WEBVTT - How MakerBot Was Born 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.760 Give in touch with technology with tech Stuff from houstuffworks 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:14.120 dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:17.479 your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer over at 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:21.400 house stuff Works. No love all things tech, and today 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:24.560 I thought I would start the story of a company 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.200 that helped usher in the hype cycle for three D printing. 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:32.080 That company would be maker Butt. So we're going to 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.440 learn the story of where maker Butt came from and 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.760 what has happened to it throughout its history, which as 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:42.680 of this recording is still less than a decade in length. 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.120 It hasn't even been around for ten years yet. But 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:47.920 for such a young company, it has had a pretty 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:52.480 big impact. For better and for worse. Maker Butt helped 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:57.600 bring three D printing into a more mainstream awareness, and 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:00.760 the story's big enough for it to span two episodes. 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.320 I know it's a young company, but there's a lot 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:10.440 that happened that has important, relevant impact on multiple industries 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:12.640 that relate to tech, and I think there are a 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:15.920 lot of lessons to be learned from the story of 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:19.959 maker Bot, and so we're gonna take two episodes to 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:23.000 really look into it, not just the technology, but again 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:26.880 the story behind the people that formed it. So to 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.760 talk about the company's history, it helps if we first 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.360 talk about the history of three D printing, which is 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.600 also known as a type of additive manufacturing. And we 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:40.679 call it additive because it involves building something up layer 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.360 by layer, rather than by taking say a block of 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.040 material like wood or marble or something, and then carving 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.720 away everything that isn't whatever it is you're building. So 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:55.720 if you're trying to build a sphere, you would end 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.680 up putting down little thin layers of material in a 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:04.160 pad over and over, with each successive layer overlapping a 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.880 little bit on all the different edges to fill out 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:09.840 the sphere until you got to the widest part, and 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.560 then you would reverse that pattern to get back to 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.120 the other end, and you would build it up layer 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:17.120 by layer, as opposed to taking say a block of 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.440 plastic and then cutting a sphere from that block. An 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.560 early proposal for this approach came from Hideo Kodama, who 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:28.000 worked at the Nagoya the Municipal Industrial Research Institute, and 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:32.160 Kodama wrote a report about a rapid prototyping system that 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:35.839 could build models layer by layer. In nineteen eighty four, 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.760 a guy named Chuck Hull secured a patent for a 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:44.320 procedure called stereolithography. The story behind that is actually pretty interesting, 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.000 but I'm going to leave it for another podcast. Suffice 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:49.160 it to say he was not the only person who 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.320 had this idea, he was the first person to receive 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.880 a patent for it. In this approach, you could rapidly 0:02:55.919 --> 0:03:00.560 build physical models of something by using a photo polymerized resin. 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.320 So that would be a type of material that would 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.640 be in liquid format, and it would go from liquid 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:09.679 to solid after you expose it to a certain kind 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.679 of light, like a very high high powered ultraviolet light, 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:17.120 and you would use this light to start turning the 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.520 liquid into solid stuff. And it worked almost like an 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:24.520 upside down version of today's common three D printers. So 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.440 if you have ever worked with a three D printer, 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:30.959 you know typically there's a platter a printer bed, typically 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:36.640 heated that the print head lays plastic down on top of. Well, 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:40.160 this approach reverses that. So you've got a platform that 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:46.280 is touching this liquid this photo polymerizing resin. When you 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:52.280 shoot UV light right at the part where the platform 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:56.160 and the liquid meat, it turns solid and that adheres 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:59.440 to the platform, and you slowly draw the platform up 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.640 as if you're lifting it out of that liquid, and 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.880 you keep adding layers by shooting the light at the 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.280 next layer down of this liquid, and you build it 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.280 that way, so it's actually drawing this up out of 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.080 the liquid. It almost looks like you've got a submerged 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:19.200 object that you're pulling up out of this stuff, but 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:21.840 in fact you're actually converting that stuff into a solid. 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:26.200 It's actually really cool to look at. But one of 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:30.320 the really important things that his approach relied upon was 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.800 using digital data to send instructions to the device. So 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.800 this idea of creating a file format that could send 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.159 that could contain the actual pattern and software that would 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:46.160 have the instructions for the equipment to say, based upon 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:48.599 this pattern, this is what you need to draw for 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.680 every single layer and build this three dimensional object. That 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:56.919 approach meant that designers could relatively quickly create models of 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.800 various components. You could prototype them in a matter of 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.640 rather than having to go through a very lengthy fabrication process. 