You may be wondering why I didn’t post this at the end of Day 2 of the Midwest Reprap Festival, like I did the last MRRF post. There are a couple of good reasons. First of all, day 2 of MRRF doesn’t end until midnight. Then, when it finally did end, I had a couple of hours of sleep and a flight home to catch. When I did have a chance to write this up, it was April Fools, so I’m not posting anything serious on that day.
While Day 2 of of the Midwest Reprap Festival of course has a lot of the stuff Day 1 had, like seeing amazing projects and meeting amazing people. For instance Chris aka Nerys and his just-right-for-my-head megaman helmet.
While the amazing people and amazing projects will continue in the illustrations, right now, I want to wax philosophic about what exactly MRRF is. Who are we at MRRF? Are we just about the RepRap 3D printers? There were certainly a lot of them, and a lot of vendors. And of course open source is king. No XYZPrinting or Makerbots 5th gen here. Josef Prusa and Prusa Research are uniquely qualified to be here (and it was great to say “hi” to him from a distance, but boy it was tough to get close to that guy). And I can’t count on two hands the number of Duet3D ran systems I saw into. As an asside, the E3D tool changer may very well be the future, but so is using 3 or 4 motors to drive the Z to get fast motion and tram leveling.
But I’m hesitant to define MRRF by exception. After all, if “Closed source need not apply” is the only qualifier, then what about the tables that had no 3D printer, just awesome projects done with 3D printers? If someone finds out those projects were made on a closed source machine that they didn’t bring, would they be unceremoniously shown the door? I would hope not. It not about the specific hardware. When you’re looking at a hand painted piece of art that started as a 3D print, do we if that printer was built by hand or bought off the shelf? No, it’s about the prints.
Plus there were closed source machines, just not closed source printers. The palate works with RepRap machines but is not, in itself, open, and I saw tons of them around.
The 3D Printing Professor and the 3D Professor
It’s also not about the prints alone, nor is it about the tech. There were booths that were showing off their 3D printer tech and there were sparse 3D prints, or 3D prints that that we’ve seen 100 times like benchies and chain mail, and there were booths showing off unique projects that 3D printing brought to life without any 3D printers on there to see.
And just to address something that’s been on my mind, MRRF is not just a boys club either. While the demographic is largely skewed towards the male, white, and middleaged (a demographic I perfectly fit into), there were strong attendees bucking the demographics with Louise Driggers, AmieDD, Spectra Studios, Olive Frogs, and others. I, for one, would not be sad to see a smaller proportions of old white guys as this hobby grows. Not that I want the old white guys to go anywhere. More everyone, I say, but especially more of the under represented.
So MRRF isn’t about the demographics. And it’s not about the project or the hardware specifically, tho there’s something to do with the hardware, for sure. But it’s not just about that. No, I think the Midwest RepRap Festival is about coming together to show off what we’re making. It’s about celebrating how RepRap and 3D Printing has enabled us. Everyone there, our lives are better for having this technology in it. Every benchy or Apollo 18 rocket wasn’t made by watching YouTube or eating McDonalds. It was made by deciding we wanted to that most human of activities; to make. And we made that decision with a 3D printer.
With that in mind, has Adrian Bower been to one of these? Because I really think we need to get Adrian Bower to one of these things. Next year, remind me. I want to start a crowd funding campaign to get a first class flight and penthouse suite for Adrian Bower to come to #MRRF2020. It’s the least we can do after all he did for us.
