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Saying ‘I Do!’ To 3D Printing For A Wedding

It’s that lovely time of year again where love is all amongst us as weddings are galore! More than a handful of our teammates have utilized the power of 3D printing with Gigabot to create wedding decor that reduces costs while optimizing creative expression & personalization… so we thought we’d share their applications in hopes to inspire 3D printing for your special day.

4 Ways To Utilize 3D Printing For A Wedding (& Why You Should)

3D Printed Wall Decor Lighting Up The Dance Floor

Jeric 3D printed and assembled an LED sign for his sister’s wedding. The printed parts took 14 hours in total to make using a combination of PLA & PETG – PETG for the front, translucent part of the sign and PLA for everything else. He used super glue and hot glue to hold everything together. He also installed LEDs throughout the inside – the LEDs are RGB and have a transmitter connected, so they can use a remote to control the color and light-up patterns. Check out the photos from the full build process in this album.

Why use 3D printing?

“3D printing gave me amazing flexibility in the design, but also let me quickly build a functional 3D design.”

Jeric Bautista

The 3D Printed Icing On Top of the Cake: 3D Printed Wedding Toppers

Alessandra designed & 3D printed ‘Mr&Mrs’ wedding cake toppers and table decorations for Samantha Snabes’ sister’s wedding. They took about 1 hour to design and model for each print and the wedding cake topper took approximately 1 hour to print while the table decoration took about 43 hours to print using silver PLA. The prints were then spraypainted with gold.

Why use 3D printing?

"Weddings are expensive but custom wedding items are extremely expensive. With 3D printing, you can literally shape your dreams without having to go bankrupt. Time-wise, I was able to get a specific picture from the customer's Pinterest and generate a 3D model under 1 hour. Even if one of the models takes 43 hours to print, you can leave Gigabot in charge while you go home, watch series and take a nap, so you virtually save those 43 hours of possible manual work.”

Alessandra Montano

A Trove of Treasures In A 3D Printed Chest: 3D Printing Gifts

Mike B. 3D printed a Zelda treasure chest for a Zelda themed wedding. The chest had a slot at the top to drop in gift cards. He also 3D scans newlyweds when he goes to weddings and ships them print-outs of themselves a few months later. For the Zelda treasure chest, he used hinges from the hardware store, a bit of Bondo to give a wood texture, acrylic paint, and a clear coat. The design took 2 hours, and Mike kept changing it to look more authentic to the game. The portraits were printed in white PLA and scanned with a Structure Sensor. Scans were cleaned up a bit in MeshMixer.

Why use 3D printing?

"For many fabricated items, the materials inform the design but with 3D printing, you can make virtually anything if you can model it. A treasure chest would traditionally be made with wood and metal. You can mimic lots of different fabrication methods all with the same two tools, a CAD program, and a Gigabot. The Zelda treasure chest needed to look cartoony so in this case, it was actually easier to prime/paint than a metal/wood fabrication would have been. 3D printing is indispensable for prop design! For the scans, someone would have had to sculpt them; this was more of a portrait captured at the moment which I think is special.”

Mike Battaglia

3D Printed Accessories: A Life-Sized Diamond Isn’t Tough

Tammie 3D printed a diamond to be a light within a large diamond ring to further accessorize the wedding. She used natural PLA and it took 1.5 to 2 hours to complete the print using Gigabot and didn’t do any post-processing work on the prints.

Why use 3D printing?

“I would have never found a diamond this large to display for the day! Thankfully for the size of Gigabot and the versatility of 3D printing, it was made possible.”

Tammie Vargas

There you have it! Four special 3D printing applications for very special days. We’d love to know – what have you printed for weddings & special occasions? Don’t hesitate to share on our forum! Until then…happy printing ever after 🙂

Cat George

Blog Post Author

HiveCube: Building a Safer Future for Puerto Rico

Note: re:3D does not manufacture HiveCube homes, but rather was part of the prototyping process and helped to 3D print architectural models which HiveCube used for pitching to investors.

Maria Velasco was hunkered down with family on the west coast of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez when Hurricane Maria hit.

“The first 24 hours there was no contact with anything outside of your neighbors.”

She described how, in the immediate aftermath of the storm, they could venture a little further from home each day to assess the damage. Families relied on word of mouth to check the wellbeing of their loved ones; people would drop by to let others know they were alive.

“It’s a humbling experience,” Velasco recounts. “You realize what you need and what you don’t need in life.”

It was this focus on the essentials in a time of crisis that got Velasco and her business partner, Carla Gautier, thinking. Channeling the spirit of resiliency on the island following the disaster, Gautier and Velasco vowed to stay and help rebuild in their own way, to make the future safer for the people of Puerto Rico.

The Beginnings of the Hive

Gautier has a particular skillset that makes her well-suited for the challenge: she’s an architect.

While completing on her Bachelor’s of Science in Architecture in Boston, she spent four months in Berlin, traveling around Europe to study alternative types of architecture for low-income communities. It was on this tour that she was first exposed to structures made from shipping containers. Later, during her Masters of Architecture, she spent time in West Africa – in Benin – studying informal construction and development.

These two exposures later came together to form the foundation of HiveCube.

After completing her master’s, Gautier started working for FEMA, getting an up-close view of the destruction around the island post-Maria. On this assignment, Gautier saw firsthand a major factor that compounded the destruction of the storm: buildings not being up to code.

She and Velasco did some research, discovering that 55% of housing in Puerto Rico is constructed informally. Some areas of the island may not have stood a chance against the force of Maria, but surely structures being built to code and with hurricanes in mind should be a given on the island, the pair mused.

These three experiences in Gautier’s architecture career – her work on low-income housing in Europe, her study of informal construction in West Africa, and her exposure to the prevalence of informal construction on her home turf – came together to form the seed of an idea.

Gautier wanted to bring her knowledge of simplistic yet effective designs for low-income housing from Europe to help people in her homeland, to create affordable housing built to withstand ferocious storms that didn’t compromise on quality or comfort.

The idea for HiveCube began to take shape.

A Jumpstart from Parallel18

Hurricane Maria tested the resiliency of Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico stepped up to the challenge.

San Juan-based startup accelerator Parallel18 created a new program post-Maria specifically to harness the energy and drive to bounce back that they saw amongst the population. Called Pre-18, it was a separate entity from their typical accelerator program, where they mentored around 40 companies from Puerto Rico each working in their own way to rebuild and kickstart the economy after the storm. HiveCube was one of the companies accepted.

Something I'm excited about in HiveCube is their team. They have two very energetic, capable founders in Carla and Maria.

Lucas Arzola is the Director of Operations at Parallel18

HiveCube and the other companies of Pre-18 epitomize the buoyant spirit of Puerto Ricans following one of the worst disasters on the island in recent history.

“We had our campaign called ‘El Boricua se las Inventa’ – Puerto Ricans Get Creative,” explains Arzola. “We’ve seen that creativity happen all around us, and HiveCube is just one example of a company that was born from the hurricane and created a solution that now is growing and thriving.”

