Introducing re:3D’s Give-a-Bot Referral Program

Do you want to be on the cutting edge of technology and give your clients another reason to view you as a trusted advisor?  By joining Gigabot’s referral program, you can tell your clients, friends and colleagues about a huge, industrial quality, affordable printer that takes an idea from dream to reality.

At re:3D, we value community and invest in our communities to make a difference. We want to encourage and inspire all the young and young at heart to think BIG and get out and make a difference in their communities. Our passion for fostering community has given us the ability to form a referral program to support this vision. We need you to spread the word to those in your communities. Together, our knowledge and resources will make a BIG difference.

What’s in it for you? As a Gigabot owner, you’re already familiar with the product, so all you have to do is tell your friends, maker friends, family, and other 3D printer enthusiasts about how BIG Gigabot can print, send them our way and we’ll take it from there.

For every person you refer who buys a Gigabot, re:3D will reward you with a kickback. It’s our way of saying thank you. You can choose from the following options:

  • A $300 check when your referral completes the purchase of a Gigabot
  • A donation in your name for $300 to the Give-Back-a-Bot program.
  • 10% off any purchase from re:3D
  • Three 5 lb rolls of Filament for even more 3D printing
  • A $300 donation to one of the two amazing non-profits that inspired re:3D

Opportunity International

Engineers without Borders

You can — Register Here.

Be sure and tell your referral to include your name in the “Who referred you?” field when purchasing their Gigabot. We’ll be in contact with you after everything is finalized with the order. Voila! We will then hook you up with whichever kickback you choose.

* Remember, if you’re not registered in our referral program, we won’t be able to give you a kickback…however, we will always be grateful and so very much appreciative of any lead you send our way.

Katy Jeremko

Blog Post Author

re:Education – Edison Engine 3D printing education series launches on YouTube!

Edison Engine – 3D Printing Basics Episode 1

Edison Engine was created to educate the world on the process of invention and how 3D printing can enable that process. 3D printing is truly a revolutionary technology, and is going to change society forever for the better.
In the near future, millions of people will have access to the creative power that heretofore has only been granted to a few. This will reduce the barriers of entry to everyday people enough to allow them to create unabated. We at re:3D are makers of the largest format consumer FDM printer on the market, and are excited to share 3D printing with the world for a better society and future. Our very own, Erik Hausmann is the host of the series, and has a passion for sharing creativity and knowledge with the world. Formerly a senior consultant at Deloitte Consulting, he is an MBA graduate student at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. We hope that you can learn and help other people learn about 3D creation through this series. We are excited to see this new future, and have created this video series to educate and watch the 3D printing revolution as it unfolds. Remember, always keep creating!

Katy Jeremko

Blog Post Author

The Great Big Gigabot Giveaway!

re:3D hit a milestone when we shipped our 100th Gigabot to the field! Around here, we like to celebrate when we achieve a goal. Our team of bots brainstormed on how we could celebrate, and one thing was for sure: we want to get YOU – the community – involved!

Our passion at re:3D is to keep the idea box open. That’s why we built Gigabot on an open source platform. We want the community to get involved and know that the brainpower of many can make a difference.

With this in mind, we launched the Great Big Gigabot Giveaway as a way to get YOU to think big and beyond the normal possibilities. With large-format 3D printing, anything is possible.

We are asking you and your community to submit ideas of how you would use Gigabot to make a difference. Think huge, because the next Gigabot could be yours.

As a team, we love that the 100th Gigabot found his home at the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch Library in Houston, Texas – a place where the community comes together to learn and grow.  We support the endless fountain of ideas that young and old minds generate and were eager to deliver the 100th Gigabot.

It’s not every day that a library buys a 3D printer, so we wanted to chat with Jim Johnson, the librarian, about the library’s future plans with their Gigabot.

While the library is working toward developing a makerspace on the top floor of the library, they wanted to offer something different to the community that inspired innovation.

“We thought we could get a desktop 3D printer, but we wanted to offer something more for makers, so we got a large-scale 3D printer,” Jim shared. “Not many libraries have a printer this size. We thought it would make us stand out and provide the community with something different.”

Thanks to a generous donation, the new makerspace will most likely be called Lee Innovation Lab. The plans, while not completely finalized, are to have a workbench and laser printer/cutter, so folks in the community can tinker around and solder.

“We’ll probably lean more toward electronics and technology, since we have a lot of engineers in our community,” Jim said.  “We want to provide them with a tool that is usually only accessible at their workplace.”

