Speaker 1: Give in touch with technology with tech Stuff from houstuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer over at
Speaker 1: house stuff Works. No love all things tech, and today
Speaker 1: I thought I would start the story of a company
Speaker 1: that helped usher in the hype cycle for three D printing.
Speaker 1: That company would be maker Butt. So we're going to
Speaker 1: learn the story of where maker Butt came from and
Speaker 1: what has happened to it throughout its history, which as
Speaker 1: of this recording is still less than a decade in length.
Speaker 1: It hasn't even been around for ten years yet. But
Speaker 1: for such a young company, it has had a pretty
Speaker 1: big impact. For better and for worse. Maker Butt helped
Speaker 1: bring three D printing into a more mainstream awareness, and
Speaker 1: the story's big enough for it to span two episodes.
Speaker 1: I know it's a young company, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: that happened that has important, relevant impact on multiple industries
Speaker 1: that relate to tech, and I think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of lessons to be learned from the story of
Speaker 1: maker Bot, and so we're gonna take two episodes to
Speaker 1: really look into it, not just the technology, but again
Speaker 1: the story behind the people that formed it. So to
Speaker 1: talk about the company's history, it helps if we first
Speaker 1: talk about the history of three D printing, which is
Speaker 1: also known as a type of additive manufacturing. And we
Speaker 1: call it additive because it involves building something up layer
Speaker 1: by layer, rather than by taking say a block of
Speaker 1: material like wood or marble or something, and then carving
Speaker 1: away everything that isn't whatever it is you're building. So
Speaker 1: if you're trying to build a sphere, you would end
Speaker 1: up putting down little thin layers of material in a
Speaker 1: pad over and over, with each successive layer overlapping a
Speaker 1: little bit on all the different edges to fill out
Speaker 1: the sphere until you got to the widest part, and
Speaker 1: then you would reverse that pattern to get back to
Speaker 1: the other end, and you would build it up layer
Speaker 1: by layer, as opposed to taking say a block of
Speaker 1: plastic and then cutting a sphere from that block. An
Speaker 1: early proposal for this approach came from Hideo Kodama, who
Speaker 1: worked at the Nagoya the Municipal Industrial Research Institute, and
Speaker 1: Kodama wrote a report about a rapid prototyping system that
Speaker 1: could build models layer by layer. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: a guy named Chuck Hull secured a patent for a
Speaker 1: procedure called stereolithography. The story behind that is actually pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to leave it for another podcast. Suffice
Speaker 1: it to say he was not the only person who
Speaker 1: had this idea, he was the first person to receive
Speaker 1: a patent for it. In this approach, you could rapidly
Speaker 1: build physical models of something by using a photo polymerized resin.
Speaker 1: So that would be a type of material that would
Speaker 1: be in liquid format, and it would go from liquid
Speaker 1: to solid after you expose it to a certain kind
Speaker 1: of light, like a very high high powered ultraviolet light,
Speaker 1: and you would use this light to start turning the
Speaker 1: liquid into solid stuff. And it worked almost like an
Speaker 1: upside down version of today's common three D printers. So
Speaker 1: if you have ever worked with a three D printer,
Speaker 1: you know typically there's a platter a printer bed, typically
Speaker 1: heated that the print head lays plastic down on top of. Well,
Speaker 1: this approach reverses that. So you've got a platform that
Speaker 1: is touching this liquid this photo polymerizing resin. When you
Speaker 1: shoot UV light right at the part where the platform
Speaker 1: and the liquid meat, it turns solid and that adheres
Speaker 1: to the platform, and you slowly draw the platform up
Speaker 1: as if you're lifting it out of that liquid, and
Speaker 1: you keep adding layers by shooting the light at the
Speaker 1: next layer down of this liquid, and you build it
Speaker 1: that way, so it's actually drawing this up out of
Speaker 1: the liquid. It almost looks like you've got a submerged
Speaker 1: object that you're pulling up out of this stuff, but
Speaker 1: in fact you're actually converting that stuff into a solid.
Speaker 1: It's actually really cool to look at. But one of
Speaker 1: the really important things that his approach relied upon was
Speaker 1: using digital data to send instructions to the device. So
Speaker 1: this idea of creating a file format that could send
Speaker 1: that could contain the actual pattern and software that would
Speaker 1: have the instructions for the equipment to say, based upon
Speaker 1: this pattern, this is what you need to draw for
Speaker 1: every single layer and build this three dimensional object. That
Speaker 1: approach meant that designers could relatively quickly create models of
Speaker 1: various components. You could prototype them in a matter of
Speaker 1: rather than having to go through a very lengthy fabrication process.
Speaker 1: And time is money and so is effort, So bringing
Speaker 1: down the time and effort needed to create prototypes would
Speaker 1: significantly reduce the cost of developing various stuff, so you
Speaker 1: could very quickly find out which of your ideas were
Speaker 1: viable and which ones you might have to tweak or
Speaker 1: abandon by building out your components this way. But this
Speaker 1: was in a time when such technology was really only
Speaker 1: available to industries and corporations. You couldn't go out and
Speaker 1: buy a three D printer back in those early days.
