Hasta La Gadget!

Interested in 3D printing and smartphone-controlled aerial drones? So is Martha Stewart.

She and I had the pleasure of touring CES 2014′s South Hall, where we checked out Parrot, Form Labs, and MakerBot, among a few other companies.

Martha Stewart, who is a judge in our brand new CES Hardware Battlefield, explained that she’s always curious about innovation and loves learning about how new technology can apply to the lives of everyday people. But more importantly, she’s interested in finding a 3D printer to help prototype new products.

Before visiting the 3D printing section, she and I had a blast checking out Parrot’s latest toys, the Mini Drone wheel-equipped aerial drone and the Sumo camera-equipped Rover.

Stewart already owns an AR.Drone 2.0, using them to aerially film her various properties as well as monitor her grandchildren when they are swimming in the ocean. The smaller, newer products are more toys than utility products, but they’re fun nonetheless.

But what really caught Martha’s eye was 3D printers, as she’s currently on the market to buy a 3D printer for prototyping her own products.

We visited Formlabs and Makerbot, which recently released three new 3D printers, and it seems that Stewart is most interested in the mamma jamma Z18 industrial printer from MakerBot.

But that’s not the only thing she had to talk about. Apparently she and Bre Pettis are forging deals left and right, working to make a Martha Stewart collection of 3D printable products, as well as a magazine spread of 3D printed Easter gear.

To close out the interview, Martha and I checked out the most entry level 3D printing product I’ve ever come across, the 3Doodler. It’s a glue gun-like pen that let’s you draw out super hot plastic onto paper that forms a 3D doodle. It’s only $99, but Martha wasn’t all that impressed with its accuracy.

CES is an opportune time to show your wares to one of the largest congregation of technology-minded people on the planet and MakerBot is definitely not going to let that … Continue reading

What we have here is a warm and fuzzy tale of a man and his gadget. Presents forgotten! Christmas Ruined! Not so fast. Armed with a 3D printer, he manages to stave off being shunned by his family for at least one more year.

Read more…

We are at a turning point in terms of gadget manufacturing. The heavy hitters in hardware – the Sonys, the Samsungs, the LGs – are stuck in the mire of slow innovation. We haven’t heard much out of that camp this year – they’re keeping CES plans under wraps – but I suspect we’ll see a few big TVs and some thin laptops and a nice fridge or two and little else. The real innovation is happening far out in the periphery where hardware is an extension of software and smart devices are now the fastest moving consumer goods.

For most of the last decade the TC team hit CES and wandered the halls, writing about as many gadgets as possible and filling up the page with update after update. Recently there’s been little need. Some of the best products – from the Pebble to this amazing 3D scanner – have come out of small design houses. Devices like 3D printers get short shrift at CES but they’re some of the most exciting new CE products on earth. Quantified self gear is underrepresented as are consumer robotics. Wearables may be big this year, but hardware makers don’t know how to build them correctly. Clearly only Google and Eric Migicovsky do.

What are we doing at CES? We’re going to do our regularly scheduled live run through of all of the halls – you guys seem to enjoy that every year so we’re maintaining the tradition. But the real action will be around the convention center. Last year we spent 90% of our time in our own booth, out on the CES parking lot. It was open to all comers, you didn’t need to have a badge for CES, and we were in the perfect spot to grab foot traffic. And grab it we did. In the hours we spent out there we met the guys from Gtar, Zivix, and Pebble. We saw folks making amazing heads-up displays, cool chip designs, and wearables. We interviewed the CEOs of Dropcam and Fitbit and generally ignored the festival inside. Who needs to film a nicer TV when the future is wandering the parking lot?

This year is even better. We’re running our own Hardware Battlefield where one lucky hardware startup will win $50,000. We’re inviting some amazing judges including Bre Pettis, Slava Rubin, and Trae Vassallo. We’ll also be holding interviews in our tent and meeting and greeting members of the Las Vegas tech community.

Want to join us? Just look for our tent on the LVCC grounds and hang out. We need an audience and you don’t need a badge to come by. We’ll be doing giveaways as well, so maybe you can grab yourself a bit of gear.

Hardware is different now. It’s not the domain of the big guy. In fact, they’ve already lost.

Stratasys, one of the two giants in the 3D printing market (the other is 3DSystems), is on a roll. This summer it bought one of the biggest and beloved home 3D-printer makers, MakerBot, and watched its printers churn out the first 3D-printed gun. Now it’s back in the news for suing printer reseller Afinia for infringing on its patents.

These patents cover some of the most basic aspects of 3D printing, from the process of creating “infill,” the cross-hatched pattern that printers use to support the inside, to the heated plate that keeps objects stuck during printing. MakerBot, in fact, has long infringed on these very same patents and, for most of its existence, has skirted lawsuits, albeit with positive results. Many smaller manufactures haven’t been so lucky.

Even Formlabs, makers of the Form One stereolithographic machine, weren’t immune. They went to market last December while facing down 3D Systems lawyers for daring to use a similar printing technique.

Why is Big 3D finally paying attention to little guys like Formlabs and Afinia aka Microboards Technology, LLC? It’s because they’re finally getting traction in the home market. While it’s usually fine for B2B companies to snipe each other – nobody cares when big CRM smashes some puny competitor – this sniping is actually hurting the industry. By slowing down the adopting of home 3D printing, Stratasys and 3D Systems are cutting into their own bottom line. IBM, in the 1980s, never actively attacked the “clones” that sprung up on the market and we now have a variegated ecosystem of hardware that ranges from mobile devices to mainframes. No one stopped Linux from copying techniques and tricks used by Unix and, eventually, Windows, and the result is a deep and rich vein of open source computing prowess.

Patents served Stratasys and 3D Systems well when 3D printing was hard. To compete with them, competitors had to have deep pockets and be ready to pay licensing fees. Now that literally anyone can build an MakerBot-like FDM machine out of a few simple parts – this guy made one for $100 – the impetus for protection is far more mercenary. They are, in short, threatened.

The EFF has been trying to swat down fake patents, for better or worse, but the problem will continue to plague small makers until the patents expire. It does not benefit Stratasys to troll the small guy (unless it’s to protect its MakerBot investment, which would be a delightful bit of irony) and, in the end, it hurts the industry as a whole. The more people who know how to do home 3D printing, the more people who will be interested in professional products. That said, perhaps Stratasys is concerned that the home 3D printers will supplant its professional business. If this is the case, it’s a baseless fear akin to Ford being afraid of go-kart hobbyists.

Patents are fine when they truly protect the filers from predators. When the filers themselves, become the predators, however, the issue clouds the market, destroys innovation, and makes the big guys look mean. That’s not good for anyone.