TC Makers: 3D Printing Wizards At Shapeways Show Us Their Brand New Queens Factory

Screen Shot 2013-05-15 at 3.55.58 PM

It’s rare to see a company that is so established yet as cutting-edge as Shapeways. The company, founded in 2007 as a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, began as a one-off 3D printing service that offered basic plastic items for sale online. Over the years, however, the company has branched off into some amazing materials – steel, ceramic, and even sandstone – and they’ve already been able to support full color printing in 3D.

Now the company is opening a series of facilities in the US and they invited us to their first print shop in Long Island City, New York. In this massive, warehouse-like space, the company has set up a number of acrylic printers as well as a small customer service team. They plan on expanding further, adding more machines to an already impressive array. The goal is to offer 3D print shops close to major US metropolitan areas to reduce wait-times and to spread out the manufacturing process among different factories. The company will have 30 to 50 printers in the LIC location once it is complete.

I spoke with co-founder Peter Weijmarshausen about the Shapeways process, the printers, and what it takes to become a 3D-printing powerhouse in a nascent market. It’s great to see such a cool company expand and it’s even more fun to get to tour the facilities even before the machines, printers, and staff becomes fully operational. Enjoy the tour and tune in next time for another TechCrunch Makers!

TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.

In Praise Of Slow Hardware

slowhardware

In all the discussions I’ve had with hardware makers about their products, one thing is becoming clear: in the end, the cheap part is never cheap. Take a look at this post about a Kickstarter project for example. A maker, Michael Ciuffo, had recently funded a very cool QR code clock that used a simple array of LEDs to display the time in QR code.

He ordered the parts from an online supplier – 500 in total – and begin testing them. In all he saw 38 of the 500 fail in basic tests. In short, his “quick and easy” shipment of components from an inexpensive vendor resulted in a 7.6% failure rate.

“I found out this week that sometimes goods and services purchased in China can be of low quality,” he wrote.

In a similar vein, I once spoke to a hardware broker in Shenzhen who sold bargain-basement phones to the developing world. While his products were far from amazing, he did find similar failure rates in all of the phones he sold, resulting in the need to hire a separate QA tester who powered on and tried all the phones before he shipped them, thereby reducing his profit.

I want to make it clear that this is no jingoistic rant, but this is, in short, the biggest problem with off-shoring hardware manufacturing. However, because the perception is that local – and by local I mean a general U.S. or European audience – is expensive, this quality problem is endlessly repeated.

“When you off-shore hardware, every mistake, and there will be mistakes, causes a delay chain that multiplies by physically shipping prototypes, samples, tester units and more half-way around the world,” said Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries. “One of the best things you can do is keep your supply chain as close as possible.”

It is telling, however, that the company just invested in a $175,000 pick and place machine for their SoHo office.

“This is why we like to manufacture here in SoHo, have our injecting molding in North America, PCBs made in the USA and services like large volume laser cutting here in NYC,” she said.

The proximity of a vendor to your assembly point allows you to, in a pinch, drive to complain. As it stands, Ciuffo’s vendor was kind enough to respond and resend extra pieces but after a 35 day wait on the original LEDs he had already added a month to his build time. While the price of the pieces was obviously low enough for him to consider the opportunity, the cost in time and potentially QA headaches becomes an intangible.

But therein lies the problem: you can’t always source, say, an array of LEDs locally. Chances are the pieces are pulled from the same factory you’d be going to in Shenzhen and, barring a bit of QA on arrival, you might be running into the same problems. However, as companies like Adafruit begin catering to the hobbyist and local manufacturers begin catering to smaller batch hardware creators, I could definitely see it becoming easier to become a true hardware locovore.

We, as consumers, should also require that the things we buy be locally sourced. While I am well aware that manufacturing is not all puppy dogs and rainbows, there is something to be said for a sourcing infrastructure that allows a Kickstarter project lead to make a few calls and flow a bit of money back into the community, state, or country. You either pay for cheap hardware up front or later on, in support costs. An active slow hardware movement would allow far more control over the process of making cool things and would, in the end, benefit us all by raising quality across the board.

Get $100 off MAKE’s Hardware Innovation Workshop this May 14-15!

Get $100 off MAKE's Hardware Innovation Workshop this May 1415!
We come bearing tidings of good savings from our friends at MAKE: get $100 off the regular price of the second annual two-day workshop designed for makers turning their projects into real businesses. The Hardware Innovation Workshop kicks off at the College of San Mateo just before Maker Faire Bay Area on May 18-19, and features big names in the world of making and innovation as well as startups you haven’t heard about — yet. The workshop will focus on innovative tools and technology, platforms and projects and devices and designs based on open hardware.

