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Mr. 3D Roboto With Jesse Chang Of MDAR And Marc Gyöngyösi Of Intelligent Flying Machines

By Tracy Hazzard

WTF Mr. 3D | 3D Printing And Robotics

 

3D printing and robotics are two of the latest innovations in material technology that have the potential to change the world in so many ways. In what ways do these two technologies collaborate in the real world? Jesse Chang of MDAR Technologies and Marc Gyöngyösi of Intelligent Flying Machines, Inc. join Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard to talk about how their companies are utilizing 3D printing technology to get their projects going. Robotics technology development is an iterative process and 3D printing offers a time- and cost-saving solution to many of its flexibility needs. Meanwhile, stay tuned to learn more about the Autodesk Spark Investment Fund, the world’s first 3D printing investment program.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Mr. 3D Roboto With Jesse Chang Of MDAR And Marc Gyöngyösi Of Intelligent Flying Machines

We thought we’d have an entrepreneurship and 3D printing roundtable as you would describe it because there are multiple people in here.

We have two people we’re interviewing in this episode.

It’s a little hard to manage, but it’s worthwhile because I want to give our audience an opportunity to understand something that we’ve been talking about again and again on the show. That is that every startup and entrepreneur need to think about 3D printing. I don’t mean this in, “You should start a 3D printing business.” I mean this in, “3D printing can be a critical factor in your success as an entrepreneur or startup.” There are three reasons why. Number one is that it lets you blow through iterations, testing, and some of these things. It’s not just prototyping, it’s also user testing, market testing, and other things in a quick and inexpensive way. We’ll talk about with Jesse Chang from MDAR and Marc Gyongyosi of IFM-Tech.

That’s Intelligent Flying Machines.

We’re talking about robots and drones.

It’s always a popular subject, but there are real-world examples of startups and new businesses using 3D printing to their advantage and their business is not about 3D printing.

The second part is the idea that you don’t have to spend a lot of your startup dollars on tooling before you’ve dialed in that design. That is such a huge savings that we wish we had way back when.

It’s all too often overlooked.

The third reason is customization, unique application, and whether or not it’s a specific end-user that you want to make a special custom model for. Personalization and customization are a general part of what could differentiate you from the masses. Those are three great reasons for every entrepreneur to consider 3D printing. We wanted to give some real-world applications and examples of how this is working.

The other interesting thing that’ll come into this interview is how Jesse is a part of the Autodesk Spark Investment Fund Group. That is a group trying to invest money in 3D printing businesses and startups.

If you have a startup that’s related to 3D printing, specifically, and software, hardware materials, they’re looking at all. They’re looking at the expansion of 3D printing, in general, and how their $100 million can help do that. We’ll touch on that as well.

One last thing we want to mention here because it’s talked about a little bit in the interview and wants to provide a little context for it is that we have been in business for many years. We had a company in the late ‘90s called ttools where we created some products and accessories for the PDA, Personal Digital Assistant, market. It was the predecessor to the smartphone industry, which is so big now. We had experience in being entrepreneurs at that time and how we dealt with challenges from big Fortune 500 companies.

Intellectual property, how we handled that.

Disputes, we went through patent litigation and prevailed. That whole story is the subject of a course on entrepreneurship. It’s a case study, Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property, at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management. Professor Conley teaches that course. He uses us as a case study to teach their students, set them up with the criteria, ask them what decisions they would make, show them what we did, and ask what they learned through that process.

We’ve had many students over the years since I gave the first interview with their grad students in 2005. Many students contact us over the years with lots of interesting projects and questions they’re working on. Jesse Chang is one of those people who contacted me. That’s how we’ve connected and now, we’re finding that our interests are overlapping again.

That gives you a little framework because we are talking about 3 or 4 different things in the interview. We have two interview subjects, but it makes some sense so hang in there. Let’s go to the interview and then we’ll talk about it some more after.

