The RepRap Community Hub at the TCT Show - Birmingham NEC UK

The RepRap Community Hub is back at the TCT show 

September 30th & October 1st.

This year the Open-Source and maker Community Hub, centered around RepRap 3D Printing has a great line-up of companies and individuals you would be very foolish to miss.

First if you have not already registered for the show, you can get a free badge and entry into the show by signing up here, it's well worth pre-registering as it avoids the queue at the NEC.

The show is on for two days starting September 30th at 9:30AM - to 17:00PM

The Main Open-Source RepRap Community Hub all of Stand J42 

If you want to meet up with me or anyone else please come to the show and visit J42 and the surrounding stands, it always great to see people from the maker community, talk about projects, ideas and generally discuss 3D printing in all it's glory and spectacular failures.

Full exhibitor list can be found here.

TCT Show Floor-plan is here.

On the Community Hub this year you will find - 

RepRapPro Ltd. - Adrian Bowyer and the team are back with the new Fisher Delta printer, and many new RepRap updates.

Think3DPrint3D - New Duet Electronics revisions, Kossel mini Kits and a lot of 3D Printing knowledge 

Semi-Utilitronic Industries is on the Hub with a rather nice version of my 3DR Delta printer design and lots more RepRap pares and advice.

ANDORNOT - will be back on the Hub with the finished Spatial One Delta printer - Andrew had the prototype on demo at the show last year, this time it's all ready for sale - Open-Source and very well built.

Shouting out a few companies close and around the community hub, sorry if I missed you off this post, (Just too many awesome companies to mention everyone) I do plan to visit every single exhibitor at the show to see what's new and interesting.

E3D (BigBox and LittleBox) - will be on stand J41 with what they tell me is the all new and improved BigBox 3D Printer design - looking forward to seeing the changes and print quality. Obviously all the great E3D hot-ends and materials will be on display and to buy during the show.

RepRapWorld is opposite the Community Hub, On stand J39 - Designers of the Megatronics electronics, and many other very cool things for RepRap 3D Printers - do give them a visit.

BCN3D Technologies is next on Stand J37 - you really do not want to miss the fantastic Sigma dual 3D Printer, it's just about the most impressive dual carriage printing FDM machine for the price you will see at the show.

Recreus and the Amazing FilaFlex materials are on H47 - I have been using a lot of FilaFlex recently, it's really great TPU material for 3D Printing. Steve wood of Gyrobot will also be demonstrating a rather fantastic program for auto-generation of custom Filaflex insoles. That's well worth a visit.



MatterHackers are at H42
InnoFil3D - H40
Rigid Ink - H38
We Do 3D Printing J35
Floreon J34
BQ - G42

Kuehling & Kuehling H32 - Probably one of the most business-ready capable FDM based 3D printers in recent years.

Mass Portal G30 - I was blown away in Berlin by this little Delta printer - it manages some of the finest looking prints I have ever seen.

Filament Print - H41
Cinter - G40
3D Print UK - G36
STRUCTUR 3D Printing - H36


Look out for many others scattered around the show -

The 3D Printing Association - G51

3DFilaprint - C39 - Selling all manner of materials for 3D printers.

BuildTak - B22 - build platform sheets that really work well.

ColorFabb B36 - Some of the finest 3D printing filaments available.

German RepRap - E35

Hawk 3D Proto - H14

Markforged -G39

Mcor Technologies D14

Ultimaker J24

And so many more....


I am looking forward to see the Formlabs FORM 2 3D Printer - recently launched. Still quite a lot of money, but they are setting the bar for Desktop SLA based Resin printing in my opinion.
Formlabs are on D44

Another interesting development in the SLA market will be Photocentricgroup, launching a new LCD based SLA printer (low cost) and offering both daylight and UV based resin formulations.

I'm imagining their LCD based printed just uses daylight resins, but I will find out more and update on this and anything else I discover.

Hope you can visit us at the Community Hub, looking forward to another two days of highly interesting discussions with all of you.

I'll have more updates (and Intro video) on the new OpenSLA project too. Please join and contribute to the Google+ Community over here.


Thanks for reading, until next time.

Rich.

TCT Show 2014 UK 3D printing

Hello everyone,

Next week the TCT Show is opening for a full three days of 3D printing, design and product development. Both consumer and Industrial sectors are fully represented.

