Bre Pettis Blog

Tinkering Makes a Comeback Amid Crisis - MakerBot, Friends and I in the WSJ!

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:03:07 +0000

MakerBot is featured in this Wall Street Journal article that just went live. Check it! Make sure to check out the video too!

Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis By JUSTIN LAHART

The American tradition of tinkering -- the spark for inventions from the telephone to the Apple computer -- is making a comeback, boosted by renewed interest in hands-on work amid the economic crisis and falling prices of high-tech tools and materials.

The modern milling machine, able to shape metal with hairbreadth precision, revolutionized industry. Blake Sessions has one in his dorm room, tucked under the shelf with the peanut butter on it.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology junior has been using the mill to make prototypes for a bicycle-sprocket business he's planning. He bolts down a piece of aluminum plate, steps to his desk and, from his computer, sets the machine in motion.
Tinkering With Technology

Jason Euren, an anthropology student at the New School University in Manhattan, worked with a soldering kit at the Brooklyn hackerspace Resistor recently.

"It's kind of a ridiculous thing to have," says Mr. Sessions, 20 years old. But "in today's marketplace you can't only offer a technical aptitude. You have to be able to provide something more."

Occupying a space somewhere between shop class and the computer lab, the new tinkerers are making everything from devices that Twitter how much beer is left in a keg to robots that assist doctors. The experimentation is even creating companies. With innovation a prime factor in driving economic growth, and corporate research and development spending tepid, the marriage of brains and brawn offers one hopeful glimmer.

Engineering schools across the country report students are showing an enthusiasm for hands-on work that hasn't been seen in years. Workshops for people to share tools and ideas -- called "hackerspaces" -- are popping up all over the country; there are 124 hackerspaces in the U.S., according to a member-run group that keeps track, up from a handful at the start of last year. SparkFun Electronics Inc., which sells electronic parts to tinkerers, expects sales of about $10 million this year, up from $6 million in 2008. "Make" magazine, with articles on building items such as solar hot tubs and autopilots for robots, has grown from 22,000 subscribers in 2005 to more than 100,000 now. Its annual "Maker Faire" in San Mateo, Calif., attracted 75,000 people this year.

"We've had this merging of DIY [do it yourself] with technology," says Bre Pettis, co-founder of NYC Resistor, one of the first hackerspaces, in Brooklyn. "I'm calling it Industrial Revolution 2."

The financial crisis played a role in taking a nascent trend and giving it increased urgency, says Michael Cima, an MIT engineering professor. "I've been here 23 years and I definitely see this trend back to hands-on," he says. "A lot of people are pretty disappointed with an image of a career in finance and they're looking for a career that's real."

Access to the tools to tinker is getting easier. "Computer numerical controlled," or CNC, tools -- which cut metal and other materials into whatever design is plugged into the computer attached to them -- now cost as little as a tenth of what they did a decade ago. Mr. Sessions, the MIT student, says he first looked at such mills on a lark, assuming the price would be well out of his reach. But his mill cost about $7,000 to buy and set up.

He sees the bike-sprocket business as a springboard for developing more complex products, such as a device to increase mobility for arthritis sufferers or an energy-efficient car transmission. He thinks his interest in tinkering will give him an advantage in a global marketplace.

"If it doesn't have that creative aspect to it, it may not be worth doing, because your job can be outsourced," he says.

Innovation in the U.S. is peppered with examples of tinkerers who started out small, but came up with big ideas, says Naomi Lamoreaux, an economic historian at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The really dynamic times in our history are times when you have lots of ordinary people who think they have a chance to make a difference."

Through much of the past century, however, developing new products required increasingly complex and expensive tools that were out of reach of most individuals -- the Wright brothers built an airplane in their bicycle shop, but the first jet-powered aircraft were built at well-funded corporate and government labs. As a result, large firms came to dominate innovation.

That trend was disrupted in the 1990s when low-cost computers allowed Internet and software start-ups to compete with giants. But when it came to developing innovative physical products, high prices kept high-tech machine tools and materials out of most tinkerers' reach.

"There have always been hobbyists, but it was really hard to go from being a hobbyist who built hot rods to becoming a car company," says Erik Kauppi, a member of at A2 Mech Shop, an Ann Arbor, Mich., workshop where tinkerers pool tools they own. "But now, all of a sudden a guy or a couple of guys have a lot more leverage."

