I think the most significant moment for me, during the Maker Faire Rome, the first I ever visited, took place while I was on my way out, after two days of sheer craziness, cruising through hundreds of stands, to find out what the latest addition to the ever expanding world of 3D printing was going to be. The moment came when a little girl, maybe three or four, who had just seen a 3D printer for the first time, simply said that she wished she had one at home. I thought that, when she gets to her teenage years, she and just about any boy or girl her age, who gets introduced to these technologies now, will probably have one at home.
That to me was one of the most concrete aspects of a fair that hosted something like 300 stands, comprising Fab Labs, inventors, makers, electronic component manufacturers and – of course – 3D printer manufacturers. Along with that little girl, I saw countless children, families, boys and just as many girls of all ages, students, professionals, and even quite a high number of seniors. Although they were there to see all the personal fabrication tools, and while (open) electronics is currently a strong focus of the maker movement, there is little doubt in my mind that most people, especially those coming to the show for the first time, were irresistibly attracted by the desire to find out more about how 3D printers are changing the world and could change their world.
Fab Labs, the personal fabrication laboratories built around the concept first proposed by MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld, are the main participants at any Maker Faire. They are the place for makers to go, built by makers and creative professionals to help others begin to “make” new things. Although the official Fab Lab Foundation charter says nothing specifically about a Fab Lab having to be a not for profit organization (different business assets are allowed), there is a lot of confusion as to what a Fab Lab’s means of sustenance should be.
That is also because all Fab Labs are different, especially here in Italy — a country divided and where every small town is often very different from its closest neighbour. What they all certainly share, however, is a great passion and great creative abilities. Italy has become a center for digital manufacturing because this new means of production is spreading both at an industrial and artisan level. While industry is certainly where the most advanced technologies and most of the money is, personal manufacturing is where a lot of the enthusiasm and creativity resides. This aspect of manufacturing is strategic for everyone involved because it has the ability to attract new people, of all ages.
Every single Fab Lab has at least a 3D printer (that is actually – together with other machinery – a requirement of the Fab Lab Foundation) and just about every Fab Lab’s stand I visited proposed some very interesting application, from Fab Lab Catania’s lifesaving App Dr Jack (to plug into the headphone jack and store all critical health info), to Fab Lab Venice’s 35 meter long reproduction of Beijing through the ages. Even more so than the new machines (there were at least thirty stands that belonged to new or established 3D printer manufacturers), this is the most important support that makers can offer the 3D printing industry: inventing new applications. And Italy is a land of inventors.
I saw amazing architectural projects, smart and connected projects, as well as new ideas, jewellery and accessories, rapid prototyping and even development of small production series. A Fab Lab’s own specific direction is very closely linked to the area in which it operates: in the center are many artisans, a little farther up are all the automotive companies, farther up north there are many engineers, to the east many designers, in the south there are lots of revolutionary ideas. These are not set in stone and can be interchangeable, but can offer a general idea.
One of the biggest contributions from Italy to the Maker scene is Arduino. The company founded by Massimo Banzi was the star of the show, attracting the attention of electronic giants such as Intel and Freescale (also present). It is one of the few, successful, purely open source business but the huge crowd constantly lining up in its gigantic store on the Faire’s premises demonstrates beyond any doubt that open source does not at all mean “no money involved”. The Arduino components are free for anyone to copy: it is the success of its branding efforts (Italians are still the best at that) that ensure the company’s commercial well being.
It seems to me that this concept is often confused by open source “integralists” who do not tolerate any other business model. Without venturing too deep into this highly complicated subject (and even more complicated by the issue of technology patents and intellectual property), the way I see it is that it does not always have to be about not making money and doing things for free but rather about using money as a tool to make things work and for people to live decently, without focusing solely on material wealth.
Personal 3D printing has made it possible to start a business with little or almost no investments. Now what it takes is ideas and skills, mostly programming, modelling and CAD skills, and that is why Autodesk’s presence as a Silver sponsor was so important: its 123D App suite of easy to use modelling tools are the easiest, and possibly the most accessible, way for children and newcomers to unleash their creativity in 3D.
That is also why the PrintforAID contest organized by Italian based online network Thingarage in collaboration with personal fabrication design marketplace MakeTank and Vectorealism, one of the first personal manufacturing service shops in Italy, chose an extremely simple 3D printed design that could transform any cloth bag in a geolocalized backpack as its winner.
With these skills a 3D printer can help any dream become real and – commercially or not – shared with others to help improve their lives or help them create what they want. So much so that even Arduino, as 3DPI had anticipated last Saturday, has joined forces with Sharebot to bring its own Arduino branded 3D printer, Materia (Italian for Matter), to the market.
The three largest Italian producers of 3D printers, DWS, Sharebot and WASP, were all present with very large stands and they were also among the few to present technologies different from FFF. Along with its high end SLA systems for the jewellery, dental and prototyping industries, DWS continues to push its XFab model which, when it will be delivered (the target date is now the end of 2014), will be the first real, valid alternative to FormLabs Form+, only with a much greater range of materials and a much larger print volume (a cylinder with 180 mm diameter and 180 mm height).
Sharebot continues to be the only company born out of a RepRap project to be able to present three perfectly functioning technologies. The quality of the pieces made with its SnowWhite SLS system continue to improve on a week by week bases, with the company now making models out of nylon and even graphene enriched nylon (and also sugar). There is work still to be done but it looks promising. So does the Voyager DLP systems and the entire FFF range (including the Ardunio Materia).
WASP, which brought its 4 meter tall Bib Big Delta system (because the 6 meter one did not fit inside the stand) impressed for the growth of all its other systems as well and for the high quality of some of its larger prints. Driven by the goal of 3D building houses anywhere in the world, the company’s CEO, Massimo Moretti, continues to innovate and invent new applications. And on the same “creative vision” is also D-Shape’s Enrico Dini, who will probably go down in history as the one who first conceptualized the idea of 3D printing houses and had an entire section dedicated to his work in the area with the great technological contributions of Italians to the world.
There were also too many other 3D printers to discuss here (we will highlight the most interesting ones in the upcoming days), however some stood out. For example the FabTotum (a compact mill, 3D scanner and 3D printer) and the very interesting “By flow” — a completely portable (and foldable) 3D printer to hit the market. Among the applications, I have to admit I spent more time at the 3DRacers stand than any other one: this open source concept for 3D printable remote controlled toy cars is definitely going to be interesting to follow (and customize/play with).
Tens of University based projects also filled the halls of the Auditorio Casa della Musica Center, many of which were based on 3D printing. There were so many exhibitors that some people complained that it was too hard to find workshops, stands and conferences but not many places are fit to hold a Faire this large. There was one that might have worked, the Rome Fair complex which, however, was occupied by another huge event: the Comics Convention. And the fact that, in spite of this unfortunate concomitance, the Maker Faire was a runaway success, is the clearest demonstration that the Maker movement’s evolution, in Italy as elsewhere, has only just begun.
