3d Printing

Make4Covid is a new Colorado-based volunteer organization of makers working on making stuff related to the Covid crisis. They were started 26 days ago, have 2023 community volunteers, are working with 105 organizations, and have delivered 14,335 pieces of PPE as of this morning. I’ve been in the Slack channel from inception and it’s just amazing to see what they’ve done. It’s an awesome example of the intersection of volunteers, 3D printing, makers, and a bunch of people motivated to help their fellow Coloradans in a crisis. ...

My friends at Formlabs have launched a Formlabs Covid-19 Network and are working on numerous 3D printable solutions for the crisis. As of this morning, 800 people have already signed up to participate. My premise around 3D printers when we made our first investment in 2010 in MakerBot was that ultimately everyone would want a 3D printer on their desktop. I thought this was especially true in prototyping, experimentation, and emergency situations. ...

In July 2015, I wrote about New Story asking readers to crowdfund one $6k house for a family in Haiti . At the time, Brett was only a few months into building New Story and had built less than twenty total homes. They were young and inexperienced but had a strong conviction to do things differently as a nonprofit which appealed to me. In the past four years, New Story has funded over 2,200 homes, building 17 communities for over 11,000 people across Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia. They started out by chasing one crazy idea , and have grown nearly 100x since my original post. ...

In the super cool thing category, it’s always fun to see two companies we are investors in easily put together a demonstration of the integration of their products. Oblong is a master of spatially interacting with 3D data on a 2D display . Looking Glass lets you interact with 3D data in a 3D display with their product (the Looking Glass .) Together, you can move and interact with 3D images on either a 3D display or a 2D display. ...

The holographic display of the future is here and you can have one on your desk for under $600. Ever since I saw Princess Leia appealing to Obi Wan that he was her only hope when I was 11, I’ve wanted a holographic display. Movies like Minority Report and Back to the Future II (do you remember the shark hologram that ate Marty ?) have consumed thousands of people’s lives over the past few decades. But until now, no one has been able to make a scalable device that would let groups of people, unaided by a VR or AR headset, see and touch a living and moving 3D world. ...

Glowforge recently launched their 3D laser printers to the public , making their product line available within 10-day delivery. As an early investor (and a huge fan) this was an incredibly gratifying moment, as Glowforge is now shipping – in volume – the product from one of the most popular pre-order campaigns in history. We’ve been a part of Glowforge’s journey to production since even before their record-setting crowdfunding campaign. But the campaign was the moment we knew that we’d found something special: the elusive product-market fit. People really, really wanted the product. Now that it has made its way into thousands of households, we’re seeing something even better. People really, really love their Glowforge . ...

Looking Glass , a Brooklyn-based company we recently led the Series A investment in, just released HoloPlayer One, the world’s first interactive lightfield development kit. This is a new interface that lets groups of people see and interact with floating 3D scenes without VR or AR headgear. While it’s an early release dev kit, it’s still as close to achieving the dream of the hologram shown in Blade Runner 2049 as I’ve seen. ...

*He took his vorpal sword in hand: **Long time the manxome foe he sought — **So rested he by the Tumtum tree, *And stood awhile in thought. – from Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky Jabberwocky and the vorpal sword always makes me think of Princess Leia saying “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi you’re my only hope.” *One, two! One, two! And through and through **The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! **He left it dead, and with its head *He went galumphing back. ...

We just led a $35 million financing at Formlabs . In case you were wondering, lasers are super cool . In 2010, when we invested in MakerBot, the maker movement was just beginning . While 3D printing technology had been around for 30 years, there were no desktop 3D printers. The concept of using an additive process for 3D printing, where you built up a 3D object from continuous extrusion of a material such as ABS or PLA (plastics) was well understood. But this technology had not been brought to the desktop at a $2,000 price point. MakerBot did that and created an entirely new market segment within the 3D printing industry. ...

Yesterday Amy and I contributed $10,000 to the MakerBot Academy campaign which is on a mission to put a MakerBot 3D printer in every school in the United States. We did it via a contribution on Donors Choose , one of our favorite non-profit contribution sites. We specifically finished out the funding for five MakerBots for the following teachers in their classrooms: Mr. Hendry – Yorba Linda High School, Yorba Linda, CA Mrs. Bragdon – Brownsboro Elementary School, Brownsboro, TX Mr. Eiland – Woodlawn High School, Baton Rouge, LA Mr. Condon – Decorah High School, Decorah, IA Mr. Colling – Coronado High School, Scottsdale, AZ Amy and I are planning to give a lot more to this campaign, but we decided to do something tangible right now by finishing off several of the campaigns on Donors Choose. ...