The electric scooter that Mr. Kauppi, who is 49, developed at the workshop is now in production. His business, Current Motor Co. in Scio Township, Mich., plans to begin shipping its scooter, with a starting price of $5,500, this month.

At engineering schools, the drop in costs is putting tools once accessible only to senior researchers into the hands of undergraduates. The Hobby Shop at MIT, once mainly a wood shop, has been accumulating advanced equipment, some castoffs from MIT laboratories, some bought.

"Now you can build sophisticated robots and things like that with all these new pieces of equipment they have," says Greg Schroll, 23, a 2008 MIT engineering graduate.

He hopes to eventually start a company around a spherical robot he built at the MIT shop, which he sees being used to gather information in places too hazardous for humans. Projects made by MIT students in the Hobby Shop now in commercial production include a LED system to create lighting effects for film and a machine to salt the rim of a margarita glass.

Hands-on is catching on at other schools. There were 27% more undergraduates who earned mechanical-engineering degrees in 2008 than in 2003, according to the American Association of Engineering Societies. Over the same period, the number of computer-engineering graduates slipped by 31%.

Students at Carnegie Mellon University asked to stay at school for a week after exams last spring so they could hang out and build things. Ed Schlesinger, a professor there, says that after a long period where theoretical work dominated at engineering schools, "when students talk to each other now, it's 'So, what cool project are you working on?' It's not enough to say I took these classes and got an A." Stanford University's Product Realization Laboratory, where students learn machining, welding and other hands-on skills, has seen membership jump to 750 from 450 over the past five years.

As a junior at Stanford in 2004, Carly Geehr thought she was headed for medical school. Then she took a course on manufacturing and design at the Stanford workshop.

"I'd never held a drill in my life, but working with the milling machine -- I was just blown away," says Ms. Geehr, who is 24. She changed her major to engineering and, as a doctoral candidate in engineering, is now a teaching assistant for the course that gave her the bug to build. On a recent day, she cheered students on as they prepared molds for sand-casting bronze, occasionally donning a protective fire suit to skim red-hot dross from the crucible before pouring molten metal into the molds.

Giulio Gratta, a senior in Stanford's engineering school, has been using the workshop to build a panoramic camera. Even though Stanford is in the heart of Silicon Valley, he says software and Internet development don't hold as much interest as before. "It's no longer the thing to do," says Mr. Gratta, who is 21. "People have to figure out something else. Maybe...physical things."

From hacker spaces to profitable businesses, tinkering is experiencing a renaissance. WSJ's Andy Jordan explores some of the "stuff" people are making with new devices that encourage hacking and creativity.

Until the 1950s, economists thought how fast the economy grew was mostly a matter of how much money was spent and how much work was getting done. But in a 1957 paper that helped him later earn a Nobel Prize, MIT economist Robert Solow showed capital and labor only accounted for about half of growth. The remaining half he attributed to innovation -- an area where the U.S. has long had an advantage.

In recent years, however, U.S. spending on research and development has led some economists to worry that innovation will no longer provide the boost it once did. Corporate R&D spending grew an average of 2.6% annually from 2000 to 2007, down from an average of 6% in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the most recent figures from the National Science Foundation. Chief financial officers surveyed in September by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and CFO Magazine said they expected their companies' R&D spending to grow by just 0.4% over the next year.

Tinkering represents innovation outside such figures. TechShop in Menlo Park, Calif., for example, is a for-profit workshop and operates like a gym, except that the members who pay $100 a month are milling iron rather than pumping it.

Founder Jim Newton tallied a list of all the tools he could imagine needing. Now TechShop, opened in 2006, has $500,000 worth of lathes, laser cutters and other equipment.

There are 600 members at TechShop's original location, up from 300 a year ago, and it has opened workshops in Durham, N.C., and Beaverton, Ore. Projects under way include a liquid-cooling device for computer servers and an electric two-wheeled car.

NYC Resistor, the hackerspace in Brooklyn, is funded by members and fees from classes it offers. It opens to visitors every Thursday. Recently, a group gathered around Ben Combee, who demonstrated the laser cutter. He put a piece of Plexiglas into place, started the air compressor, pushed a button and shouted, "Fire the laser!"