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:09.160 And time is money and so is effort, So bringing 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.200 down the time and effort needed to create prototypes would 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.479 significantly reduce the cost of developing various stuff, so you 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.240 could very quickly find out which of your ideas were 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:21.520 viable and which ones you might have to tweak or 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.880 abandon by building out your components this way. But this 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:28.200 was in a time when such technology was really only 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.640 available to industries and corporations. You couldn't go out and 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:33.839 buy a three D printer back in those early days. 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:36.919 It would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. It 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:39.920 was not something the average person would even be aware of, 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.200 let alone be able to access. This also meant that 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:45.760 if you did have access to one of these devices, 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:51.600 you could print replacement parts for vintage technology. So maybe 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.760 no one's making a particular type of car part. For example, 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:58.360 maybe there's a specific model of car that you own 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.719 and you want to keep it in good repair, but 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:04.960 that company no longer exists, so you can't just go 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:07.680 out and buy a replacement part. With the right type 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:12.760 of additive manufacturing equipment, you could build a replacement part. 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.480 All you would need is the digital plan to do that. 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:21.720 Whether you made that in a computer assist Design CAD program, 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.960 or maybe you were able to get hold of that 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.880 design from somebody, or maybe even you were able to 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:31.440 scan an original part and make a digital copy that way. 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.640 Jay Leno reportedly uses this method to maintain his collection 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:39.640 of vintage cars. And it helps that we can now 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:42.839 print in lots of different materials, not just the plastics 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:48.160 that you typically encounter with consumer brand three D printers. 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:53.600 All right, So that's the basic history of additive manufacturing. 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:57.680 From its beginning, it was the realm of the manufacturing industry. 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:00.720 It was not something that your average person knew about. 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.880 Skip ahead twenty years, hop on over to the UK. 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.720 It's lovely there. And in two thousand and four, doctor 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.800 Adrian Bauer of the University of Bath proposed a new 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.200 project that the following year would be called rep rap 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:20.880 our ep r AP that stands for Replicating Rapid prototyper. 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:23.720 The goal of this project was to create a low 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.360 cost three D printer, one that would be capable of 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:31.840 printing most of the parts of a duplicate three D printer. Now, 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.600 this in itself wasn't exactly a new idea. There was 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.800 a mathematician and a total genius named John von Neuman. 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.600 I'll have to do a full episode about von Neuman 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:45.920 in the future. He proposed a concept which he called 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:49.640 the Universal Constructor. This would be a machine that would 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:54.960 be capable of replicating itself, Which is the super simple explanation. 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:57.080 If I do a full episode about him, I'll have 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:00.600 to go into much greater detail, because it's a pretty 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:05.960 phenomenal concept. Now. Bauyer's proposal was a little more modest 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:09.160 than what von Neuman was talking about. It would be 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:13.280 able to largely copy itself, piece by piece, but unlike 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.560 a true universal constructor, it would not be able to 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.640 assemble the new copy. It wouldn't be able to. It 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:23.320 had self copying but not self assembly abilities. You would 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.800 still need a person to actually take all those pieces 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:29.880 and put them together. He envisioned a rapid prototyping machine 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.360 that could make most of the components needed to make 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.040 a second copy. So in theory, you could make one 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:40.439 of these things. You could then buy the raw materials 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.360 you needed, meaning largely the plastic that the printer would 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:47.920 use as a printing medium and as for its parts. 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:50.400 Then you could print all the parts for a second one, 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:53.559 and then build the second one and use that one 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.040 to print all the parts for a third one, and 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:57.680 so on and so forth, and you could keep on 0:08:57.760 --> 0:08:59.560 printing more and more copies and give them to all 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.000 your friends, and soon everybody has one of these things. 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:05.520 But he admitted that there were some parts like stepping 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:09.319 motors or metal fasteners that would not really be printable 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:11.280 in this way, so you would have to purchase those 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.760 parts separately and put them together with the parts that 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:19.240 you were able to print. However, these parts were widely 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:23.760 available and more importantly, pretty cheap, so the most it 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:28.320 would require is access to the digital plans to print 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.640 the pieces that you needed. You would need one working 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:33.839 printer to do the printing. Obviously, if you didn't have 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.720 a printer, you couldn't start the process, and you would 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.720 need some know how in the assembly process about how 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.120 to wire everything together and actually physically put it together. 