Speaker 1: It would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. It
Speaker 1: was not something the average person would even be aware of,
Speaker 1: let alone be able to access. This also meant that
Speaker 1: if you did have access to one of these devices,
Speaker 1: you could print replacement parts for vintage technology. So maybe
Speaker 1: no one's making a particular type of car part. For example,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a specific model of car that you own
Speaker 1: and you want to keep it in good repair, but
Speaker 1: that company no longer exists, so you can't just go
Speaker 1: out and buy a replacement part. With the right type
Speaker 1: of additive manufacturing equipment, you could build a replacement part.
Speaker 1: All you would need is the digital plan to do that.
Speaker 1: Whether you made that in a computer assist Design CAD program,
Speaker 1: or maybe you were able to get hold of that
Speaker 1: design from somebody, or maybe even you were able to
Speaker 1: scan an original part and make a digital copy that way.
Speaker 1: Jay Leno reportedly uses this method to maintain his collection
Speaker 1: of vintage cars. And it helps that we can now
Speaker 1: print in lots of different materials, not just the plastics
Speaker 1: that you typically encounter with consumer brand three D printers.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's the basic history of additive manufacturing.
Speaker 1: From its beginning, it was the realm of the manufacturing industry.
Speaker 1: It was not something that your average person knew about.
Speaker 1: Skip ahead twenty years, hop on over to the UK.
Speaker 1: It's lovely there. And in two thousand and four, doctor
Speaker 1: Adrian Bauer of the University of Bath proposed a new
Speaker 1: project that the following year would be called rep rap
Speaker 1: our ep r AP that stands for Replicating Rapid prototyper.
Speaker 1: The goal of this project was to create a low
Speaker 1: cost three D printer, one that would be capable of
Speaker 1: printing most of the parts of a duplicate three D printer. Now,
Speaker 1: this in itself wasn't exactly a new idea. There was
Speaker 1: a mathematician and a total genius named John von Neuman.
Speaker 1: I'll have to do a full episode about von Neuman
Speaker 1: in the future. He proposed a concept which he called
Speaker 1: the Universal Constructor. This would be a machine that would
Speaker 1: be capable of replicating itself, Which is the super simple explanation.
Speaker 1: If I do a full episode about him, I'll have
Speaker 1: to go into much greater detail, because it's a pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal concept. Now. Bauyer's proposal was a little more modest
Speaker 1: than what von Neuman was talking about. It would be
Speaker 1: able to largely copy itself, piece by piece, but unlike
Speaker 1: a true universal constructor, it would not be able to
Speaker 1: assemble the new copy. It wouldn't be able to. It
Speaker 1: had self copying but not self assembly abilities. You would
Speaker 1: still need a person to actually take all those pieces
Speaker 1: and put them together. He envisioned a rapid prototyping machine
Speaker 1: that could make most of the components needed to make
Speaker 1: a second copy. So in theory, you could make one
Speaker 1: of these things. You could then buy the raw materials
Speaker 1: you needed, meaning largely the plastic that the printer would
Speaker 1: use as a printing medium and as for its parts.
Speaker 1: Then you could print all the parts for a second one,
Speaker 1: and then build the second one and use that one
Speaker 1: to print all the parts for a third one, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, and you could keep on
Speaker 1: printing more and more copies and give them to all
Speaker 1: your friends, and soon everybody has one of these things.
Speaker 1: But he admitted that there were some parts like stepping
Speaker 1: motors or metal fasteners that would not really be printable
Speaker 1: in this way, so you would have to purchase those
Speaker 1: parts separately and put them together with the parts that
Speaker 1: you were able to print. However, these parts were widely
Speaker 1: available and more importantly, pretty cheap, so the most it
Speaker 1: would require is access to the digital plans to print
Speaker 1: the pieces that you needed. You would need one working
Speaker 1: printer to do the printing. Obviously, if you didn't have
Speaker 1: a printer, you couldn't start the process, and you would
Speaker 1: need some know how in the assembly process about how
Speaker 1: to wire everything together and actually physically put it together.
Speaker 1: But then you could just make copies. The project would
Speaker 1: involve not just the design of the physical printer itself,
Speaker 1: but also the software you would need to access this
Speaker 1: piece of equipment, the file formats you would need to
Speaker 1: be able to send to that equipment so that you
Speaker 1: could actually do some meaningful printing. Another very important element
Speaker 1: in RepRap and one that's going to become super important
Speaker 1: in our maker bot story, is that this whole idea
Speaker 1: was going to be an open source project and still
Speaker 1: is to this day. It is an open source project. Now.
