With keynote speakers from industry heavyweights like Stratasys, Materialise, 3D Systems, Wohler’s, Hewlett Packard, and Shapeways, I wanted to highlight a few of the up-and-coming companies and speakers that will be at the Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo, part of 3D Print Week NY taking place in two weeks, from April 15-17.
The Living
Personally, I’m excited to see David Benjamin of The Living. I missed his presentation at REAL 2015, and I really want to check this out. The Living is an amazing and relatively new company that creates prototypes for the architecture of the future. The reason I like their work is because of their unique and large-scale structural work. They created a 200-ft floating pier in the East River, called Pier 35 EcoPark, that changes color according to water quality, and a biodegradable brick “branching tower” for the Museum of Modern Art, called Hy-Fi. I’m curious to learn a bit more about this creative bunch and see what they’re working on.
Digital Metal
I will definitely be spending a bit of time at the Digital Metal booth. I haven’t seen a demo of their seemingly innovative manufacturing technique for producing metallic components. The company describes it as an “ink-jet technology for additive manufacturing and 3D printing of metal components and systems.” If I had more time, I would focus a bit more on metal 3D printing in general, so this will give me some time to see Digital Metal’s machinery produce me some holographic metallic takeaways.
VanGogh Imaging
Next, I’ll wander over to another interesting looking company called VanGogh Imaging. They develop “object recognition and analysis middleware for mobile and embedded devices.” Their real-time 3D technology claims to take a chunk out of the time-intensive post-processing for 3D applications. VanGogh’s “Starry Night” technology “fully automates the 3D modeling process and provides an array of feature detection and measurement capabilities.” Starry Night goes a little beyond 3D printing, into the worlds of automotive safety, security, robotics, and parts inspection. I, of course, want to see how it is applied to robotics and security. And also want to discover why they decided to use Van Gogh as their moniker. Or maybe I just answered my own query.
Voxel8
Oh, yes, Voxel8. I have to see what Travis Busbee, Co-founder and Materials Lead of Voxel8, is going to highlight during his presentation. I’ll expect to get a good dose of materials development, and also gain some insight into how Voxel8 conducts their R&D, including how they produce conductive inks and advanced materials to pave the way for 3D printing electronics. I also would like to see his vision of a future that includes multi-material printing of electronic devices and inject some new data into my own musings on the subject. Before Voxel8, Travis did some PhD work which focused on “materials development and micron scale 3D-printing of multi-material flexible electronic devices and sensors for biomedical applications,” so, hopefully, he will be able to layout a general, but accurate, roadmap of what to expect for the future of electronics and biomedical 3D printing.
Senvol
I’m also stoked to see Zach Simkin and Anne Wang, the Co-Presidents and Co-Founders of Senvol, which is one of my favorite companies in the whole 3D printing industry right now. Since October, it’s been a real pleasure to watch this company take off. They started by authoring part of the 2014 Wohler’s Report and introduced their 7-point proprietary algorithm to determine if industrial 3D printing is cost-effective along industrial supply chains, and most recently sent out a thunderclap of clarity from the 3D printing industry to the world with their Senvol Database. Anyone, for free, can perform a “laser-focused”, Google-like search from any spec of industrial 3D printers in one place. Hallelujah! Now, if only someone would do that for desktop 3D printers….
Anyway, it’s going to be great. If you don’t think it’s great, 3D printed drones will laser your eyes into mush!
