WTFFF?! 3D Printing Podcast: 3D Print Tips | 3D Print Tools | 3D Start Point

We're going to interview Nina Hoff of byFlow. She's the CEO of a Dutch company that specializes in 3D printing for some time but they really spun this off and started this company in 2015 in which she is the CEO. She's a very young 25-year-old CEO, which we think is amazing. It's a company she has with her brother and her father and a couple of other partners as well. We just love the idea of really getting something that's so mainstream in terms of food 3D printing, finally. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

Tom and Tracy reads out a statement by Dr. Eric James of Field Ready to spread the word and get some help for their GoFundMe for those who feel so inclined to donate. It would help the use of 3D printing in disaster zones that Field Ready is working with right now due to the recent hurricanes. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

Today, we’ve got an interview that’s going to be a little bit different. It’s definitely 3D print related but it’s in a very different way. I wanted some prefaces for all our listeners saying while this isn’t absolutely the deepest 3D print subject, it’s still really cool and there are a lot of parallels with the 3D print industry and a lot to learn from it. Especially if you are involved in a 3D print startup that’s maybe making a new machine or even if you’re in the education space. I think there are a lot of great nuggets here for you. We’re going to talk to Charlie Runckel of FabricZoom. It is an affordable fabric printer that uses off-the-shelf 3D print parts to have created its initial beta run here. They are based outside of Portland, in Beaverton, Oregon. The team had been coming up and thinking about how to make an affordable fabric printer. They were looking the cost of all of the parts and all of the time it would take to develop it. What they’ve come up with is just great. They really modeled what the 3D print industry has done. We’re thinking about those first 3D printers where they were $3,000 and all of that or even they started in the kit world, but they were all using these off-the-shelf parts. They were really building up from there. Many of them still use off-the-shelf parts especially stepper motors and printheads and things like that. You can buy off-the-shelf parts and make your own 3D printer. Really they apply that same technology using some of the actual motors and different things that 3D printers use and are made of today to make this fabric printer. They had to go beyond that because they’re not 3D printing. It’s either so many parallels. To me, I was so excited for this interview after having gone through it because there are a lot of lessons in what they’ve done to execute their vision and their goal that I think a lot of 3D print startups should model for their business. We just really wanted to bring this to you. We thought it was of interest to the general maker community as a whole, which you guys are. We thought that would be of interest to you as well. There are many of you who have makerspaces who also do costume design and other things as well, school systems and educators who do all that. We thought this would be very interesting to raise awareness of it as well. It excited both of us. I hope you really enjoy this interview as much as we did. Even though it’s not 100% strictly about 3D printing, I still think you’re going to enjoy it.   To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

Scott Tarcy of CAD Design Help is an expert in doing engineering and CAD work in general. Scott has a lot of experience working with CAD files in his CADDesignHelp.com company. He has a unique perspective and has a lot of experience. Scott was very interested on our recent episode on the Matter and Form desktop 3D scanner. He was surprised that we were so pleased with it and that it actually worked for us because his experience with desktop 3D scanners has really not been that great. We're going to talk about that in this episode. Also about really the details, ins and outs of working with CAD files that have been 3D scanned and how you can and cannot work with them. He's also going to tell us about this new 3D Print The Future TV Show that they filmed several episodes of the first season and it launches on Amazon Instant Video. You're going to hear about that as well. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

We've got a really great guest today, someone who we had so much fun talking to. His name is Sterling Hawkins from AdvancingRetail.org. But really, that's just the tip of the iceberg of who he is and what he's about. He's all about retail and innovation. What is great is, he's the first person we've talked to on this podcast who really has that retail perspective first and sees the opportunities and understands not only the potential, but how 3D printing is eventually going to be adopted more, how you're going to get more application of it. Let's talk with Sterling Hawkins about closing the retail innovation gap with 3D printing. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

We're going to discuss 3D printed fidget spinners today. We've seen a lot of opportunity with this product, both in the engineering side of things as well as in design. We're going to mention a few favorites of ours that we've seen and what we like about them. We're also going to share some ideas that we have on how this can be a great project, both for adults and for students. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

We're going to review the Bevel today. This is a 3D scanner that goes on your phone, a handheld scanner. It was a Kickstarter by Matter and Form. We're going to share how we tested it and tried out, and what results we got from it. We're also going to discuss some of the areas that we think could be improved, both with the product itself and from a business standpoint. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

I have a great interview with Grant Mackenzie. He is the sales manager for CEL who does what I've referred to in the past as the CEL Robox 3D Printer. Those of you that have listened to Tracy and I for a long time know that we saw their CEL Robox 3D Printer at CES in 2016. That's more than eighteen months ago, January of 2016. We were very impressed with this 3D printer. We had arranged and we're told originally we were going to get a review unit. For one reason or another, just the circumstances that came to be, we never received such a review unit. I even looked at trying to buy one and get one, but it was hard to come by. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

In today's episode, Tom and Tracy Hazzard talk about free CAD software, and how most of them are not really free. These software usually come at the price of privacy, of dealing with ads, of having your profile up there on the internet, etc. They discuss some possible ways to change things for the better. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

In today's episode, Tom and Tracy Hazzard talk about CAD part size versus going to your actual 3D printed size. They discuss how and why this is a problem, and also provide some great tips and examples of what you can do to avoid this problem or how you can deal with it when such issues with actual 3D printed size arise.   To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

Stephania Stefanakou, who we’re going to talk to today, she’s out of Toronto. She not only has an artistic approach mindset. She really wants to take emerging technology like 3D printing in fashion and help the fashion industry move forward and really make wearables wearable. Wearables differently than you might think. Wearable is going to be an overused term in the industry. You say wearables, people naturally think of the Fitbit, SCOTTeVEST or maybe smart shoes that have a chip in them and this is not that. This is what she calls passive wearable technology. It’s not super high tech with chips. They’re not trying to put electronics into clothing, but make clothing that works better because of the technology and that’s where the wearable comes in. Because of the technology and because of how it was made as well through the use of 3D printing in fashion and other smart materials. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

In today's episode, Tom and Tracy Hazzard talk about where to find 3D print files. Not only that, but specifically where to find 3D print files that are good, that are actually printable, and that will work for your printer. They provide examples of where they find some 3D print files themselves and how some of these sites work. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

In today's episode, Tom and Tracy Hazzard talk about 3D Print Lithopanes. They've played around and experimented with it themselves and explain how they did it and what software they used. They also give great examples of how you can use 3D print lithopanes in your business, to make an impression and make sure that people don't forget you. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!  

We've come to meet another person involved in the 3D printing industry from a legal perspective and from a different legal perspective than we've interviewed in the past. We tended to interview people who have much more of an intellectual property background and/or directly corporate attorneys for someone in the 3D print industry. We've done that way. In this case, Farah Tabibkhoei of Reed Smith is a Senior Associate there but she’s also a founding member of a 3D print legal task force that they’ve developed. That task force has 50 attorneys on it. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!

In today's episode, Tom and Tracy Hazzard talk about the opportunity cost of 3D printing. They go through their own genesis story with 3D printing and how they saw that not buying a 3D printer would cost them a great opportunity. They also go into how 3D printing changes your production process, your design process and it's helping you with your business that not doing it really is a missed opportunity. Tom and Tracy also discuss how a leap of faith is needed but you have to think about the opportunities that you would be missing if you don't start now. To send us a message, go to 3dstartpoint.com or shoot us a message at info@3dstartpoint.com or on our facebook or twitter! Its absolutely free, so ask away and and don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear more on our regularly scheduled Thursday podcast episodes!