Speaker 1: That meant none of the designs for rep wrap proper
Speaker 1: would be proprietary or hidden from view. It needed to
Speaker 1: be open source for two big reasons. One was that
Speaker 1: it would allow these machines to perpetuate across large groups
Speaker 1: of people, so you don't want to have any barriers
Speaker 1: to keep that from happening. If you had protected intellectual property,
Speaker 1: then that's a limitation on how quickly stuff could be
Speaker 1: spread across the entire population. But if you make it
Speaker 1: open source, everyone has access to it, so it removes
Speaker 1: those barriers. The other important bit is that Valuer wanted
Speaker 1: people to have the opportunity to change the open source information,
Speaker 1: whether it was changes to the design of the hardware
Speaker 1: or to the software, and in that way you could
Speaker 1: create improvements or alterations, and the design of the rep
Speaker 1: rep device would evolve over time. As people joined the
Speaker 1: community and added their ideas to the design and implementation
Speaker 1: of this printer. People could experiment with different approaches. They
Speaker 1: might be able to improve the efficiency or the resolution
Speaker 1: of the print jobs, meaning how smooth is the finished print?
Speaker 1: If you can improve on that. That's a benefit to everybody.
Speaker 1: And as long as everyone kept everything open source and
Speaker 1: we're sharing it freely, those improvements flow back into the
Speaker 1: overall maker community and they perpetuate across it, so everyone
Speaker 1: gets to benefit from everyone's ideas. So if you designed
Speaker 1: this properly, you could use a rep wrap one point
Speaker 1: zero printer, and then when someone makes an improved movement
Speaker 1: that would effectively become rep wrap one point one or whatever,
Speaker 1: you could use your old printer to print out the
Speaker 1: new stuff. Alter your old printer, and now you've got
Speaker 1: a new printer. You never have to worry about obsolescence.
Speaker 1: So instead of having to abandon a technology three or
Speaker 1: four years down the road, you can keep making incremental
Speaker 1: improvements to your device by printing stuff with the device itself.
Speaker 1: So it almost becomes self improving. Not quite because it
Speaker 1: does require the input of real human beings, but you
Speaker 1: get the idea. So bow your imagine a world where
Speaker 1: people could print whatever small parts they needed on demand,
Speaker 1: whether it was a replacement for an existing piece of
Speaker 1: technology or maybe just something totally new that they wanted.
Speaker 1: And he even envisioned a world in which people could
Speaker 1: print out their own recycling devices, and those recycling devices
Speaker 1: would consume the old, broken or worn out plastic parts.
Speaker 1: So instead of just accumulating more and more of these
Speaker 1: broken parts, you would actually break that down so that
Speaker 1: you could use it again. You could have a new
Speaker 1: supply of plastic that you would use for printing material.
Speaker 1: He thought the printers as wealth machines. The cost of
Speaker 1: items would be reduced down to the cost of their
Speaker 1: raw materials and the labor associated with assembling the stuff
Speaker 1: if assembly was required, and Bayer called the whole process
Speaker 1: Darwinian Marxism because the means of production would be in
Speaker 1: the hands of the proletariat without the pesky requirement of
Speaker 1: holding a bloody revolution in order to do it. Two
Speaker 1: of the three founders of MakerBot became part of the
Speaker 1: rep rap community, and we're working on this goal. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, Zach Hokin Smith joined the rep
Speaker 1: rap project while attending Iowa State University. Smith was quickly
Speaker 1: won over to the concept of open source hardware and
Speaker 1: would become an remain a strong advocate for that approach,
Speaker 1: so much so that he is now the executive rector
Speaker 1: for RepRap Research Foundation. Then you had Adam Meyer. He
Speaker 1: attended Cornell University in the early to mid nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: and earned a degree in computer science. He worked as
Speaker 1: a developer for a couple of companies before being invited
Speaker 1: by Smith to work on a new project that would
Speaker 1: become maker Bot. And the third co founder is the
Speaker 1: one who was most closely associated with the maker Bot
Speaker 1: in those early years, even though you could argue convincingly
Speaker 1: that really Smith was the heart of the project. He
Speaker 1: was the reason why it all started in the first place.
Speaker 1: But there was a third person who was sort of
Speaker 1: the face of the company, and this was Brie Pettis.
Speaker 1: More on him in just a moment, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to spend a little more time talking about Brie
Speaker 1: Petties because his story is the one tied to those
Speaker 1: early years. The man Baker bought even more than the
Speaker 1: other two for reasons that will later become clear. So
Speaker 1: Brie Petis didn't come to the maker community through being
Speaker 1: a computer scientist or an engineer. He had attended college
Speaker 1: in the early nineties and studied subjects like performing arts
Speaker 1: in psychology. After college, he lived in Prague for a while.
Speaker 1: He worked on film sets as an assistant cameraman and
Speaker 1: in other capacities. He also landed a gig for a
Speaker 1: while as an assistant in Jim Henson's creature shop in London, England,
Speaker 1: and he eventually returned to the States, went back to
Speaker 1: school to further his studies, and he earned a teaching certificate.
