Presented at
31C3 (2014),
Dec. 28, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
(30 minutes)
Mr Beam was started as a hobby project aiming to get more experience in 3D printing. For fun we put it on Kickstarter and ended up in kind of a roller coaster.
After many years as a all purpose developer in several startups, I decided to explore the shiny new world of 3D printing.
Laser cutting seemed to be cool, useful and fun. The idea of reusing a dvd burner laser was nice and budget saving, some weeks later the first prototype wrote "hello world" on a piece of wood.
After spending another two month of improvements two friends joined and the idea of kickstarting a mini series production was born.
Finally the Kickstarter campaign was the reason for a lot of travel: Erfurt, Berlin, Barcelona, Tiflis, Vienna, Rome, Austin, San Francisco. On the road were awesome highlights as well as deep depressions.
All in all we didn't get rich in the end, but we got lots of experience in many different areas.
We believe that crowdfunding is a huge opportunity to develop things that otherwise never would have been done. We are happy to share all the lessons learned on our way. Hopefully other projects cause less headache with this knowledge.
Presenters:
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Philipp Engel
Long time software developer started to explore open hardware design and finally ended in the rollercoaster of a crowdfunding campaign.
Hi, I’m Philipp. I have spent a good part of my youth soldering electronic kits from the local electronic store for fun. As I started studying computer sciences, my focus shifted towards software. When Teja asked me to join his DIY hardware project, childhood memories popped up. I was electrified and almost immediately agreed to join. Since then I have been working mostly on Mr Beam’s software and some parts of the hardware. I just love being able to design machines on the computer one day and assemble the parts to a working prototype on the next.
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Teja Philipp
Long time software developer started to explore open hardware design and finally ended in the rollercoaster of a crowdfunding campaign.
Hi, I’m Teja! Being an all purpose software developer with a little design background I was working in the IT business for several years. Then I got in touch with the maker movement some time ago when I got my first 3D printer. Building real hardware was quite satisfying after dealing with virtual things all the time. The RepRap community taught me quickly how to build well working and affordable machines. After several smaller projects I built a first iteration of a do-it-yourself laser cutter with an ordinary laser diode from a dvd drive. Within the Mr Beam project I’m responsible for the hardware design.
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