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.920 But then you could just make copies. The project would 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:51.760 involve not just the design of the physical printer itself, 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:56.360 but also the software you would need to access this 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:59.079 piece of equipment, the file formats you would need to 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.760 be able to send to that equipment so that you 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:06.000 could actually do some meaningful printing. Another very important element 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:09.760 in RepRap and one that's going to become super important 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:13.880 in our maker bot story, is that this whole idea 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.720 was going to be an open source project and still 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.080 is to this day. It is an open source project. Now. 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:23.880 That meant none of the designs for rep wrap proper 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.439 would be proprietary or hidden from view. It needed to 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.719 be open source for two big reasons. One was that 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.240 it would allow these machines to perpetuate across large groups 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.040 of people, so you don't want to have any barriers 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.800 to keep that from happening. If you had protected intellectual property, 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:44.319 then that's a limitation on how quickly stuff could be 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:49.440 spread across the entire population. But if you make it 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:53.320 open source, everyone has access to it, so it removes 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.920 those barriers. The other important bit is that Valuer wanted 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:02.160 people to have the opportunity to change the open source information, 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.079 whether it was changes to the design of the hardware 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:09.000 or to the software, and in that way you could 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:12.800 create improvements or alterations, and the design of the rep 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:16.320 rep device would evolve over time. As people joined the 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:21.880 community and added their ideas to the design and implementation 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:25.800 of this printer. People could experiment with different approaches. They 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.520 might be able to improve the efficiency or the resolution 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:34.880 of the print jobs, meaning how smooth is the finished print? 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:38.880 If you can improve on that. That's a benefit to everybody. 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.880 And as long as everyone kept everything open source and 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.800 we're sharing it freely, those improvements flow back into the 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.960 overall maker community and they perpetuate across it, so everyone 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:54.240 gets to benefit from everyone's ideas. So if you designed 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.360 this properly, you could use a rep wrap one point 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.320 zero printer, and then when someone makes an improved movement 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.960 that would effectively become rep wrap one point one or whatever, 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.200 you could use your old printer to print out the 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.480 new stuff. Alter your old printer, and now you've got 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:12.679 a new printer. You never have to worry about obsolescence. 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:18.520 So instead of having to abandon a technology three or 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:21.880 four years down the road, you can keep making incremental 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.080 improvements to your device by printing stuff with the device itself. 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.960 So it almost becomes self improving. Not quite because it 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.800 does require the input of real human beings, but you 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:36.280 get the idea. So bow your imagine a world where 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:39.360 people could print whatever small parts they needed on demand, 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.160 whether it was a replacement for an existing piece of 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:45.840 technology or maybe just something totally new that they wanted. 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.319 And he even envisioned a world in which people could 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:52.120 print out their own recycling devices, and those recycling devices 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:56.560 would consume the old, broken or worn out plastic parts. 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.760 So instead of just accumulating more and more of these 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:04.400 broken parts, you would actually break that down so that 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.080 you could use it again. You could have a new 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.480 supply of plastic that you would use for printing material. 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.440 He thought the printers as wealth machines. The cost of 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:16.560 items would be reduced down to the cost of their 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:20.280 raw materials and the labor associated with assembling the stuff 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:23.760 if assembly was required, and Bayer called the whole process 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:28.000 Darwinian Marxism because the means of production would be in 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:32.040 the hands of the proletariat without the pesky requirement of 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:35.000 holding a bloody revolution in order to do it. Two 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:38.120 of the three founders of MakerBot became part of the 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:42.240 rep rap community, and we're working on this goal. In 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:46.520 two thousand and seven, Zach Hokin Smith joined the rep 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:50.480 rap project while attending Iowa State University. Smith was quickly 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:54.040 won over to the concept of open source hardware and 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.360 would become an remain a strong advocate for that approach, 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:00.480 so much so that he is now the executive rector 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.560 for RepRap Research Foundation. Then you had Adam Meyer. He 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:08.360 attended Cornell University in the early to mid nineteen nineties 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:11.040 and earned a degree in computer science. He worked as 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:13.360 a developer for a couple of companies before being invited 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:15.880 by Smith to work on a new project that would 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.240 become maker Bot. And the third co founder is the 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:23.120 one who was most closely associated with the maker Bot 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:27.000 in those early years, even though you could argue convincingly 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.600 that really Smith was the heart of the project. He 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:31.840 was the reason why it all started in the first place. 