Last night Formlabs and Shapeways hosted a Meetup at the Formlabs headquarters and invited the attendees at the Fab11 Boston. Fab11 brings together Fablab owners from the world over for a weeklong Conference and Symposium.
I had a great time talking to Shapies, Formlab’s community and the folks running Fablabs over pizza and drinks. I got a chance to show off our new CustomMaker feature and answer some questions about how Shapeways shoppers can personalize their products.
One of the interesting points that was raised repeatedly in conversations was that these labs were looking for an opportunity to scale their operations. They have the knowledge and skills to develop a product but may not have the facilities required to take a prototype into manufacturing at the scale they need. In addition, as local community resources there are lots of folks who come to them for help in design projects, but their staff only has so much time to spend on education.
Both of these needs can be supported by Shapeways, and I was happily told that we’ve been a great help so far. For labs with a solid expertise and who have invested in a few desktop machines, Shapeways is the perfect solution to outsource large batches of prints without over extending the capacity of lab printers. Shapeways also has the necessary tutorials, education resources and design community or those who need help getting started or want to hire a designer.