Companies from the Pre-18 program were then eligible to be selected for the following Parallel18 cohort; HiveCube was one of 16 that made this jump. “We’ve never as many Puerto Rican companies in the Parallel18 cohort as we did in this one,” Arzola muses.

The Pre-18 program was so successful that Parallel18 has decided to make it a regular thing. “It’s going to be an official program we’re going to do once a year,” explains Arzola. “So the idea is that we can do one Pre-18 cohort for every two Parallel18s.”

HiveCube’s extended time with the Parallel18 team super-charged their pace of progress as well as reinforced the value of the accelerator program.

“We’ve seen them evolve and grow significantly in a short amount of time, so it sort of validates our program as well,” says Arzola. “There’s no better validation than just seeing thriving companies that will be able to contribute to Puerto Rico and grow from this point on, because we’re able to support them in this stage where they need help the most. That’s why we do what we do.”

Parallel18 is also where Gigabot enters the HiveCube story.

The duo was having a tough time pitching investors: their vision was getting distorted along the way, often manifesting in others’ minds as a less-aesthetic, lower-quality “trailer.” But what the two had in mind was so much more – they just couldn’t figure out how to communicate this in a way that resonated with prospective investors.

Gautier and Velasco experienced firsthand the phenomenon of using a 3D printed prototype in lieu of a digital one. The digital renderings on a computer screen or projector weren’t getting them the reactions in meetings that they wanted, but perhaps a physical model could convince people of their vision, they thought.

They used Gigabot to print a basic architectural model of a Hive, and began taking it to meetings with investors and communities working on reconstruction. The physical model excited people in a way that digital drawings and renderings hadn’t.

Suddenly, in Velasco’s words, “everybody wanted to take the meetings, everybody wanted one.”

There was something about being able to turn a physical object over in their hands that clicked with people. The surge in enthusiasm over the model pushed the pair to continue driving forward and make the concept a reality. With the first hurdle crossed, they now had to bring their vision to life.

Building a Hive

HiveCube works with used shipping containers, lending a second life to structures that would otherwise end up in container graveyards.

They buy a certified-as-seaworthy shipping container, verify that the container is structurally sound, and begin preparing it for its new life. The container is given holes for windows and a door, a fresh coat of paint, and the interior refurbished and outfitted with living fixtures.

The prototype Hive that they constructed for their August launch party is what will become their Basic Model: a two bedroom, one bathroom unit with a kitchen and living room in the center.

They’re filling a major gap on the island that contributed to the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria: creating housing that’s code-compliant but also affordable for the general population.

“We believe in their concept: the fact that they’re bringing an architecture background to what they’re doing and are designing hurricane-resistant homes that can provide accessible housing,” Parallel18’s Arzola explains. “That’s really relevant to one of the big problems that appeared after the hurricane: the fact that the median income in Puerto Rico is low compared to the cost of housing. There is a need for more affordable options in the market.”

Their goal is to create something that’s more than just a safe shelter. “We’ve been trying to make sure that we build something that’s actually nice to live in, not just something cheap and fast,” Velasco explains. “Something that people would want to own and they’re proud of and that they feel comfortable and safe with.”

The pride for their island shines through HiveCube’s mission to create safe, affordable housing for Puerto Ricans.

As Velasco puts it, “We’re going to try and build something that can actually help the community be stronger, if something like this – God forbid – happens again.”

On December 13th, HiveCube took home the People’s Choice Award at Parallel18’s Generation Five Demo Day, an award bestowed by an audience vote.

“It speaks to how relatable and relevant the solution is to Puerto Rico,” muses Arzola. “So yeah, we’re very proud.”

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

architect architecture construction Design Hurricane Maria Hurricane Recovery P18 Parallel18 Puerto Rico

Hurricane Maria forces Parknet to Pivot, Gigabot Lowers Risk

Antonio Ramos takes a deep breath. “It was really depressing.”

A native Puerto Rican, he was living in San Juan when Hurricane Maria hit. He described the sentiment on the island when the storm was forecasted: Irma had just passed by with little effect, and the general feeling was that Maria would also spare them. The island is used to storms, he explains, and they usually bounced back after big ones in a couple weeks.

But this one turned out to be different.

He remembers seeing the radar images of the vastness of the tempest bearing down on them, their island dwarfed next to it. The dire situation quickly became apparent. Antonio recalls his reaction: “Okay, we’re screwed.”

It wasn’t just Antonio that had to weather the storm – he had a company to tend to as well.

From Capstone Project to Company

Antonio and his cofounder, Alan Lopez, started Parknet when they were still engineering students in university. They used the idea for their Capstone Project, building a controller that could connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi or SIM cards and control a boom barrier or electromagnetic gate – “really anything that could be activated,” Antonio explains.

They approached a local company with their idea, proposing to them that they could reprogram their controller in real time.

“They actually challenged us,” recounts Antonio. “They told us, ‘Hey, that can’t be done.’” The company said the only way to reprogram it was to go into a computer, use their software, and reprogram the whole controller.

Antonio didn’t balk. “I told them, ‘No, we can actually hack your controller.’” The company didn’t budge.

“So, it was a challenge,” says Antonio. “And challenge accepted. Something that we’ve learned is that you never challenge an engineer and say that they can’t do something, because they will do it.”

Six months later, Antonio and Alan demoed for the company their “unhackable” controller working as they had originally pitched. Parknet was born.

Maria's Arrival

Parknet makes cloud-based controlled access systems which provide facility administrators the ability to control access points – think entry doors or parking gates – in real-time, through the use of a web-based app accessible from any device with an internet connection.

Antonio and Alan explored different routes for how to market their system in Puerto Rico.

“At first, we wanted to use it for a parking lot payment system. But we found a bit of resistance here from the parking administrators,” Alan explains. They shifted their focus to gated communities and apartment complexes.

They joined the Generation Four cohort of Puerto Rican incubator program Parallel18 in August. And then, in September, Maria arrived.

“After the hurricane, we had no cell phone communication, we had no Internet, no power. It was really depressing,” Antonio recounts. “Our business needs Internet. It’s an Internet of Things device, so it needs Internet to operate and it needs power. So we were kind of stuck there.”

They pivoted yet again, strategizing how to stay afloat and retain their employees.

“We had to survive,” Antonio says. “The sales cycle for gated communities and apartment complexes can be from four to six months. It takes a lot of time and a lot of meetings and convincing.” But they found that with commercial spaces, the process was faster. “We started selling to co-working places and offices.” One such customer is Parallel18 itself.

Antonio stopped paying himself in order to keep his team on payroll. “We were in survival mode,” he explains. He began working in generator repairs, a service in high demand on the island following Maria.

They weathered the monster storm and its lingering aftermath, and several months later the company was back on its feet. As Parknet started demanding more from Antonio, he wrapped up his generator repair work and went back to it full time.

3D Printing Before Moving to Manufacturing

In the Parallel18 program, Parknet crossed paths with re:3D.

