We love community events – they’re always easy-going and it’s a great opportunity to catch up with old faces, chat about innovations in the 3D printing industry, and see a few wild and wacky ideas up close. Plus, we get to showcase upcoming products we think you’ll be excited about! Two weeks ago we took a trip to The East Coast RepRap Festival (ERRF) in Bel Air, Maryland, USA. Here’s our download of what we had on show, what we liked and a few shout outs. 

E3D’s ERRF 2022 Round Up

Heading into ERRF 2022 our agenda was simple: catch up with old friends, build new friendships, and get ObXidian into your hands. Having not attended the show since 2019 the excitement was real and based on the excellent communication from the ERRF team we knew this was going to be an awesome show. A couple of weeks have passed and we’re back down to earth, ready to share our ERRF experiences with you.

Just like the McCallister family tradition of leaving Kevin behind on family holidays, it is apparently now a tradition for our stand to get stuck in customs. You’ll all be relieved to hear that the stand did arrive safely, on Monday, the day after the show finished… To prevent any future customs mishaps, David Randolph and his team have very kindly allowed us to store our stand in the Printed Solid warehouse. One day you’ll get to see our shiny new stand, we promise!

With that out of the way, let’s get to the important bits:

Shout-out to Team ERRF   

We challenge you to find a more exceptional foursome than Chris, Lauren, Nick and Vicky, the ultimate hostesses with the mostesses! As always, this team pulled off an event with impeccable organisation from start to finish, going above and beyond to accommodate and make us feel at home. Home, but with much nicer weather; 25 degrees Celsius, which google reliably informs us is 77 degrees Fahrenheit.

We’d also like to give further thanks to the ERRF team for creating a shared space with the Memorial Bust for the community to remember Sanjay. From the hours spent co-ordinating the build with Todd at We The Builders, to the collection of 463 parts from all over the world (go Vicky!), to spending an entire day and a half constructing the final build (you’re amazing Lauren!), we cannot thank you enough for patience and dedication. Sanjay would be both mortified by the fuss and effort but absolutely lapping up all the attention at the same time. ERRF was his favourite annual event so having him there beside us was a true comfort.

To top everything off, this amazing team donated $1000 to the Sanjay Mortimer Foundation.

Whilst we're on the subject of the memorial bust, let us give another shoutout to the wonderfully talented Sid Naique who sculpted this 3D bust with absolute perfection, capturing Sanjay's most distinguished features so beautifully. We mean come on, look at those locks! 

ObXidian stole the show 

Hot off the production line, we rocked up at ERRF with 300 freshly assembled ObXidian’s, and we cannot explain how amazing it felt to be able to finally put our money where our mouth is and physically hand them over! If you didn’t attend ERRF but are eager to add an ObXidian nozzle to your Revo collection then you can head over to the E3D website and join the pre-order queue. If you’re outside of the UK, we do recommend ordering through your local reseller to ensure that you receive your products in a timely, cost-effective manner. 

The Community 

The community are at the heart of this event. After two years of no in-person ERRF, the 3D printing community was out in full force! We spoke to so many wonderful friends old and new. This is how most of the discussions went:

Person: Heard you’re selling ObXidian?

Team E3D: Yes.

Person: Take my money!!

Jokes aside, we met makers old and young and discussed everything under the sun, from volumetric flow rates to why we had about 900 pancakes on the table behind us (thank you Olivia and Jon!), don’t ask…

Sam Prentice and the DeathRace!      

Sam came up with an idea, the death race where 3D-printed robots would battle it out until the very end. There can only be one winner. The concept is somewhat reminiscent of the hit TV series called “Robot Wars”. We won’t give away too much here as Sam is going to be featured on one of our future blogs. For now, all you need to know is that there were over 40 racers, and it was total carnage! We loved every bit of it.  

SMF T-Shirts sold out     

Thanks to the super talented Kaoss with another epic design, we had some Sanjay Mortimer Foundation t-shirts printed to sell at the event. Unsurprisingly, these were very popular and quickly sold out raising $500+ for the foundation. To everyone who bought a t-shirt, thank you so much for helping us fundraise for such an amazing cause. To those of you who were gutted to have missed out, don’t worry they’ll be available to buy soon we promise!

The SMF T-Shirts being displayed by the wonderful Clare and Dan. 

‘How we got here, where we’re going and the SMF’   

Day 2 and it was Clare’s (Head Of Product Strategy & Marketing) turn to take to the ERRF Build Platform. Boy did she smash it, ending her talk with a standing ovation from the audience. Clare recapped E3D’s humble beginnings, went into detail about our IP strategy and how we’re teaming up with industry friends to bring the most reliable extrusion systems to market, ending finally with an introduction to the Sanjay Mortimer Foundation. We seriously recommend checking it out here. 

Some special shoutouts to our dear friends:      

First up, team Voron. Gosh these guys are so reliable, thank you for sourcing printers, tattoos, stickers, toolheads, acid reflux tablets (gotta love that American diet) and for being all round awesome.

Grant 3DMusketeers, believe it or not this was the first time that we’d met in person! We hit it off instantly and want to give Grant a huge shoutout for 3D scanning everyone in the team, we can’t wait to troll everyone at E3D HQ by leaving mini versions of ourselves around the building.

Pooch, always a pleasure! Thanks for the small shiny things that you gifted us as we left. Wouldn’t you like to know…

Prusa, thank you for hosting a great evening at the Ripken baseball stadium - we ate enough American food to last a lifetime. Matt, your mother’s apple pie was glorious, do give her our regards!

Ben Withem, thank you for being so helpful and hooking us with a printing contact at the last hour – the banners looked fantastic and wouldn’t have been possible without your help.

Last but by no means least, a shout out to Brendon Builds who kindly donated his awesome printer for the duration of the show. Brendon works on seriously impressive projects and has very kindly expressed an interest to combine his projects with fundraising for the SMF. Watch this space.

ERRF 2022 you were amazing, until next time 💙.

Couldn’t make it? Don’t worry, we plan to attend plenty more events this year. See what’s coming up by following the link below. Don’t forget to follow our socials and chat to us on Discord for up-to-the-minute updates.

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