Category Archives: 3D Printing

Inside 3D Printing New York 2014 Recap

One of the main events of the year in 3D printing took place last week in New York. Part of Mediabistro’s global tradeshow series Inside 3D Printing found it’s way back home to New York for the second time in it’s history. The first show hosted over 3000 visitors over two days, and this year things were set to be bigger – a lot bigger. The latest edition happened in Berlin last month and was praised by all the people I met who had attended.

I don’t even know where to begin, as I am still feeling a little light headed, not only over an incredible show, but also due to two 30 hour flights within seven days and 11 hours time difference.

Our trip started 2am in Bangkok, from where we took the first flight to Dubai. Quite standard flight, nothing really to report – basic Emirates stuff. The second leg to New York was with the Airbus 380, and I have to say that it is quite an amazing airplane! Flying economy was actually like flying business class with some less respected carriers. Finally landed safe and sound in New York and felt the +15 degrees (+30 in Bangkok…) in my every bone while waiting for a taxi.

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Inside 3D Printing New York 2014 Preview

While we are preparing for the Inside 3D Printing New York, I thought I’d write my views on what is to be expected. The show takes place 2-4 April at Javits Convention Center in New York City, and this year’s visitor numbers are estimated to be very high. This is definitely my 3D printing highlight show of the year.

Compared to last year, one of the new features for this year is The Maker Summit & Pavilion, which caters the DIY community. The Maker Pavilion is a special section of the trade show floor aimed for consumers, prosumers and makers. The Maker Summit is the conference part consisting of maker and new comer -aimed speaking sessions. As the home 3D printer market and DIY community are growing rapidly along the 3D printing industry, these two will surely be visitor magnets.

Another new add-on for this year’s edition is the workshop sessions that take place during the first day of the show. The workshops cover four topics this year:

Desktop 3D Printers – From Start to Finish,
From CAD to Scanning: Introduction to Design,
Reshaping Manufacturing: Understanding the 3D Printing Process
Tools of Creation and The Future of Retail

The workshops are a great way to gain more hands on experience about 3D printing, and I personally am the most interested to see how these will be received.

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Investing in 3D Printing

“Have you seen the price jumps of the 3D printing stocks? What are you long? You must have invested in some, right? Is 3D Systems the one to go with?”

3d printing wolf of wall street

Having some background in both 3D printing and finance, I hear these questions quite often. Well, at least I used to hear them. 3D printing stocks were the ‘pretty girl in class’ for the past year or so, until the 3D Systems (DDD) recently announced it’s preliminary results for the year 2013[1], which made the stock price plummet and set the market haywire.

Was it really a surprise?

The news, I mean. If you had studied 3D Systems more closely you would have noticed many things that normally would raise alarms in any investor’s mind. Without going into too much details[2] their growth strategy has been based on acquisitions, without actually selling too many of their own 3D printers. Their consumer focused 3D printer does not get much appraisal from the maker community.

3d-systems cube

So what has made theirs and other 3D printing stocks skyrocket? Is just a charismatic CEO (he really is) and effective marketing (it really is) enough? Could be, but it could also be that people are lazy to do their homework and just invest when it seems like the right time?

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3Doodler Review

Early last year I backed up a project in Kickstarter called 3Doodler. It was the first time for me to back anything on Kickstarter and to be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect. The delivery time was long, and I had almost forgotten the whole thing, until just recently, 10 months later it finally arrived. There was a bit of a mix-up with the courier company, which is more of a standard at this part of the world.

The 3Doodler, for those who are not familiar with it, is the infamous 3D printing pen that raised over $2.3 million from over 26,000 backers with their Kickstarter campaign last year. Besides the money the 3Doodler also raised a lot of questions and varying opinions. Some thought it was the best idea ever and some condemned it as a simple glue gun.

Was it just hype around an average product or have they unlocked something unique? Now that I actually have the 3Doodler, and been playing around with it, I thought I’d write a review from a non-tech user perspective. In this review I will look into the five aspects listed below. Each section will be graded 0-5, 5 being the best outcome.

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3D Printing Industry partners up with Mediabistro to produce Inside 3D Printing trade shows

3D Printing Industry - Inside 3D Printing - Mediabistro copy

It’s official. After months of waiting and waiting the day is finally here. Mediabistro just announced their investment in 3D Printing Industry and that going further the two companies will be producing Inside 3D Printing worldwide trade show series together.

At 3D Printing Industry we obviously were waiting this quite anxiously and unfortunately it took longer than anticipated to get everything in order. Things in Asia can sometimes take time, but there’s no point going into details here. The developments are great and will strengthen our leading online media position in the 3D printing realm. The partnership makes perfect sense for both companies and the same model has worked wonders in the past for many.

In fact, it’s a bit of a funny story. When we first met Alan in April in New York he was explaining how he usually operates the trade shows and media partnerships. I mentioned to him that it sounded very much like the model used by Search Engine Land with SMX shows. Maybe I should have done my research better, as it was Alan’s original model that he had created for Search Engine Watch when it was still owned by Jupitermedia. Live and learn.

The times ahead are very exciting for us.

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