Read on to find out who’s speaking…

Filed under:

Comments

TC Makers: Inside Will Rockwell’s Steampunk Workshop

Screen Shot 2013-04-07 at 7.27.14 PM

Hidden amidst the winding pathways of Llewelyn Park, New Jersey, America’s oldest gated community, steampunk designer Will Rockwell is building a future that never was. He began his career as a TV producer but he always loved to tinker with metals, leather, and wood – the three components of good steampunk. After building a set of Rocketeer-style USB keys, friends turned him on to Etsy. He opened a shop and almost immediately was flooded with orders.

These designs are a labor of love for Rockwell who scours the junkyards of New Jersey for cool odds and ends. He has two workshops, one in Pennsylvania and one in the basement of his 1912 home.

Rockwell doen’t expect to get rich with his hobby but he’s doing well, nonetheless. His unique style, nautical-themed designs, and electronic additions to his devices meld the modern and the mysterious in a quirky way. My favorite project? His electric guitar outfitted with wild effects and knife switches, although his handmade USB keys are still amazing.

Will is definitely following the maker spirit and is even making a little money. His world is one of the imagination, full of undersea starships and steaming hard drives run by pistons. It’s enough to make you think you’ve stumbled upon the world of Captain Nemo via the Jersey Turnpike.

TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.

We’re celebrating Insert Coin semifinalists with a giveaway makers will love

We're celebrating Insert Coin semifinalists with a giveaway makers will love
On Wednesday, we opened voting so you can help us choose five finalists in our first Insert Coin: New Challengers competition. It was hard enough for Engadget editors to decide on 10 semifinalists out of the myriad awesome crowdfunded projects entered, including such futuristic fare as bipedal robots, high-tech puppetry and more. Now it’s your turn to pick which final five entrants will also present on stage at Expand this March for the chance to win a total of $25,000: $5,000 for the Reader’s Choice winner and a whopping $20,000 Grand Prize. Voting closes this coming Wednesday, February 27 at 12:30pm PST / 3:30pm EST, so get your vote in!

To celebrate the DIY ingenuity and high tech innovation demonstrated by our intrepid entrants, we’re running an Insert Coin Twitter Giveaway that gives a little something back to all the makers out there. We’re giving away the following three kit prizes: Grand Prize is the Egg-Bot, an art robot that draws intricate designs on eggs or other round objects including ornaments, golf balls, and light bulbs; 2nd Prize is an Apple 1 Replica Kit designed with permission from the Apple I’s original creator, Steve Wozniak; 3rd Prize is the Adafruit FLORA GPS Starter Pack including a Flora motherboard, a GPS module that can also perform location datalogging, eight ultra-bright chainable RGB pixels and more.

To win, simply send a tweet naming which of the 10 semifinalists you want to win, in the following format: “I think [PROJECT NAME] should win $20,000 in the @EngadgetExpand Insert Coin Competition!” Of course while you’re at it, don’t forget to vote! To be eligible to enter, you must be 18 years of age and a U.S. resident (please peruse the full rules).

Name your inventor of choice by 5pm EST on Monday, February 25 (one entry per person, please!). We’ll choose three winners at random to win each kit prize and will notify them via Twitter. Plus, make sure to follow @EngadgetExpand for more chances to win tickets, prizes and other goodies.

Filed under: ,

Comments

TC Makers: Engineering The Perfect iPhone Cover At Element Case

TechCrunch Makers: Element Case

A buddy of mine who lives in Shenzhen said that the best tech business to be in – the one that offers the most profit for the least amount of work – is soft goods, meaning cases, bags, and other paraphernalia. Don’t tell that to the guys at Element Case. Their amazing metal and wood iPhone cases take hours to build, months to design, and they look simply amazing.

For years I’ve been fascinated by this little Santa Clara, California company. They made and sold fairly expensive metal cases that hugged the edges of iPhones like an exoskeleton. They were rugged and, rather than simply adding some pretty colors and some rubber to your phone, actually changed the aesthetic to something a bit more interesting. Their latest case, the Ronin, is made of wood and nickel-plated metal and looks simply amazing on an iPhone 5. In a way it changes the phone completely, giving it a more organic edge. They also make cases for flagship Android phones.

I had the chance to tour the factory where Element makes most of its metal cases, a little outfit called K-Fab Inc.. Terence Tang, an Element Case product developer, took me from station to station and explained the Element magic. The company uses local CNC shops to build its cases and tries to find supplies that are made locally – locavore hardware, if you will.

The Ronin takes one hour from start to finish and requires a number of very specific steps and quality assurance tests that are performed to ensure the case fits snugly on the phone. Element used to machine its own parts until it got too big. Now it hires others to build parts to its specifications. Tang told me that they currently have a rabid fan base that buys every case as soon as it comes off the assembly line. That’s right – there are Element Case collectors.

It’s great to see how much handwork goes into building a fairly simple iPhone case. Because the Ronin uses wood, K-Fab fabricators have had to modify their procedures to ensure the hard, dark material doesn’t splinter or break.