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Thank you both for joining us, Jesse and Marc, who are both entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs of startups and ventures. Why don’t we start with you, Jesse? Tell us a little bit about MDAR. It’s called motion contrast 3D scanning, which is intriguing to us. Tell us a little bit about what it is and how 3D printing has figured into that startup.

Thank you for having me. MDAR is developing a next-generation 3D scanner. We have developed a 3D scanning technology that enables machines to see accurately in full outdoor sunlight at video rates. The reason why this is important is because it’s a first for structure light depth cameras. What is a structured light depth camera? If you think about things like Kinect, that’s a good example. You have a camera and you have a laser. The ability to see in full outdoor sunlight at the video rate is a first for this kind of technology. The Kinect is blind outside. By using our patented technology, we’re able to have 3D scanning work both indoors and outdoors. This is especially important for three industries, one, the makers’ industry who are the main users of 3D printers, two, industrial automation and three, self-driving cars.

Marc, tell us a little bit about IFM because it uses a slightly different technology,

IFM stands for Intelligent Flying Machine. Here at IFM Technologies, we have developed the world’s first flying robot or, as people like to call it, a quadcopter that offers reliable indoor localization out of the box. That’s important because now, quadcopters or drones, as they’re also called, can only fly outdoors when they have GPS. The moment GPS drops out, you can’t control them. Somebody who’s not skilled behind the remote control will lose control and crash it.

We have one of those drones crashing into a tree. Our videographer has done that so we know exactly what happens. He couldn’t figure out why it went wrong because he didn’t feel like it was his flying that was the problem. It may well have been a drop out in GPS.

Relying on GPS is one thing that makes it easy to fly outdoors. Once you want to take them indoors, that’s where we see the huge potential for flying machines gets difficult. Research is working hard in trying to solve these problems. There are varying approaches. However, there’s no quadcopter that you can take out of the box and fly indoors. IFM developed a prototype that can do that for you.

We’re working indoors and outdoors with the two of you.

Nobody wants to be tooling for a technology that isn’t going to come out for three or four years. 3D printing solves that. Click To Tweet

One of the things that you would imagine the ability to have systems that can work both indoors and outdoors. They are two challenging environments, the ability to see and navigate. While you might think these are different problems, they are in the same family of problems. It’s how Marc and I got connected in the first place.

Each of these different products and different businesses seems to involve scanning the environment to navigate. You guys work together in each of these startups in some ways. Are you using similar technology in both of these? Is that also how it’s tied together?

We do have plans to put MDAR on one of our intelligent flying machines but we went a different approach in terms of localization. On IFM, we only use a single monocular camera which is running complex computer vision algorithms on board to determine its position with respect to the origin. However, because our intelligent flying machines are the first that are that small and yet, as powerful as a flying laptop. We can also run other programs and systems onboard such as MDAR. That’s why it’s the prime candidate to test out MDAR onboard a flying robot.

Let’s talk a little bit more about entrepreneurship and startups. Have you used 3D printing in your prototyping or testing process? Has it made life easier for you?

Yes, we use 3D printing. Given the early stage that we’re at, 3D printing is an invaluable tool for us, especially when it comes to prototyping. Even as we begin to roll out the alpha product that we plan on being able to sell in small limited quantities, for our initial production runs, many of our parts will be 3D printed. This is not scalable in the long run but at least as we’re trying to get some initial traction in the market, 3D printing helps us shortcut a lot of time in getting to market.

Tooling costs are expensive. If you’ve made a mistake or make a change, you haven’t wasted your startup money on that or your seed money, in this case.

Looking at how we built the first generation of IFM, we call it IFM Alpha, what makes it possible for intelligent flying machines with the small and light is the lightweight design. When you go through a lot of different designs, you make a CAD drawing on the computer. That’s not the same as having something in your hands that you can look at and feel. Even if it’s not to scale, having the 3D printed model out of the printer in 30 minutes is something invaluable to the development of such a platform.

