Gadgetory

I welcome back to see this coverage of CES 2015 joining me here are three distinguished guests from the world of 3d printing all of which are taking new approaches to the process of 3d printing they are Daniel Apple stone CEO of other machine company Connor McCormack's CEO of em core technologies and Colin Randy who is the managing managing director of formlabs thank you much so much for being here joining me from my panel my CES panel so let's start with what this is all about let's get some context to the whole thing in a short time I feel after all that all the CSS I've been a part of I've seen 3d printing go from maybe like a couple random outposts here on the show floor and blossoming into just dozens and dozens of different options the whole 3d printer thing has exploded and but for the most part all these machines are doing the same thing they're they're squirting out hot plastic into layers and building and using same prof sometimes they're larger or smaller machines sometimes they're handling slightly more refined materials but they're all essentially this basic idea of the 3d printer we've come to understand but as we've gone to gotten to know these 3d printers we've also come to millen like their shortcomings the frustrations with 3d printers and working with plastic it shifts it shrinks it sticks is slow to work with and sometimes the end product no matter how expensive the machine is feels a little cheap like a like a Lego that you're holding in this panel we're speaking with three representatives of companies that are taking a different approach to 3d printing new directions opening up new material possibilities working with wood working with paper metal circuit boards rubber resins if 3d printing is to be the revolution we're all thinking it's going to be it's going to take more than plastic and these are three companies that are really trying to charge forward and make that happen so let's get to some question actually let's describe the different companies actually I feel like that's that's a big part of this starting with Danielle and with other mil your product described to me you can probably describe to me the best best possible way what what other metal does sure yeah it is just high precision cutting of 3d objects out of whatever material you put in there so you can put a block of wood you can put a slab of metal you can put a little piece of linoleum and you carve away the shape that you want instead of adding layers you're cutting away layers so it's a traditional manufacturing technique but we just make it small and portable so you can have one at home yeah so I've seen you know larger CNC Mills that take up an entire room and this is this is a desktop mill for people who are interested in making smaller things I feel like maybe one of the communities that you've tapped into very quickly was that people who want to make their own custom circuit board smaller things that really need the precision and need to do that subtractive kind of process for the 3d printing yeah absolutely i'm circuit boards is so huge because most people they don't have a big fab lab in their backyard you know they can't easily access china so instead you have a piece of manufacturing that comes to you and so you can use it to cut whatever you want that includes high-precision circuit boards so if you're thinking about making a connect at home or you have an idea for a wearable now you can make your own circuit boards and iterate really quickly we should also mention you're wearing some some products that you created on ya know i love the application for jewelry so all these crafts entrepreneurs that you know they send a way to get pieces made and then they sell you can just make them at home so out of brass or silver or making you know custom cast plastic parts um it's really it's really going to open up the world for material possibilities for you know the average person and then Connor talk to me about emcore you got to is it two different products that work with paper yeah right so firstly thank you for the opportunity to speak here today I think it's great that you're actually talking about just learned in plastic because a lot of times we hear it on in the industry they think it's only like an FTM type of technology so effectively we looked at this industry very differently we felt from everybody else it's almost ten years ago almost sometimes embarrassed to say how long but 10 years from when we first had the idea of completely taking the industry and turning it upside down and coming up on the material that was extremely accessible very low cost and durable I'm you said paper right everybody can can get their hands on a couple of range of paper why don't we try and make it 3d printer that runs on regular office paper to consider your photocopier into your printer in the office so interior you can set up robbing a few sheets of paper to go into another printer you put it into a 3d printer and what we do is we print that full-color a very high color resolution treaty objects at extremely low cost you know maybe 10 to 20 times cheaper than plastic very very green so you can take this part at rodan to recycle bin at the end but the color because we use ink and paper we get very high color correlation between the two so we have two products and one does fold hi res bitmap image in color and Dylan doesn't do the full color so it depends on what way you want to go yeah I think that's one of the things when people invest in a conventional 3d printer they realized very quickly which is the amount of just wasted plastic that gets tossed all over the place because you're you're going to probably mess up one out of every couple prints or two out of every three prints you do something's going to happen then you've just got a glob of plastics if you need to do something absolutely and the way I look at 3d printing it's like it's like a tool in the toolbox you know every machine has its own strengths and weaknesses yeah and different people need metals and different people need plastics and different people need for color and and it really is that the an industry that has a need for lots of different types of technologies so it but the general trend across all of them is that they can be very expensive to run and we try to really change that and really upset the apple tart and then Colin talk to me about formlabs so formlabs makes sorry it makes a stereo lithography machine and those machines have existed they were one of the first 3d printing machines but what formlabs wanted to do was much like other mill put put a printer on every person's desk so it's it's called a prosumer printer so it's not it's not one that you may have in your home but it's one that you'll see engineers and designers using to make things it uses a resin which is centered by a laser and that