On 3D Printing

Fuel3D, which bills itself as “a handheld 3D scanner for less than $1000″ rocketed past its target of $75,000 and is now over $200,000 raised with 23 days to go.
Volumental’s 3D Scan-to-Print Web App, on the other hand, is still short of its $20,000 goal (they’ve raised about $12,000 so far).

Let’s take a deeper look.

First, why is 3D scanning important?

While the popularity around 3D printing continues to rise, sourcing good designs to print remains a challenge. Sure, you can buy a MakerBot 3D printer and download some 3D designs from Thingiverse, but what if you wanted to capture something in your home or office? That’s where 3D scanning technology comes in.

New entrants to 3D scanning

On the high end, there is expensive software and equipment used by professionals. Fuel3D is directly competing in this area of the market with a much more affordable solution.

Hardware innovation blog HackThings wrote, “Fuel3D is a handheld 3D scanner that’s capable of capturing extremely high resolution mesh (250 microns) and color information of objects in 3D, for around $1000. According to the creators, that’s an order of magnitude less than today’s commercial solutions of comparable resolution.”

On the low end, there is free software such as Autodesk 123D Catch. And MakerBot has announced plans for real-world copy and paste technology. This is the area that Volumental is competing. The web-based software connects to a depth camera, like a Kinect, and builds a model on the fly.

HackThings wrote about this solution, “It works as a combination of inexpensive sensor hardware and sophisticated cloud-based software. Log in to their web service, plug in a $300 depth sensor via USB, walk around the object you want to scan, wait for processing and then click “print” to get a clone either via an online printing service or on your own 3D printer.”

Kickstarter campaigns comparison

It might seem surprising that the higher priced solution has raised more money to date on Kickstarter, but this side-by-side comparison gives us some insight into the mentality of crowdfunding. Supporters don’t want to fund things that are perceived to be free; instead, they want to pledge to campaigns that are changing the market. Fuel3D is reducing the cost of high end 3D scanners by an order of magnitude, while Volumental is competing with free.

If you want to back either campaign, or both, here are videos and links to each project.

Fuel3D: A handheld 3D scanner for less than $1000

The 3D Scan-to-Print Web App by Volumental

Poppy Kickstarter Closes in on $150,000 to Turn Your iPhone into a 3D Camera

July 15, 2013 News

Poppy Soon to Hit $150,000 Crowdfunding Milestone

A few weeks ago, we covered the Kickstarter campaign launch of Poppy, an innovative device that lets you capture, view and share images in 3D, using only your iPhone.

With an initial target of $40,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter, Poppy raced past that goal on day 1 and is now closing in on $150,000 with 11 days left in the campaign.

As is common with Kickstarter campaigns, Poppy has a set of stretch goals that only kick in if the funding campaign outperforms its target. The first stretch goal was $100,000 and the reward was the inclusion of a simple tripod screw mount for every Poppy. It was easily achieved.

The second stretch goal is $150,000, and the reward will be the release of a white Poppy, available to those who pledged $59 or more.

3D Printing Inspiration

We chatted with the Poppy founders about how 3D printing played a role in Poppy’s development. It enabled them to iterate fast and create a working prototoype that they could use in customer development.

Poppy founder Joe Heitzeberg explained, “3D printing helped us make Poppy stylish and easy to use by allowing us to iterate the design and get actual usage feedback from real users before committing to the more costly work of tooling for injection molds.”

As we reported previously, if you pledge $1,200 or more on Kickstarter, you can receive one of the original 3D printed functional prototypes.

Below is a video showing how Poppy works.

Canadian Actress Ellen Page Tweets “No F ing way” About 3D Printing – Our Response

July 11, 2013 News

Ellen Page Tweets about 3D Printing – Our Response

Canadian Actress Ellen Page, known for her roles in in Juno, Inception, X-Men: The Last Stand and other films, tweeted yesterday about the 3Doodler 3D printing pen:

no F ing way “@UberFacts: This is a 3Doodler — The world’s first 3D printing pen that can actually draw in the air. pic.twitter.com/no7yxQO687”

— Ellen Page (@EllenPage) July 10, 2013