They began using Gigabot to 3D print enclosures for their printed circuit boards, or PCBs. “We can build a box in like, two hours, and we can test it before we send it to the manufacturer,” Antonio explains. “The manufacturer had a minimum of 10 boxes, and if it didn’t work correctly, we were going to waste 10 boxes.”

Once they finalized the enclosure design, they moved to a sheet metal forming process, but they continued to turn back to Gigabot for custom requests. “One of the advantages is that we can offer a customer a custom design,” Antonio says. “If they want a diamond shaped scanner, we can build it for them. If they want it embedded into a gypsum board, we can also do that.”

One Parknet customer in San Juan who has requested a diamond-shaped scanner is El Almacén, a speakeasy-style bar tucked away just off the buzzing square of La Placita.

They’re using Parknet’s technology to text message patrons digital keys and grant them entry to the bar with the swipe of a phone. The door unlocks and the e-key-holder descends into an old-timey themed lounge.

It also gives the bar the marketing opportunity to track and quantify their marketing. They can compare how many people the text message key was sent to and how many people used it, rather than their old method, which was a post on their Facebook page with the password for the night. There is also the location-based aspect of it – if a patron gets within a certain radius of the bar, their phone will remind them that they have a key to the nearby locale.

Moving Forward Post-Maria

It’s just past the one year anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s landfall.

Puerto Rico has recovered fairly well given the incredible destruction of the storm. The land itself looks lush and green, and the people I spoke with are propelled by a resilient spirit and a desire to rebuild and strengthen their island for the future.

Antonio is one of those very people. Parknet came out the other side of Maria arguably a stronger company, with more applications and a wider customer base than he and Alan had originally imagined. It’s been a big cycle for them that has taken them through multiple major pivots in the company’s lifespan.

After the trials of Maria, Parknet is now focused back on gated communities and apartment complexes and is ready to tackle their original vision of parking lots.

Learn more about Parknet: https://www.linkedin.com/company/parknet.pr/about/

Learn more about Parallel18: https://www.parallel18.com/

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

3dprinting Design engineering Hurricane Recovery prototype

And The Winner Is… Results of the Fast Furniture Challenge

As you may have seen, we launched a global 3D printing contest this summer in pursuit of finding a 3D printed solution to quickly assemble furniture in preparation for this year’s hurricane season. Called the “Fast Furniture Challenge”, we opened up this problem to our global community in exchange for a $250 cash prize.

Applicants were judged on a set of criteria including print time, cost, materials restrictions, weight load, and ease of assembly. Winning prints had a print time of under 48 hours, cost less than $20 to print, and were easy to assemble and disassemble using only pre-cut wood from Home Depot for the final piece of furniture to hold at least 150 pounds.

Participants submitted .STL files and digital presentation boards and our team judged the designs based on each design’s creativity, presentation board, .STL quality, estimated print time and ability to print without supports. The top designs were then printed and put to the test – the final product was judged on the ability to withstand 150 pounds, how easy it was to assemble and the cost of the print.

We’re excited to announce our winner…drumroll, please…Sylvain Fages! Sylvain’s design printed a set of joints (4 joints = 1 table) in 12.08 hours, using 1.07 lbs of PLA for a $20.21 material cost. The prints had 15% rectilinear infill and no supports were needed. Also, shout out to the runner-up: Daniel Alvarado from ORION.

Below you’ll see some snapshots and assembly footage from Sylvain’s winning design and the final product our teammate Alessandra put to the test.

Reviewing Design Boards & .STL files

Sylvain submitted two design presentation boards (you can also access the original Sylvain Designs PDF).

Design #1 was done in such a way that the weight of the table is resting on the legs and not on the joint. That way, the strength of the table top should define the strength of the table; however, requires a small hole to “clip-in-place” the table top.

Design #2 is almost the same as design #1 but without the hole for clipping the top in place. Design #2 was selected for printing as it does not require access to power tools that may not be available to people during emergencies.

.STL file review & slicing revealed the model was watertight with no errors and can be printed without supports, due to its unique design.

Testing the Joints

After selecting the top designs, we put them to the test by 3D printing them and assembling tables using pre-cut wood from Home Depot to evaluate ease of assembly, their stability and ability to hold up to 150 pounds. Here’s footage from Sylvain’s printed designs:

3D Printed Joints Table Assembly Video: Ease of assembly was an important factor in choosing the winner, watch Alessandra assemble a table w/ Sylvain’s 3D printed joints

Weight Test Video: We also tested that the table could hold up to 150 lbs.

Table Stability Video: Alessandra tested the level of the table’s stability.

Final Product Photos

Here are some snapshots of the joints in action after the table was assembled. Click to view bigger photos.

3D Printed Joints and Final Table Design

Lessons + Insights

As you may have seen in our first post announcing this challenge, this Fast Furniture challenge was inspired by personal experiences our team endured during Hurricane Irma and Maria which we will continue to be sharing in our 3D printing recovery series. We ourselves went through rounds of trial and error to find a 3D printed solution to assemble furniture quickly – which was one of the biggest requests in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. I caught up with our teammate Alessandra who shared some lessons from our experience and learnings from this challenge. Here are her key takeaways:

Joints with 3/8″ wall thickness are very resistant to breaking. Previously, we were using 1/8″-1/4″ wall thickness for joints and they weren’t as strong as Sylvain’s. That extra 1/8″ does the trick!
The configuration of the joints allows the table top to rest on the wooden legs and not the 3D printed joints, which greatly reduces its probability of breaking.
No matter how thick the 3D printed part is, braces are needed for full stability.

"Using 3D printers to improve our world and help people - this is my vision of a 3D printer at its best!"

Sylvain Fages

We asked Sylvain his motivation for 3D printing and entering this challenge, he shared, “Since I discovered 3D printing through a blog article about fixing a stroller back in 2014, I have always been fascinated by how much you can do and build! I bought (and built) my first printer in 2015 and have since then always admire the possibilities you have with of 3D printing, especially to fix, recycle, and reuse things. When I heard about this challenge, I could not resist but to participate! Using 3D printers to improve our world and help people – this is my vision of a 3D printer at its best!” You can view more from Sylvain on Instagram and Thingiverse.

If you have more questions, you can tune in to more discussion on 3D printing fast furniture on our forum and stay tuned for future 3D printing contests by following us on social media @re3Dprinting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and sign up for our monthly newsletter for the latest updates and opportunities. What’s a global challenge you want to solve using 3D printing?

Cat George

Blog Post Author

#3DPrintedPreparedness 3d printing Contests Design furniture

3D Printing Sparking Innovation at Stellar Industries

Have you ever walked by a construction site, looked at a massive piece of equipment that completely dwarves you, and wondered, “How do they change that massive tire if they get a flat?”

Stellar Industries has the answer to that question.

Stellar designs and manufactures hydraulic truck equipment – cranes, hooklifts, tire service, and more – for the construction, mining, and utility industries. In other words, they make the equipment to change those 12-foot-diameter tires, as well as perform a lot of the other service on hulking pieces of industrial machinery. It is interesting that 3D printing could be use to do something as intriguing as this. Luckily there are mark downs for those who are interested in finding computer systems that might be able to help.

