re: 3D Printing Furniture

My first attempt at 3d printing furniture went pretty well. The stool I designed  and later printed on the Gigabot ended up on-stage with Samantha Snabes, Co-Founder of re:3D, presenting to 5,000+ attendees at Web Summit in Ireland. Somehow along the way, Prime Minister Enda Kenny struck a pose with it. What an honor!

re:3D won 2nd place out of the Beta Pitch group and the 3D printed stool made it into several of the pictures that ensued; very exciting to watch the twitter streams.

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For my next project, the goal was to create a piece that combined 3d printing with existing materials. I had been saving a slab of walnut purchased from eBay and thought, why not turn it into a bench? It was a pleasant challenge designing the base to follow the feel and flow of the live-edge slab. I wanted technology and nature to seemingly merge. It’s a beautiful slab and I needed to do it justice! There’s a great book out there about how loads are distributed in nature which helped to inspire the bench; it’s called “Design in Nature: Learning from Trees” by Claus Mattheck.

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The piece required a two-part print due to the large size so it was split it at an inconspicuous angle down the middle. The base was designed with pocket-screw holes and once lined up, was secured to the live-edge slab with pocket-screws. While the print itself was structurally sound, I coated the entire bench in clear epoxy just for some added strength. The gloss finish on the base was sanded back down to satin using 200 grit sandpaper. The indicators on the bench represented spots that I had missed with epoxy; they pointed out where I had to touch up on a second coat.

I was very pleased with the result and honored to have been included in Big Medium’s Austin East alongside many other great artworks.  Even Google’s self driving car stopped by to see what’s up. I think they look good together.

Mike’s 3D printed bench is featured at the Big Medium East Austin Studio Tour (self-driving car for scale:)

Having access to a Gigabot has opened up so many more doors due to it’s scale and precision. Can’t wait to start my next project which I will be sure to post about in the next couple of months.

Happy Printing!

Mike Battaglia

Blog Post Author

@MikeBattaglia

re:turning to Web Summit!

Yep, that’s right- we’re returning to Ireland!

This time we’re showing up in full force with Katy, Matthew, Samantha, Gigabot and some exclusive 3D printed content!

Why Ireland?

It all began with Web Summit 2015 when our co-founder Lara identified the opportunity and we were invited to apply.

After being selected last year, Samantha had the pleasure of attending sans Gigabot as a female technologist representing the BETA program. While we didn’t win a pot ‘o gold, the experience left us richer in experience & relationships.

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While exhibiting we met, WEVOLVER, which resulted in a collaborative effort to leverage their platform & community. They also sponsored this year’s Great Big Gigabot Giveaway.

In addition to making some new friends, throughout the week Samantha had the chance to pitch to thousand in the BETA PITCH category and was blown away to win 2nd place!

She also had the honor of  meeting the “Prime Minister” or Taoiseach Enda Kenny who posed with our traveling 3D printed stool.

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Fast forward 4 months later, Samantha & Matthew had a chance to meet up with the Taoiseach in on St. Paddy’s day during his USA tour for the IDA breakfast during SXSW. They brought the BETA trophy and, of course another 3D printed stool!

Shortly afterwards, Katy, Matthew and Samantha packed their bags and this time Gigabot for what promised to be an adventure on their self proclaimed #road2collison a.k.a. Collision in Las Vegas!

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The group was trilled to demo Gigabot for the Summit crowd in the USA along with some pretty slick 3D prints.  Again, we pitched….and this time won!

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As part of the prize package, we were invited to be part of the 2015 START tour. This provided Matthew and Ernie the opportunity to head to CONVERGE/RISE. At RISE the duo re-connected with the Summit staff, launched our 2nd Great Big Gigabot Giveaway to give away a Gigabot to a group making a difference, learned a ton about Asian Manufacturing and Ernie took his first international trip! 

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Which leads us back to Ireland…

We can’t wait to meet you and to demo Gigabot for the friends we made last year. We hope you will look us up if you are across the pond next week!

Here’s where you can find us:

  • Attending the Kick-off Welcome Dinner on Sun? We are too!
  • We’ll be giving a live demo at the Machine Summit at the Main Hall Complex Tuesday, November 3 from 15:00 – 16:00, with a specific demo slot on our from 15:15 – 15:30
  • We are exhibiting Gigabot at stand number S-130 in the START Village Area on Day 3 of the event, Thursday, November 5
  • After packing up Gigabot, we’re hitting the bus with the group heading to Surf Summit the November 6-8
  • We return to Dublin on the 8th and plan to spend a day visiting customers and/or anyone we missed before heading out late the next day!

Shameless ask

  • This year we are hoping to connect with press and influencers who can help us tell our crazy story. If you have a friend we should connect with, please email samantha@re3d.org!
  • Also, we need a pro-surfer to take our 3D printed surfer out on the waves during Surf Summit. Email samantha@re3d.org for details:)

See you soon??!

-Matthew, Katy, Gigabot and Samantha

  • @chief_hacker
  • @Katyjeremko
  • @samanthasnabes
  • @RE_3D

re:3D – Beta Pitching at WebSummit 2014 in Dublin

Hi Friends,

As you may have noticed, the re:3D crew hasn’t stepped out of the office much this year.

While we miss the community, our little team elected to spend our limited resources in bettering Gigabot, meeting as many customers as our gas tanks would allow, and getting organized as a full-fledged small business. Now that we have parts in inventory and an amazing staff to help with order fulfillment, we are pleased to announce that we have a little more bandwidth to be with many of you this week at Web Summit 2014.

We’d love to chat if you plan to attend and/or meet up with any media or companies you think would be valuable.

You can find us at the following events:

Belfast Summit: You can catch us on the Summit bus heading there from Dublin on Nov 2nd & back on Nov 3rd or at any of the scheduled events.

BETA Exhibit: Last spring we applied for a discounted opportunity to attend Summit as a featured start-up. We are honored to be selected for the BETA showcase. As a BETA startup we will be exhibiting on Nov 4th in the Hardware area, which is located in RDS Main Hall. Our stand number is HRD102. 

People’s Panel: Thanks to you we placed #5 out of hundreds who applied to Summit’s popular & entirely crowdsourced stage of speakers from around the world. For making the Top 10, we will be moderating a panel we proposed on  Nov 4th.  

Time: 16:19-16:34 at the Simminscourt Venue | Topic: Toilets & Trash-Will 3D Printers Save the World? | Panellists: Ion Cuervas-Mons, Asha Saxena, Tina Stroobandt

BETA Pitch: After 2 weeks judging over 1,500 applications, the Web Summit judges chose their top 200 companies to pitch during Web Summit. We’re delighted to share that re:3D qualified to join the PITCH BETA group! Watch us compete against the best companies beginning with Round 1 on Tuesday at 14:00 GST for almost $20K USD!

Finally, we were blown away when Samantha was selected as a Women in Tech Attendee!

Don’t have tickets, but planning to be in Dublin? We’ve also registered for the following side events:

Let us know if you or a friend would like to say hi!  We’ll also be making a couple of BIG announcements and traveling with some pretty cool prints we’d love to show off!

See you soon?

CHECK BACK OFTEN – WE’LL BE DOING OUR BEST TO ADD EVENTS AND RSVP LINKS ALL WEEK!