We’ve been encouraging entrepreneurs to consider the use of 3D printing in three ways. Number one, it’s obvious for prototyping. Many of us who have been prototyping for years use 3D printing in some format or capacity. The initial run, as you pointed out, Jesse, that’s a critical factor. The third way is to create something special, something that can’t be done in another method. If you need a design that can’t be made with an injection mold or a material that needs to be a lighter weight that isn’t possible to develop in a different method, it’s a great way to do that. Long-term personalization, other things if you want to create your robots, you want them to look like your robot.

There are a lot of products being sold directly to consumers that use parts that are 3D printed for a production sense. There are speed limitations to that. In scale, maybe some cost limitations. I would think in the quadcopter arena, lightweight being important, you can create some unique structures by 3D printing that are hollow. They’re not completely hollow but have some structure inside of them. That’s pretty unique to 3D printing. I don’t know that it would be as easy to injection mold those sorts of things. One of the questions I have for you is how many iterations do you think you’ve gone through in the testing of your early alpha design?

Our prototype is the thirteenth design iteration. The way I design, every time I change something major, I say it’s a new iteration. I started using 3D printers with probably the 3rd or 4th generation of that. Ever since then, I printed a half-scale model of it with all the components. Initially, I printed the onboard systems, such as the onboard computer, like blocks. Having those parts that are roughly the same size and being able to play around and arrange them was also important.

That’s a great tip for people to be able to visualize where all the components are going to go and the scale of things. Jesse, what about you?

With MDAR, we go through a lot of different iterations. As we go through with the production process and as we’re engaging systems engineers, we’re going through iteration after iteration. It is an iterative process. Having the flexibility that 3D printing machines offer is helpful for us.

We can’t stress enough to many people out there how different it is coming from CAD design and going into the actual printed format. It is not direct. There are lots of surprises. The first time they get something out in three dimensions isn’t always what they expect it to be. We hear this so often from entrepreneurs and startups where they spend all this money getting into their first tool or product and it is a disaster because they didn’t take the time to go through the physical iteration of it. Something can be deceptive in the computer when you’re coming up with something unique, original, and new, not a redo of something else that already exists out there. Did something like that happen to either of you in your development process?

We did have a lot of different designs that we worked through. There’s one trick that I did find out about 3D printing, especially when using the MakerBot 3D printers. You have to set the scale to 103% to get the actual size.

We’ve been hearing that from a lot of people who say, “I printed it and it didn’t come out quite right.” What material are you using?

We’re using both ABS and PLA.

Did you find it to be the same for both?

Yes.

For our audience, there can be some variation on that from printer to printer. When your actual dimensional accuracy is critical for your application, you need to do some test prints. Print something that’s 100 millimeters long, measure it after it’s printed, and make sure it is 100 millimeters long. If not, that can give you a good reference point to adjust the scale.

We came about that when we were trying to fit the onboard computer into one of the bases that we designed. That was printed to scale on a 3D printer that didn’t fit. We re-measured everything. We figured out that the dimensions were right on the computer, but they were not in the 3D print. We printed it again thinking that it was an inaccuracy from the printer. At some point, we realized that it’s the scale that’s off.

These are the kinds of surprises that happen to you when you’re working on a project. It would be a shame if you adjusted your design on the computer, thinking that was it. You go to injection mold it someday from a drawing and it doesn’t fit. Injection molding has different issues of plastic shrinkage and other things, so you need to know what you’re doing there as well. You’ve got to get some experience with what tools and processes you’re using and leave build-in time for iterations because it is necessary. Tell us about whether or not you feel that you could have done these businesses without 3D printing as one of the tools or how much harder or more expensive?

It would have been way more expensive because we’re working with expensive materials on the quadcopter itself. Once we go forward and build the prototypes from the actual material, we have to be sure about our design. We’re not talking about $50, but we’re talking about materials that cost $300, $400. If you start building different models and you need a lot of them and you will see if your design is not there, it gets expensive fast. Without 3D printing, it would probably have been way harder.