sort of chemical reaction creates a lot of possibilities what happens is this is a piece this is um it's still an additive process so much like the fdm machines you'll be able to get a large amount of complexity you'll even be able to build complexity into the objects but you get a really high resolution and you don't get some of the ridges that you'll see in the fdm objects but the interesting thing is also the chemical reaction because you can Center plastic you can make flexible plastics you can make things that you can cast jewelry with you can change the power of the laser so things can be very very have a very fine resolution or they can move very fast so today we even release a software update where you can actually print parts faster than the end at fdm machine so it's a really interesting time for us as we kind of figure this figure our way to this space and so the resin in your machine it's liquid at first right you've got like a pool of resin but then that gets fed through the machine and then just cauterize door or made made hard with the yeah so the reason if you see the printer it has an orange top it's because it's blocking a UV light it's a blu ray laser so you it's a very very fine point so you get really really fine details so you see people building we see people building big things but you also see them building small figurines and very high high fidelity objects it's really cool all right cool all right now talking still about the the problems of 3d printing or the frustrations of 3d printing tell me about how each of you I me future products solve a problem how did you come across the this the idea for the product in relation to what was the the problem that you were trying to solve for you know like Danielle like in the world of 3d printing instead of just coming out of another 3d printer Howard how was the other milf solving a problem or taking a different approach well we actually feel like one of the big barriers is not knowing how to design in 3d and so with a milling machine you have you know even if you have a square of metal you can just draw in Illustrator or some drawing program and just cut that and so giving people the capability of like just teaching them that a digital design can be physical is a huge thing to do and so instead of requiring people learn 3d design you can just take a drawing that you have you know write your name and engrave it in the back of something and so we wanted to just start there and hopefully you know as as the collective consciousness about 3d printing 3d design grows then people will say oh I can actually make I could make a you know a chess piece out of wood in addition to you know with 3d printing but we wanted to give people like the simplest possible starting point so that everybody can really get involved with computer control manufacturing essentially Connery I think you've already answered this question but the getting to Danielle same point but how much does software play into the usefulness of the product or any roadblocks to people adopting the product is software a critical ingredient routable piece of you know that can be real bottleneck if you can't generate the data and you know if you and garbage in you'll get garbage out so it's one thing get the right data but then it can be very hurt just to get data at all and we've we found this with our own technology before we went to the full color we were dealing with a file format which is called stl which is deals with usually a white file it doesn't have any color but its energy but a bitmap image on there we were just dropped into the sea of a new technology a new area that we knew really nothing about initially so we have to really you know swim really fast so trying to generate color data it can be problem but it's getting easier and easier Daniel mentioned you know you can sketch at things people are making apps know for your tablets that you can actually design with easier to have kids to actually design a book color and all those various things but that can be a bit of the challenge on a better but if the hype maybe I feel part of the problem at the industry is better the hype and it's not so much aware the technology is going to go because I believe that that's going to get there but where the technology is right now you know people might take imprinted on mobile or people canít ink that from the fringe and it's the only one to realize that each machine you know has its own limitations but I do believe that in time 5 10 years time we will look back at this time and said this was a start something major talking about currently and maybe you can answer this question Colin the customers I think a lot of people they look at 3d printers they see them on the show floor and I think these are great but like maybe it's not right for me how does how how is 3d printing going to connect with like that just a general consumer or is it is that is that connection may be forced to much so that's the for me that's the dirty secret of 3d printing that we're kind of working through right now in from the 80s up till now these machines were huge they cost 300 thousand dollars and it you had one or two people that ran the machine you would come and you would give them your file they would fix it they would print it for you and they would give it to you but what you're seeing with these machines is your having to have an experience where people interact with it directly which means that you have to change your change price point in the way they get to it but you also have to change the full experience so what you're hearing Daniel talk about about being able to sit down and understand how the machine works the paradigm shift is that actually changes your design process it changes how you think about things it's like when you learn how a computer worked as you learn how this technology works you actually think about making things differently and so the big deal is have any experience that allows you to learn and understand an easy road maps that they get you there but as is the the customers that you're finding for your products is it still more like an institutional customer educational market or is there really this kind of mythical wellspring of like home tinker's who are rushing to adopt the 3d printers the foot of the other the other interesting thing is it's it's sort of a massive market of niches so you see like there's this technology is running in some of the highest in institutions that I know of but then it's also giving birth to tons of Kickstarter's of people who just want to figure things out so it's one of the challenges I would I would argue for our our businesses are trying to find these niches and help them in the right ways when you can't serve them as a mass market there is a market there for the tinkerers or the maker community you know we're always