At a table strewn with laptops, wires and circuit boards, Eric Skiff showed off a robotic arm that twitches when a hand is passed near it. In a corner is the Barbot, a robot that, when it works, pours and stirs an absinthe cocktail called a Sazerac.

Such projects -- not to mention a giant Lite-Brite and a toy piano that plays Philip Glass's "Modern Love Waltz" -- may seem frivolous. But Zach Hoeken Smith, a NYC Resistor cofounder, thinks something important is going on. The computer kits sold by companies such as Apple in the 1970s were demeaned as toys, he says, but ended up launching the personal computer revolution.

Mr. Smith, 25, studied computer science at the University of Iowa, and worked as a Web developer. But a few years ago, he started playing with an "Arduino" -- an open-source microcontroller. These are used as the "electric brains" for everything from wall-avoiding robots to a hat that pokes the wearer's heads if the person stops smiling. "I was hooked," he recalls.

Intrigued by the idea of making a machine than can build its own parts, Mr. Smith got interested in "rapid prototyping machines" -- 3D printers that lay down layers of materials like plastic to form objects. The technology is used by manufacturers to make prototypes, with industrial machines typically costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Mr. Smith's NYC Resistor friends Mr. Pettis and Adam Mayer joined the project. Using off-the-shelf electronics and parts, along with a laser cutter, they came up with a machine. Now they're selling kits to make 3D printers.

Their company, MakerBot Industries, has shipped 350 of the $750 kits so far. They hired two employees, started paying themselves, and are building another 150 kits for their next shipment.

Adam Elkins and members of a hackerspace in Philadelphia, called Hive 76, bought one kit and built the machine. Mr. Elkins, a 28-year-old system administrator for a software company, says he doesn't have access to a lot of space, so he goes to the hackerspace to build. "There's no man-cave I can go to and do things."

The first thing he made on the 3D printer was a black plastic ring topped off with white plastic jewel. Last month, he presented it to his girlfriend, along with a marriage proposal. She said yes.

Autorouting

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:44:31 +0000

Raphael is teaching me Eagle, which is software for laying out printed circuit boards and I'm fascinated by the autorouting feature. It's beautiful. You are watching the computer think about the best ways to connect the dots.

New in November - Whirlwind MakerBot Tour

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:19:31 +0000

Last year I made a video every day of November. This year, it's time to do it again. Every weekday, I'll post a new video. I'm doing this with some other video superstars! It's New In November!

MakerBot in the Bits 'n Pieces show at Material Connexion

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:12:18 +0000

MakerBot is a company I started with some friends and it's blowing up. It grew out of the friendships forged at NYCResistor and the MakerBot is going to be in the best art show of the 21st century. It's called Bits 'N Pieces and it'll be at Material Connexion starting on Thursday.

DATES: November 4 - December 4, 2009
HOURS: Monday - Friday, 9am - 6pm
LOCATION: Material ConneXion 60 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10010 T. 212-842-2050
NEAREST SUBWAYS: #6 at 28th and Park / NRW at 28th and Broadway.

Bits ‘n Pieces is a traveling exhibition of work by international designers, architects, computer scientists, and material and technology researchers. It will showcase projects still in their development stage, as well as furniture, architecture, jewelry, graphic design and products that anticipate the next phase of the digital revolution, focusing on how society is imbued with, shaped by and shapes technology. This new era will be marked by increased awareness about, and accessibility of, continuously advancing technologies and materials and the changes that we will be making in our lives through them will be not just formal but structural, not merely aesthetic but substantive, changing how we actually think about, design and build our objects and space. What will life look like based on changes that are sometimes visible to the public and sometimes invisible?

Read on for the conceptual essay. (It's good)

We live in a sped-up world in which technological advances occur faster and faster. We can’t imagine, for instance, living in our homes and working in our offices without products that were lab experiments only five years ago. Often, it has been technological innovation that has served as the catalyst for these changes. For example, will the 3D printer – the cost of which has plummeted in only a decade – move from the lab and the factory into our homes and offices in the near future? How could seemingly small changes like this actually have a big impact on society, socially, economically and culturally?

Technology has bestowed a greater responsibility on the designer by radically altering his role. Design will not only be about creating products that are a result of innovation, but envisioning future scenarios and communicating these clearly to the public, suggesting new production processes and testing the manifold uses of new technologies. The designer is now in a position to tell factories which tools should be made and/or designed in order to make products, becoming as much researchers, scientists and engineers as “designers.” In this way, they must begin to use technology as a tool with which to expand what we perceive as “normal” and constantly re-create our quotidian world.

