LayerXLayer Inteview
Half a tote of failed prints fits in a Manila envelope now. LayerXLayer didn’t set out to prove that. He’s the main recycler in his house, the one going through the can asking who put this in here. So from when he first started 3D printing he kept his scraps: failed prints, supports, and later […]
stlDenise3D Wanted to Tell Other People’s Stories
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nSiDZli0a9I Denise printed a Han Solo blaster, and then a bunch of Scouts dropped it. It was one of the first fancy prints she ever did. In third grade she desperately wanted one. A friend had one, and she never got it. So when she finally had a printer, she printed one, and she said […]
Blair, Benski and Bearded Printer on Making the Jump From Hobby to Business
By the time I got around to Benski, he already had the listing pulled up. I’d asked all three guests about the first thing they ever sold to somebody who wasn’t a friend or family, and he went and looked his up. It was a design he’d forgotten he made. He was aggravated that there […]
Modern Magician Interveiw
His mom’s way of grounding him was to take away whatever he was enjoying most: the game console, then the TV, then the radio, until all he had left was books. So he read the encyclopedia that summer. In this Padded Room conversation, Modern Magician (David Bates) goes back to the beginning. A first PC […]
He Never Told His Friends About This
Somebody in chat asked if we could see a picture of a young RetroMaker, and he said sure, he had one right there on his desk. Christmas, 1983. Glasses. He’s doing a little overbite on purpose, to be cool. And there in the shot is his first boombox. The boombox he designed to be 3D […]
StephiMakes: Print Maker
I asked her to give me a pose for the YouTube thumbnail and she asked if she could put her dino in it. That is the moment I keep coming back to from this one. Not because it is cute, though it is. Because another maker made that dino. He is starting out in model […]
Bearded Printer Is Making the Things His Followers Didn’t Come For
The first thing Bearded Printer ever 3D printed was half of a Baymax. It was the sample file that came with his first printer, an Anet A8 kit. He bought it because an Ender 3 was more than his budget could handle. He built the kit, felt pretty competent about it, and sent a print. […]
His wife bought him a printer kit for Christmas and it made him quit for two years
Somebody in the peanut gallery asked TechJeeper what the Polaroid on the wall behind him was. It’s not a Polaroid. It’s a rug, and he tufted it himself. It’s also the only one he’s ever made. He liked doing it. He still has all the pieces, he says he wants to do it again, and […]
“My Business Killed My Hobby” — Vic on Getting a Printer Back Just for Himself
Vic told me a rule he set for himself back when he was starting: the filament had to pay for itself or he didn’t buy filament. Two rolls off Amazon was a stretch. So the business didn’t really start as a plan. It started as the only way to keep printing. That worked. It worked […]
PD: Karen Chau on Ducks, Squeaky Toys, and Designing Like a UX Person
You’ve probably already printed one of Karen’s ducks. Nate ran a plate of 25 Uncle Sam ducks off the printer for the 4th — every one of them came off a model Karen Chau designed. So when she sat down with me in The Padded Room, I wanted to get past the ducks and into […]