Speaker 1: So from the late nineties to the mid two thousands
Speaker 1: he was a teacher in the Seattle Public school system.
Speaker 1: And as a thirty one year old school teacher, you
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have looked at Pettis and said, this guy's
Speaker 1: going to become the leader of a tech company with
Speaker 1: an incredibly disruptive goal of turning manufacturing upside down and
Speaker 1: putting that into the hands of the common consumer. He
Speaker 1: was making instructional and educational videos for his students. He
Speaker 1: was frequently incorporating puppets and other stuff in these videos,
Speaker 1: and he was putting those videos up online and that
Speaker 1: caught the attention of a guy named Philip Torone, who
Speaker 1: was the senior editor of Make magazine, the diy Maker Journal.
Speaker 1: Tarne offered Petis a job to come out to New
Speaker 1: York City and to work for Make that would involve
Speaker 1: him not just writing articles for make, but also creating videos,
Speaker 1: kind of like what he had been doing in his
Speaker 1: teaching gig, and he took Tourne up on the offer
Speaker 1: moved out to New York City. Now while he was
Speaker 1: in New York, Bree Pettis would meet Zack Smith, and
Speaker 1: the two of them would become two of the founding
Speaker 1: members of a hacker collective called NYC Resistor. The group
Speaker 1: would hold regular meetings, including some that were open to
Speaker 1: the public, and at those meetings people could discuss ideas
Speaker 1: they could work on designs for hardware or software. Together,
Speaker 1: they could recruit people to work on projects and generally
Speaker 1: hacked technology just to figure out how it worked and
Speaker 1: how it might work better or maybe work in a
Speaker 1: way different from how the creators had originally intended, kind
Speaker 1: of that whole hacker ethos. And it was through this
Speaker 1: organization that they also met Adam Mayor. Zach Smith brought
Speaker 1: his rep rap stuff to the NYC Resistor space to
Speaker 1: show it off and invite folks to help him work
Speaker 1: on the tech. In an effort to realize this RepRap
Speaker 1: vision of building machines capable of printing the parts necessary
Speaker 1: to make copies of itself. Now, according to Pettis, he
Speaker 1: and Smith and Mayer got a RepRap machine, really a
Speaker 1: repstrap machine up and running briefly before it stopped functioning entirely.
Speaker 1: But that brief success inspired them to work on creating
Speaker 1: a rep strap kit of their own. So what is repstrap. Well,
Speaker 1: within the rep rap community, it refers to a three
Speaker 1: D printer quote cobbled together from whatever parts you can find,
Speaker 1: which will eventually allow you to print the parts for
Speaker 1: a rep rap printer end quote. So it's another three
Speaker 1: D printer, but this one is with all sorts of
Speaker 1: like Frankenstein type parts, and the goal is that ultimately
Speaker 1: you can print all the parts to just build a
Speaker 1: rep rap printer using this kind of Jerry rigged system.
Speaker 1: The name comes from a combination of rep rap and bootstrap.
Speaker 1: The parts for a rep strap may not all be
Speaker 1: three D printed, Some of them could be constructed through
Speaker 1: subtractive means, like cutting materials down with like a laser
Speaker 1: cutter or something along those lines. Now, their work led
Speaker 1: to the design of a printer they would call the
Speaker 1: Cupcake C in c C and C stands for computer
Speaker 1: numerical control, which is a concept that applies to a
Speaker 1: whole host of different computer controlled tools, not just three
Speaker 1: D printers, but stuff like drills or lathes. My buddy
Speaker 1: Oz used to operate a computer control router with this
Speaker 1: kind of system. He would load a design into some software,
Speaker 1: use that software to send a command to the routing table,
Speaker 1: and the software would translate the design into a set
Speaker 1: of instructions that would be sent to this computer controlled
Speaker 1: routing table, and a big arm with a very fast
Speaker 1: spinning drill bit would descend and start cutting the patterns
Speaker 1: into the material below. Next thing you knew, you had
Speaker 1: yourself a cutlass made out of aluminum, or some etched
Speaker 1: awards that were made out of plexiglass, all sorts of
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Well, the cupcake C and C was something
Speaker 1: that the three were able to make in a kit form.
Speaker 1: So the kit would include wires, a micro controller, and
Speaker 1: acrylic build platform upon which your three D printed objects
Speaker 1: would sit as the printer was working. It included an
Speaker 1: extruder which would convert the solid plastic into a form
Speaker 1: that could be laid down layer by layer. I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that later in this episode. In an XYZ
Speaker 1: positioning system and more like a balsa case essentially that
Speaker 1: you could put together. Based on this quasi success of
Speaker 1: them getting this thing briefly running, the three decided that
Speaker 1: they would start a company of their own and really
Speaker 1: try to bring three D printing to the mass market,
Speaker 1: or at least a consumer market filled with makers and
Speaker 1: hobbyists who could perhaps support the business long enough for
Speaker 1: it to catch on, kind of like how the home
Speaker 1: PC business all started with kits in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: You would send off for a kit, you would get
Speaker 1: the parts, and you would put the computer together at home.
