After entering Baruch College, as a business student I would really like to form some kind of business.  In the past few years, I enjoy baking so much and try to practice every week. So it’s not strange that I want to open a café of my own someday. In this class, I learned how 3D printing is becoming bigger and more extravagant in the future, so I was thinking why not incorporate into a pastry business. For example, a company called Sugarlab is 3D printing sugar structures and incorporates them into baking.  Other such as Shapeway is making furniture and so kind of objects in different categories. So why not add all these ideas into a café. With 3D printed furniture serving 3D printed pastries, it sounds crazy but I think it’s definitely foreseeable in the future.  Also, 3D printing all necessities is more money saver than investing in new furniture from other company. It may be more time consuming but it’s more reliable financially. It’s not only a personal interest, but it can be educational when everyone start to know and entering the world of 3D printing. With such a great field of art, it should be practice all over. However, every business comes with some risky factor, financial supports and the big blueprint itself is very challenging for all business starters. Also, to really know how to start this big project, I will need to be excellent and specialize in this entire operating system. Financially, finding a sponsor or supporter for my project is a tough step, because this technique is not well popularizes and it might sell too extravagant to them at first. Overall, it’s a lot of work to form a base foundation and building upward, but I think it not all impossible since this industry is constantly growing.

Here’s some news and articles regarding 3D printing:

 

3D printing is the next industrial revolution!

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/11/01/five-reasons-not-to-go-completely-gaga-over-3d-printing/

 

The e-commerce market of 3D printing products

www.shapeways.com

 

In-depth description about 3D printing

http://www.economist.com/node/18114221

 

Forbes’s takes on 3D printing

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gcaptain/2012/03/06/will-3d-printing-change-the-world/

 

3D printing company, Pirate3D’s story of their kickstarter business

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/the-wide-open-era-in-3-d-printing/?_r=0

I learned so much about 3D printing from the class. Coming with no knowledge about 3D printing and getting to know more and more about it. First, the Makerbot meet up was very cool, because all the creations in the store are fantastic and whoever made it are awesome! By far I think my greatest accomplishment is really to pushing my mind into thinking deep about the coffee project, because at first I thought we were creating some kind of cup as final project. However, after rounds and rounds of pushing our creativity to maximum level, we are totally thinking wild and “outside the cup.” So this process is definitely pushing everyone’s imagination and that’s very beneficial for my career. As a minor student in Graphic Communication, thinking beyond the line is very important strategy that we need to own in order to compete with our competitors. At the end, it’s primarily the arts that speak the words instead of letters itself.  It’s so true that people say “ creativity is contagious” or “ creativity is an addition” because when we work together as a group, all our members really get involve into thinking and breaking the ice to come up with some definitions and solutions toward our need. So we will leave home thinking a lot about the ways we can improve our project. Personally, I started looking around the trespassers everyday while I’m commuting to school and observe how they move, walk, speak, and everything that has to do with their everyday life. Finally, I realized everyone is busy and rushing in some way or another. And everyone is drinking some kind of beverage everyday. So why not make the bottle or container they carry around more portable and easier when commuting?  This becomes our main topic for the project.  My greatest gain in this class is not just knowledge about 3D design, but also how to think as a maker!

This exercise is by far my favorite one, because from step one to last step I need to plan and create from scratch. Throughout the process I think I exceed my skills with Sketchup and the outcomes are very satisfying. So here are my creations:

 

My shape is a yellow cylinder. At first, I was having difficulty with getting the right measurement of the figure, especially the diameter of the circular top and bottom. Finally I realized the input asked for radius instead of diameter, so my mistake was I put the wrong number and the diameter became double the original size. Overall, I think I am satisfied with my end result. My model of a castle remind me a lot about my childhood hobby when I was little kid, I always puzzled up Lego pieces into a house or some kind of castle. However, I think my model look more like a rocket rather than castle, I decided not to revise anything because it’s simply abstract to look at first glance and abstraction is one of the most important essence of art sometime. For recommendations, I will definitely say practice a lot with the program you are working with, I have some difficulties with Sketchup sometimes and it’s frustrating.  For example, I hate the “rotating” feature, because it’s very confusing. It’s a double step technique, in which you have to find the right angle and axis you want to rotate the object along. After some practices, I think it’s a simple program that can do so many things!