WTF Mr. 3D | 3D Printing And Robotics

3D Printing And Robotics: 3D printing technologies enable smaller players to enter into the hardware startup world by significantly reducing tooling costs and risks.

 

It’s a bigger barrier to entry without 3D.

I would say the same for MDAR. With the abilities that we can have with 3D printing, it helps us shortcut the time to market. Had we gone through the whole process of tooling, I don’t believe that this is something we’d be able to feasibly bring to market in the timeframe that we would want to make this thing profitable. I feel that 3D printing technologies are truly essential for enabling smaller players to enter into the startup world, especially on the hardware side.

One thing that people don’t count on is that those delays to getting to market are costly. That’s where one of the tripping points for so many startups happen.

Going to your earlier point, I want to talk a little bit about the 3D printing software. With the 3D printing software, you bring up an interesting point. When you have a cool CAD design, how do you necessarily translate it into something that you can print? A lot of it, as you rightly pointed out, is lost in translation. You get these mangled pieces. You have to stay there and watch it forever. Some of these limitations are inherent in this generation of 3D printing technologies. What I’ve been taking a look at here in my capacity at the Spark Fund, we’ve been seeing a lot of cool new 3D printing technologies that are coming out, especially on the vat photopolymerization side and stereolithography. Carbon 3D is one example of a company working on this. On the sintering side for things like metal, a lot of these cool new 3D printing technologies are becoming much faster. Their error rates are getting lower too. Advancements on both the hardware and software side are essential. Moving beyond normal FDM, PLA, and ABS plastics is a crucial next step to make 3D printing viable on a mass commercial scale.

It’s a combination of the two. Our thoughts are also on a third side and that is the content whether it’s entrepreneurs like you using it and showing what it can do for a startup or entrepreneurship for the product category. On the other content side, it’s not good enough to have a bunch of cheesy design models that are free. I hate to say that word but that’s what they are. They don’t have relevance to people’s lives or businesses. It makes it harder for people to have a vision of what 3D printing can do for them. When you come in with your great companies and startup ventures and you show them how you’ve been able to use them, you give other companies a vision for how they can use it and where they can take it.

There’s a lot of cool innovation going on and a lot of people working on a lot of different interesting products. There are a lot of new complex geometries is another way of rephrasing your statements about how cool shapes you can make that are hollow and light that you can put on things like quadcopters. You can make intricate parts. A lot of these kinds of shapes are cool. You can make them using existing manufacturing processes. At the same time, you also want to make it scalable too. As you move further along the commercialization stage from a few limited orders to hundreds to thousands to millions of units that you’re trying to sell. You’re making it scalable as well. At the millions level, this technology is still lagging in terms of economics, both in terms of time and cost, for 3D printing on a manufacturing scale.

That will change as well in advancements in hardware and software. Speed is one of those things that also will naturally advance. It may be hard for those of us involved in seeing 3D printing happen at the local level to think, “What’s it going to take?” It may take ten years before we see it. It may happen a lot faster. We’ve been advising some of our entrepreneur clients to look at the cost structure of it. When you’re in a startup venture, there are many startup plans where they think, “We’re going to be in a no-profit mode because we’re going to be marketing. We’re dumping a lot of money into brand building and all of these things.” Those are perfectly acceptable. A lot of venture capitalists understand that those processes happen. There’s no equity or revenue coming in at that point.

You have to think about that initial run the same way. You can’t look at the initial run and say, “It took me five hours to print, and that costs X. It takes Y amount of materials.” You can’t make a direct and say, “That means that this initial run, I should charge the addition of those two things.” It doesn’t work like that. You have to think of your initial run, what we call in retail a lost leader. You think of it as, “Let’s figure out what it needs to cost, what I believe it will cost in the hundreds of thousands of units or tens of thousands of units. Let’s charge that price now, understanding that it costs me more but it didn’t cost me tooling.” You have to think about it in that way and put it into your startup plan for your funding.

