Dinosaurs are one of the things most likely to catch our eye when we're browsing 3D printing projects, so we loved the ModiRaptor kit - a build-your-own 3D printed dinosaur? Count us in. We got in touch with the designer to find out more about the whole ModiBot toy line...
How did you first get involved with 3D printing?
I've been involved in 3D printing for about 15 years, but used more as a prototyping tool when I ran Hasbro's sculpting department. We would get various types of 3D files from various properties to help us develop our toys. As far as using it as a manufacturing tool, I did my first print on Shapeways about 2 years ago.
What software do you use? What's good about it - or bad?
I use Rhino and for my purposes it's great. It's more of a solid modeller, so organic is kind of tough on it, but my business partner, Tucker, and I have been developing a workflow to switch between Rhino and ZBrush. So far, it seems to be working to combine the two. The one benefit of solids is being able to easily cut moulds for our our regular plastic parts.
The reason we approached you for an interview is that we found the Modiraptor on Shapeways and thought it was awesome. Obviously that's only part of your wider collection of modular toy kits - can you tell us a bit about the development of those?
ModiBot is an experiment in 'on-demand' product. I've working in mass-market toys for a long time, and I think the product economy is set for a massive digital disruption, on par with what we've seen in media-based businesses. 3D printing isn't going to usurp traditionally manufactured items, but it's going to allow for tighter alignment with users. It's what they want and they're going to get it. ModiBot is a tool for creating your own toys. But at this point, it's still a bit of a blunt tool. We're planning on evolving it immensely over the next year.
Is 3D printing the best match for this kind of product? Are there things you can do using 3D printing that you otherwise couldn't?
I'm not sure 3D printing is perfectly aligned with any product at this point, maybe Invisilign is the exception. You tend to tailor what you are doing to what the specs of the output material. In our case, we're highly invested in polyamide, because it's a type of nylon - relatively cheap, durable, and fairly consistent. We need a lot of flex in our ball joints, so, at this scale, it's basically the only game in town for detail and resilience.
We started this as a way to use moulded and 3D printed items together. What we've designed is very simplistic, but many items are print only because they may be hollow to reduce costs, or a very complex shape that can't be moulded. They would need to be moulded as two parts, assembled and glued. 3D printing saves you on items where complexity is high and where you can save in labour. We're experimenting with gear assemblies moulded inside of parts. So far, it's the one that that our current print method isn't quite good at, but we're debugging it. Hopefully, we can make it work.
What have the biggest challenges been, so far?
Our challenges are mostly about how we align with our consumer and give them what they might want. Our current shop structure doesn't let people design their own. It's kind of a mess because there's no way, without purchasing, to decide why you might want a longer set of arms or choose between very similar snap-on parts. Our problems are about interface to a certain degree, which we are working to solve right now. It might be as simple as using Shapeways API, which they continue to refine.
How would you like to see 3D printing technology evolve in future?
At the Inside 3D Printing conference, I saw several presentations discussing Voxels and digital materials. It's fascinating. If I had access to those technologies right now, ModiBot would be a very different animal. Having control of your material down to the equivalent of a pixel-level would be amazing. Mixing soft pixels (voxels) with hard to make medium-flex materials or using voxels of different colours to offer fully coloured printed parts. Once we turn that corner, our world will begin to look very different. It's like the promise of nanotech, but at a more workable scale for product creators.
You've just launched a Kickstarter campaign, tell us a bit about that.
We've learned over time that 3D printing is great for the personalization of things and making exotic parts, but not always consistent enough for the parts that get the most wear. In our case, that the joints of our figures. To solve this, we've decided to mould our basic ModiBot figure chassis - Mo is his name - in high-impact polycarbonate to give users something really durable to build upon. It doesn't hurt that the moulded figure is cheaper than a printed one. For the Kickstarter campaign, we're raising funds to buy our first batch of moulded Mo's and some accessories. So, you'll be able to order a Mo in whatever colour you prefer and order 3D printed parts in a small selection of colours to personalize your figure. All the parts can be mixed and matched between kits to build whatever you want.
The important thing here is - if this were a Kickstarter for a traditionally moulded action figure, which we tried last year, scale stops you for making one of anything. With 3D printing, if we have only one person purchase our cyborg accessory kit, we can make it for them. That's nearly impossible with traditional products, which we'd be forced to order thousands of cyborgs to get that person the one they want. And worse, it would kill our company to sit on 1000 products that don't have a huge market appeal. With this approach we can give people the products they want. The goal is to create a huge ecosystem of parts that would let you build about anything. And nearly all of it would be available 'on-demand'.
Kickstarter seems to love 3D printing projects; there have been quite a few that attracted several times more funding than they initially asked for. Why do you think the two might be such a good match?
It's a pure fact that Kickstarter loves 3D printers. We're wondering if they love 3D prints to the same degree. That's what we're trying to gauge. People are amazed at the process of watching something they chose being made, one layer at a time. People love the future. But sometimes when you put a 3D printed product in their hands without the act of them choosing it or watching it being built, it can be anticlimactic. People have a highly refined sense for quality product especially the sensual part of its feel. We think 3D printing will shift that a bit, but there is a touch of a stutter step. We think blending the two approaches gives a better result. We'll see if that's true.
Do you see 3D printing and crowdfunded ventures as a kind of disruptive force, pushing back against big companies in some way?
Absolutely. I think together they are a one-two punch. Large companies could use it in very effective ways, but they'd need to learn to get out of their own way and embrace lower margins and more interaction with their users. 3D printing doesn't scale the way big companies might like. Not yet anyway. The product economy will be disrupted; to what extent and how quickly is up for debate. It won't look the same as digital media disruption because the output is atoms, not bits.
Finally, what's the best thing about 3D printing, from your perspective?
For me, it's a promise of things to come. I think product development and creation has been in a stall for a long time. Mass retail, predictability, ubiquity, and universal have ruled the roost. People have developed a taste for custom things. We want to be surprised, and immersed and embraced. 3D printing has the ability to be like a big 'hug', telling the customer "I like how you think. Let's do some fun stuff together!"
Check out Mo and the other ModiBot toys at the Dynamo Development Labs website, here, or via the Shapeways store, here. You can also back the Kickstarter campaign here.