TLDR: A cancelled flight, a spontaneous day in Copenhagen and most importantly enough Stroopwafels to feed our entire E3D office. We’ve finally touched back down in the UK after Sweden Meetup.
Despite our journey home being slightly disrupted, the rest of the weekend played out smoothly thanks to the incredible event staff at 3D Meetup Sweden. Within 1 hour of arriving on the Friday we’d located all of our shipments, set up the stand and had the ToolChanger running its first laps around the print bed. It's evident that considerable thought and effort went into the organisation of this event and boy you guys pulled it out the bag - a massive shout out for that! Guests and exhibitors were there in full force, showing off their awesome creations and giving talks which weren't to be missed! Our staff couldn't help but sneak off and check out all the cool things that were going down. Here is our selection of highlights:
Our Highlights
Scan3D
"It was an interesting experience being 3D scanned, I've used the mobile-based 3D scanning apps in the past, but the detail that was being captured by the Artec Eva was incredible. When the scan is happening you are required to stand still for it to work correctly, if you wobble too much and you might end up with an arm sticking out your head! It was an odd feeling having to be still while two people circle round you over an over again, but the whole process only took around 5 mins. Several batches of scans happened, during which time you could see your body being built up on the screen in front of you. I’m looking forward to receiving the 3D model so I can play around with mesh mixer to merge myself with various existing models, Jabba the Hutt being on my mind for the first experiment."
Dan Rock, Technical Support on 3D Scann and photogrammetry
“The BLTouch is very exciting technology and the fact Paris traveled so far just to be here shows her passion and enthusiasm for her project. My main takeaway from her talk was that Antclabs are constantly striving to improve their product in two core areas, precision and stroke length. Paris was kind enough to give me a free sample which I'll be installing on my printer next week..."
Jan, Mechanical Engineer on Paris' BLTouch talk
“Gina's talk provided a fascinating insight into the development of OctoPrint since it's inception in 2012. As OctoPrint's sole developer Gina explained how she works full time to constantly improve and refine the 3D printing staple that is OctoPrint.”
Greg, Head of Special Projects and Creator of the ToolChanger on the Octoprint Lecture
Mosaic Palette
Some of our team had never seen a Mosaic Palette in person and, essentially, it was pretty cool and a great toy for playing around/getting used to multicolour printing. The splicing technology and the quality of prints produced was extraordinary; we even had a crazy maker suggest the unique idea of setting up 4 palettes with the TC: imagine that- 16 unique filaments within 1 print.
Imagine printing Loubie's Sir Pigglesby, (shading, soluble supports and all) with no post-processing at all in just one print!
PancakeBot
The PancakeBot was really cool - of course - 3D printed food, if that's not the way to one's heart... Honestly, we just love the unique innovations that the 3D printing community come up with, regardless of how niche they may be; it truly shows how people are making 3D printing their own and incorporating it into their everyday lives.
ToolChanging > Printing
Exhibiting at MRRF last month we observed something interesting with those viewing the ToolChanger at our stand. Individuals would crowd around, intensely watching for minutes on end. As it turns out they were not nearly as fascinated with the fantastic print quality as their behaviour might suggest; they were in fact waiting to see a 'tool change' which made more sense. Makers didn’t want to see a printer, they’d seen that a million times- they wanted to see the E3D ToolChanger.
There's nothing like giving the customers what they want so we set up a 'extrusion-less demo' for the exhibition. Plus if anyone wanted to see the ToolChanger actually printing, Adam Engberg from Uppsala University has his printing on the Duet3D stand which was directly next door to us running some neat multi material prints. Our demo consisted of 2 V6's and a SuperVolcano which danced around the build volume at the insane speed of 500mm/s. Then the cherry on top? An inspection camera tool head with a live feed hooked up to a monitor in front of the ToolChanger.
In a similar vein, we thought it'd be nice to have some more interactive pieces. We printed both Flowalistik's recent educational V6 piece and also a multi material piece which acts as visual representations of our engineering design of the Nozzle X.
Thanks Flowalistik!
The Finest of Guests
We were blessed with fantastic company during our time in Sweden and took the opportunity to take both Joe Casha (3DMN) and Torbjörn Ludvigsen (Hang Printer Project) out for meals to catch up.
Food (& Drink) for Thought!
And of course we took advantage of the event team's kind invite for drinks back at the hotel on the Saturday. We are British after all...
Post-Event Beverages
3D Meetup Sweden is Here to Stay!
3D Meetup has definitely grown since our attendance last year. We credit this to: interest in printing and the maker movement continuing to climb; the ongoing passion and support of the wonderful attendees; the love and co-ordination poured into the festival by its organisers; and when a weekend ticket only costs you 149 SEK (around £12)- attendance is a no brainer. We had a fantastic time and we expect great things for the future. Roll on next year!
Thanks again to the event 3D Meetup Sweden. We'll be back
Bonus Content (Our Flight got Cancelled...)
3D PrinthusetAs our flight back to the UK was cancelled and we were 'stuck' in Denmark, we decided to give 3D Printhuset a visit. Once open to the public, they now operate on an appointment only basis, but we managed to wing ourselves a quick tour. There's some seriously exciting things going down in this office, last year they opened up a new 3D construction business, developed their own concrete 3D printer and have since become the first company to print a fully EU compliant house. You can check it out here. We were made very welcome and were happy to see our products being used on their machines.
If you want to view paradise...
If you're Stateside and sad to have missed out, we'll be at Rapid, Detroit, from 21-23 May. See you there!