Katy Jeremko

Blog Post Author

re:3D does SXSW 2014 – bigger than before!

Arriving at SxSW 2014 brought back great memories for us and was a good mile marker to see how far we have come as a company.

This Austin event holds a special place in the life of Gigabot and its founding team.

Flashback to SxSW 2013 – re:3D unveiled Gigabot after StartUp Chile chose them as one of the top 10 startup companies to be part of its sixth generation world-recognized acceleration program. We launched our 60-day Kickstarter campaign on the first day of SxSW Interactive, and our awesome backers met our fundraising goal within 27 hours! With their incredible support and advice from mentors, we’ve spent the the last year working hard to manufacture and deliver a high quality 3D printer (both in design and accuracy) that our backers and customers value.

Today, we’re functioning as a 3D printing company and our team is growing! While we still have our share of challenges here and there, we have learned that communicating is one of the most valued tools when working with a distributed team. (and really any team…)

This year, re:3D returned to SxSW as a success story. Wow! Adventures and opportunities awaited us around every corner. Our team pulled together, bonded a little closer, learned a lot, talked to a massive amount of people, posed for pictures, ate delicious food, interviewed with media, hung out with musicians, spoke on a 3D printing panel, assembled a Gigabot for delivery, finalized assembly and Kickstarter shipments, printed some cool prints, encouraged students and even got to eat some frozen yogurt and take a breather.

If you didn’t have a chance to make it to SxSW to see Gigabot in action, here’s a snippet of how re:3D was involved.

SxSW Create

A place where makers, hackers and DIYers united to check out innovative technologies and products. Our team spent three days with two Gigabots 3D printing and talking about 3D printing with local artists, architects and hobbyists. Some young 3D printer fans even came by to learn more about Gigabot. Our Chief Hacker, Matthew, spoke on a panel discussing 3D printers and the how 3D printers are being used. The recurring phrase that sums up SxSW Create, “Wow, that is so cool.”

SxSW Tradeshow

After SxSW Create, we moved our two Gigabots over to the trade show where we set up our 3D printers at the StartUp Chile booth. It only made sense to be a part of their booth since that is where we got our start last year. With tired feet, we spent the next three days showing off Gigabot and talking about possible ways researchers and developers could use Gigabot. Several media companies stopped by to interview us and we even got to pitch our product and company in front of Austin-based VCs at the SxSW Chile booth!

On-AirStreaming

During the music portion of SxSW, we partnered up with On-AirStreaming, an Austin-based film studio that does interviews with artists in an air-stream trailer. Pretty spiffy, if you ask us. We set up Gigabot and printed out “musician-ny” things like guitar pics and little guitars… not pushing the limits of size, but having a great time squeezing in some quick prints between shows. We even printed a specially requested yellow penguin. Thanks, On-AirStreaming for having us!

While our job is really never done, it’s time to raise a glass and take a deep breath as we close on the final Kickstarter deliveries. Here’s to another year of adventure and growth! See you back at SxSW 2015!

Katy Jeremko

Blog Post Author

Kickstarter Viki LCD Upgrade

* Original post from late 2013 *

Thanks for the continuous support, patience, and feedback! Many of you suggested that providing more multimedia with our Kickstarter updates would be helpful. A video seemed like a good way to answer some questions about the Viki LCD upgrade, so @chief_hacker recorded a quick tour of the Viki LCD add-on. All of our Gigabot-level backers will receive this add-on as part of our stretch-goal fulfillment.

Watch the video Viki Intro:

Katy Jeremko

Blog Post Author

3D Printing Should Start at a Young Age

* Original post from late 2013 *

Caitlin Maudlin is a freshman at West Albany High School where she is an active member of the school’s robotics team and Future Business Leaders of America.

Imagine being able to create anything that comes to mind. Imagine making things big as cars or small as human veins. 3D printing brings this day dream to life. 3D printing is fast growing as both a hobby and a career. Not only because it’s still interesting and new, but because there’s so many possibilities. It opens doors we didn’t even know existed, as all true advances in technology do. There are opportunities to use 3D printing in everything from the medical field to engineering. Now go and introduce this to the creative youth.

You get thousands of teenagers wanting a shot just to see this thing in action. As someone who is on a robotics team personally I love the idea of having access to a 3D printer for prototyping. At competition this year we saw a several teams with them. Each one spoke very highly of using them and recommends them to anyone. The vice president of team S.W.A.R.M. gave his opinion on this technology as “3D printing is useful for prototyping quickly, creating models/trinkets/art pieces, and overall having fun being able to see your creation take shape.”

Now robotics teams aren’t the only groups of kids who are using this. Makerspaces all over the country are taking advantage of this new way to provide hands on education. A Makerspace at the University of Mary Washington called ThinkLab uses a 3D printer for prototyping, designing, and creating solution to business problems.

It doesn’t even stop there just yesterday I went to the Maker Faire only to see a group of teenagers showing off their printer and what they make with it. Maker Faires are great places to go see what people are doing with new technology and to show off their homemade crafts. People are using printers not only for stuff now, but for things that can help us in the future. The possibilities are truly endless. Ten years from now what could we be making? What kid is going to figure out how to use a printer like the Gigabot to make new arms or legs for amputees?

So why not strive to put a bot into every high school? Help the future by introducing the youth to printers today. George Benard Shaw said “Youth is wasted on the young.” I believe in firmly proving him wrong. Teens love tinkering with all the new “toys” the world provides. Not all of them have had the wonderful experience I’ve had being able to learn to use a 3D printer.

Which is why 3D printers should be as common as regular printers are. Robotic teams, some schools, Makerspaces, clubs, artists, and more are all getting into 3D printing. These kids are the ones who are imagining what they can do with this product. They daydream about the things they can accomplish and build in the short time it takes to print out the tools they need. The youth is the future, and as an overused phrase says so in 3D printing.

Katy Jeremko

Blog Post Author

The Next Web (TNW) Latin America, Day 2

* Original Post in August 2013 *

The second day at the conference was noticeably slower than the first.  On top of some significant internet problems (and by that I mean there was no wifi for most of the day), there were less people stopping by the booth, and just less people in general.  Regardless, we spent most of the day printing The Next Web logo (thanks Lorena!), which was given as a prize to Senseta for winning the startup rally.

With more free time than the day before, I had more opportunities to hop next door and watch the presenters.  Kei Shimada kicked things off with a great quote by Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”  I took this advice to heart, explaining our 3D printer to bewildered onlookers with the simple one-word explanation: “Magic.”

The investor panel on stage – among them Startup Chile’s very own Horacio Melo – offered some sound advice regarding startups in Latin America.  They urged the crowd to look to solve Latin America’s problems, rather than rushing to build the first thing they see on Tech Crunch and thinking it will work in the LatAm market.  These solutions they said, will not be sexy.  Think: B2B, software as a service companies.  Horacio added: “Please no more social networks.”

My favorite speaker of the day was Paulo Veras from 99 Taxis.  His talk was about how to scale your startup to a full-fledged business, but he also spent a lot of time talking about how to be a successfulstartup.  A lot of his advice was very pertinent to re:3D’s current stage.  Veras stressed the importance of hiring exceptional people.  Startups need to take the time to seek out A players, and fix mistakes quickly when they arise.  One of his other main points was about laser focus – a piece of advice re:3D hears a lot.  Unfocused startups fail, he said.  Have one product and nail it – then, when you become really good at that one thing, you can diversify.

On top of listening to some very interesting talks, we got to speak with more new people at the booth.  Some brief points from the day:

  1. We can’t escape it – no matter what country we’re in we get the inevitable weapons question.  Brazil is no exception – there was a notable fascination among the Brazilians with printing guns.  One guy even went so far as to say, “Well, when you can print a gun, I’ll buy [a Gigabot].”
  2. There was some strong interest from several attendees (one disappointed Brazilian who wanted to walk out of the conference with our STGO MakerSpace-destined Gigabot), but mostly just a lot of entrepreneurs curious to see a 3D printer, but with no practical use for one.
  3. I tried Google Glass.  I’ve seen a handful of people wearing them in the States, but I’ve never had the opportunity to hound them with questions like, “What do they do?”, “Do you use them everyday?”, and “Do you feel like a total idiot when you wear them?”. Today, I finally got the chance to ask all these questions and more.  And – bonus! – I got to try them on and give them a spin myself.

Tomorrow is our final day in São Paulo – Matthew heads to Santiago to play musical chairs with some Gigabots while I head back to San Francisco.  I get most of the day tomorrow to explore the city and I plan on making a 2nd, hopefully more successful than my first experience, stop at a Churrascaria.

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

The Next Web (TNW) Latin America, Day 1

* Original Post from August 2013 *

As expected, it was an action-packed first day at The Next Web conference in São Paulo, Brazil.  After accidentally eating until the point of pain the night before at traditional Brazilian Churrasco restaurant (I clearly did not understand the process at this kind of establishment), it was an early start this morning to get set up. Matthew zipped through Gigabot assembly, with only minimal visible envy of the surrounding software companies whose setup procedure was opening their laptops.