A Gargantuan Operation in Garner

Stellar is based in the small Iowa city of Garner, and driving through downtown feels a little like driving through a Stellar Industries ad. Every other building seems to have a Stellar sign on its facade; the employee-owned company employs some 400 people there and sprawls across town.

Hydraulic truck manufacturing is a massive industrial operation that requires a lot of space, and the Stellar warehouses that dot the landscape each contain some portion of the truck-manufacturing process.

There’s the shop section, replete with engineering toys like enormous CNC machines and laser cutters, huge press brake machines that bend pieces of steel like putty, sparks flying from plasma cutting robotic arms and human welders alike. Another gargantuan building houses just the paint portion of the process, where truck bodies receive their coats on a journey along a carwash-esque track. The final stop of the trucks, the assembly building, is where everything comes together and the trucks take shape, workers flitting around the lifted rigs with tool boxes.

In a slightly less hectic area of the assembly building, a large wooden crate on wheels has arrived. It’s Stellar’s second Gigabot.

The Road to 3D Printing

“It was quite a journey.”

Engineering Manager at Stellar Industries Matt Schroeder recounted how they got to the point of having their second in-house 3D printer. “About 5 years ago, we looked at 3D printing, and it was just really expensive and very limited.”

What they were interested in doing was creating tools to help the folks in the assembly portion of the Stellar Industries operation.

“When we first started getting into the 3D printing realm, we needed some assembly fixtures.” Scott Britson is the Assistant Engineering Manager and has been in the Design and Engineering Department for 16 years.

Scott explained that different clients get differently configured trucks: different bodies, different components – sometimes customer-supplied – mounted in unique ways. They wanted to make the assembly team’s job easier in doing these custom setups, so that, as Scott explained, “when we repeat a truck for a customer, they get the same exact truck that they ordered from the first build to the eighth build.”

Stellar had in fact been creating these assembly fixtures themselves pre-3D printer, but their only option was to make them using what was available. Matt recounted, “Before our Gigabot – and before we would even contract out 3D printing – it would be a very intensive process of working either internally or externally with the machine shop to painstakingly make a prototype.”

The fixtures they made were heavy, costly, labor-intensive pieces which also had the negative effect of pulling their machine shop away from actually producing truck components. “We were using aluminum, we were using steel, we were having to machine stuff, we were having to weld stuff,” explained Scott. It was amounting to be too much of a labor, cash, and time sink to produce the tools.

Their attention turned to 3D printing.

“With 3D printing, we knew we could get lightweight, we could go into certain areas and cut places out of the part that we needed to go around,” Scott explained. “It’s a lot easier than sending it to our machine shop.”

They began by outsourcing their 3D print jobs to third party service bureaus, but they reached a stopping point where they were getting quoted longer and longer lead times. “We realized,” Matt recounted, “this is a core competency we need to develop in order to be able to have faster response times and control our own destiny.”

Thus began the hunt for a 3D printer of their own.

A Big Machine for Big Manufacturing

“When we looked at 3D printers a few years ago, you were limited by the 8 x 10s, the smaller, more toy things that sit on your computer desk,” Scott explained, “which really didn’t fit our needs.”

Stellar manufactures big, industrial equipment to service even bigger industrial equipment. They needed something to match that. “We needed to go to something that we could build bigger things, bigger fixtures for the types of trucks that we build,” said Scott.

Stellar prioritized a few important features to them: first on the list was size. Another deciding factor, Scott explained, was “the ability to upfit your 3D printer to the newest advancements and not be stuck at a version one, version two, version three.” They wanted something that could evolve with them and stay current with advancements in the industry without them having to buy an entirely new machine. And lastly, they were looking for a company that would come in and teach them, to help make their team 3D printer-literate.

“That’s where Gigabot came into our eyes as the clear leader,” said Scott.

“Right around the first of the year, we received our first Gigabot,” Matt recounted, “and we immediately put it to work that day, printing some prototype parts and things that were in a backlog that we really needed to get a project back on task.”

They completed most of that work in about two to three weeks, explained Matt, and then an interesting phenomenon occurred. People from other departments got wind of the new toy at the office and started coming by to check it out.

Igniting Innovation

“It’s kind of a piece that everybody wants to come up and see, everybody wants to take a look,” said Scott, of their Gigabot.

It didn’t take long before projects that weren’t originally on Stellar’s radar began springing up.

Scott recounted, “We’ve had our assembly department come up to the Gigabot and say, ‘Hey, you’re doing that part, do you think we can get something like that for this?'” The Stellar engineering department works to draws up the idea in CAD and print out the design on their Gigabot. Within a matter of days, they can have the part in their hands.

The increased creativity and innovation sparked by the in-house 3D printer, as both Scott and Matt described, is palpable.

The whole Stellar team is, as Scott explained, “constantly thinking of new ideas and new things to help them improve their throughput.” As Matt put it, “Once we brought [Gigabot] in, it excited people’s ability to think outside the box; it got people thinking about innovation in ways that we originally we weren’t intending.”

Their Gigabot was suddenly awash in a steady stream of projects coming from all angles.

“Things that we wouldn’t have initially thought of,” Matt explained, “like, go/no go quality tools.” A common misconception about 3D printers – that they’re really only for prototyping – was quickly dispelled once Stellar got their hands on their Gigabot.

“I think something that was very eye-opening to me is the range of materials that we could print,” Matt mused.

“I was of the mindset that we could just print something in PLA and it was just this hard plastic proof-of-concept,” he explained, “but we’re printing very tough and durable materials, we’re printing things that can bend and stretch and flex. We’re printing gaskets. Things like that are not what we had originally envisioned, but we’re leveraging those now. Being able to print those large varieties of materials is really helping us.”

In Stellar’s weld shop are large 3D printed tack fixtures used for cranes. These fixtures are 70-85% cheaper than traditional metal fixturing, and let them keep their production equipment focused on end-product parts. 3D printing them also allows Stellar to keep their lead times down; depending on the size of the part, they are often able to deliver fixtures or tooling with just 24 hours’ notice.

Also in the welding area is an assortment of colorful, 3D printed rings used to designate the holes used for specific tool models. Using the 3D printed collars allows them to match the collars with any additional plastic parts, and are much more durable than denoting them with markings in paint or tape.

Their maintenance department has taken a liking to the new 3D printer, finding ways to cut costs on expensive replacements. “We had a small component for a paint system that was several hundred dollars to replace, and you had to buy the entire kit to do so,” Matt recounted. “We were able to look at the small part, we created it in 3D and printed it over that night, and they were up and going the next day. So it was very fast and it was very economical.”

And, of course, there are the assembly jigs and fixtures that originally spurred the Gigabot purchase in the first place. The lightweight, low-cost 3D printed pieces are night and day compared to their first-generation, machine-milled and welded metal brethren, and they’re helping the Stellar assembly team become more efficient and effective with custom truck builds.