The concept of Bits ‘n Pieces came to life when a diverse group of product designers based in the U.S. and Europe began to discuss how their various projects were informed by digital technology. Differences in location seemed to create differences in perspective but there were also, unexpectedly, many things in common.

Bits ‘n Pieces addresses the myriad ways in which the digital era has changed the world of design, from the ways in which designers imagine images, objects and space to how they fabricate prototypes and manufacture at the mass level. Digital information emailed directly to a press, mill, laser-cutter or 3D printer can sometimes be picked up the very next day in the form of a three- dimensional object. Today, design developments speed across the globe via the Internet. It has also become increasingly easy to produce images, objects and architecture that were previously impossible thereby expanding the consumer’s horizon at a much more rapid rate.

Much of the work in Bits ‘n Pieces asks what we do and how we do it now that the digital revolution is behind us, and we have entered a post-digital era. Whether an object is digital or analog is no longer of any importance, since digital technologies are now embedded in the ways we think, work and play. Ten years ago, digital technologies were a goal rather than a means; one assumed that everything should and would be digitized. The tendency was “You are either with or against us”. One example can be seen in the music world, where around the turn of the century there was a big division between the digital musicians, with the blips and drones and the musicians that swore by analog. This discussion is now slowly quieting down and making room for subtle incorporations of digital in analog music and vice versa. Today’s designers must dart back and forth frequently and effortlessly between digital and analog, using whatever means suits the job. By now, digital technology is “here to stay” and is a tool in a toolbox, next to all the other already existing (and emerging) tools.

Acres of Hacking: Noisebridge!

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:12:32 +0000

Noisebridge, a hackerspace in San Francisco, is awesome. It's a very open and wonderfully chaotic space. I have been co-hacking from here while in town and it's got a fantastic vibe. This picture shows about half of the space. Behind me are two classrooms, a kitchen, a server room, bathroom and more rooms being built out. They have one rule: "be excellent to each other."

I took a bunch of pictures. Check them all out!

This post has been crossposted to the nycresistor blog too!

I'm on FLOSS Weekly talking about MakerBot Industries

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:14:41 +0000

FLOSS stands for Free Libre Open Source Software and the FLOSS Weekly podcast is a great open source focused podcast. They had me of MakerBot Industries on the show to chat about, well, MakerBot. Give it a listen. Here's the MP3!

EFF Awards

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:18:23 +0000

Last night I attended the EFF Pioneer Awards. My friend Limor of Adafruit Industries recieved an award for being awesome. She is an obsessive electronic engineer who has a successful open source hardware business and she pushes the limits with projects like an open source cellphone jammer.

This is an important one. Limor is an awesome engineer. My favorite kind that won't sleep till something works and obsessive about things like order fulfillment tool chains. The open source hardware world is small and growing and Limor is a true pioneer in this frontier. Getting recognized by the EFF, is big to me. It says, "Hey, don't mess with Open Source Hardware because the EFF knows about it and recognizes it as awesome."

Besides getting to see my friend have an award ceremony moment, I got to see other people get awards including the gentleman who broke the diebold voting system.

I feel very strongly that information should be freely shared and I've been a big fan and supporter of the EFF for years. They are the rockstars of the laws that I care about and so after the awards when I got to meet a few of them, it was kinda like being backstage at a rock show. The lawyers are all badasses, but they are also nice people and they all have a strong sense of humor. If you ever get a chance to go to an EFF event, you should. If you aren't a supporting member, here's the link where you can go support these lawyers that are kicking butt to defend digital freedom.

Barbot on IEEE

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:47:57 +0000

I'll be writing the occassional articles and making a few videos for IEEE Spectrum and the first video is live. Make sure to check out the IEEE blog. It's a great resource for great ideas!

Orrery Obsession

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:35:24 +0000

I've been obsessed with orreries for a while now. It's been on my list to create a lasercut orrery. If you know of any plans, send them my way so I can convert them into lasers!

Industrial Revolution 2

brepettis@gmail.com (Things!) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:30:58 +0000

It is the best time ever to exist. There has never been a better time to be creative and make wonderful things and be a part of the wonderful communities that are springing up to bring your passion, innovation, and ingenuity into the world.

