Trip to Switzerland

Beautiful view of the river in Bern

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.

Giving a talk in Biel

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