Any time a media outlet or conference wants an expert on 3D printing there are two people to turn to. The most famous is [Bre Pettis] of MakerBot. The other is an awesome guy named [Prusa], designer of the most popular RepRap and possibly the most popular 3D printer of all time. He’s been putting his fame to use by interviewing all the big names in 3D printing and putting them all up on his YouTube account.
First up is [Kliment], RepRap core dev and creator of the Sprinter firmware and Pronterface host.
[Ruben Lubbes], RepRap community guru, tells [Prusa] about his collection of RepRap parts from famous RepRappers. It sound like a quite interesting collection that’s probably very valuable from a historical perspective. Who knows, in a few years it could be as interesting as [Gutenberg]’s first printing press or [Tim Berners-Lee]’s NEXT cube.
Next up is [Tonokip]. He developed the original Tonokip firmware, the firmware that all major RepRap firmwares are based on.
[Prusa] also interviewed [Jordan Miller] a.k.a. [jmil] of the Philly hackerspace Hive76 and the University of Pennsylvania. He made his name in the RepRap community for 3D bio printing.
Wrapping up the most interesting people, there’s also an interview with [Sound], developer of the Slic3r firmware. We’ve seen an interview of [Sound] before, and this interview continues the earlier one by talking about multiple extruders and how awesome the RepRap community is.
Lastly, and unfortunately, is a short video of [Prusa] interviewing me at the world Maker Faire last September. [Prusa] is a huge fan of Hackaday, so this interview is just two guys being star struck at each other.
Actually, the 2012 World Maker Faire had the largest number of current and former Hackaday alumni in one place ever. A group interview of [Ian] (now of Dangerous Prototypes), [Phillip Torrone] (Adafruit), [Phil Burgess] (Adafruit), current Hackaday boss man [Caleb] and myself would have been awesome. We’ll try harder next year.
You can check out the good videos after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr-ASAqxiJg&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcCO_aSkhJI&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=issEJV9PD6M&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DXRSwc1fM4&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuxg2L7r1oI&w=580]
Slic3r is not a firmware. It’s a slicer (who would have guessed?!)
Well there you go – here I was thinking that Dr Adrian Bowyer would have been the most famous RepRapper – who would have guessed it is actually some Johnny-come-lately I have never heard of…
Whilst I agree with you that Dr Bower should be one of theist well known names in open source 3D printing that doesn’t mean that nobody else deserves recognition. All the people interviewed have made huge contributions to the community, why shouldn’t that be recognised?!
For starters that list is chronologically backwards and slic3r is not a firmware.
Stop all that horsin’ around, straight-away. We need Prusa nozzles OUT NOW. :D
The two leading experts on a manufacturing tech that existed before they were born…
While Tonokip did some great work, his firmware was just a derivative of the work from the Hydra-MMM project (http://cpwebste.blogspot.com and http://sourceforge.net/projects/hydra-mmm). That was the first firmware written in a straight-forward manner that solved most of the problem with the FiveD. The foundation and fundamental techniques used in that firmware are still clearly visible in Sprinter, Marlin, Sailfish, etc. Tonokip actually mentions the Hydra-MMM project in his interview and it’s clearly listed at the top of all of his firmware releases as well. Go look at the two codes and you’ll see what I mean. So if you’re going to say everything is BASED on one of these firmwares, it should really be the Hydra-MMM firmware which was apparently written completely from scratch unlike tonokip (Hydra derivative), Sprinter (tonokip derivative) or Marlin (Sprinter derivate). They’re all legends in this arena, but for some reason I never see the Hydra project getting any credit…