Industrial Revolution 2 is an unstoppable mass movement of creativity, sharing and doing things yourself!

You can make everything you need and use machines and robots to make it happen. It is the dawn of a new age of creativity where the fabrication tools are not a continent away, but are in your living room. Need a measuring spoon to make cupcakes? Download one or design one and print it!

At MakerBot, we're making machines that support people's creativity. We've made it cheap enough that you can have a 3D printer on your desktop. You'll go to the store less, design custom things more and we created Thingiverse to be the youtube of 3D models and digital designs so that if you don't want to design something, you may already be able to just download it and create it with your machine.

We're obsessive about open source because we know that by sharing our knowledge and all the designs, electronics, and code, we empower our friends to do more with our work and share what they build with it too. The culture of sharing is my culture, and yours too if you share what you know and are willing to make some progress in the world and share it.

What will it be like when you go next door and instead of borrowing a cup of sugar, you make a sculpture on their sugar fabrication machine? Later, they'll come over and use your Shopbot, Micro CNC, MakerBot or lasercutter!

We've been consumers for so long that it feels utterly natural to sift through advertisements, watch commercials and click on ads. It's absurd that we need a revolution to bring personally fabricated objects to the marketplace. We are humans with hands. We were born with the innate ability to create a wonderful world and to make things. Somehow, the first industrial revolution took that away from us by creating assembly lines, dividing up labor, and centralizing manufacturing so that you wouldn't have anything to do with the creation of the things you need in life. It's insane that my shoes were made so far away and that they were probably shipped via plane, boat, and trucks to get to me from across the world.

Having the tools to make things changes all that. Having automated machines in your life to make the things you need means that you're cutting all the transportation costs out of the equation. You still need to buy raw materials, but you can make things locally using an automated means of production on a scale perfect for you.

I started a conversation about Industrial Revolution 2 on twitter today and it got good. Here are some of the things people said. I'm still in the discovery phase of figuring out how distributed, decentralized, personal manufacturing approach compares and contrasts with the first industrial revolution. If you've got ideas or responses, contribute to the comments!

@dmuren: IR2 will look less factory (making as monotony) and more school (making as exploration). Two probs, one stone.

@kaden_harris: This IR2 is just the original Maker movement's correct evolutionary path. Robots bedamned: we're Makers.

@stahlman: does IR2 mean the end of mass production & a shift towards localized production of just what is necessary thus reducing waste?

@dmuren IR2 has to concern itself with the materials that open objects are made out of - open source plastic is beholden to the man

@johnbaichtal: IR1 was about making robots out of people, #IR2 is about people making robots!

@cavilling_elite: the problem with IR2 is standardization and helping the people w/o the skills to have their own fabrication.

@cyenobite: #IR2 will have less of a social impact since it will involve more robots than people. unless more people own those robots.

@OrangeComputer IR2 is considered a dangerous idea 2 many currently in power. Overcome that opposition with generosity & the golden rule!

@bre @kaden_harris point taken. 2 instead of 2.0. Revolutions shouldn't have micro version releases.

@bre @speedymarathon More than 3D printers, IR2 his is about personal fabrication, distributed manufacturing and sharing.

@sstrudeau: "Industrial Revolution 2.0" Like the info revolution gave us all presses, IR2.0 will give us all factories (with robots).

@ChristianBurns: it could involve a ton of child labor if we will unleash our children to build their dreams.

@cromulus: the corrollary for ir2 is the information revolution, factories for all, like blogs are printing presses for all.

@dcwilson303: products to produce as opposed to producing for masses.

@ChristianBurns: It's going to be distributed, not centralized around factories, but grouped around ideas and nodes of information

@jkopel: IR2 will (hopefully) involve less coal smoke and child labor.

@johnbaichtal: IR1 mass production by giant factories, IR2 micro production by collectives.

@todd_sundsted: IR 2.0 moves the craftsman/woman, designer back into a prominent role..

@clothbot: Education IR1 = don't think; repeat. Education IR2 = think; remake. ...or something to that effect.

@hypatiadotca: @bre less gin? http://bit.ly/12ZsWR

@mattmichielsen: @bre The next Industrial Revolution will be more about the individual and less about large corporations. And Awesome.

@bre: I'm initiatng the term industrial revolution 2.0. People and the robots who help them make things are the next internet..of things!