Making Business Sense of 3D Printing – Accenture. Any company with a supply chain or a storefront should keep close tabs on this burgeoning technology. Why? Because there are significant business opportunities if companies consider how 3D printing could facilitate mass customization, unlock new revenue streams through on-demand production and extend support for the long tail for products or parts that consumers buy in low volumes.
The true opportunity of 3D printing is the ability for companies to produce a wide range of objects on demand, with little or no inventory costs. It is therefore clear that 3D printing could have broad business implications and drive substantial cost savings in areas such as consumer research, product development, testing (product, production, consumer, quality assurance) and packaging and shipping logistics. Wired editor Chris Anderson leaves magazine world to run robotics company. Wired editor Chris Anderson is leaving the magazine after 11 years as its editor-in-chief to run a robotics company he founded, 3D Robotics. Anderson made the announcement at an all-hands meeting for Wired staffers in San Francisco today. 3D Robotics has a Facebook page, Twitter account, and domain name (3drobotics.com), but currently no website.
Currently, that URL redirects to DIY Drones, another company Anderson founded, which sells kits and parts for people making their own unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — robotic aircraft, essentially. It appears that 3D Robotics is an outgrowth of that company. In addition to running Wired and turning it from a niche magazine with insider geek appeal into a mainstream tech-culture powerhouse, Anderson also wrote several influential books, including The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price. The new company is a robot manufacturing company with factories in San Diego, California and Bangkok, Thailand. Photo credit: Christina Bonnington. D I M E N S I O N E X T | NEW BLOG @ Shoes By Bryan. My Robot Nation. Jherrm/scanbooth. Introducing ScanBooth | Jeremy Herrman. Kids getting 3D scanned at the Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire 2012. © Larry Rippel At the 2012 Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire, I ran a booth where people could get 3D scanned and take home a small printout of themselves.
After an intense 7 hours, we scanned over 90 people and printed out over 40 of them. Going from raw 3D scan to a printable miniature figurine requires a surprising number of steps. Raw 3D scans have holes, extra geometry and artifacts that all need to be dealt with before sending to the printer. In fact, when I first started scanning people back in March, it took me over an hour to manually clean up a scan so that it was able to be printed out.
In order to scan and print so many people in such a short time span, I had to automate the process as much as possible. ScanBooth is a collection of software for running a 3D photo booth. Here’s what ScanBooth has to offer: We had a fantastic time showing people the power of 3D scanning and printing at Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire.