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Welcome back to geek time. This is Brad. Hi Lulu, how's it going?

Hi, Brad. Let's continue with our 3D printer.

Yeah, so 3D printing.

3D printing.

You said you are currently using 3D printer to print out parts of your drone, I was wondering like why do people generally use 3D printing, is it just for hobbies?

A lot of time it's for designing, maybe you have like an invention, you wanna create, you can design something and then you can print out the part, try to use it; if you don't like it for some reason, you can design it, you can change the design, print it out again. Whereas if you do that, if you like have an idea for a part, then you have to send your part off to someone else to make the part. And then it comes back to you maybe a week later.

And so every time you wanna redesign something you have to do this. Whereas like a 3D printer, you can do it in a matter of few hours…

Cut the middleman.

Yeah, or if you break something, on your skateboard or if you break something on your desk or something, you can actually print out a replacement part.

The exact same as before.

I mean like you can usually if it's like a circle or something that you can measure the diameter.

You can just plug in the diameter and then you can print it with holes in it or something like that. And it can basically just connect back to your desk where the old part was.

Yeah, but it does sound like a lot of work you have to go through just for parts of a desk, I probably just get a new desk, I guess for machines for more intricate things.

When it comes to like especially in the US right now, there's this whole movement called right to repair where people they don't want to throw stuff away because you have all these things, you have a phone and you use it for a year and then you throw it away, but it's like all this material is on the phone that you're throwing away and it's like, it's going into the trash but that stuff can be reused.

But when you have a desk like you don't need to buy a new desk, you don't need to buy a new thing. You can just print a piece and you can fix it, right.

So in a way, it's actually environmentally friendly to use 3D printing.

Yeah, it's also a big thing for kids nowadays, especially schools are using them teaching kids, how to be designers, you know, teaching them how to program computers and then how to print things from 3D printers.

I would imagine this is very popular among kids, especially certain type of kids, probably the future geeks.

Yeah.

In the previous episode, we did talk about the limitations of 3D printing and you were saying, first of all, it's the size, but can we have a very, very big 3D printer?

We like it for businesses and business use, you can get them. There's usually like these huge machines. They're kind of almost like machines like CNC machines. They are huge and you can use them to 3D print huge devices or I should say huge devices but huge prints, but this can take hours sometimes like because you have to print layer by layer. If you want it to be strong, then you don't want to have like a really huge layer. You want to have like little by little…

Little by little

And so that will take even longer.

So in that sense, it's not even as efficient as the original machine.

No, like you definitely wouldn't want to use this for mass production for people who are selling like a limited number of toys that they're building online or something like that someone who has like a small shop. It would be really good to start off with. You can print out the items that you want to sell and then you can sell them online. But once you get beyond like a certain amount, like a certain production level, you have to go back to some of the traditional methods.

3D printers are not meant for that. They are meant more for designing, like designing and making things. You have an idea. You wanna print it, then you wanna like change the shape and then reprint it. Basically it's meant for design and meant for fun in design fun but definitely not for mass production.

If you have a piece, because like each layer is printed individually and not like kind of what we call an injection molding, where every like all of the plastic is put into the machine at once, and then fed in and kind of like solidifies together; when you print it layer by layer, the different layers aren't quite entirely put together. So it can break, it can crack open.

So it's also not as sturdy as the normal way of, let's say, building things.

A few people have made this better. And what they basically do is they have a machine that cures it or bakes it.

So if you were to make a shape and then you put it into a curing machine, what it does is it brings it to the temperature where it doesn't melt it. But what it does, it heats it up enough so where. The individual layers start kind of becoming more fluid and joining together.

Um…It sounds very complex, but I guess it's like what you said. That's not what 3D printing or printer was invented for, it’s more for designing; so far I have heard you talking about making all these parts replacement parts mostly. But 3D printing is it more printing the things that are already in existence or printing the things that haven't been in created?

You can use it for both; a lot of people like see something they want at the store. But they look at it and go that's really expensive, I really can't afford that. But then they can buy a few parts and then 3D print everything to put it all together, you know like build an electric skateboard, you can buy the motor. It is basically like the quad copter motors that we use. You can get a stronger one and use that to control your skateboard and push you along. And you need something to connect the motor to the skateboard and so you can 3D print it.

I guess you said it's because they see something in a store and they think it's expensive. I think for people like you, it is not the expense really, it's more like the sense of accomplishment of building something on using your own intelligence, using your own skills.

But also there's a lot of people who just like the design process.

And so if you had something you wanted like you can go on, there's lots of websites that hold like thousands of different designs people have made. So if you have a design and you're like, I don't want to keep it on my computer. I want to have it somewhere. Other people can use it or I wanna put it, you can sell your designs or you can put them on open sources…

Open sources.

Like Thingiverse.

It’s actually called thingiverse?

Yeah, Thingiverse.com. That's one of the major websites for people who want to upload their designs.

So would you say that there is a community of people like you, who would like to…

Definitely, like what's actually really interesting is the reason I chose my particular 3D printer was because when I was looking online and looking at all the different 3D printers out there, mine came in a kit that I could put together and so I had like this challenge of putting together the kit but also there were people printing parts for their 3D printer to make their 3D printer better.

So there's this community of people who were going out and saying this part and the 3D printer is good, but we can make it better if we focus the cooling system on this part.

So they were 3D printing the 3D printer.

Yeah, basically printing parts that would make it stronger or sturdier.

This is just now sounds like some sort of tongue twister.

It is.

I think I really do like this whole DIY or what they call the maker culture. It does sound really really fun. I mean it's a pity that I'm not good at those things, but I have a lot of respect who can do it. I think we're gonna wrap up here because 3D printing, I don't think most of our audience know much about; hopefully after these two episodes, you are a little bit less confused than I am.

You can go online, you can look at like watching videos, just go watch a video of a 3D printer being printed. It's very mesmerizing, just kind of watching it slowly being like printed up. It's fun, but there's that go out and design something on your own. You can practice designing it for free. And if you think I really want to print this, you can go out and buy a printer.

Yeah, now that we know that they are getting really affordable. All right, on that note, thank you Brad for coming to the show. And for our audience, if you have ever experienced with 3D printing, if you know anything about it that you want to share, leave us a comment in the comment section. We'll see you next time.

See you everyone.

Bye

Bye.