That’s how we think about it here at MDAR, exactly on those lines. We also plan on rolling out different iterations and models depending on the size of the target markets too, and for the specific uses.

Let’s circle back to something Jesse mentioned to make sure our readers understand this because many might not. Jesse, can you share with us a little bit about what the Spark Investment Fund is and it’s trying to do?

In addition to working on MDAR, I also work as a member of the investment team for the Spark Investment Fund at Autodesk. What is Spark Investment Fund? It’s an early-stage venture capital fund focused on investing in 3D printing. We’re the only and largest 3D printing investment fund. We’re interested in all kinds of different startups that are introducing innovation on the software and hardware side of 3D printing. If you or any of your readers have any cool new startups they want to pitch us, we welcome you to come to our website and submit a pitch. It’s Spark.Autodesk.com/fund.

A lot of the challenges now and what we’ll be able to do is to make 3D printing even more accessible than it already is. We’ll catalyze even more entrepreneurship by bringing down production costs even further for the person or the makers out there. One of the areas that we believe there’s a lot of progress for is on the software side. This is an area that we’re interested in. On the software side, there are things that do a mesh repair and all these different kinds of functions and features that go into 3D printing software. We’re also working on our platform called Spark. That’s about it.

I read on the website information that there are $100 million to spur 3D printing information. That’s quite a big fund.

The $100 million is a starting point for us to take a look at the 3D printing industry. We want to build an ecosystem around Spark, which is a reason why we’re investing so much money into this space. We’re trying to capitalize on development along with hardware, software, materials and even services.

You were talking about SLA and some of the sintering and other processes that are going on there. They’re great but they’re a little color challenged and quality of material challenged, even though they’re faster. If we can find a good convergence between the fun of filament and the fun of color and merging that with these speedier processes, that would be a great addition to the 3D printing world.

We’re all about enabling development on all different types of hardware platforms, whether it’s DMLS, SLA, FDM, or MakerBot. We want to create an open platform that will be able to service all these different kinds of technologies, hardware and materials that are out there to create an infinite number of possibilities.

Everybody was excited when they saw the press about the Carbon 3D printer and how quickly it printed. That’s a wonderful thing and it’s much needed. There are many legitimate realistic applications for it. However, I was personally a little disappointed when it was a one-color resin again. At some point, that has a limitation. It would be great to see more advancements where tons of material and certainly color combinations of material in one print are more possible. You talk about this fund so it means that simultaneous research and projects can be happening. Carbon can concentrate on what they’re doing best. The material people can concentrate on what they’re doing best. A bunch of interesting new startups can do some pushing.

Color is an issue with a lot of different technologies. Speed, build size, and a lot of different issues still exist. I don’t think that you’re going to be able to find a magic bullet that solves all the different issues all at once. This is going to be an incremental process where different kinds of technologies can all coexist together. Different technologies have different relative strengths. In some technologies, you will want the ability to print fast. In other technologies, you’ll want to be able to print and have it in full color after you print it. Even with these existing technologies, like FDM and MakerBot, you’re not exactly getting full-color fidelity there either. There are limitations there as well. It’s a matter of balancing all the different kinds of trade-offs and increasing the tools that you have. Having an open platform and being hardware agnostic are so important.

To tie back to MDAR and IFM, one of the things that you mentioned was that you were going to be making different styles or models, in a sense, for different applications. That’s where I see the same thing happening in 3D printing, in general. Maybe you need a specific printer in a business to business sense. You need a different printer to do a specific job that has its requirements. These one-size-fits-all printers are great for consumers but not so great for the business application.

