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Interviews: Ask Bre Pettis About Making Things
As co-founder and CEO of MakerBot Industries, Bre Pettis is a driving force in the Maker and 3-D printing world. He's done a number of podcasts for Make, and even worked as an assistant at Jim Henson's Creature Shop in London after college. Makerbot's design community, Thingiverse, boasts over 100,000 3D models, and inspires countless artists and designers by allowing them to share their designs. Bre has agreed to set aside some time from printing in order to type answer to your questions. Normal Slashdot interview rules apply.
How fast?
Ask about making things? What can you tell me about making Slashdot Beta go away?
Do you consider yourself a hero?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how heroic would you consider yourself?
Is there anything you would do differently given the chance that would make you more or less of a hero, and why would do do these things?
It seems consumer 3d printers mostly deal with plastics. Will we see other materials soon? I'm specifically interested in printing metal objects.
How come all cheap meat thermometers suck.
Seriously, how come you have to pay like $100 to get something that can actually give you the temperature of something you are cooking in less time than it takes to turn your steak into a brick of charcoal? I don't mind paying the money, but it just seems like a stupidly simple problem.
How much did you pay to get a Slashvertisement?
Do you think it would mop the floor with the competition simply because they'd make it so that any granny could pick it up and use it easily?
Many of the things I want to build with a 3D printer are not complicated but are outside the build envelope of the printers out there. Like my truck grill which is about 48" wide, 12" tall and 3" deep.
Why don't we have bigger print envelopes? This should just be a matter of more steps of the stepper motor.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
When will I be able to make my own space rocket from a pile of rocks to a finished product?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Arn't the makerbot guys still on the /. hivemind hate list?
Has public opinion changed since they closed up their designs? Personally I'm still a little sore.
Stratasys acquired Makerbot a few months ago. Has things changed on the hardware or software side? What changes await for the future?
Will Makerbot release a cheaper FDM 3D printer?
Does Makerbot have any plans for an UV 3D printer, either laser-based or projector-based?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
1 billion? 2 billion?
I have heard from the BBC, forums and other internet hangouts that 3-D printers are unreliable. You can start to print something and the printer errors, or the process is somehow falters , causing you to restart all over again.
I this true, and do you expect as the tech captures more attention, so will reliability?
I note that the Replicator 2 and Replicator 2X share many components.
Will there ever be plans to release an upgrade kit for the Replicator 2 which adds a more powerful Power Supply, Heated Build Plate, and/or a second Extruder Head Assembly?
It would be nice to be able to add those options to the Rep2 in order to print ABS and other materials, or to do multi-color prints.
Follow up Question relies on the proviso that an upgrade kit is planned....
Will you shut up and take my money already?!
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
How much do you spend on pomade every month?
I heard that you lived in Ithaca at one point in your life. As you might know then, it can be quite snowy in Ithaca. Do you have reason to believe that superstructures (in the style of Buckminster Fuller) could be built using 3D printing in the future, or are the technical challenges too great? Could a dome be printed? Is there any hope for keeping out at least some of the snow (perhaps not all of it as it is sometimes quite nice)?
Mr. Pettis thanks for taking the time. Your 3D printers are nice.
My question:
What is needed to take consumer home-based 3D printing beyond novelty items? Specifically everyday home consumers not pure hobbyists.
Of course 3D fabricators are used for more than "novelty items" in several commercial and industrial applications, but for several reasons, not the least of which is cost of the 3D fabricator, most of what people make is just knick knacks, novelty items, and bric-a-brac.
What will we need to see technologically to take consumer home fabrication beyond things like action figures? Ex: making something like a flashlight or toothbrush
Thank you Dave Raggett
How close to mainstream will 3D printers become?
I've talked to makers who predict everyone will have a 3D printer in their home. I've heard other opinions that 3D printing will become a common hobby like building model railroads, astronomy, or programming. Yet others believe it is a fad and it will return to being a tool for professional engineers only. What do you think?
Why did you betray the very same open-source community that helped you get off the ground by making the Replicator 2 and onward closed source? You wrote two lengthy blog posts, but all I've gotten out of them was you dancing around the question and contrasting yourself to Adafruit. In my opinion, you could've kept the replicator open and sold pre-built ones, parts, filament, attachments, or more but you decided to do the one thing to invoke peoples' ire.
What do you say to the many articles that are along the lines of "3D printers in every home will print anything"? Today's 3D printers have nowhere near that capability. The materials available are quite restrictive and the output is relatively crude. I have read many articles making outrageous claims that home 3D printing will change the face of manufacturing very soon. When I look closely at the claims, such as printing electronics, I see they are impossible. It has gotten to the point that I don't believe anything coming out of the 3D community. They have cried wolf too many times. What do you say on that subject?
What kinds of useful objects do you envisage being printed which aren't available from a local store? I've been following 3D printing for a while and have helped build a few machines, but the only objects I've seen printed are either purely aesthetic (eg. keyrings) or could be bought from a local shop in less time than the print takes.
