Maker Faire Shows Off 3D Printing

Each year Maker Faire comes to the Bay Area and it seems the 3D printing exhibit continues to grow in scale. With 120,000 attendees and thousands of makers, it’s a great event.

Our friends at Hack Things went to Maker Faire and wrote this recap.

The section on 3D printing — a tiny part of the entire event — was bigger than what we saw in New York. And even more 3D printers were scattered throughout the exhibition hall. There were some delightful variations.

• A team from Berkeley demonstrated 3D printing with sawdust or cement.
• The SandBox fuses thin layers of sand to create objects. The unfused sand acts as support so any geometry can be created and there’s no need for extra support structures. This mimics a property of the much more expensive SLS (selective laser sintering) technology.
• Fred White showed off his soon-to-be-on-Kickstarter Apex 3D printer head. It can print six separate filaments or fluids simultaneously. As he pointed out, you could print a teacup and fill it with tea in one pass.
• Oleksiy Pikalo has a 3D printer that can draw patterns in carmel in the foam of your latte. He’s working on a version that will work for beer.
• And the Serpentine 3D printer, designed by architecture students, uses clay to rapidly create structures.

Read the full write-up at Hack Things.

Visit the Maker Faire website.

Read more articles about Maker Faire.