nainesh rathod: so if you think about the kinko's kind of a 3d printing network, that's the vision. so our vision essentially from the shape sort of aspect of it is take a picture and find it, right, or doodle something and find it. that was the earlier premise, and thanks of course to nsf we were able to not only go through the feasibility but actually prove that that idea works. we've all thought about bar codes and rfids and all those kind of things. arts actually are unique. they have their unique signatures. so if we
forget all of those are secondary identification and just simply use shape as the identifier, wouldn't life be simpler? the other thing that it allows us to do is give consumer the option and that is not just find where i can buy that or find it, but hey, can i actually print it? that's really what we have here. if i want to cast it or in this particular case 3d print it, all of the data is there. i print it, in my local neighborhood, and our goal is really to create a vibrant community in the u.s. take an example of chicago—and in fact,
we're using chicago as a pilot—where they import $50 billion of finished goods. even if we localized 5% of that manufacturing using smart shape technology, that's $2.5 billion, right? that actually translates to 15,000 jobs locally itself. this technology doesn't have to be locked up in big business. to make it available at our fingertips is within reach. why can't we actually print the thing instead of going to the store and buying it? nsf to us has been a big risk taker. when we went to them and said, "hey, we're thinking about this," they
didn't throw us out the door. they basically said, "great
3d printing companies in usa,idea. here's some money. see what you can do." they played i think a foundational role for us because without that kind of a beginning we wouldn't be where we are. ♫music♫