Everyone here knows the limitations of 3dprinting; there is quite a lot you can't do with low-tensile plastic that is full of fatigue points. But the whole concept of a 3d-printer seems like it could be taken in more than this limited direction- what you have is a reasonably precise x-y-z servo table that's easy to program and can even be built in a garage if you're up to it.
Something I'd like to see in the future is a device more reconfigurable. E.g, swap out the plastic print head for a milling attachment, laser/plasma cutter, maybe way down the road a sintering variant.
Have you ever considered a swiss-army machine of this nature? It would obviously be costlier, but would be way more useful than what we have today.
Many useful items that one could build require some metal bits in addition to 3D printed parts. I've recently encountered this situation when trying to make a little gizmo with motor drive. Small gears, shafts and so forth are very hard to come by. Have you considered starting an ancillary industry that provides the sorts of things that the company Small Parts used to offer, before Amazon killed them?
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
As much as I like 3D printing using what I call a "goop nozzle", I am wondering when the patent will expire on the method of aiming a laser beam into a pile of metallic dust and then pulling out a fully functioning tool, which seems more fun.
I think the "goop nozzle" approach is fine for plastic, food and organ or body part printing though.
Fuck turncoat Petis. I don't want to ask him a god damn thing.
Mr. Petis,
First off, thank you for publicizing 3D printing to such degree that now the general public is very well aware of it, and also for creating a "reasonably priced 3D printer." In doing so, you have raised the expectations of what can be printed with these devices, and I would like to know whether it would be good to also try to educate the public about the limitations, and the "gotchas" of 3D printing.
For example, if one is to print a finely detailed object, chances are, most of the details won't come out unless the scale of the object is large enough for them to be visible. Most people have a hard time understanding what the x/y resolution vs. z resolution is, and also are not aware of the possible warping that may occur.
Do you have any plans to explain in details these things, just like you did with the general technology?
Similar to the metal powder sintering question above... MIG welding is an additive process that could be used to make 3D parts, similar to the way a plasma CAM cuts out parts.... is there any hope that 3D printing will go this direction or is it too imprecise to make decent parts?
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Of endlessly promoting a fantasy and making hyperbolic promises about a technology that is completely underwhelming?
You started out as a 3 man company, but somehow you have 'lost' the other two founders. Was the size of your ego to blame for that?
And: why are your printers not allowed to print during shows and conventions? Too much chance something goes wrong with them?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Don't you freakin' dare!
Slashdots finally become usable again
Fuck off Cunt. I can't blame you for selling out to make money, I honestly would have probably done the same thing. But I didn't and you did. Fuck you. I always thought you were a twat in those make magazine videos, but could never put my finger on it. Turns out my gut was right. Enjoy your millions, shitbird.
Perhaps something's happened in the meantime, but I've seen Bre demonstrate Makerbots at a couple different conventions over the last few years -- printing away ...
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Bre:
In the larger world of 3-D printing, obviously there are manufactures who have never been particularly maker-friendly. You started off, though, with very affordable kits, and a connection to the RepRap foundation, which emphasized open source code, reproduceability, openness, etc.
(Wikipedia's a bit out of date on this front, but as of this moment, the entry there says "MakerBot Industries' products are designed to be built by anyone with basic technical skills and are described as about as complicated as assembling IKEA furniture.[8] The printers are sold as do it yourself kits, requiring only minor soldering.")
A lot of the excitement that I had when I first saw MakerBots (at Seattle's Metrix CreateSpace) derived from the fact that one of the Maker Bots they had was built with pieces printed by the other, RepRap style. It seems like a lot of the innovation in the earlier models was based on shared enthusiasm and tinkering. The company has since moved away from the open source hardware model. Do you have any regrets about this? Are there open source contributions that the company is making but that just aren't well known?
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Could I also become successful in the 3D printing world by stabbing my friends in the back?
Early MakerBots I know went to a lot of hackerspaces / makerspaces, and also to individuals who just had to have one.
As the size (and price!) have gone up (I don't even know by how much --- I saw an ad for the latest models that just said to ask for a quote; I think that means "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."), has your intended customer changed, too? What kind of people (what kind of businesses, might be the better way to put that) are buying MakerBots now that it's a slightly bigger commitment? (Workshops? Still home users? Schools? Doctors who want to do another full-skull transplant? Beekeepers? )
How did the transition from being an open source darling to a danger to the whole 3d-printing community work out for you? How do you feel about kicking out your two co-founders because big money demanded it?
Dear Mr. Pettis, Why did you join the dark side of the force ?
How do you make everyone think 3D printing is such a big deal?
Don't support Bre.
Isn't this a GPL violation?
I guess you've lawyered up with the acquisition by Stratisys. $403M would keep any challenge tied up in the courts for years.
How are people still giving your company money in clear conscience?