The first talk of the day was Luis von Ahn, who humorously explained his past accomplishments: “How many have you have ever filled out [a captcha form]?  How many of you found it extremely annoying?  Yeah, I invented that.”  The human being-verification inventor went on to describe his latest venture, a language-learning startup called duolingo (www.duolingo.com).  The idea behind it is that users learn a new language while simultaneously translating the web.  The service is free – duolingo makes their money by selling the translations that their users create for them.  The same thinking went into both captchas and duolingo: recycle the energy that people are already expending on the web.  This mentality can be traced back to von Ahn’s childhood idea of creating a gym where the people exercising on machines create electricity which is then sold back to electric companies.  Take an action that people are already doing, and figure out how to make use of it.

On top of this, duolingo is simultaneously essentially doing one giant A/B test of language-learning.  von Ahn asks, “Do we teach students adjectives first, or plurals first?”  Now they have a definitive answer to that question, after splitting up users between the two different options and tracking their progress.  And with research showing that after using the service for 34 hours, users have the same amount of knowledge as the equivalent of a semester of a university course, it seems they have the right idea.

Other takeaways from the day:

Many Brazilians expressed interest in 3D printing, and they see the value in having such a tool for prototyping.  However, they warn of potential problems getting Gigabot through Brazilian customs.  Not only are the taxes high, they say some imports just never make it through.  More investigation is needed into this, but it seems like the best option for interested Brazilians might be to come to the states and bring Gigabot back with them.

Some Brazilians suggested we manufacture the machines down here, thus circumventing the complicated customs process.  But the Brazilian market is notoriously difficult to break into, so the conundrum is how to test the popularity of Gigabot in the country if we can’t sell it here.  The Brazilians we talked to stressed the importance of targeting the massive Brazilian market, so it’s something we need to explore as a company.

I can apparently pass for Brazilian.  In Chile, my blonde hair and face in general was a dead giveaway that I was an outsider, but I cannot tell you how many times I was asked today where in Brazil I was from.  The game is over when I can’t reply to them in Portuguese.

We’re looking forward to what Day 2 brings.  We’ve got some exciting prints planned!

Boa noite,

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

Designing for a Global Audience

* Original post from mid 2013 *

Design is a relational tool, used to communicate our respect for the end-user and to manipulate human behavior. To think, I design. The best part about being a designer is having the ability to allow others to see what I see and collaborate on effective solutions at the human scale. Here are pieces of my design process that I have found invaluable and want to share with you.

When you start a design project, usually your first ideas are your best ideas. 

But, you won’t figure that out until you’ve circled around at least ten other concepts. Designers are born with a strong intuition for brand sentiment, but start with the big picture before being able to streamline the resonate details. Carry around a small notebook and pen everywhere and use doodle time to sketch quarter-sized brand marks. Sometimes the best ideas come when you’re least expecting it.

Map your constraints. 

The beginning of a project is easily the best time to get yourself acquainted with your future hurdles. What is the type and size of audience you are designing for, and how much time do you have to create something magical? Be realistic, but dream about all possibilities.

Print it out, pin it up, and draw at least 100 thumbnail sketches of concepts with a pen or pencil. 

The first thing that a designer must do when presented with a new project is to curate a mood board of images, textures, samples, and concepts that can guide your project. From there, print every single thing out and hang it up on a wall in front of you. Knoll your inspiration into categories, stand back, and synthesize the early stages of your brand.

Play with design styles. Learn useful vector tricks and tips, but avoid following trends in your industry, especially if it’s an emerging market. Developing a brand for yourself and your company are two different things. The beauty of being in a start-up is being able to have a lot of input on the form of the brand.

Your brand is an umbrella of your understanding of the product. 

As a designer, you feel out the emotions and desires of your audience, and your brand is a tangible expression of that understanding. In order to give your product the ability to scale and grow, you must look to your customer for the answers. Just remember, Reddit can be your best friend and your worst enemy when it comes to how the public perceives your product. To grow your brand identity, ask yourself: What are the reasons that your community wants to be involved?

Live with your design before you decide to go any farther with it. 

When I develop a brand, product, or graphic design, I like to carry it with me somehow everywhere I go. Showing my brand to a diverse group of friends is a great testing ground for the world.

Never take criticism personally. 