That’s also something where we see a huge potential for 3D printing technology with what we want to do. One of our goals with IFM and what we’re doing already with BMW as one of our first clients, is integrating our flying machines into existing problems and trying to solve those problems with our machines. That means that we’re orienting ourselves towards a service-based business model where we have the technology and can sell this as a research platform but we can also develop customized solutions. For example, BMW, in their applications, needs a slightly different flying platform than if you’re flying in the lab. There are different sensors that you might want to put on it. You’ll be able to go into the lab, make a small mount for a new sensor printed out in 20 or 30 minutes, and mount that right away without having to mess around with duct tape and hot glue. That’s valuable. That’s where we see huge potential for the future and the next steps for IFM.

It’s a whole new world when you think about it. It’s a whole new world to customer responsiveness. That’s what we’ve been hearing from many of the businesses that are successful so far. We heard that from PetPrints 3D. Customer service responsiveness and being able to step people through the process of 3D printing and what it’s enabling you to do makes you a more valuable partner. This sounds like business to business applications with BMW. They may have needs that change for whatever they’re going to need for the flying machines. You change it as you go. You certainly don’t want to be tooling for something that isn’t going to come out for 3 or 4 years when the model comes out. You want to be testing them out ahead of time.

There’s an interesting story my grandfather, who was an engineer at BMW, told me. I’m working together with him on IFM because he has a lot of experience in hardware design and lightweight design. He told me about how they used to develop the suspension systems on the cars at BMW. There were him and Maschinsky who was the leader in this area at BMW at that time. They were working on novel concepts for that. When he saw 3D printing technology, he realized what they could have done and achieved in addition to what they did back then by being able to print it out like complex shapes, as Jesse said. What they used to do is they will take toy cars and they would mock them up with suspension systems and different drive systems so they will be able to simulate what the dynamics of the vehicle would be. As you would rotate the driving wheel, the wheels would react differently based on whatever new concepts they had implemented. They had to physically build that out of small wooden sticks that they had to glue together with the most exotic components they use in those markups. Nowadays, if you go into a prototyping shop at BMW, you only see 3D printing technologies in all the other early-stage markups because it’s accessible and easy.

If you have a startup that involves 3D printing, start thinking about submitting your pitch to Autodesk Spark Investment Fund. Click To Tweet

We have not used FoamCore. We used to make FoamCore models to some of our early designs. I don’t think we’ve done that in many years. Computer technology and now 3D printing technology in many years have changed so much of the way business and development is done. Jesse, to tie that back to what you said about how you met us, which was through Professor Conley and the entrepreneurship and innovation program that you took, we made a lot of mistakes in the early days of making the ttools. We had fit problems with the seam between the barrel and the top of the pen, even between the pen, which is an accessory, and the Palm Pilot itself that the product was meant to go with. There are many things that 3D printing would have helped us tremendously. It was not accessible or affordable. We made mistakes and things that could have cost us our business. It cost us some of our timelines on the business in terms of time and money there. I think about how fast and easy we could have done it now. It’s lightning speed.

If only we could bring patent filing costs down as well.

That’s a whole other subject. We’re working on a chapter within a book on that. All those lessons we learned from making all those mistakes over the years and how we use patents, technology, and different things now. How we operate our business is different. Thank you both for being here and talking to us about startups and entrepreneurship. It’s been useful for people to know an application of how 3D printing is changing the startup and entrepreneurship process.

Thank you for having us on your podcast. It’s been an honor to be able to meet you after reading about you in Professor Conley’s class back at Kellogg. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see you soon.

We’re looking forward to trying to do some more tie-ins to programs like that and help answer questions to those that come out of the program and those who are in the program. We’re working on some different methods for helping more entrepreneurs out there.

Thank you much, Tracy and Tom. I enjoyed talking about the way 3D printing made it possible for IFM to reach a new dimension both indoors and outdoors.

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Many of you may have heard of the $100 million Spark Investment Fund and thought, “This is the place.”

If you didn’t perk up with that, maybe you were distracted or something. That should get everybody’s attention.

The reality is that I mean, there’s a lot of criteria. The links to it will be on our website at HazzDesign.com. Their goal is to push technology and the market of where 3D printing can go and keep it as an open-source platform. I love the term hardware agnostic.

