The mainstreaming of MakerBot
Sarah Laskow
Bre Pettis, the C.E.O. of MakerBot, often refers to 3D printing as “the future.” And if the company’s NoHo retail store was created as a place for people to “see, touch, feel, smell” that future, here in Pettis’ office, you can hear it. And it’s noisy.
More than one of the company’s Replicators is spitting out heated plastic filament into a new forms. While the rest of MakerBot’s Downtown Brooklyn headquarters is as quiet as any corporate spread, Pettis’ tchotchke-filled space is resonant with the sort of semi-rhythmic whirring familiar to anyone old enough to remember the earlier days of desktop printing, before anyone could own a speedy inkjet.
Five years ago, a MakerBot printer came in pieces. The first version, created by a team of three at a hacker space in Boerum Hill, was described to me, by Pettis, as “the hardest kit ever to make” and, by a former MakerBot employee, as “a hazard … that worked like shit.”
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/08/8551266/mainstreaming-makerbot