Your design is not you. Once you create it, you are donating it to your customers. Everyone is an undiscovered designer, so listen before reacting to new ideas. My favorite thing to do is develop 3-5 versions of an idea and walk around with my computer asking, “what do you think”?

Think Big, Print Huge

Katy Jeremko

Blog Post Author

Diving into 3D Printing

* Original post from mid 2013 *

Note: This post is adapted from an article written by Morgan Hamel for the Santiago-based magazine “I Love Chile.”

If you had told me a month ago that I would be leaving my hometown of Silicon Valley – the heart of all things tech – to come to Santiago, Chile to work with a startup making 3D printers, I would have thought you had taken one too many deep inhales of the Santiago smog. Yet here I am, gazing out the window at the Andes as I push a 3D printed model of the Chrysler Building and a structure of the inner ear out of my way to write this.

My knowledge of 3D printing before arriving was pretty minimal, so I’ll give you the low-down on how this futuristic technology works. In contrast to traditional subtractive manufacturing, whereby objects are fabricated by removing matter from a piece of raw material, 3D printing is known as additive manufacturing: objects are created by adding layers of material to form a desired shape. You start with a 3D image on the computer – modeled with digital modeling software or downloaded from a website with open-source designs, like Thingiverse. Using a special computer program, you then slice these images into layers that are readable by the 3D printer, and – voilá! – your printer can begin dispensing the layers while your once-two dimensional object comes to 3D life before your eyes. The impact of 3d printing in supply chain is also very fascinating and definitely worth investigating further.

Sounds like something straight from the year 3000, right? Surprisingly enough, this technology has been around for almost two decades. It has even helped to spark the fourth industrial revolution, which will have huge consequences for the business world. Drawing from the process of the then-recently-invented inkjet printer, 3D printing got its start in 1984 when Charles Hull invented stereolithography, a process by which 3D objects were created from digital data. Since its birth, 3D printing has brought us a working kidney (2002), a self-replicating printer (2008), a working car (2011), and a prosthetic jaw (2012). As the technology continues to flourish, we are now beginning to see 3D printers as household items, with the breadbox-sized MakerBot Replicator leading the pack in the desktop printer market.

Right now, the marketplace is awash in desktop 3D printers – microwave-sized machines within the budget of a well-to-do hobbyist who enjoys printing handheld objects. But say you wanted to print something bigger, something like a chair? These printers don’t have the capacity to print something that large. This is where re:3D saw an opportunity. Addressing two of the main barriers to 3D printing – cost and scale – the team built their answer to this problem, and it goes by the name of Gigabot.

The Gigabot is currently the largest consumer printer on the market, boasting a build volume 30x larger than that of a standard desktop printer. The printer excelled in its Kickstarter campaign, meeting its fundraising goal in just over 24 hours and surpassing the target by more than sixfold. At $3,950 USD, it has applications in prototyping industries where the alternatives – like traditional injection molding – start in the tens of thousands of dollars. The team is already looking to become the forerunner in markets beyond the single consumer – aerospace, architecture, design, education, manufacturing, and medicine are just some of the industries where large-scale 3D printing is applicable and cost-effective.

But the team is not stopping there. The next project is already in the works at re:3D – a machine that converts plastic trash into 3D printer input material. This undertaking – a collaboration with Dr. Joshua Pearce of Michigan Tech University – will drive down costs while reducing landfill waste and global resource depletion, all while furthering the company’s vision of a future of sustainable 3D printing where individuals can have ownership over their entire supply chain. The applications range from the average consumer interested in operating a sustainable personal factory to isolated communities like Easter Island, where trash removal is a time-consuming and costly process.

So why Santiago? re:3D was accepted as one of the 103 companies in generation 6 of Startup Chile, an incubator program put on by the Chilean government. This CORFO initiative gives entrepreneurs around the world $40,000, office space, and mentorship under the condition that they move to Santiago for six months to build their companies. Gigabot is currently printing away in the ultra-cool workspace of the STGO MakerSpace (stgomakerspace.com) while the team explores the opportunities for 3D printing in the Latin American market.

While 3D printing has been hailed as the second industrial revolution many are still skeptical. But one needs to look past the knick-knacks and toys, towards the custom prosthetics and organs, the toilet in a developing country printed using the community’s plastic landfill, the astronauts fixing an unexpected breakage while on a mission. Only time will tell if 3D printing is the future, but until then I’ll be here in Santiago, somewhere between the Chrysler Building and inner ear.

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author