“We’re able to keep spacing on parts, we’re able to drill new holes in the fixtures for the mounting,” Scott explained. “We’re able to do a lot more for our shop to make it more consistent – they’re not having to get the tape measure out and make sure they’re not getting mis-measurements. They have the fixtures there so that they’re getting the exact location that they need.”

Stellar’s mind has been firmly changed since their original belief that 3D printing was solely a prototyping tool. Matt mused, “I think there is going to come a tipping point where we will produce more and more production parts on our machines versus prototyping parts.”

Bringing in Backup

“I don’t think in the beginning we knew that we would be running the Gigabot nonstop,” said Scott.

“From the day that we got it to about 45 days down the road, that thing was running 40 days, day and night,” he recalled. “The only time that it was down was because…we didn’t have it running through the weekend, or we were letting the bed cool to pull the prints off the Gigabot.”

Matt also recounted the early days, ping-ponging between projects they originally intended for their bot and new unexpected ones that came out of left field. The two angles kept their machine plenty busy. “In short, we were able to keep the machine running non-stop for about six months,” he said. “There were just a couple of times for some minimal preventative maintenance that we had the machine down, and it’s still running around the clock today.”

“In fact,” Matt continues, “we have been so busy we’ve had to get a second machine going.”

In the quiet side room off the main assembly floor, they pry the wooden boards of the crate apart with the excitement of kids opening up a new toy, unveiling Stellar Gigabot number two.

Within minutes of getting it uncrated and into the office, it’s already begun printing.

Learn more about Stellar Industries on their website: www.stellarindustries.com

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

The Mannequin Challenge

The Greneker office strikes me as a place you wouldn’t want to be stuck wandering at night, what with the bodies lurking around each corner. I scheduled my visit for early afternoon.

Greneker is a mannequin manufacturer based in Los Angeles, California. They’ve worked to stay cutting-edge in their industry since they started in 1934, always keeping pace with the latest groundbreaking materials and manufacturing methods, like moving from plaster to fiberglass around World War II.

They’re proving that even an entrenched player in the game isn’t too old to learn new tricks: their latest foray is into the worlds of digital and 3D printing.

Steve Beckman is President & COO at Greneker, and he’s been a part of the evolution of the company over the last 2+ decades as they’ve set themselves apart in their industry.

When I started with this business, we would get together as a group, we would look at the trends in the marketplace, and we would develop a line based on what we saw happening in the marketplace at that time.” It was a big gamble – the process was both costly and time-intensive – but that was just business as usual for them. “That was done with clay sculpting, so we would start with armatures and clay, go through the process ourselves, create an entire line of mannequins, and really just kind of rolled the dice and hope that it would sell to that market.”

Whereas they began by working independently from apparel manufacturers, Greneker found themselves doing more and more custom work for specific clients. They found their niches in the athletic wear and plus size markets, and working with big-name clients like Under Armour and Adidas in the clay design process provided its own set of challenges.

“It was a very long process to develop a line of custom mannequins,” Steve explains. “We would have to spend a great deal of time upfront with a client trying to figure out what they were looking for, what the poses were, what the dimensions were, what sizes these pieces were. The armatures would be set up by hand, the sculpting would be done by hand in clay. It would require several visits of the client on premises before we got an approval to move into the molding process to begin production.”

When working with athletic apparel clients, the challenges multiplied. As they started to get into sports-specific activities, posing came to be of utmost importance. “The poses are either accurate or they’re inaccurate,” Steve says. “If you try and put a golf mannequin in a golf shop and he is not in the proper position, the mannequin will be ripped apart by patrons.”

If you want to talk with someone about whether Greneker is in fact a creepy place to be stuck at night, Daniel Stocks is your man. As Senior Sculptor at Greneker – or Sculptor Extraordinaire, as Steve tended to refer to him – he’s the one responsible for following through on all those client requests.

“A lot of the time I would work late at night making all these adjustments and changes while the people are in town so that they [could] see it the next day,” Daniel recounts. And that was after starting from scratch on the figure: constructing a metal armature and building up the clay by hand.

True to their trailblazing past, Greneker began searching for ways to update their process and make themselves more efficient.

“We started to look at digital as a way of creating these pieces, and creating them precisely and accurately,” Steve recounts. “We’ve now moved from clay sculpting to everything being 3D printed, which has helped us in a myriad of ways.”

The 3D Printed Mannequin Challenge

Greneker dipped their toe into 3D printing with a smaller-scale CubeX and quickly realized the potential of the technology.

“We felt as a company that this was the direction that we needed to take, and we needed to go full steam ahead before some of our competitors became aware of the technology and started utilizing it,” Steve shares. They wanted to gain the competitive advantage before others caught wind of what they were doing. “And that’s one of the things we have done, we’ve positioned ourselves as the experts in this type of mannequin design.”

They purchased a few other small 3D printers, and then Daniel began the hunt for a large-scale printer with the right price tag. He came across Gigabot.

“Well, there was really nothing else on the market within a reasonable price point that would make pieces big enough for a full body,” Daniel muses.

“We selected the printer based on, again, the human body,” Steve explains. “We’re a mannequin manufacturer. We wanted larger printers to be able to print torsos and legs.” Their 3D printer arsenal includes a range of machines, from small-scale printers good for the details on hands and faces, up to the large size of Gigabot for cranking out large pieces.

“The challenge for us and my challenge to Daniel was to get a full-sized mannequin printed in one day,” Steve smiles. “It takes about 250 hours of print time to print a mannequin. In order to print it in one day, it was going to take a bunch of machines.”

Take a stroll through their office and you’ll come across the realization of this dream: a separate room tucked within their main sculpting area which they built specifically for 3D printing. “The Gigabots work fantastic for large-sized pieces, so we bought a bunch of them,” Steve recounts. Greneker is now up to four Gigabots – stacked two-by-two and suspended from the ceiling – which they house in this room along with their smaller-scale machines so they can run 24 hours a day.

“Before 3D printing, it would’ve been just unthinkable to make a mannequin in a day,” Daniel muses. “Now it’s actually possible.”

“A Myriad of Benefits”

Steve explained that the benefits that came with moving from clay design to digital and 3D printing have been numerous. The biggest savings may be from a time standpoint – they’re cutting from every aspect of the preproduction process.

“We save time throughout the entire process,” he shares.

Because everything is now digital, they no longer have to bring clients in to see mock-ups in person during the design process. “Instead of having clients visit, we can have video conferencing now, which accelerates the initial consultation period greatly,” Steve explains. “The client can sit on the other end – whether they’re across the country or across the world – and in real time we can make those changes and those tweaks to make these pieces exactly what they’re looking for.”

Daniel is particularly happy about this aspect as well. He still sometimes has to work on a time crunch, he explains, but “it’s less physical and it allows a lot more flexibility,” he explains. “If I have to, I can work from home on the computer and makes adjustments. It’s a lot quicker.”