I will be at the Show for the entire duration, do try to visit if you can. You will find us on the RepRap community Hub Stands J45 and J47C (or with our wonderful neighbors all around us)

If you would like to talk to me about 3D printing or anything else, let me know in the comment or send me an e-mail or message @RichRap3D - I would be really pleased to meet up with more of you.

Show floor-plan is here

3DHubs are also having a meetup at the show, so look out for that one. Should be fun.

Also if there is anything you want me to check out, research or investigate at the shows, just let me know.

And also the TCTShow running from the 30th September - 2nd October at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre -Register and find out more here

I'll try to give as much feedback as possible from the show floor, usually on Twitter first @RichRap3D and G+ / this blog as soon as I can.

See you soon,

Rich.

Work in Progress and RepRap Community Hub event - September 2013

Hello Everyone,

A lack of updates from me for a while, but I have been working very hard on many things including my new RepRap Delta Printer (3DR) -

More on 3DR shortly - an Intro Video is up on Youtube here if you want to get a head-start

So far it's been a summer of festivals and exciting 3D printer developments, lots of new machines announced and more people than ever, openly working to make technology for this great industry.

Lots of other things to also report on as soon as I get a chance - here is a taster of things to come - 

• 3DR - A 3D printed RepRap Delta printer, much more on this shortly - (see above)

Experimentation with Laybrick -' it's a bit like printing with stale chewing gum' but a very interesting material (and also finally Laywood too) 

Better mixing of multiple materials and many more colours - (method show above is using a base colour, in this case white and many feeds of colour, mixing in a single nozzle)

• Trials with PVA. (using some exciting new printers)

Nylon 645 Printing

• Taulman Nylon 645 (both colour and natural printing - it's a more clear material so very nice for light pipes!)

• Stainless steel hot-end experiments - more updates soon.

And here's the Really BIG News! 

A rather exciting RepRap community announcement - 

If you remember last year - I reported on the TCT show looking through 'makers' eyes, upset a few people, (not the intention) but it also helped make a lot more positive progress with all the the others and even the Show organisers.

I also reported on the show in 2011, if you want to see how things are starting to evolve.

After last year, the TCT Show asked me to get more involved with trying to make this an event for both the established additive manufacturing suppliers and the wider maker, developer, designer community. 

I will be doing a RepRap focused presentation at this year's show and here's the really exciting bit - 

In association with the RepRap Magazine I'm pleased to announce that in partnership with the TCT Magazine and Personalize we have organised a very exciting opportunity for the whole RepRap community.

In September this year the TCT magazine has its annual Additive manufacturing and 3D printing show at the NEC in Birmingham (UK) The TCTShow is in its 18th year and attracts big names from the industry, businesses and individual makers from all over the world.

The Show has an exciting exhibitor list and in recent years has embraced the Maker and RepRap communities with the Personalize sections of the show and the fantastic bright minds initiative. This attracted many maker based companies including Ultimaker, Makerbot, Leapfrog, Electrobloom and MiiCraft along with many other open source and proprietary developers to last year’s event.

This year the TCT Show and Personalize have further collaborated with the RepRap and maker community, providing a significant and dedicated space for the two days of the exhibition.

This space will be a dedicated RepRap community hub, where makers, designers and developers from all over the world can come and talk about RepRap and all the many aspects of 3D Printing. We can share our passions and developments, 3D printing experiences and ideas with each other and visitors to the show.

I'm even more excited to announce that joining the RepRap Magazine on this RepRap community hub will be the Inventor and father of all things RepRap, Dr Adrian Bowyer. I'm still rather stunned this is happening, and I hope you are just as excited. Joining Adrian on our stand will be the RepRapPro Ltd. Team, they plan to have a complete RepRap production facility to fully demonstrate the self-replicating nature of this great project.

The RepRapPro Ltd. team are all highly accomplished developers and designers in the RepRap community and will be showcasing their unique Tricolour Mendel and Huxley printers along with offering advice and discussion about RepRap and 3D printing for the whole community.

And, yes there's more... Also set-up on our community hub will be the ever amazing Faberdashery Team, who will also be expertly on hand to offer advice about materials, 3D printing and all things colourful and Maker related.

We have a considerable space for use at the show - RepRap Hub Stand G54 - please see the master floorplan for the entire show space.

This is a globally recognised event and a great opportunity to get involved and spread the RepRap mission. And on that note here is where we need your help -

I'm attempting to coordinate efforts in the UK and need to hear from anyone that wishes to sponsor or contribute in making this a really fantastic hub for the RepRap community.

