Erik's Blog: Discussing open source innovation, personal fabrication and a ...

My personal goal is to really impact global wealth in a positive way.

Often people are surprised when I say I studied economics and now develop and sell 3D printing technology. This could not be a more conscious decision. In the following blog posts I will explain why I do what I do.

It is my belief that a great way to contribute to the world, is through technology. Technology is perhaps the single most powerful driver towards a world of abundance.

My approach is twofold, I've been working on understanding the theory from an academic background through research (my masters thesis' PDF) and on the other hand I put whatever I've learned and 'test it' within the context of my work in practice. When I started, this used to be purely volunteer work in an amazing 3D printing community (RepRap.org) and more recently, as an entrepreneur and founder of a leading 3D printing business called Ultimaker. Back in 2008, building a 3D printer was pretty hard. Today, you don't need to know much about 3D printing to benefit from it. I'm glad that in 2008 I was naïve enough to think I could get it working quickly and start printing soon, because now our company leads in making 3D printing accessible without compromising performance. But it wasn't just the shared frustration that motivated me and my co-founders. It was the potential to empower many people to create real physical things.

To understand technology's impact on progress, see also an interview with myself and Peter Diamandis in the documentary in the previous post, where we argue that when a physical object has a digital counterpart, its design can be changed and improved by anyone with a laptop and internet access. The ability to manufacture that object with a few clicks of a button is becoming widely distributed as 3D printers become more accessible. The very act of 3D printing liberates what is 'only' virtual and makes it real. The value is materialized into the real world that we live in. This changes everything. And that's not just my crazy personal opinion.

Diamandis frequently refers to Moore's law in this context. Because technology typically has the ability to increase its capacity at an exponentially rate, this could be the most significant source of increase in global wealth. Peter Diamandis isn't the only one who thinks so. Notably, Peter Thiel, billionaire and philanthropist mentions that the synthesis of the real and virtual world are where the most significant opportunities lie. He mentions that the computerization of transportation like with Google's self-driving cars is probably the biggest improvement in transportation since the development of cars in the first place, over a 100 years ago.


Click here for Thiel's full talk on technology as the most significant driver of progress.

If the biggest improvements to an entire industry are expected when it becomes computerized, the computerization of manufacturing is probably the biggest thing to happen to our real world. Are digital technologies really so important when they start impacting the real world? It's perhaps appropriate to remind you, that you are in fact the product of a digital manufacturing system, your entire body is constructed based on digitally encoded information (T, G, A and C instead of 1 and 0). The DNA code is replicated and distributed globally. Without digital code, there would be literally no life. Today we have the internet to distribute digital representation of physical objects. On the one hand we have 3D design and 3D scanning tools to create the files, on the other hand the 3D manufacturing tools to make things. Even though the tools of today are rudimentary compared to future versions, it is for the first time that they become accessible to the masses. I'm highly excited to contribute to this through my company Ultimaker.

If the ideas for the things around us can can from anywhere, don't expect things to stay the same. Not only will we see more useful things, we'll see entirely different things (e.g. the long tail of things). We will see radical innovations by small groups of passionate tinkerers outpace the one-size-fits all products of big corporations. If innovation is function of the amount of conversations going on, as Diamandis puts it, digital manufacturing is what harnesses the power of the internet and makes it impact real, everyday lives.

I completely understand why Chris Anderson quit his job as editor in chief of Wired magazine. He believes that 3D printing is going to be bigger than the web. I think he could be right, since the majority of our economy still concerns real, physical things. Currently the market of bytes, the virtual economy, is about 20 trillion dollars. By contrast, the market of physical bits (actual things) is 130 trillion dollars, much more significant. But imagine if the strengths of the two were combined...

In the comments, please let me know your thoughts on abundance, exponential growth and progress in global wealth. In the next post I will continue to explain how 3D printing is becoming a significant driver of progress.

We were lucky to be featured in Tegenlicht. Tegenlicht are exceptional documentary makers who go in depth into major issues of humanity.

The part where I'm being interviewed starts at around 34 minutes. Most of it is in English, but our interview is in Dutch, possibly there will be a translation/subtitled version made available.







The documentary displays an optimistic view of the future where global energy, food, healthcare are abundant and affordable, and even physical goods can be manufactured on the spot in your own home.

"The the rate of innovation is a function of the amount of conversations that are going on."

  - Peter Diamandis

3D printing democratizes the ability of ordinary individuals to create physical solutions, to solve transportation problems by never producing more stock than is used, to produce more personal objects and efficiently, with much less waste. The future is here! I'm thankful that we get this opportunity to have so much control over the physical things around us, and the ability to go from your imagination to a real thing, in minutes!

Now for something that's not related to 3D printing (well, not directly), but so insanely cool that I have to blog about it right now (no, this can't wait another day)!

Through a friend at Google, whom I will call Dave (not his real name), I was able to get one of the first sets of Glasses. Dave had two sets of glasses for testing from having won the "iwantglass" competition. Of course it's a pre-release, so the software running on it might change pretty radically, and it has already crashed on me once. Apart from the fact that the HUD display has a rather small viewing angle, the picture really is awesome for augmented reality. Right now, all the apps running on it were 2D, so I can't wait for the 3D API to be used to overlay video's over reality. Google are saying that the 3D overlays will be used only to a minor extent.

For those who have not seen the news about Google Glasses yet, this video will give you a great impression:


As soon as I have had some more time to play with it, I will start posting video's about this remarkable, non-intrusive internet device!