Speaker 1: That eventually led to the birth and then success of
Speaker 1: companies like Apple. So the three settled on the maker
Speaker 1: bought name pretty quickly. They all thought, well, this would
Speaker 1: let you make stuff. It's part of the maker community.
Speaker 1: It is more or less kind of a robot because
Speaker 1: it will automatically carry out the instructions you send to it.
Speaker 1: And they thought, well, there's no way that name is available.
Speaker 1: It's too good of a name. But they did some
Speaker 1: research and found that as far as they could tell,
Speaker 1: no one had claimed to it. So they said, excellent,
Speaker 1: we're going to go with that. In January two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, the three launched this company with the help
Speaker 1: of seventy five thousand dollars of seed money. Twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars of that came from Adrian Bauer himself, the
Speaker 1: man who proposed the RepRap project five years earlier. And
Speaker 1: like I said, their first product was the cupcake C
Speaker 1: and C and you would buy that in kit form,
Speaker 1: or if you lack the patience but you happen to
Speaker 1: have a whole lot more money, you could buy it
Speaker 1: fully assembled. If you buy it as a kit, it
Speaker 1: would set you back seven hundred and fifty dollars, a
Speaker 1: princely sum in its own right. But if you wanted
Speaker 1: someone else to put the thing together and save you
Speaker 1: some time and remove the possibility that maybe you'd wire
Speaker 1: it up incorrectly, then you're looking at twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars to buy one fully assembled. So what was up
Speaker 1: with the name Cupcake? Well, as Adam Meyer would explain
Speaker 1: to Google in two thousand and nine, there's a presentation
Speaker 1: that's up online. You can actually watch the whole thing
Speaker 1: if you like. The Cupcake device was meant to be
Speaker 1: a three D positioning tool that could do more than
Speaker 1: just act as a three D printer. That was the
Speaker 1: first implementation they envisioned for it. But they thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is really a device where you can have two
Speaker 1: different components and they quote unquote know where they are
Speaker 1: in orientation with relation to each other, including distance and positioning,
Speaker 1: and then you could use that for all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: not just three D printing. And they created a design,
Speaker 1: or propose a design at least that would use frosting
Speaker 1: as a stuff to pipe out onto a surface, like
Speaker 1: on a cupcake. So that's where they got the name
Speaker 1: cupcake C and C because they thought, well, this could
Speaker 1: really let you create very intricate designs and send them
Speaker 1: to the machine, and then they would carry out the
Speaker 1: designs automatically and your cupcakes would be made with robotic precision,
Speaker 1: or at least frosted with robotic precision. While the team
Speaker 1: had been working on the design for the cupcake for
Speaker 1: a while, they didn't have an actual first generation cupcake
Speaker 1: C and C ready to go working until March of
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. Brie was scheduled to travel to Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas for south By Southwest with the goal of showing
Speaker 1: off the maker bot to people there. He didn't have
Speaker 1: a ticket, he was just going to show them the
Speaker 1: printer in bars around Austin, Texas, And from my experience
Speaker 1: the couple times I've been to south By Southwest, that
Speaker 1: seems to be the kind of location where most of
Speaker 1: the actual action of south By Southwest really takes place
Speaker 1: in the after hours in the various restaurants and bars
Speaker 1: around Austin, Texas. So he shot a quick video of
Speaker 1: the team's early cupcake C and C printing out an
Speaker 1: object in March two thousand and nine, then immediately went
Speaker 1: to south By Southwest where he would show off this
Speaker 1: printer in bars, and he printed out shot glasses as
Speaker 1: a demonstration. Apparently he had this fascination was shot glasses
Speaker 1: in general, and so that was kind of his go
Speaker 1: to demo. After south By Southwest, the team actually created
Speaker 1: an online storefront so people could purchase the printers. This
Speaker 1: was the first time they were actually offering them up
Speaker 1: for sale. They had the idea of seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for a kit. They knew they would charge
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred for a fully assembled one, and now
Speaker 1: they were finally ready to say, all right, if you
Speaker 1: want one, put in the order. They had put together
Speaker 1: twenty kits and boxed them up so they were ready
Speaker 1: to go, and they thought that it would probably take
Speaker 1: a couple of months to sell out of that initial
Speaker 1: inventory because the idea was still pretty new, especially outside
Speaker 1: of the type community of makers who were familiar with
Speaker 1: the RepRap project. But instead, they actually sold out of
Speaker 1: their kits in two weeks. At that point, maker Bot
Speaker 1: was taking up space in the office of an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: named Jake Lodwick. Loudwick had co founded the online video
Speaker 1: platform Vimeo. Before that, he had worked as a web
Speaker 1: developer for College Humor and It's early Days. He's another
Speaker 1: interesting person in business in tech, and I'll probably have
Speaker 1: to do a full episode about him in the future
Speaker 1: as well. But as MakerBot was getting bigger, they were
Speaker 1: taking up more and more space in Loudwick's office, and
Speaker 1: he eventually told his team that once his lease was up,
Speaker 1: he was not planning on renewing. He was going to
Speaker 1: give up the space, and that meant the young company
Speaker 1: needed to secure space of their own for realsies, So
Speaker 1: they ended up leasing a five thousand square foot office
Speaker 1: space in Brooklyn, New York. They were convinced that this
Speaker 1: would give them plenty of room to grow, but within
Speaker 1: two months they had pretty much filled it up with capacity.