We have a lot to do and are looking for, individuals and companies who want to help make this a great resource for the RepRap community.

And if you can operate a 3D printer, or would like to print some awesome things for the event, please get in contact at the e-mail address below.

This will be what you help make it, so please do get in contact for more information and if you can assist or even just to let us know you are going to visit the show, we want to hear from you – let’s make this a RepRap meeting event to remember.

For further information about the show, please go to the TCT Show website

If you would like to help out in any way with the event, or just want to show support, please e-mail us - and I will get back in contact - tctshow@reprapmagazine.com

You can come and visit the show for free, but you must pre register - Registration is free and open now, click here

Please do also take a look at the great work being done for the Bright minds program, a really great part of the two day show designed to get children into 3D printing, design and innovation. The fact that the TCT show are backing this Bright minds program is one of the main reasons I'm giving my time to help make this show something good for the community I hope you will want to do the same.

Do get in contact, and we all hope to see and talk to lots of you at the show.

And right about.... now - Issue 2 of the RepRap Magazine should be released- take a read, it's rather good.

Rich.

In other news -  

Makerbot got sold to Stratasys today - So much has already been written about this today, I don't want to add to the noise, but I can highly recommend reading this by Joris Peels and Al Dean's spot-on take of events here.

:)

TCT Live show (UK) 3D printing and more

I visited the TCT Live show at the NEC in Birmingham last week. A lot of really interesting stuff, too much to detail everything here, so here are a few highlights for me. If you do nothing else, please Read the section below on Geoff McCormick.

One of the highlights of the TCT show for me was a presentation by Geoff McCormick. Geoff is passionate about lots of things connected to 3D printing and the social / economic side of design and development using technology spread all over the world (open-source / sharing networks and joint development projects).
I know he is a fan of Fab-Lab so must be aware of RepRap, I would have liked to talk to him further, we only briefly discussed the Microsoft Gadgeteer project (It's an ARM7 Arduino style Open-source tool-kit) - Yes I know it does not sound like Microsoft... but they are throwing money at it.

Geoff's presentation was unfortunately wasted on many of the people present, but that's just an indication that many industries have no idea what's changing and how seemingly implausibility things become possible when you get a load of people together who are passionate about problems and finding solutions to them. So many of the companies at that show should take a big look at what's going on with open hardware, open software, community projects, digital playgrounds and personal manufacturing in general, it would be an eye-opening experience for many I'm sure. Ways to turn these many channels of development into commercially successful products or business ideas should really be a critical focus for most established companies and investors or they will all wonder what happened and why they missed out..

The customer is King, at some point soon businesses will need to tailor make almost everything or someone else will.

Please take a look at these reports that were used as the basis of Geoff's presentation - They highlight key trends that will drive growth in Creative industries and they provide very interesting views on the colliding digital and physical world in which we all interact.


Executive summary - New models, new markets, new makers
Baseline Report - BRIDGING THE DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL WORLD
Key findings - this is excellent food for thought - Final Report

And - Where to next?

 Back to the TCT Show -

Mcor were at the show, with their A4 paper based 3D printer. About £9,000 for the printer and it uses normal office paper. Still can't convince myself of it's eco-credentials as it's going to use bleached copier paper and waste quite a bit of it in every print. It's back to subtractive manufacturing, but a nice machine and the 'printed' parts looked great.

I was highly disappointed by the HP 3D printer, I had expected great things, it seems a lot slower than any other 3D printer I have seen and the quality was just average, the ABS plates are throw away after just a few prints and it's really expensive

Bits From Bytes had their new '3D Touch' printer, it's like a BFB3000 with new electronics and a touch-screen interface and a Memory stick slot on the front for printing from.

A1 Tech had a BFB3000 making a bit of a mess printing something?, it went on printing this badly for a while, the raft had lifted and the print head was catching, causing quite a mess over the object. Sadly not a good advert for the technology.

But they did have plenty of nice printed objects on a desk.

Renishaw Laser SLS 3D printing (Sorry for the high reflective surface, hopefully you can make out the Laser doing it's job.

Nice Objet printed materials using different resins.

All the usual suspects were there, the big players and a few technologies I had always wanted to see in action (Laser sintering and full colour powder printing and also multi material resin printing).

Did anyone else go to the show?

I would be really interested in your comments or thoughts on Geoff's reports? what do you think?

Thanks for reading.

Rich.