Tag: 3d printing

Blogging in the Morning: Lift12, 3615, StartupWeekend [en]

Here we go again. Inspired by one of my good friends who has been working in her studio in the morning and doing paid work in the afternoon, I’m going to have another go at “blog in the morning”.

I have, as always, a ton of things I want to write about. This post will be random.

I spent three days at Lift conference last week. For those of you who have never been to Lift, you must put it on your calendar for next year. Buy the tickets in the summer, so you get the early-early bird price. Lift is a wonderful conference. The talks are fascinating, the atmosphere is relaxed and friendly, the fondue is awesome.

I live-blogged the conference, like I do each year. I’m never happy with the job I do as a live-blogger (I always think others like Adam or Suw do a way better job than I do), but I’ve come to accept that live-blogging is gift not that many people have, and that I’m good enough at it to do a decent job of it and deserve my pass year after year (until now, at least).

Speaking of Lift, Lift’s founder Laurent Haug has started a podcast/show I haven’t yet had time to catch up with (I’m dying to) called 3615 (reference to old French Minitel codes). It’s in French. I think it’s great that it’s in French. What’s it about? It basically calls itself “3615, the show that wonders if the 21st century is a good idea or not”. Neat.

Lift this year properly lifted me ;-). I feel excited about technology again: 3D printing for example, I’m actually very tempted to order a RepRap kit and build one for eclau. Or robots.

I’ve decided to take part in the next Lausanne StartupWeekend. It’s this coming week-end! There are still a few open spots if you want to sign up, by the way. Julien Dorra is the guilty one: his talk made me realize I’d love to take part in the kind of events he was talking about. Actually, I’ve been inspired more than once to organize hack-dayish events: Website Pro Day, World Wide Paperwork and Administrivia Day, and more recently (still at the idea stage) “important but not urgent” days for eclau. Basically, “let’s get together and do stuff”. I also find Addict Lab fascinating, even though I still (after a lunch with Jan) can’t quite wrap my brain completely around it.

I like playing with ideas and doing a variety of things. Maybe putting myself in the kind of context StartupWeekend offers will also help me understand better what it is that I do. Plus, it’s going to be great fun.

So, anyway, I’m going to StartupWeekend. I even have an idea to pitch (I think). Who else is coming?

While I’m rambling on about Lift, one major take-away for me was the idea that information overload is part of the human condition. Go read my notes of Anaïs Saint-Jude’s talk, and once the video is online, listen to it. Well, listen to the whole Lift conference, actually. That’s what week-ends are for!

There is a whole lot more to say about Lift (3 days, folks!) but I’ll stop here. I feel like reading through my notes again, I have to say. Live-blogging, even if it’s not particularly difficult for me, requires a lot of concentration (it’s tiring) and it does mean I suffer a little from the post-effort brainwash syndrome. You know, like how after an exam you can’t remember a thing you wrote? That.

As for the other stuff I want to write about… let’s keep some for these coming mornings, OK?

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Lift12, New Futures: Lisa Harouni, 3D Printing [en]

[fr] Je suis à la conférence Lift12 à Genève ces jours. Voici mes notes de sessions.

Live-blogging from Lift12 conference in Geneva. These are my notes and interpretations of Lisa Harouni’s session — best effort, but might be imprecise or even wrong!

lift12 1100340.jpg
3D printing! Lisa became fascinated with 3D printing after meeting a guy who kept fiddling with a little structure that was impossible to create with traditional manufacturing techniques.

Tomorrow we’ll feed our desktop 3D printers with material and they’ll produce objects for us.

How does it work? Create a 3D model and build it layer by layer from the base upwards.

Materials: plastic, aluminium-plastic composite, ceramics, metals, glasses, chocolate… anything that can be melted. Can also create large (2m) structures. Also, tiny (4 microns).

Prototypes. Also final products. steph-note: lovely lamp

Furniture. Structures that cannot be made any other way, so complex. Clothes.

Other end of the spectrum: engine block. Very heavy. Get the weight down? Remove the solid parts from the design. Create a system that builds a structure only when needed to hold the weight. Less material, less weight, better cooling channel. Again, can’t be built in any other way.

More porous implants. If it’s solid metal body tissue moves away. Porous implants mean the tissue can grow in it.

3D-printing has no economy of scale. So each one can be different. Adapting to specific needs. steph-note: wow, blown away by the implications — hadn’t seen it so clearly until now

Website of the future: pick your lamp, the designer has created customization experiences, pick what you want. Then… upload your product, to centres which will build it on demand. Reduce shipping costs, etc.

We’ll be able to download spare parts from the web. Hoover breaks down, you can fix it at home. Good-bye warehouses. But what happens with copyrights? The product industry might be disrupted just like the music industry is being disrupted now.

Bike: dozens of machines needed to create the different parts… in future we can do this with a single machine.

The landscape of manufacturing is going to change.

Price? lamp, 40-50$. Within a week or two but built within an hour.

Watch the video:

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