Tom And Tracy Are Back!

After taking a week to retool, Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard are back. Explaining the circumstances that led them to take a week-long vacation, they talk a little bit about some of the realities of business that get in the way and life. They also give a heads up on some of the things that you can expect on the upcoming shows – from 3D scanning and 3D printing of a particular part to improve a consumer product, to interviews and discussions on intellectual property and the legal and compliance issues surrounding 3D printing. So sit back and relax as Tom and Tracy bring you great new episodes with lots of energy and fun!

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We are back.

We were gone a lot longer than we thought.

It was one of those things where things started to get overwhelming with everything that we have going on in our business and our personal lives. We thought it was going to be a short hiatus and then it turned into a bit of a longer hiatus.

We’ve realized we’d never taken a vacation from our 3D Print Podcast since we started it. We took a week to retool or something at one point, but we were still working on it. We were like, “We can take a vacation. It’s not going to be that big of a deal.” Our daughter then graduated from two colleges and got married in the middle of all of this. It’s gotten away from us.

I’m never having had the experience of being parents of the bride, a wedding is consuming of the parents’ time among other things and even more than we expected. She kept adding more and more things, “Can you do this? Can you do that?”

We appreciate all those people who sent us messages on Facebook, Twitter, over the website and everything. You’re letting us know how much you missed us and you wished we were back, and wondering if we were going to come back. We are back. We intend to stay back, although we probably need to plan a little more hiatus now and again. We need to plan a month off a year, otherwise, it’s too intense. We need to give ourselves a little breathing room. We will do that again at some point, but we will plan it better next time.

We’re talking a long time away at this point. We’re still planning to do about three episodes a week on a regular basis. We thought we would come on because we have had many of you reach out to us, “What happened to the podcast? Are you guys still doing it?” We wanted to come back and talk a little bit about some of the realities of business that get in the way and life. Some of it is 3D printing related and some of it is not.

This is a classic problem that you probably all have. It’s that 3D printing doesn’t pay your bills. If it’s not paying your bills, if it’s not making you money, if it’s a hobby or an interest or a side like it is for us, then it’s the first thing to go. It’s the first thing that drops off. It’s the first thing that you don’t make enough time for, especially when everything else is demanding of your time like lots of kids and weddings.

I didn’t want it to be the first thing to go to the point where Tracy kept saying to me, “Don’t you think we should plan a break?” I’m like, “If we have to, we can take a break.” I didn’t plan it.

You didn’t plan it. It got forced on you because you didn’t want to.

It did get forced on me. The push comes to shove at some point and it’s like, “All right, we haven’t had time to record. Here comes the first week without any episodes.” That turned into a couple of months. I apologize for that. Usually, we’d like to give you a heads up on what’s going to happen instead of going silent for a while. We know we may have lost some readers in the process and that’s unfortunate. Those of you who have stayed subscribed to the show, this has popped up back on your smartphone. Maybe you’ve gotten the email if you’re subscribed on 3DStartPoint.com when the first post goes up because you get either a daily or a weekly notice that there’s new content.

If 3D printing doesn't pay your bills, it's the first thing that drops off. Click To Tweet

Those of you who frequent the website, 3DStartPoint.com, there were blog posts in the interim. We do post blogs. I don’t know if you all realize that. We wanted to make sure that’s clear. It’s not all the time, but we occasionally post blog posts that are blog posts that have no podcast associated with them. That’s mainly a vehicle of Google reality that you have to have some SEO content in there that is blog posting content, but also some topics don’t lend themselves well to anything that’s not visual. It’s not a topic to be talking about. It’s much better to show you. We do have those. If you were subscribed or a part of our email program on it, you would have received those. You would have seen some blog posts in the interim. You would have seen we weren’t totally silent.

I know there are some more blog posts that are separate from the episodes that are coming up too. There’s some new content that’s being created there. 3D printing is still a reality of our business and that’s one of the things that took over. We’ve talked about often that we have a product design and development. We’re a consulting firm that does product design and development for companies. We have several companies. We’re doing some cool projects that we use 3D printing as a part of our daily business.

We can’t talk about them all unfortunately.

Some of those are coming up. They are going to be made into episodes. One in particular involves 3D scanning and 3D printing of a particular part to make an improvement to a consumer product.

That’s going to be a great episode because it was a real challenge for us to find the right scanner or find the right way to make this and do all of those things. That’s going to be an interesting episode. We’re also going to have an episode about the wedding favors we made for our daughter and our experience with that.

That will be a lot of fun because there are many different aspects that 3D printing played a role in our daughter’s wedding that we didn’t force on her. She requested it of us and it turned to be a significant thing. There’s quite a story there and lots of interesting things to learn about.

We’ve got some great interviews. I’m excited. We’ve got some great interviews on a company that’s scanning figurines that are amazing gigantic cars.

3D printed cars, practical, real produced and they are for sale. That will be cool.

We’re going to have more discussion on intellectual property and the legal issues and compliance issues surrounding 3D printing.

Different issues than we’ve talked about.

We’ve got a great episode on 3D printed fashion, which I’m excited about as well. That’s coming up. You don’t want to miss it. We appreciate your patience with us and that you’re back with us as well. Thanks again guys for all the support in the interim. We are going to do our best to bring you great new episodes with lots of energy and lots of new angles and topics.

Upcoming WTFFF Shows: We’re doing some cool projects that we use 3D printing as a part of our daily business.

This is a shorter episode than normal. We wanted to come on to talk with you and let you know what’s been happening and what’s coming up. We’re back. We’re excited to be back. We’re having a lot of fun. We’ve recorded a lot of content already. You can count on it coming. You will continue to see new content on 3DStartPoint.com. Some of you have written into us with some suggestions for episodes and those are coming up. We’ve definitely made note of them. There are some good topics for episodes that will be coming as well. Keep writing in if you have some new topics or questions that you would like us to try to address in a future episode.

We’re always looking for interesting guests. We’ve been getting some interesting and unusual guests that are coming in from all different angles. We don’t want to only be interviewing the same old people that are doing the speaking tour. That’s getting old to me. I want some of the people who are down in building digital manufacturing facilities or in the trenches. We want to talk to you guys out there. Suggest those people and offer them up for us. Recommend people that would make great guests for us.

That’s going to do it for this quick revival episode. The next is a great episode about what we did involving 3D printing for our daughter’s wedding and a lot to talk about on that. Stay tuned for that one.

Don’t forget to reach out to us on 3DStartPoint.com and @3DStartPoint on social media. Thanks again for reading. We look forward to being with you for the upcoming future.

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