken itthat far with things, but it'll be an adventure.
and we're going to-- just likewe survived cassette tapes, vhs machines, cd-rdrives --we're going to explore it an make it work. audience: i want to hearmore about the guns part. that was interesting. audience: yeah, the guns. bre pettis: oh, so the questionis what about 3d printed guns, and i get this a lot. and my standard answeris basically like,
there's way moreinteresting things that you can make ona makerbot than a gun, and way more easier waysto acquire a firearm, you also have tothink, like-- yeah, i think i wouldjust leave it there. i think that's all toreally say about that, because sure it'ssuper-exciting. and there was a moment wherelike every channel was like, did you know that you mighthave a 3d printer in your house,
and it could dosomething very scary. news at 11. we had that kindof hype around it, which did a lot to promote3d printing, frankly. but it's just not our spirit. at makerbot we're obsessed withunlocking people's creativity. so i just-- it'llbe an adventure. male speaker: thankseveryone for coming. let's give a warmround of applause.