Inside 3D Printing Santa Clara 2014 Preview

By | October 15, 2014

Inside 3D Printing travels back to the US next week to see the second show in Santa Clara Convention Center. Unfortunately I missed the show last year, but what I heard from our team that was present it was a great show. So, a lot to be expected this year as well. 3D Printing Industry is co-producing the show with the organizer MecklerMedia, and we have a team of four at present including the US based writer Scott J Grunewald, video producer Tony Hofmann, Ari and myself. We’ll have a booth at the show and will be filming video material as well as covering the show on 3dprintingindustry.com as usual.

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The latest shows in Tokyo and Hong Kong were successful as always. Tokyo show attracted over 35,000 visitors in total for the cluster of tech shows bundled together. Despite being based in Asia, I do prefer the trade shows in the western countries. People in western countries are perhaps more extrovert and therefore easier to engage with. In Tokyo we did a small survey through a translator. Getting answers from the visitors seemed to be tricky even for the local translator.

The show in Santa Clara this year is coined to be quite big. It will happen over three days from 21-23 October including 56 conference sessions, 6 keynote speeches and over 40 sponsors and exhibitors. Let’s have a look in more detail what to be expected.

Keynotes

As the first day is filled workshop, the first keynote speaker will be Jeff Kowalsky, Autodesk CTO in the morning of the second day. He hasn’t revealed yet more of his topic, but most likely he will cover Autodesk’s latest development from tech point of view. This is definitely one on my watch list.

In the afternoon keynote, the chairman and chief executive from Organovo, Keith Murphy shares today’s applications of 3D bioprinting and where it’s heading in the near future. For anyone who is considering investing in 3D printing companies, this is definitely one not to miss.

The closing keynote for the second day is the one and only, Terry Wohlers, who is considered to be the leading consultant in 3D printing industry. His company Wohlers Associates is behind the leading industry titled Wohlers Report that has been published for 19 consecutive years. Terry will deliver his realistic overview of the whole industry and where it is today. If you are new to 3D printing and would only watch one presentation, I would suggest that this would be it.

Keynote speakers

The last day’s first keynote will be coming from Siemens Chief Solutions Architect, Mohsen Rezayat, who is going to cover a very interesting topic; the role of file formats and how they limit 3D printing. There has been some conversation around this topic for as long as I can remember and will be definitely interesting to hear what Siemens has in their sleeve on this one.

The afternoon keynote is another one on my list for not to be missed. Chris Anderson, the former WIRED Magazine chief editor, and currently the CEO of 3DRobotics, will go up on stage. No speech description available yet.

The closing keynote will be delivered by Carl Deckard from Structured Polymers. He will be focusing on the history and the future of 3D printing, bringing perspective from a laser sintering company’s point view.

Conference

The MecklerMedia team has definitely put their best foot forward with the Santa Clara show program. Four tracks running simultaneously for two days! The tracks include areas such as medical, investment, food, design and aerospace. There are just too many interesting presentations to list, but here some of my personal highlights.

  • Medical Track: Lynn Rothchild from NASA on 3D printing advanced biocomposites on earth and beyond
  • Food Track: Hod Lipson from Cornell University on 3D printing food overview, challenges and opportunities
  • Business & Investment Track: A startup competition of six 3D printing startups
  • Entertainment & Fashion Track: Jason Lopes from Legacy Effects on how to enable imagined things come through with 3D printing
  • Maker Track: Mike Vasquez on how to make 3D printing work for your organization
  • Manufacturing Track: Skylar Tibbits: 4D printing and programmable materials
  • Aerospace Track: Daniel Faber, CEO of Deep Space Industries on how to bring sustainable free enterprise to the space frontier
  • Technical Track: Daniel Stolyarov, CEO Graphene 3D Lab on Graphene-enhanced materials for 3D printing functional devices
  • Software Track: Andy Lauta from Adobe on bringing 3D printing to creative

Workshops

As mentioned earlier the first day kicks of with a total of eight different 3D printing workshops. The topics cover desktop printers from start to finish organized by Type A Machines team, how to run your business on 3D printing, reshaping manufacturing and understanding the 3D printing process, overview of 3D scanning etc. Please see the full workshop and conference program here.

Overall it’s going to be a very colorful three-day show. I am really looking forward to it. If you haven’t registered yet, you still can (include the code PD14 to get 10% off of your Gold and Silver Passes). See you there!

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