I'm really excited that our company has just started offering fully assembled Ultimakers in addition to the kits!!


Don't worry, we won't drop the kits from our offering any time soon! We're still great supporters of the hacker community. Also... we keep on innovating and won't leave early customers with a 'legacy machine' empty handed. Specifically, we provide the opportunity to upgrade your Ultimaker to make sure you enjoy the benefits of those who bought the latest version of the Ultimaker. We've done this through upgrades such as the UltiController, the new Hot-end, an extruder drive upgrade, etc.

At Codebits, an amazing event organized by Sapo (an awesome, innovative Portugese company) a lot of nice stuff was happening. Besides a 48 hour programming contest, there was a hardware hacking den. This is where I met Mitch Altman again and lots of cool Portugese people who were making awesome code and awesome things! Also had a nice talk with Rob Bishop, a smart and down-to-earth guy who revolutionizes computing by making the Raspberry Pi into a global hit 'from the comfort of his bedroom'.

See my Google+ footage of the event here...



Besides printing stuff that people designed all throughout the event, I also gave a talk and several workshops on how to 'code pysical objects'. A recent development (found after the talk) that I'm really excited about is CoffeeSCad! You should check that out, too!

For a video of my talk, have a look here or click the image below.



Again, I'd like to thank the many volunteers, in particular Pedro! He and his many friends made the visit to Portugal a very nice one. Also, Celso, who was main instigator of the whole Codebits experience, which really is something to whiteness before you believe it! It was also amazing to meet Nelson Neves and Dini Miguel who were doing awesome projects of which I'm sure you'll learn more.

Ultimaker was proud to be listed among the the sponsors of the epic Codebits 2012 event!



For those of you who know your Portugese, Ultimaker was mentioned on TV station RTP, here.

Can't wait until Codebits 2013 arrives!

With al the busy-ness at Ultimaker I haven't traveled much. Finally I had a nice trip to Switzerland, to give a talk and meet our friends from the FabLab Luzern, who also give workshops in building the Ultimaker.

I met Roman Jurt in real life and he showed me the FabLab, and added UltiControllers to their Ultimakers. He showed me around Luzern, Zurich and Bern.

Later I met Ramun Berger, also FabLab manager and director of 89grad in Bern. These are great guys doing very interesting stuff, and sometimes they open up their company's workshop to be a FabLab. They have two Ultimakers in the lab and used it to make some really nice prototypes for their customers. One of the 89grad-lab visitors, Thomas Staub, was working on a quadcopter for his employer, DFRC.

Thomas' Quadcopter

Ultimaker 3D printed electronics enclosure for a quadcopter

Ultimaker 3D printed electronics enclosure

Quadcopter parts 3D printed on the Ultimaker

It was nice it see how 89grad works on very diverse but innovative projects and how they open up their lab to others!

Later I had the opportunity to give a talk at "schule für gestaltung bern und biel-bienne" or the design school of Bern/Biel. The subject was mass-customization (slides here). The subject isn't my expertise but I had read a whole shelf of books which touch upon the subject, so I could give good examples. Also, I put it into practice by printing bracelets with the visitor's names on it. It was a funny surprise to see my name on posters around the school's main building and to see that the press was attending the talk. It's great to see the subject will become better known in Switzerland, and this may contribute to it.






Thanks Marc Zaugg for inviting me, and thanks everyone for making me feel welcome!

We've been really busy with many developments at Ultimaker! Most notably: the Ultimaker Controller, reducing lead times, adding individual 3D printer parts and lowering the overall shipping costs. Also, we're releasing an improved version of ReplicatorG. Test versions are available at software.ultimaker.com/beta.



Together with Julius, I made this cool video of the UltiController:

Usually, during the weekend I spend my time working on Ultimaker as a company, or I have social obligations. For this weekend, my wife surprised me in an original and heartwarming way. She said she had planned a little trip, but instead the surprise was that I could do anything I wanted, EXCEPT work. So I spent the entire weekend just playing with my Ultimakers instead of improving them or improving the company. A whole weekend of 3D printing!

I was pretty emotional because of her altruistic gift! Funny, I feel like I already have everything that I could wish for. The only thing I can't have enough of is time!



These are the results, so far:


I'm really fond of how the lion turned out! It was a 5 hour print at high detail setting (sub 0.1mm layer height).

De afgelopen tijd zijn er een paar evenementen geweest waar ik nog niet veel over geschreven heb. Daar wil ik bij deze verandering in brengen.
Ik heb een presentatie gegeven op How Do You Do. Dat was een super gaaf event tijdens het STRP festival in Eindhoven, waar men tips en trucs uitwisselde op allerlei technische en media- gebieden. Ik vertelde wat over het delen 3D design. Hier is een leuk artikel over geschreven en ook een videootje geschoten:


Verder stonden wij afgelopen week als Ultimaker op RapidPro, waar ik ook twee lezingen heb mogen geven over open source innovatie en 3D printing. Dat was een druk bezochte beurs met veel interesse in de Ultimaker!

Last week was the 3D printing event in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Ultimaker exhibited there together with about 20 other Ultimakers, shown by their proud operators (see this Ultimaker blog post). There were also RepRaps, milling machines and LeBigRep was printing on site with their HUGE printer. A lot of bioplastic was consumed!

At the event, I was asked to give the first presentation. Below are the slides and recorded video.

Start Movie

View it via direct streaming link or the event page at OpenWebCast.nl.