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.240 But there was a third person who was sort of 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.640 the face of the company, and this was Brie Pettis. 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:43.040 More on him in just a moment, but first let's 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:53.480 take a quick break to thank our sponsor. So I'm 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:55.840 going to spend a little more time talking about Brie 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:59.240 Petties because his story is the one tied to those 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:01.640 early years. The man Baker bought even more than the 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.800 other two for reasons that will later become clear. So 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.000 Brie Petis didn't come to the maker community through being 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:12.360 a computer scientist or an engineer. He had attended college 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.840 in the early nineties and studied subjects like performing arts 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:19.920 in psychology. After college, he lived in Prague for a while. 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.080 He worked on film sets as an assistant cameraman and 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:26.160 in other capacities. He also landed a gig for a 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.480 while as an assistant in Jim Henson's creature shop in London, England, 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.000 and he eventually returned to the States, went back to 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.160 school to further his studies, and he earned a teaching certificate. 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.560 So from the late nineties to the mid two thousands 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:45.440 he was a teacher in the Seattle Public school system. 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.560 And as a thirty one year old school teacher, you 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.160 probably wouldn't have looked at Pettis and said, this guy's 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:54.600 going to become the leader of a tech company with 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:58.680 an incredibly disruptive goal of turning manufacturing upside down and 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.480 putting that into the hands of the common consumer. He 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:06.240 was making instructional and educational videos for his students. He 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:09.480 was frequently incorporating puppets and other stuff in these videos, 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:11.960 and he was putting those videos up online and that 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.760 caught the attention of a guy named Philip Torone, who 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:21.360 was the senior editor of Make magazine, the diy Maker Journal. 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:24.920 Tarne offered Petis a job to come out to New 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.120 York City and to work for Make that would involve 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.800 him not just writing articles for make, but also creating videos, 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:33.560 kind of like what he had been doing in his 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.120 teaching gig, and he took Tourne up on the offer 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.720 moved out to New York City. Now while he was 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:42.680 in New York, Bree Pettis would meet Zack Smith, and 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.400 the two of them would become two of the founding 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:50.680 members of a hacker collective called NYC Resistor. The group 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.720 would hold regular meetings, including some that were open to 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:57.600 the public, and at those meetings people could discuss ideas 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.520 they could work on designs for hardware or software. Together, 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.600 they could recruit people to work on projects and generally 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:07.159 hacked technology just to figure out how it worked and 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:10.080 how it might work better or maybe work in a 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:14.480 way different from how the creators had originally intended, kind 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:16.919 of that whole hacker ethos. And it was through this 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:21.639 organization that they also met Adam Mayor. Zach Smith brought 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:25.480 his rep rap stuff to the NYC Resistor space to 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:27.520 show it off and invite folks to help him work 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.520 on the tech. In an effort to realize this RepRap 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:33.879 vision of building machines capable of printing the parts necessary 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:37.679 to make copies of itself. Now, according to Pettis, he 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:41.080 and Smith and Mayer got a RepRap machine, really a 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:47.719 repstrap machine up and running briefly before it stopped functioning entirely. 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.479 But that brief success inspired them to work on creating 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:54.960 a rep strap kit of their own. So what is repstrap. Well, 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.680 within the rep rap community, it refers to a three 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.639 D printer quote cobbled together from whatever parts you can find, 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:04.080 which will eventually allow you to print the parts for 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.199 a rep rap printer end quote. So it's another three 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:10.679 D printer, but this one is with all sorts of 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:14.719 like Frankenstein type parts, and the goal is that ultimately 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:16.560 you can print all the parts to just build a 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:21.560 rep rap printer using this kind of Jerry rigged system. 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:25.440 The name comes from a combination of rep rap and bootstrap. 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.480 The parts for a rep strap may not all be 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:31.360 three D printed, Some of them could be constructed through 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.400 subtractive means, like cutting materials down with like a laser 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:39.200 cutter or something along those lines. Now, their work led 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:41.639 to the design of a printer they would call the 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:46.240 Cupcake C in c C and C stands for computer 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.760 numerical control, which is a concept that applies to a 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.640 whole host of different computer controlled tools, not just three 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:57.679 D printers, but stuff like drills or lathes. My buddy 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:01.000 Oz used to operate a computer control router with this 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:04.800 kind of system. He would load a design into some software, 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.280 use that software to send a command to the routing table, 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:13.680 and the software would translate the design into a set 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.199 of instructions that would be sent to this computer controlled 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:21.159 routing table, and a big arm with a very fast 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:25.840 spinning drill bit would descend and start cutting the patterns 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.120 into the material below. Next thing you knew, you had 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.080 yourself a cutlass made out of aluminum, or some etched 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.760 awards that were made out of plexiglass, all sorts of 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:38.120 cool stuff. Well, the cupcake C and C was something 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.320 that the three were able to make in a kit form. 