Speaker 1: Things were really exciting for the fledgling company at this time,
Speaker 1: and I would have my first experience with maker bot
Speaker 1: not long after this stuff was going on. I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that in just a second, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Not only
Speaker 1: did the make Bought guys move into a new space,
Speaker 1: they made their first hire to help handle incoming orders.
Speaker 1: So now there was the three of them plus an employee. Exciting.
Speaker 1: The maker community appeared to be eager to get hold
Speaker 1: of the tech that would allow them to actually explore
Speaker 1: the possibility of making the rep wrap dream a reality,
Speaker 1: something where they would be able to print all sorts
Speaker 1: of different parts, not just you know, chochkeys, but useful stuff.
Speaker 1: Part of that meant adhering to those principles of the
Speaker 1: open source philosophy. The cupcake was a true piece of
Speaker 1: open source hardware. The software you need to run it
Speaker 1: was also open source, so the community could scour over
Speaker 1: the design of both and contribute fixes or improvements. They
Speaker 1: were acting as quality assurance, they were acting as research
Speaker 1: and development. This was incredibly valuable for Maker bought. Not
Speaker 1: only was it creating a community of loyal customers, it
Speaker 1: was also doing a lot of work that makrobot would
Speaker 1: have had to do on its own. If it had
Speaker 1: been proprietary technology from the get go, they would have
Speaker 1: had to have their own teams QA stuff make sure
Speaker 1: everything's working properly. If something's not working properly, then they
Speaker 1: would have to go through the whole process of trying
Speaker 1: to fix the problem, you know, find a work around
Speaker 1: or a solution. They would also be looking at their
Speaker 1: own ways to improve the technology, but by releasing it
Speaker 1: in this open source format, their users became those people.
Speaker 1: It was almost like the users were an employee by extension,
Speaker 1: and an employee of incredible skill because it came with
Speaker 1: all the ideas of all the different people in that community.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly powerful and apparently it was just really
Speaker 1: encouraging to participate in this community. People who bought a cupcake,
Speaker 1: C and C felt like they were part of something
Speaker 1: big and they had some sense of ownership there because
Speaker 1: their input was valued. They were all working together to
Speaker 1: change the world. It was kind of this almost utopian
Speaker 1: sort of perspective. Well, as the orders were coming in
Speaker 1: the company was making plans to take another step into
Speaker 1: the consumer marketplace, and that would involve traveling out to
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Nevada for the twenty ten CEES Trade Show,
Speaker 1: and that's where I saw a maker bought cupcake C
Speaker 1: and C for the first time as it slowly printed
Speaker 1: out a special plastic coin that I still have somewhere.
Speaker 1: The team also talked about how they hoped to create
Speaker 1: a three D scanner in the future to let people
Speaker 1: convert a three dimensional scan of a physical object into
Speaker 1: the data necessary to print out a replica of that object.
Speaker 1: That would be a huge jump forward because it would
Speaker 1: mean you wouldn't have to plot out all the points
Speaker 1: yourself in a CAD program or hope that someone else
Speaker 1: could do it. With a good scanner, you could get
Speaker 1: a full three dimensional scan of something like a replacement part,
Speaker 1: and then you would have that information forever. So it's
Speaker 1: not like you would scan it once and then you
Speaker 1: just print it once. You scan it once and you've
Speaker 1: got it, and whenever you need another one, you just
Speaker 1: print another one. So it was like you suddenly got
Speaker 1: access to a never ending supply of all these different
Speaker 1: parts if you could just scan them in and if
Speaker 1: you had the raw materials to print on another one.
Speaker 1: So you started to see the possibility of that vision
Speaker 1: coming true. But at this point they didn't have the
Speaker 1: scanner that would come later, but they didn't have it
Speaker 1: at this early station, but they did say that was
Speaker 1: something they were interested in developing. Part of the disruption
Speaker 1: that three D printers were all about was a related
Speaker 1: project that Zack Smith had worked on back when the
Speaker 1: three co founders were still getting ready to launch maker
Speaker 1: Bot as a company, so this was late two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. This was a website called thingaverse, and the
Speaker 1: website is kind of a companion piece to maker Bot.
Speaker 1: It acts as a repository for user generated digital design files.
