announcer: a.q.'s blog and grill. alan quarry: now you two guys have met andso you have created, what you're calling, discovery. andrew finkle: yes. mm-hmm. alan quarry: just give me a quick breakdownon what discovery is and what
3d printing in san francisco, does it do. charles meyer: so discovery it's an add-onfor existing 3d printers that expands the capabilities of the materialsthat the 3d printer can work with. the 3d printer alone nowadays typicallyworks with a plastic
filament, one of two types, either p.l.a.or a.p.s. plastic. what our product does is, using the same printer, nowpeople can work with ordinary silicone. people can work with things likecake icing, or ceramics, or clays, or play-dohs, and the list grows. so by expanding the materials, then peoplecan be more creative with the 3d printer because, you know, yes, you can dosome pretty cool things with plastic, but sometimes you want to do somethingelse. and really it's better in a different material but then youcan't 3d print it. so we are hoping to be able to change that.
alan quarry: that's excellent. so actuallynow i can use much cheaper or less expensive materials to do my experimentation,and that's why you have called this thing discovery. andrew finkle: yeah. it is using materialsyou can pick up at the local hardware store, or even you can mix up icingsugar right in your kitchen with some sugar, a little bit of eggs. andyou are off to the races. alan quarry: now you got to show me . . . andrew finkle: all right. alan quarry: . . . what you guys are doingwith icing sugar.
andrew finkle: cool. so i brought a coupledemos with me today. so this is our structured printing logo. this is printedon a traditional plastic 3d printer. so you can see it does not have muchflexibility. it's quite hard, but you get some nice detail. so what ourdevice allows you to expand into and just to start off with the icing sugar,since that's what we're talking about, is now you can print with this. thisis completely edible. alan quarry: yeah. andrew finkle: this was just printed thismorning, so it's a little soft. but, as it hardens, it could be used as thetop of a cupcake, to decorate a
birthday cake, promotional materials. anothercool one is silicone, so this is stretchy, it's flexible. so this couldhave applications, things like prosthetics, gasket materials for differentmechanical applications. alan quarry: mm-hmm. charles meyer: membranes. alan quarry: okay. andrew finkle: and then, something in between,this is latex so it is not quite as stretchy but extremely flexible. alan quarry: all right. so, i'm making thisfrom stuff that i get at the
grocery store, the icing sugar. andrew finkle: yes. alan quarry: this one, i can use siliconefrom the hardware store. andrew finkle: this one, yeah, we picked upfrom target. alan quarry: 5.99, 6.99. andrew finkle: three ninety-nine for two. alan quarry: three ninety-nine? andrew finkle: yeah. right. similar volumeof the filament is on the order of $20 to $40 so. . .
alan quarry: wow. okay. so i'm cutting mycost by a factor of ten. andrew finkle: right. yeah. alan quarry: and this, again, was the latex? charles meyer: latex. alan quarry: and where am i getting latexfrom? charles meyer: typically the hardware storeso. . . charles meyer: ordinary latex caulk. alan quarry: yeah. this really is democratizing3d printing. charles meyer: yes.
alan quarry: it is making available for everyone.so discovery is actually it's an add-on. andrew finkle: it's an add-on, a peripheraldevice. alan quarry: so, i build, like you do, myown 3d printer, right? or i order it. and then, how do i get the discovery?i mean, do i build it? are you guys building it? what's going on here? charles meyer: we're building it. and we aregoing to be revealing this at maker faire in san francisco in a couple ofweeks. charles meyer: may 17th and 18th. after that,we'll be opening up some
crowd funding. alan quarry: you're going to be doing somecrowd funding. alan quarry: so what is happening with that? andrew finkle: so we're hoping to releaseour device through a crowd funding site, similar to kickstarter. andwe're hoping to sell a good amount of these devices to people who alreadyhave a 3d printer. there's been a few people who have tried this kindof technology before, but no one has really implemented it in the way we have.
so we're selling a well-priced device thatcan be added on to people who
are already 3d printing. it's not requiredto buy another 3d printer and now your material expansion goes from twomaterials to countless, peanut butter, nutella, anything you can think of.