“What,” you may ask, “does he mean by ‘physical?’” Miniature, scaled-down models of a mannequin to show clients weren’t possible before 3D printing, because the mini and full-scale versions can differ so much when working by hand in clay. So, as Steve recounts, the sculptors had to work in full-size clay as they went through the tweaking process, often while the clients were there in person. He explains, “We would bring the client in and then the sculptors would wrestle with the clay in front of the client until we got it to where it needed to be.”

No more mannequin manhandling. “With 3D printing, we take the digital model and we’ll produce a scaled model, usually about 18 inches tall, and then we can send that to the clients,” says Steve. “They can make sure that all the measurements fit where they like and that the posing is what it needs to be in. Once we get the sign-off at that point, then we produce a full-scale 3D print.”

Greneker will print a full-size version of the mannequin, which, with a little sanding and painting, will function exactly like the final mannequin, albeit not in the final material. That gets shipped to the client where the stakeholders can review the piece exactly as it will look in production.

This is immensely helpful for another portion of the process: the sign-offs. In the past, Greneker had struggled to get all of a client’s decision-makers in the room at once. “We would have a group of people come visit us that may or may not represent all of the stakeholders involved in the development,” Steve explains. “Ultimately, whatever approvals or opinions we received at that point could be superseded by someone else that hadn’t been here.”

That frustrating portion of the process is completely removed now. “With this new process,” Steve says, “the model goes in front of everybody, so it’s there for everyone to look at. You get a much, much tighter buy-in much more quickly.”

And of course, in the actual design process itself, the digital realm has also proven itself to be a clear winner over clay. “If you do something in clay, you do it by hand,” says Steve. “You can’t necessarily repeat that.”

No one is likely a bigger fan than Daniel. “It opens up a lot of new tools,” he explains. When designing a head, for example, he can take advantage of the symmetry tool in CAD. The work he’s done on one side of a face is automatically mirrored to the other. “Before, working in clay, we would have to try to make adjustments – ‘Which ear is higher? Are the eyes straight?’ Things like that it makes much simpler.”

It also aids with consistency and continuity if different sculptors are working on the same body. “If I have a large project and I have three sculptors working on it, because it’s three sets of hands, it may not look identical,” Steve explains. “With the digital design, we don’t have to worry about that. The design is the design and you can move it, change it, scale it, but it’s always the base design and it’s always obvious what it is, no question.”

The slashing of time from every part of the preproduction process goes hand-in-hand with cost-cutting. “Internally for the business, the change has been much more cost-effective,” Steve shares. “When I started, we would create lines based on – when it’s all said and done – it’s spaghetti on the wall. It’s our best guess of what was going to sell. We don’t have to do that any longer.”

That gamble used to be a risky one.

“When we did it in clay, you had to commit to it. Clay’s only got a very limited shelf life,” Steve explains. With CAD replacing clay at Greneker, there’s no more wasted effort and materials going into a design that doesn’t sell. Now, Steve says, “We can put a design that we think is cool together digitally and it can sit there as a model until there’s a market and a place for it.”

An Industry in Flux

“The apparel retail industry is in a great deal of flux right now,” Steve explains. “Online sales have really started to affect their brick and mortar sales. I don’t foresee some of the large scale roll-outs in malls in the near future, but what we do see is the need for smaller runs of more specific posing.”

And this – thanks to their calculated research and work – is where Greneker excels.

“What we see going forward is we need to be much more nimble, much faster, and much more cost-effective on the development side so that the retailers can afford to bring in specific mannequins for specific markets,” says Steve.

Greneker’s hard work to modernize and streamline their mannequin production process has paid off. “The marketplace is requiring speed to market. Everything has got to be done sooner rather than later,” Steve explains. “When we would sculpt and create a new line by hand, the process could take upwards of six months in preproduction. In 3D printing, now we’ve reduced that process to where it can be as short as just a few weeks.”

The tedious parts of their old process -the gambles on trends, the risk of botched posing, building up new armatures and clay bodies by hand, the endless on-site client visits to make tweaks and get approval – all of that is now off their plate.

“Right now, we’ve just finished realizing our first set of goals with 3D printing,” says Steve. “Our future goals: we’re going to bring in as many printers as it takes to be the absolute fastest to market as we can be. We want to stay ahead of our competition.”

Learn more about Greneker: greneker.com

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

3d printer 3d printing customer story Design fashion gigabot Greneker mannequin story

3D Printing Connectivity In Post-Maria Puerto Rico

re:3D had a #HurricaneStrong year in 2017 – our Houston team was hit by Harvey and our team in Puerto Rico withstood Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria. June 1st marks the official beginning of hurricane season in Puerto Rico and in this series, we are highlighting stories of impact and insight to encourage #3DPrintedPreparedness this year.

It’s no surprise that the 3.4 million people in Puerto Rico struggled to communicate after Hurricane Maria.

90% of cell towers were damaged, satellite phones were rendered useless, and over 1,000 wireless antennas were lost. For the wireless antennas in operation, they require 8-9 generators powered by diesel fuel – which not only costs a whopping $150 or so an hour but is also particularly problematic when Puerto Rico experienced a massive shortage of gasoline that is needed to fuel the Island until the infrastructure is fixed. The communication infrastructure was severed and the use of typical WiFi that requires sending a large amount of data was impossible. But some entrepreneurs decided to see this problem as an opportunity and created a connectivity solution.

Founders Jonathan Diaz Sepulveda, Victor Santiago, and Saul Gonzalez of a local software development startup – ALQMY – used Gigabot to 3D print a prototype and design Low-band Frequency Network that is uniquely capable to function in the post-hurricane conditions. 3D printing gave the team access to the technology needed to create products quickly and rapid prototype working devices.

The devices were designed using Rhino 6 and printed in PLA.

These walkie-talkie-esque prototype products called Firestarters were equipped to operate on lower bandwidth frequencies, similar to the communication technology used in pagers. The devices were able to create a decentralized wireless network without having to depend on the decimated infrastructure, and had the capability to connect people within 1.5 miles of each. Not only were people able to connect by sending SMS communications but the devices also enabled sharing of GPS information. Puerto Ricans would be able to coordinate allocating petroleum for those in need, bringing food to one another, and connecting with loved ones about their ongoing living conditions and safety.

While this product is operational and still in prototype stage, the founders have entered the next phase of manufacturing Firestarter at scale as part of their bigger vision to make these devices available to people as preventative emergency measures before it’s too late. This access to connectivity in emergency situations is particularly close to Saul’s heart – his community in Utuado had to bury a loved one in a backyard without being able to contact supportive emergency services. Firestarters are affordable products that come with the peace of mind of community connectivity and are still relevant today in Puerto Rico as recovery continues to be a work in progress. Connectivity continues to be an obstacle, and yet is imperative for ongoing recovery which is especially top of mind as hurricane season begins again starting June 1st. Beyond Puerto Rico, ALQMY is sharing this technology with the world by making it open-source so others can proactively learn from Puerto Rico’s experience and prepare for emergency situations.

