[MUSIC] In this video, we are speaking the cofounder and CEO of 3D Hubs, which is a platform that brings together close to 30,000 printers on one platform and provides access for you to upload a design and walk to the corner and pick up the print or get it shipped to you. Much closer than what was earlier possible. So Brad Pierce shares the vision of distributed manufacturing, which allows each one of us to have access to a printer instead of having to buy one. Join us as we chat with Bram. >> So I'm the co-founder of a company called 3DHubs. And 3DHubs is an online platform where anyone who doesn't own a 3D printer can go, upload their 3D models and then find a 3-D printer nearby. We now have around 28,000 printers around the world connected, actually more countries than where you find McDonald's. The idea is that because you get access to local printers it's typically a lot faster, you can even print something with a guy around the corner who has a machine, Ultamaker for example, in his garage. But you can also find the large industrial machines, so basically, we're offering full range of 3D printing technologies and materials as close to your home as possible. Yeah, so it's over 150 countries and we did a calculation with some public data from NASA. Where we found out that we're providing over one billion people in the world access to a 3D printer within only ten miles of their home. So in Amsterdam, we would say that's biking distance. I have industrial design background, so I already knew quite a lot about production and how to produce my designs. And when I found out about 3D printing, I was immediately intrigued, and this was about ten years ago. Because I started understanding that we can create a future where a lot more different products can be launched into the market, and they can be produced in a much more efficient way. So instead of producing products in huge quantities on the other side of the planet, typically in Asia, shipping all that stock around the world, storing it in warehouses, getting it to retail. We can create a network of, basically that's what 3D printers are, manufacturing robots, and that's work of manufacturing robots. And just send a 3D file there, and produce products locally and on demand, and that's the future that I believe in for manufacturing. I think we did help make 3D printing a lot more accessible. Before if you wanted access to a desktop 3D printer, such as a Makerbot,or an Ultamaker, or a Form Labs machine, you would have to buy it, right. There was typically no other way to access those machines. Of course, you could access the industrial expense of machines and they have certain advantages, but the prices are typically high, the turn-around times are long. So that's a market that we created. You can just get something printed, within 24 hours, on a MakerBot or FormLab. And that's really unique, and that makes 3D printing a lot more accessible, because you get your parts faster, locally, and a lot cheaper. We have a lot of partnerships. We've done one project with Enable, they produced 3D printed prosthetic hands. Traditionally prosthetic hands are very expensive, they can be up to $10,000. And for example, in developing countries, that's typically too much so we produce 40 prosthetic hands with 3D printing.within our network for Haiti people who lost their hand in Haiti. So that's the type of projects we're also doing, yes. Well, the vision is that while the 3D printing technology and market matures, that more and more both individuals and companies will discover the benefits of the distributables. So not going to one centralized 3D printing factory and ship to all the customers around the world from that location. But actually leverage out global 3D print production network, and produce much closer to those customers, and basically have less shipping time, less shipping costs, less issues with customers. Everyone can sign up to our platform, it's free. We do some quality checks, of course, if you're able to print quality parts. And once you passed those checks, you can start accepting orders from our platform. Since our start with, we've got over 2,000 prints been ordered from our platform. So, you can really do some substantial volume, but it also depends of corse, on the quality of your prints and your service. Yes, we've made a lot of people entrepreneurs. We got people on our platform that owned one 3D printer. They did as a hobby thing on evenings and weekends and start getting so many order to our platform that they decided to quit their regular day job and run a full time 3D printing business and now they have 20 machines. Yeah really printing for trading a helpful time. [MUSIC]