That shows that they’re after pushing technology forward regardless of the platform.

It makes complete sense for Autodesk to be on board with this. Who are they? They are the company that helps us, makers, designers and developers facilitate our creative process.

They’re the software people so why wouldn’t they be hardware agnostic?

Anything that you have, maybe ideas, you should look at what you need to do to submit that in. It’s a great opportunity for lots of companies, entrepreneurs and startup ideas to think about. Some of this funding can help push the 3D printing industry, in general.

If you have a startup involving 3D printing, you’ve got nothing to lose by submitting a pitch.

That being aside, I’m not a big robot and drone fan but these sound fun. I can see how this is necessary. That indoor-outdoor problem, they’re solving it on the technology side. They’re also solving it on the design side of what these things look like, how they function, how they’re using their shape and form to do this.

They’re combining all the components that they need to achieve their goals. 3D printing is an integral part of that. Whether you’re in drones and robots or not doesn’t matter. These are great examples of real startup businesses using 3D printing in practical ways. It’s helping them save money and speed up their time to market.

There are so many important things that you have to think about when you’re a startup. Preserving your cash for the testing, development, and refinement of your idea is the most critical process. Those that spend too much money on legal fees, startup costs, marketing from the get-go when their idea isn’t fully refined yet are going to find themselves tripping up.

We’ve witnessed some other startups that were involved in counseling and mentoring, things like that. We’ve seen other startups realize, “I have this great idea on paper in concept or the computer but I’m going to have to give away a bigger piece of my company if I get investment funding now. If they get a little further down the road, make the working product, and have proof of concept, they can get more money.” They can give away less of their company to get it because their idea seems more plausible, believable and realistic that it will happen. 3D printing is playing a huge role.

Let’s be clear here, 3D printing isn’t for everyone because it’s engineering-intensive and CAD-intensive. There are a lot of service people out there. I see it all the time on LinkedIn. I have seen a couple of guys on LinkedIn desperate for some work and they’re great designers. That’s one of those things. Reach out there because there are some great designers waiting for some good projects to work on. They don’t work for free, mind you, but these are the guys you want on your team.

WTF Mr. 3D | 3D Printing And Robotics

3D Printing And Robotics: Autodesk Spark Investment Fund is the first and largest investment fund that supports startups working on hardware and software innovation for 3D printing.

 

You don’t have to be a designer or an engineer to use 3D printing. There are resources to help you do that.

 

You can use a service provider. It’s not zero cost. I don’t want you to get that in your head. It’s a low cost.

It’s a lower cost than traditional processes. Remember that story that Marc was telling.

Why we bring this up and why this is on the podcast is that every startup and entrepreneur venture needs to think about how 3D printing might fit in speeding them to market, getting a better-refined product, and getting a specialized, customized customer-service friendly product.

That last one was our podcast interview with PetPrints 3D. It’s their entire business.

These things can give you a competitive edge, give you a great product, and get you to market faster. The faster you launch with the best product, the better off you are.

If any of you reading have your startup that you’re in the midst of, have done in the past that used 3D printing, or you’re considering using it and you want to talk to us about it or perhaps see if it’s a good fit to come on our podcast and be another subject for a future podcast, reach out to us at HazzDesign.com.

We’re anywhere on social media at @HazzDesign.

I hope you enjoyed that interview and hopefully, it wasn’t too confusing. Thanks for reading.

Important Links:

  • MDAR
  • IFM-Tech
  • MakerBot
  • Spark.Autodesk.com/fund
  • HazzDesign.com
  • PetPrints 3D – past episode
  • @HazzDesign – Instagram

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Filed Under: 3D Printing Topics, Featured, Vol. 3, WTFFF?! Podcast, WTFFF?! Show Notes Tagged With: 3D Printing And Robotics, 3D Printing For Prototyping, 3D printing investment program, Intelligent Flying Machines, MDAR Technologies, Motion Contrast 3D Scanning

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