Building cases is traditionally quite easy and quite lucrative. These guys made it hard and expensive – and they’re selling out of models almost daily. It’s great to see a small manufacturer take something that most people consider a commodity and turn it into a work of art.

TechCrunch Makers: An Evening At The Van Brunt Stillhouse

Screen Shot 2013-01-24 at 9.17.25 AM

What do you do when you already have the coolest job in the world? You start a business where you can have another amazing job on evenings and weekends.

Daric Schlesselman is an editor for the Daily Show in Manhattan who lives in deepest Red Hook, a small, cool community on the edge of Brooklyn. There he rents a former paint factory where he’s set up the Van Brunt Stillhouse and storage facility where he makes some of the nicest grappa, whiskey, and rum this side of the Gowanus.

Schlesselman started out as a homebrewer but has taken investment to build a small, artisinal distillery in Red Hook. He makes booze to match the season – rum in the summer, whiskey in the fall, and grappa anytime – and he’s the perfect example of someone who followed his dream to sweet fruition.

The stillhouse is compact and well-appointed with plenty of barrels of delicious whiskey aging in white oak. He may not be making 3D printers or electronic eyes, but the Van Brunt Stillhouse shows us that even a mild-mannered TV editor can, with a little time, energy, and perseverance, build a real business making some amazing stuff.

TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.

Lady Ada AKA Limor Fried Named Entrepreneur Of The Year

NewImage53

While I don’t often hold stock in random pronouncements by magazines, I’m shocked and thrilled that Entrepreneur Magazine named Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries, as their 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year. Limor runs a $4.5 million company with 25 employees and she produces some of the coolest electronic gadgets around.

It’s amazing that Adafruit Industries exists at all – after all, the average code jockey doesn’t want to handle solder or jumpers. However, the company has made it easy for electronics hobbyists to learn almost everything there is to know about some amazing microcontrollers, Arduino boards, and even skill badges for geeky Boy Scouts. They’ve taken off, selling $10 million in gear this year.

Limor started her company in her MIT dorm room by selling electronics kits to her friends, making about $10 on each kit. Soon she moved to New York and in October moved from a 2,000 square foot office to a sprawling 12,000 square foot loft in Soho.

Just a week after the move, Fried was bubbling with excitement, obvious even over the din of 500 packages being prepped for the daily UPS shipment. “It’s a new chapter in the business,” she exclaims. “I think we can quadruple our current size.” No mean feat, considering Adafruit has shipped more than half a million kits in the last seven years, and revenue has doubled every year for the past three. The warehouse-grade power supply at the new facility allows for simultaneous operation of large equipment like laser engravers and mills, which means much faster production; the additional space means more inventory can be stocked. Fried is also throwing her creative weight behind education initiatives, designing school curricula in electronic circuitry and robotics and creating stickers and badges, à la Girl Scouts, to get kids to brag about their skills in areas like welding and programming.

You can read the article here but you’re actually better off heading over to the Adafruit website and picking up a few kits. Nothing beats the feeling of firing up a homebrew electronics project and I’m thrilled to see the maker community band together to elevate one of their own amazing hackers.

Make Your Mornings Suck Less With This Sleek Capsule Coffee Maker [Coffee]

Not content with simply being masters of the clock, the Swiss have apparently decided to take over another crucial aspect of our day: caffeine. The Delizio Uno, a minimalist capsule coffee maker, boasts clean lines and vibrant colors enough to brighten any morning. More »

TC Makers: A Visit To The Brooklyn Factory Where They Make The Ultracool Blink Steady Bike Light

Screen Shot 2012-10-03 at 5.45.09 PM

It’s rare to see the creation of a product from idea to implementation but Blink Steady, a unique, multi-sensor bike light, allowed us to do just that. Created by Benjamin Cohen, Stuart Heys, and Mark Sibenac, the Blink Steady launched in April on Kickstarter and shipped last month.

The Blink Steady factory is in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, in a huge repurposed knitting factory that is home to a few dozen apparel manufacturers. The workshop is full of tools, stamps, cutters, and parts that Heys uses to build robots for his other clients. He and Ben got together to create their first commercial product and were pleasantly surprised by the reaction.

The light itself is dead simple: you mount it on your bike and it starts blinking when it’s dark and you’re in motion. It stops when you stop for a length of time. To change the notification style from blinking lights to a steady red beam you simply flip the light over to display the appropriate part of the laser etched logo – “Blink” to blink, “Steady” to stay on.

Heys and Cohen took us through the workshop and showed us how they made each piece by hand using locally sourced materials and labor. They truly made something from nothing and we’re proud that they were able to take part in TC Makers.

Note: Special thanks goes out to Josh Zelman, our stalwart producer and cameraman, for whom this is the last episode he’ll record as he’s leaving us on Friday. Let us know if you need a crack video guy because he won’t be on the market for long. You can find him on LinkedIn.

Product Page