It’s entrepreneurs like these who are coming together and building a more resilient Puerto Rico, utilizing technology to lead the next generation of innovation. According to Saul, the entrepreneurial ecosystem here is more positioned than ever to flourish – evolving into a culture of tight-knit community and open idea sharing. They are participants in one of the most innovative projects in Puerto Rico where the city of Bayamon has taken on a project to become the world’s smartest city by launching the first Internet of Things lab, applying technology to things like agricultural technology, transportation, and more. Beyond producing Firestarter, ALQMY offers software development services at affordable prices. Get in touch to learn more about them, their services, and the Firestarter prototype.

Cat George

Blog Post Author

#3DPrintedPreparedness 3d printing Hurricane Recovery Puerto Rico Rapid Prototyping

This Company Is Pursuing The Untapped Potential Of 3D Printing In Kenya

After growing up and working in his family’s manufacturing business in Kenya, Mehul Shah saw the big opportunity of 3D printing and decided to pursue its untapped potential full-time. He started Ultra Red Technologies two years ago as a contract 3D printing company in Nairobi to design, prototype, and produce custom 3D printed products that solve problems for clients in their community and around the world.

From their inception, the team received requests from a broad scope of industries. In the first few months, they created a cooler box for a major plastics manufacturer, CNC machined spare parts and ethanol cookstoves from sheet metal.

"We believe in the untapped potential of 3D printing."

Mehul Shah, @UltraRedTech

The range of requests and the eagerness to quickly produce high-quality products at scale immediately brought Mehul and his team to the realization that it was necessary to upgrade from a desktop cube printer to an industrial size to meet customer demand. Ultra Red Technologies needed a printer not only with the capacity, capability, and adaptability essential to the variable needs of customers and their various requests, but also a printer that was easy to use and repair, and that came with world-class customer support available to them in Nairobi. In-depth research led them to Gigabot, and a video confirmed their decision to become part of the re:3D family.

The Gigabot has been Ultra Red Technologies’ premier printer and has leveraged its unique strengths to produce products across industries using a wide range of materials in variable sizes, from large, human-sized products to small creations, all with the same attention to magic details. Ultra Red Technologies’ creations range from product designs for students, to custom-made electronics, to splints for physical therapies, to dental appliances, to computer-aided engineering projects, to individual creative requests (like a wine rack or speaker) – the list goes on and on. The applications for 3D printing are endless, limited only by customer imaginations. Customers easily envision what they want to create, upload a photo, and Ultra Red Technologies makes it a reality.

The applications of 3D printing are endless – limited only by our imaginations.

Not only has the breadth, quality, and scope of use of the Gigabot been influential on Ultra Red Technologies’ business, but its high rate of productivity and quick turnaround time has turned first-time customers into repeat users.These customers come back because Ultra Red Technologies produces high-quality products effortlessly, and further, pre-emptively provides solutions to problems the customers would otherwise later encounter. They have saved some of their customers up to $150,000 through product prototyping and cut down the timelines of product design projects from the norm of 6 months to a couple of weeks. For instance, Ultra Red Technologies has cut the build times of cardboard architectural models from 6 months to just two weeks. And the 3D printed models come with the bonus of added detail not found in other methods of creation. An outstanding “wow factor” like this makes customers keep coming back for more.

But this is only the beginning for Mehul and his team. Seeing the massive opportunity in the 3D printing industry, Ultra Red Technologies has evolved to expand its services and has started producing their own innovative products – bringing to life their ideas and building products in pursuit of their passions and solutions to significant problems. They began to hone in on their enthusiasm for the outdoors by launching a particular arm of their company, Ultra Red Outdoors, and to date, have created custom outdoor products such as canopies for wildlife exploration vehicles. Currently, they are in the middle of printing parts to make a solar-powered desalination device to provide access to reliable, clean drinking water for the 41% of Kenya’s 48M population currently without it. And they are just getting started.

Their impact is tangible, and the possibility is exponential. Check out more about the 3D printer Ultra Red Technologies is using and follow their journey. To learn more about Ultra Red Technologies and their services, contact their team.

Cat George

Blog Post Author

The Fire Station Gigabot

Chuck Grant wasn’t with the Magnolia Fire Department in 2011 when the Riley Road Fire happened, but the effects of the massive blaze on the department he now works for as Assistant Fire Chief and Chief of Technology are still visible.

The fire took 10 days to contain and burned nearly 19,000 acres in Magnolia, Texas, northeast of Houston.

“The fire was in such a size that it knocked out cell service in a lot of areas,” Chuck recalls. This meant that the department’s typical public alert methods using Facebook, Twitter, and other cellular-dependent mediums were off the table. They had no easy way to communicate with the community they were trying to help.

What the firefighters found is that when residents didn’t know where to go or what to do, they came directly to the fire station to try to get information. But in a large-scale disaster like this one, that was a problem. “There was no one in the fire stations because they were all dealing with the emergency,” Chuck explains. The fire exposed a serious communication problem they realized they needed to remedy.

When Chuck joined the team, he began working with the Fire Chief to devise a solution to this problem.

What they came up with was something akin to a tool that many businesses use for public messaging: LED signs. The signs would be out front of each of Magnolia’s nine fire stations to display updates and actions during large emergency events, with the ability to change the information quickly and from the field.

The next order of business was aesthetic – they wanted to add a symbol of the fire service to the signs to make them their own, something that would look good for the community.

When they settled on the idea of a large fire hydrant statue on either side of each station’s sign – two at each location meant 18 in total – the next challenge became how to get them made. They started investigating options like fiberglass and bronze casting, but quickly realized that everything was far out of their budget.

That’s when they found Gigabot.

The sign project in conjunction with other potential uses for 3D printing at the station made getting their own Gigabot and fabricating the decorative hydrants themselves the most cost-effective option. Chuck already had a background in 3D modeling, so designing the hydrants was no problem. “It was just a matter of scaling something up from, say, an inch tall to 99 inches,” he said. “And the Gigabot was able to do that for us.”

The build volume of Gigabot was the original draw for their sign project, but in order to make the purchase financially worthwhile to them, they wanted the bot to have a second, longer-term use. This is where the RFID tags enter the story.

Fire stations operate under a system of strict regulations: a truck must have a certain amount of equipment before it can respond to emergencies, and this equipment has a variety of imposed lifetimes that need to be tracked. Chuck explains, “When I started 35 years ago in the fire service, no ax had an expiration date on it – either it worked or it didn’t. And now that’s all kind of changed. So the need for technology has really, really ramped up.”

On top of this, equipment must cycle in and out of the repair room as it’s damaged. A tiny crack to a mask takes that mask out of service until it’s fixed. Keeping track of what equipment is damaged, what needs to be replaced on trucks, where damaged equipment is in the repair process – they’re all more processes that need to be tracked.

All of these components add up to quite the logistical headache for fire stations: monitor the ticking clocks on your equipment to make sure active tools are not outside their expiration dates and take things out of circulation when they are, keep track of damaged items in for repair, and ensure your trucks have all the equipment they need to be ready to respond to a call at a moment’s notice.