Speaker 1: So at thingaverse, designers could upload their design files for
Speaker 1: other people to use or even to alter in any
Speaker 1: way that they liked. So if you created a collection
Speaker 1: of files for say three D printed chess pieces, you
Speaker 1: could upload them all as files to thingaverse and someone
Speaker 1: else could download those and print out the chess pieces
Speaker 1: that you designed, and the designs all followed the licensing
Speaker 1: strategy of either the New General Public License or the
Speaker 1: Creative Commons License, and those agreements typically allow people to
Speaker 1: use a piece of intellectual property with very few limitations.
Speaker 1: Of course, it all depends upon the specific type of license.
Speaker 1: These licenses are not all just one approach. There are
Speaker 1: multiple different pathways you can take with them. But with
Speaker 1: some of those license you can actually allow folks to
Speaker 1: not just take your work, but make derivative or altered
Speaker 1: works based off of what you've already done. So that
Speaker 1: means someone could download those chess pieces you designed, for example,
Speaker 1: and then they create a customized version of every piece
Speaker 1: that uses your models as a starting point, or then
Speaker 1: after that they might upload their own altered designs they
Speaker 1: can set right alongside your originals, and someone else could
Speaker 1: download either one or both and make changes to either
Speaker 1: or both. So one of the categories that got a
Speaker 1: lot of action on Thingaverse early on had to do
Speaker 1: with the printers themselves, so users were designing parts that
Speaker 1: could upgrade the basic cupcake C and C design, So
Speaker 1: it was possible to go out and buy a cupcake
Speaker 1: C and C kit, spend the eighty hours or so
Speaker 1: it would take to put it together, get some plastic
Speaker 1: filament as your printing material, and then print out a
Speaker 1: printer upgrade using the original version of the printer. Then
Speaker 1: you could take it apart, put the upgrade into your
Speaker 1: new and improved printer, and start up again. And that
Speaker 1: was again one of the most powerful parts of having
Speaker 1: this community was having people who are actively working to
Speaker 1: improve the product. Maker Bot paid attention to those designs
Speaker 1: and would even incorporate some of them in the official
Speaker 1: future machines that would produce, and often it would include attribution,
Speaker 1: so the people who had created the designs would get
Speaker 1: an attribution in future versions of the actual products. So
Speaker 1: this was really the honeymoon phase for a maker Bot.
Speaker 1: The maker community was enthusiastically embracing the company. Tech news
Speaker 1: outlets were really getting excited about covering it. But there
Speaker 1: were some big changes lurking on the horizon and they
Speaker 1: would affect everything. So before I end this episode, before
Speaker 1: I conclude on this part, I figured it would be
Speaker 1: good to give just kind of a quick high level
Speaker 1: rundown on how these printers work in general, and I'll
Speaker 1: be chatting about some other models in the upcoming episodes,
Speaker 1: but they all work on a similar principle in the
Speaker 1: maker Bot family, So essentially, it all begins with that
Speaker 1: digital three D model of whatever it is you're going
Speaker 1: to print. That model serves as the set of instructions
Speaker 1: for the printer. The printer software takes the model and
Speaker 1: essentially slices it into very thin layers from the bottom up.
Speaker 1: The bottom in this case being the side of the
Speaker 1: object that will be in contact with the building platform.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily the bottom of the object itself, because
Speaker 1: you could print an object on its side or even
Speaker 1: upside down, so top and bottom in this case refer
Speaker 1: to whichever side is making contact with the base the
Speaker 1: printing platform, that's the bottom. These instructions get sent to
Speaker 1: the printer, which can interpret the instructions as a set
Speaker 1: of plot points where it's going to lay down the
Speaker 1: plastic in a very thin layer. The type of plastic
Speaker 1: falls into a category called thermoplastic, and, as the name suggests,
Speaker 1: with thermo heat has an important part to play here.
Speaker 1: Thermoplastics are materials that soften as they get hotter and
Speaker 1: they harden as they cool down, so if you heat
Speaker 1: them up to a hot enough temperature, they'll actually they'll melt.
Speaker 1: So a real of thermoplastic filament would serve as the
Speaker 1: raw material for the printer. The type of plastic. The
Speaker 1: two most common types of thermoplasts that you'll find for
Speaker 1: consumer three D printers would be ABS, which is oil
Speaker 1: based and it's the same sort of plastic that lego
Speaker 1: bricks are made out of, and PLA, which is a
Speaker 1: biodegradable organic plastic. It's made from starchy byproducts maker Bot
Speaker 1: it tends to focus on both. They tended to focus
Speaker 1: earlier on ABS over PLA, but that would change over
Speaker 1: the course of the life of MakerBot as well. ABS
Speaker 1: tends to make a harder plastic than PLA once it sets,
Speaker 1: but it's also gotten amorphous melting point ABS does. That
Speaker 1: means that you can't be totally certain that which temperature
Speaker 1: of the stuff is actually going to melt. It depends
Speaker 1: heavily upon the batch of plastic you have, so typically
Speaker 1: three D printers will heat up extruders to around two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty degrees celsius, but depending upon the filament,
Speaker 1: you might need anything between two hundred and ten degrees
Speaker 1: celsius to two hundred and forty degrees celsius to get
Speaker 1: the ideal temperature to get the consistency the melting that
Speaker 1: you will need to print properly in addition, ABS can
Speaker 1: warp as you print if it happens to cool down
Speaker 1: too much during the printing process. So for that reason,
Speaker 1: if you print an ABS, you need a heated bed
Speaker 1: or heated platform to keep the plastic at a high
Speaker 1: enough temperature so it holds its shape through the entire
Speaker 1: printing process. But you also don't want the bed to
Speaker 1: be so hot that it ends up making the plastic
Speaker 1: guy like it never has a chance to actually cool
Speaker 1: enough to start hardening, and it'll warp as the print
Speaker 1: head moves around or as the object becomes too heavy.