kind of selling into that area but part of the challenges how are we going to jump from hundreds of thousands of people buying machines to millions of people buying machines and that's where there is a little bit of a job both software hardware we all need to kind of work in this to make it happen but if there is the desire there it will happen and people there are examples where people are printing out stuff for their home use so once once there's a clear use case for it it'll just happen in South people will pull the technology in but still there is some challenges I think from like I know from the 2d printing I call the opposite of what we do 2d printing in your office that mean HP or one of the big players there might make one and a half million printers a month and the whole industry know combined is doing tens of thousands so how do we go from tens of thousands to millions a month and that is still a bit away but i think it is it's coming it's it's it's there and now we're also living at a time where there's a lot of options for people who are looking for a 3d printer I did the latest issue of make magazine just like reviewed 26 in the magazine that are all essentially doing the same thing I feel like that 26 is a low number compared to the amount of 3d printers we're seeing on the show floor here at CES is that a sustainable amount of competitors all trying to do the same thing or are we gonna see no we're gonna see a whittling down or a buying up or how is that going to consolidate from your point of view I think there will be people who are good at each different piece you know there will be the one that is like really killer raw materials really high-resolution the one that is you know the inexpensive but they'll also be the ones that have great support essentially like the people who really understand how to build a community and how to reach beyond a hundred thousand people to the hundred thousands of a month and that's really who's going to be there to teach people the skills that they need and so there will be 3d printing companies that do that really well and so will see a combining and I'm I'm seeing you know it's probably big enough to support maybe 10 really big players but it'll be you know it'll consolidate to who's good at what yeah cause you as you mentioned you know the lot of there's hundreds I reckon it could be two or three hundred variants of the the fdm type of technology is so it does put you guys in a pretty good position to not be directly competing with the same the same process I mean you guys all we have unique different kind of outside of the 3d printing perspectives on it I mean you you you have two challenges you have to kind of grow the market and create you know on ramps for people to learn how to use it but the the market is still finite so if someone using an FTM prints are well enough they they may not spend time with your technology so while we are why our technology is different we still have some of the same people that we we address and we serve we're lucky in some cases that many of these people have made multiple machines and they they definitely want a mill if they have an FTM printer and they would love to play around with paper or resin so that that plays in our favor but right now until like you get mass adoption like you have computers and front and paper printers TD 2d paper printer so yeah and then what are the next challenges for your product I mean we work for I know I've been hearing a lot about materials materials materials is that is it is it about Biggers and about cheaper is it about finding the next material that people want to play with Daniella sure I think for us it's about learning the needs of a more general population like we want to go after people who are making crafts on Etsy or people who are making crafts at home that want to turn it into a business how do we help them take what they're already doing and do it with our machine basically it takes someone who's doing something by hand and give them a way of automating part of the process so that's our challenge is accessing this large group of people who's never done anything with a computer-controlled machine before but now they can I'm for us I mean like any company we're all I assumed we're all working on new technology we do see us as an R&D company and so even though we sell them it's really printer we see us as a decor as in our day companies so we're constantly innovating filing patents I'm just like you mentioned you know looking at different materials looking at smaller machines faster machines but you know there's always a challenge I think people think that you know you might as well close the patent office because there's no more innovation or nod and treat your printing but the challenge is that everybody is working on something you and anybody can have a good idea like anybody watching this a kid at home among looking after the kids it just needs an idea I'm with these technologies you can actually innovate you I do really quickly have a proof of concept and go to market so I'm surprised Connor 44 m core that there isn't I'm for a product like paper it seems like would be like a really safe planet to have like a more like low end consumer like yeah device to for kids to play around with or not maybe kids but for people to play around with yeah well I could tell you what I'd have to kill you looking no but we we realize that too I mean there is a we get a lot of requests by making a smaller kind of a home use printer and then we also get on the other side for making very large printers for printing like not just letter size but like office that sighs yeah so we can kind of go either direction and so it's exciting direction for us but you know what where we're going to go next and so you know just watch the space and 44 formlabs so with us I think if you you listen you hear like make it cheaper make it bigger make it faster but if you if you listen more it's about an experience it's about the support that Daniel mentioned the fidelity of the print the possibility of the different types of residents so we try and hold all those things as a symphony and and deliver like this experience that feels like no one can get anywhere else and that's sort of why if you kind of look you'll see a you'll see a machine upgrade happened or you'll see a materials upgrade happen or you'll see a software upgrade happen so for us right now we're playing with all these parts of the ecosystem to create the best experience you can possibly get into space our whole yeah guys I think I think that's going to be our time thank you for joining me thanks so much for joining us today for this panel lots of more cool stuff and people and gadgets and guests coming our way at the cns stage up next we have a gps pet tag that does much more than fine lost pets stay tuned