It’s quite the operational feat for organizations whose main function is to save lives and battle fires.

In the interest of allowing firefighters to do what they do best, stations are looking for ways to manage all their equipment tracking in the most efficient way possible. Magnolia Fire found a solution in RFID tags from Silent Partner Technologies. The small radio frequency identification devices have an adhesive on one side to affix them to objects and they can be scanned from a distance and tracked via software on a computer. Chuck explains, “It very quickly gives the firefighters the chance to scan the truck and know that the vehicle is ready for them to respond to a call the minute they come into work.”

The problem was, Magnolia quickly realized that the harsh firefighting environment in conjunction with the wide variety of materials they had to tag was proving to be too much for the adhesive tags. “Because the fire service is a tough place to be a little tag, the adhesive strips on the back don’t hold up as well as they would in another application,” he explained. Heat from fires, water from hoses, and the general physical battery that the firefighting tools endure took their toll, and the department found themselves returning from events sans many of their RFID tags.

A solution, they realized, lay in 3D printing.

Using Gigabot, Chuck has been printing small compartments for the RFID tags to fit into which they can then mechanically fasten to their tools. 3D printing the tag holders provides a uniform material to which the adhesive can adhere, while also tucking the tags away where they can’t get bumped off. And they can do this all without altering the form and function of their well-designed equipment.

“All of our items have been well-designed, they’re well-engineered, and so for us to just take something and stick it on the side of it isn’t really a great option,” Chuck explains. What they’re doing is replicating a certain component of an object and building a pocket into it where they can hide a tag. The clip of a flashlight, for example, is replaced with its 3D printed clone, plus one RFID tag that you wouldn’t know is there. This becomes infinitely important when when you’re in a smokey room with thick gloves on, where a foreign part on a familiar tool can lead to dangerous confusion.

If the sign project was what led Magnolia Fire Department to Gigabot in the first place, creating custom RFID tag holders for their equipment is what kept them coming back. It’s proven to be the long-term justification they wanted in order to get their own 3D printer on-site.

“We certainly had this sign project that’s important…it’s going to be the thing that people notice the most because it’s going to be out in front of the building,” Chuck says. “But long-term, to get the most out of our investment, we need that secondary…task for the Gigabot to do.” The ongoing RFID project checks that box.

Gigabot has also proven itself as a problem-solver for issues that weren’t necessarily originally on Magnolia’s 3D printing radar, as the department now has the ability to produce any sort of custom-made pieces they desire. “Instead of going into the marketplace and kind of having to mold to what is available, we can meet our own needs by drawing our own parts and printing them,” Chuck explains.

An example of one such piece is an ingenious yet simple part to hang the firefighters’ masks inside the trucks, keeping them off the seats and floor where they’re more likely to get damaged, and hanging them in a way that doesn’t put stress on the facepieces. The clever design fits into the masks where the firefighters’ air tanks connect; with one twist they lock onto the piece so they can’t fly off en route.

The station’s service room is lined with equipment in for repair, including a table full of dinged masks. Much of the damage was due to them being tossed around inside trucks or hung in a way that puts undue stress on the temples of the masks, causing them to crack over time. This new piece, they explain, solves these problems and was infinitely simple for them to manufacture.

Clessie Hazelwood, Battalion Chief at Magnolia Fire Department, originally saw the design 20 years ago at a different fire department. Chuck prodded him to talk about how much effort that department had to go through to produce one. Clessie sighed, “Oh…they had to do machining, set up dies and everything.” It was a long, costly process.

When Magnolia got their Gigabot, Clessie came to Chuck to see if the part was something he could print for them. Chuck chimed back in, “From the time you told me about it ’til the time you held it in your hand, how long did it take?” Clessie paused.

“Less than a week.”

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

3D Printing Products for Refugees

The Gigaprize is a competition we run for every 100 bots we sell to donate a Gigabot to an organization that will use it for good. Scott Key originally saw the call for contest entries on Instagram.

He and his business partner, Sam Brisendine, thought the odds of them actually winning were pretty slim, but they decided to give it a shot anyway. That decision ended up paying off handsomely.

The winners of the 400th Gigabot are Good Works Studio, a Houston-based design firm specializing in products for refugees.

Sam and Scott met as students at the Rice University School of Architecture, where they developed a sort of Swiss Army Knife crate of supplies for refugees as a class project. The crate itself broke down and transformed into a floor, and as time went on, they came to realize that the most valuable part of the whole package was not the cache of supplies inside but the box itself. Emergency Floor was born.

Thus a school project gave birth to Good Works Studio, the company that the two cofounded specifically to develop products for the refugee space. Their first product, Emergency Floor, is a modular flooring system for refugee camps that can be quickly installed and configured to the varied layouts and sizes of different shelters.

Flooring for these refugee camps provides families with something more than just comfort: safety. The flooring acts as a thermal break between the cold nighttime temperature swings of places like Iraq and Lebanon, as well as a means to combat the higher rates of diarrhea and parasitic infections that come from living in the dirt.

Emergency Floor is just the first product that Scott and Sam have released to tackle problems faced by millions of refugees around the world, and they’ve got more in the works. However, the design and prototyping process that goes into developing products like these is not cheap, and Good Works Studio is a young, cash-strapped, two-man company whose founders work separate full-time jobs to pay the bills. They ran a crowdfunding campaign to get Emergency Floor off the ground, but they knew that the money and time needed to take future ideas from paper to product would be prohibitive.

Traditional manufacturing and tooling isn’t the most forgiving when it comes to the design process. Get a mold made and then decide you want to tweak something in your design, and you’ve just gotten yourself a $15,000 paperweight. Perfecting the design before moving on to manufacturing was imperative.

“Previously we had outsourced 3D printing and other prototyping methods,” Scott explained, but, as he went on, “It was just going to be an impossibility to do the amount of iterations we needed to get a product to where it needed to be.”

Having an in-house 3D printer was the dream.

For Scott and Sam, Gigabot is an enabler. Having a 3D printer of their own means getting well-designed products into the hands of people who need them more efficiently and effectively. They can send a design file to print in the morning, have a prototype in their hands by the afternoon, and start printing a modified version before they leave at the end of the day. This ability to iterate their designs quickly and in-house allows them to move through the prototyping process much faster and less expensively than any other avenue.

The overarching vision that drives Sam and Scott is a desire to help those in need around the world through design. The next product they’re working on is a device that can be installed into any shelter to act as an air conditioner – sans electricity – using the Venturi effect.

Our aim with Gigabot is to enable others to create products that make this world a better place, and the Gigaprize is our way of making this technology even more accessible to people who will do just that.

As Sam put it, “Design can do good for those who can’t afford it.” We couldn’t agree with him more.

Learn more about Good Works Studio and their first product, Emergency Floor:
Twitter: @EmergencyFloor
Instagram: @EmergencyFloor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emergencyfloor/

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author