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.879 So the kit would include wires, a micro controller, and 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:49.600 acrylic build platform upon which your three D printed objects 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:53.320 would sit as the printer was working. It included an 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.400 extruder which would convert the solid plastic into a form 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:58.359 that could be laid down layer by layer. I'll talk 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:01.240 more about that later in this episode. In an XYZ 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:07.480 positioning system and more like a balsa case essentially that 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:12.119 you could put together. Based on this quasi success of 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:15.560 them getting this thing briefly running, the three decided that 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:17.720 they would start a company of their own and really 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.080 try to bring three D printing to the mass market, 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:22.840 or at least a consumer market filled with makers and 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.399 hobbyists who could perhaps support the business long enough for 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.160 it to catch on, kind of like how the home 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:33.160 PC business all started with kits in the nineteen seventies. 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:35.600 You would send off for a kit, you would get 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:37.720 the parts, and you would put the computer together at home. 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:41.800 That eventually led to the birth and then success of 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.359 companies like Apple. So the three settled on the maker 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.560 bought name pretty quickly. They all thought, well, this would 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:51.159 let you make stuff. It's part of the maker community. 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:53.560 It is more or less kind of a robot because 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:57.200 it will automatically carry out the instructions you send to it. 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:00.400 And they thought, well, there's no way that name is available. 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:02.040 It's too good of a name. But they did some 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:04.440 research and found that as far as they could tell, 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.119 no one had claimed to it. So they said, excellent, 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:09.359 we're going to go with that. In January two thousand 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.480 and nine, the three launched this company with the help 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.520 of seventy five thousand dollars of seed money. Twenty five 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.280 thousand dollars of that came from Adrian Bauer himself, the 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:22.880 man who proposed the RepRap project five years earlier. And 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.720 like I said, their first product was the cupcake C 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:29.160 and C and you would buy that in kit form, 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:31.639 or if you lack the patience but you happen to 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:34.040 have a whole lot more money, you could buy it 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.800 fully assembled. If you buy it as a kit, it 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.840 would set you back seven hundred and fifty dollars, a 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:42.760 princely sum in its own right. But if you wanted 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.639 someone else to put the thing together and save you 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.639 some time and remove the possibility that maybe you'd wire 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:52.760 it up incorrectly, then you're looking at twenty five hundred 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:56.400 dollars to buy one fully assembled. So what was up 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.760 with the name Cupcake? Well, as Adam Meyer would explain 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:02.720 to Google in two thousand and nine, there's a presentation 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:04.639 that's up online. You can actually watch the whole thing 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:07.320 if you like. The Cupcake device was meant to be 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:10.960 a three D positioning tool that could do more than 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:13.560 just act as a three D printer. That was the 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:16.359 first implementation they envisioned for it. But they thought, well, 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:19.360 this is really a device where you can have two 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:23.280 different components and they quote unquote know where they are 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:28.879 in orientation with relation to each other, including distance and positioning, 0:22:29.280 --> 0:22:31.080 and then you could use that for all sorts of stuff, 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:33.840 not just three D printing. And they created a design, 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:38.159 or propose a design at least that would use frosting 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:43.399 as a stuff to pipe out onto a surface, like 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:46.280 on a cupcake. So that's where they got the name 0:22:46.359 --> 0:22:49.280 cupcake C and C because they thought, well, this could 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:52.960 really let you create very intricate designs and send them 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:55.000 to the machine, and then they would carry out the 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:58.680 designs automatically and your cupcakes would be made with robotic precision, 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:03.400 or at least frosted with robotic precision. While the team 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:05.600 had been working on the design for the cupcake for 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:09.360 a while, they didn't have an actual first generation cupcake 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:13.080 C and C ready to go working until March of 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.320 two thousand and nine. Brie was scheduled to travel to Austin, 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:19.040 Texas for south By Southwest with the goal of showing 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:21.520 off the maker bot to people there. He didn't have 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:23.800 a ticket, he was just going to show them the 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:28.520 printer in bars around Austin, Texas, And from my experience 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:31.000 the couple times I've been to south By Southwest, that 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:33.879 seems to be the kind of location where most of 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:36.840