Speaker 1: PLA is in general safer to use than ABS. It
Speaker 1: puts out fewer fumes at any rate. It also has
Speaker 1: a lower melting point, so you don't have to operate
Speaker 1: the printer at such a high temperature at the extruders,
Speaker 1: and it cools into a glossy, smooth appearance. It's a
Speaker 1: little more esthetically pleasing than ABS typically is. After printing
Speaker 1: running bed doesn't necessarily have to be heated, though the
Speaker 1: resources I'm familiar with suggest you should probably still use
Speaker 1: a heated print bed. You just don't need it as
Speaker 1: hot as you would with ABS, So in other words,
Speaker 1: you might need a heated print bed that's at sixty
Speaker 1: degrees celsius for PLA versus eighty degrees celsius for ABS.
Speaker 1: PLA has greater tensile strength than ABS, but ABS typically
Speaker 1: withstands wear and tear better and will withstand impact better.
Speaker 1: If you drop something that's been printed in ABS plastic,
Speaker 1: it tends to just kind of bounce, and it's typically
Speaker 1: kind of fine. PLA material can be a bit more brittle.
Speaker 1: It could actually shatter, depending upon what it is and
Speaker 1: how hard it hits the ground, whether it's PLA or ABS.
Speaker 1: There's a motor that's in a three D printer that
Speaker 1: pulls this filament, this wire like construction of plastic into
Speaker 1: the printer's extruder. The extruder is essentially a super heated nozzle,
Speaker 1: or not superheated, but at least a very hot nozzle.
Speaker 1: It's heated to a precise temperature like that two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty degrees celsius for APS, for example, and that's
Speaker 1: in order to melt this filament, and the extruder prints
Speaker 1: this molten plastic on the heated print bed. The motor
Speaker 1: keeps it moving, so the filament keeps adding pressure, thus
Speaker 1: pushing the liquid plastic through the end of the nozzle,
Speaker 1: and the process continues until you finish the print job.
Speaker 1: Either the extruder will move around the print bed or
Speaker 1: the print bed will move underneath the extruder. It depends
Speaker 1: upon the design of the printer. In either case, these
Speaker 1: movements correspond with the digital three D model for the
Speaker 1: object that you're sending to the printer in the first place,
Speaker 1: and the printer lays down the first of many layers
Speaker 1: of molten plastic. The printer repeats that process layer by layer,
Speaker 1: laying down molten plastic to sit on top of and
Speaker 1: bind to the lower layer of plastic. The printer is
Speaker 1: essentially creating multiple two dimensional images, just stacks of two
Speaker 1: dimensional images, over and over again until they add up
Speaker 1: to a full three dimensional printed object. The Cupcake CNC
Speaker 1: could print an object up to one hundred millimeters long,
Speaker 1: one hundred millimeters wide, and one hundred and thirty millimeters tall,
Speaker 1: so that translates to four inches by four inches by
Speaker 1: five inches more or less. But the Cupcake C and
Speaker 1: C was just the beginning, and while this company was
Speaker 1: rapidly gaining fans in the maker community, things were bound
Speaker 1: to change pretty dramatically in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in part two of this episode, but
Speaker 1: that concludes this part. So I hope you guys are
Speaker 1: enjoying the story of makerbots so far. Our next episode
Speaker 1: will have a lot of controversy and tragedy in it,
Speaker 1: at least from a kind of a high level view,
Speaker 1: very interesting stuff. If you guys have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, tell you what, go to our website,
Speaker 1: it's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You can check out
Speaker 1: the links there, you can get in contact with me,
Speaker 1: let me know what you would like me to cover
Speaker 1: in future episodes. You can also pop on over to
Speaker 1: our store over at tepublic dot com slash tech stuff
Speaker 1: and look at the merchandise there and not just look
Speaker 1: at it, you know, buy something if you like it.
Speaker 1: Every purchase you make goes to help the show. We
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate it. Then We've got some fun designs on there,
Speaker 1: and we've got new ones coming all the time. So
Speaker 1: go check it out and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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