Matthew Compeau and Biying Miao are architects and entrepreneurs who use The Replicator to bring their designs to life, including the fantastic jewelry from their latest project Hot Pop Factory. We asked them why they use a MakerBot, and they whipped up a post for us to share right here on this blog.

Hot Pop Factory’s collection of 3D Printed jewelry celebrates the unique texture of 3D Printed objects. The three-piece collection was designed using Rhino3D and Grasshopper and then fabricated with our MakerBot Replicator. Coming from an architectural background – a profession in which the tools and technology for dreaming up amazing designs are progressing much faster than the budgets and construction methods needed to build them, we realized that our MakerBot provided an amazing creative outlet to scale down those ideas and bring them to life in way that wouldn’t be possible with other fabrication methods.

Since it first started shipping earlier this year, we’ve been using the Replicator non-stop. After several months of experimenting with its strengths and limitations, we’ve been able to develop a set of striking designs that show off the stratified beauty inherent to the additive manufacturing process. During this time, The Replicator completely changed the way we design. Instead of iterating our designs through sketches and rough models, The Replicator lets us produce an unlimited number of full-size prototypes that we can touch and wear at every stage of the design process. The result was a visceral understanding of how each piece is formed that allowed us to tweak every detail in order to help bring out their true beauty.

As excited as we were about The Replicator as a design tool, we are equally passionate about its role in the future of personal manufacturing. As young designers we don’t have the resources that would normally be required to bring a product like this to market. Our MakerBot has empowered us to take full ownership of the design and manufacturing process. Instead of investing tens of thousands of dollars and trying to forge relationships with suppliers and fabrications, we can manage the entire process — from design, to fabrication, to distribution — from our living room. It’s an exhilarating feeling to have so much control over a project we’re so passionate about. We hope that as our business grows, we can empower others in the same way, by providing tools that allow them to personalize each piece for custom manufacturing.

Needless to say, working on this project has already been an exciting journey. We hope that you’ll join us as the experience continues to unfold at www.HotPopFactory.com.

 

Alright, it’s a full day on the blog here, but seriously there are just a lot of people using MakerBots now. Animators, mathematicians, and now for an entrepreneur.

This Kickstarter campaign just launched today at 10:00 a.m. and we are happy to say it’s yet another product made possible by the prototyping powers of a MakerBot. Look at the humble little machine sitting behind Jamie, the lead on the POP project.

After a little market test of their idea for a portable device charger, these guys made a prototype of a brand new design on their Thing-O-Matic in ABS plastic and were then able to actually prove the concept. Now when someone asks you what you can actually use a MakerBot for, you can say, “starting a business.”

 

Big ups to Chris Mayer, a MakerBot owner and hackerspace founder in Wisconsin, who brought his Cupcake CNC, MakerBot’s first generation machine, to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Entrepreneurship Bootcamp…and apparently drew a crowd.

Chris attended this program himself three years ago, and has since gone on to found the hackerspace Sector67. That organization can already boast some cool successes. Here’s one that Chris got to brag about:

[Sector67 member] Eric Ronning, won the UW’s 2012 Schoofs Prize for Creativity for the prosthetic hand he developed using Sector67′s 3D printer, a programmable plastic molding device.

It’s pretty cool to keep seeing people doing awesome things even with our earliest machines, and taking time to spread the knowledge. Keep going, guys! The future depends on it.

What have you done with your Cupcake CNC lately? We want to know.

 

You gotta love this. Have you heard about the Pebble Watch? Eric Migicovsky’s company Pebble has raised a record-breaking $10 million+ on Kickstarter¹ — with a week left in its campaign — to produce its Bluetooth supported smart watch.

They thought they’d raise enough money to make 1,000 of these beautiful and highly sought after watches. Well, now it looks like they’ll have to produce 85,000. That’s a tall order, except that they say they’ll use The Replicator to help the production process.

The team has smashed the Kickstarter record for funding, and collected its initial goal of $100,000 in a matter of two hours, and had surpassed $200,000 within four hours.

The Pebble crew is a ten person startup, which Migicovsky says is working around the clock on perfecting the software. Regardless of the team’s heavy workload, Migicovsky assures that backers will receive a Pebble in the order in which they were purchased. In the future, says Migicovsky, the production phase will bolstered upon the purchase of a MakerBot replicator.

More proof that a MakerBot is an essential tool for the entrepreneur.

via Digital Trends

 

1. !!!!!!! [↩]

Next Saturday, April 21 — right around the corner! — is ACE Academy’s 3rd Annual ACE Innovation in Austin, TX. The event is an “all ages oriented, public event celebrating Austin’s community of creative entrepreneurs.”

That sounds wonderful, except so far there won’t be a MakerBot there! Anyone in the area with a MakerBot on hand should absolutely spend the day out at the University of Texas campus and share the love with this community. Laurie writes at Nereus Notebook that the event will include,

demonstrations of stop-motion animation, 3D printing, robotics, rocketry and various community programs. Show your support for Austin’s young innovators and our highly-creative entrepreneurial community if you’re in town.

Sounds like a fun afternoon!