3D Printer Village @ Maker Faire Vancouver 2012

Just got home from a weekend of nerding out with thousands of folks at Vancouver’s 2nd annual Mini Maker Faire. Whew…I haven’t talked that much in a long time!

It was two straight days of showing people 17 (!!) different 3d printers we managed to pull together in our “3D Printer Village” which has to be a record…at least in Canada – and most of them were printing all weekend. This doesn’t include the other printers at MakerFaire but at individual tables.

We had the full line of MakerBot’s represented including Dan’s Cupcake which came from Victoria:

Two Thing-O-Matic’s and three Replicators:

Representing the Reprap community, we had my Prusa, the original Darwin (one of the first 100 ever built!):

an E-Maker Huxley:

and a few of Brad’s including a Repstrap and a Prusa:

and Andrew’s enormous BFB 3D Touch:

We also had a collection of printers designed by members of our club like the Ditto:

and the Tantillus:

Derek & Helen were just around the corner with their awesome booth featuring Derek’s Citadel Mendel & CNC Router:

Contrary to what many people thought, we were just a collection of enthusiasts showing what we’re able to do with 3d printers. When folks found out we were local, and that we have a group that meets regularly, lots of people were interested in coming out and learning more.

Right now, we have been organized by a RepRap forum and a private Facebook group [see below for an update on this]. Our next meeting is this Wednesday (June 27) at 7pm in Langley at the Walnut Grove Boston Pizza beside Colossus. We’re actually a little worried that we’re going to have a lot of new folks showing up but we’ll cross that bridge on Wednesday night which is usually a slower night for the restaurant.

In light of the interest we got from MakerFaire, we’ll be looking to create a more appropriate online site for us.

I spent most of the time explaining the technology while my MakerBot cranked out a ton of pieces of tri-lego:

Unfortunately, I had a wiring issue with my Prusa so it just sat there for the whole Faire instead of printing stuff.

I also had to nerd up my namebadge a little…MakerFaire is the perfect place for this:

I setup my GoPro to shoot a timelapse from the back of our booth…this is just a few hours of activity around us:

Brandon set another GoPro up so we have two angles from Day 1:

We had a great time meeting tons of new people and showing off what we’ve been doing with our printers.

I didn’t get too much time to check out the rest of the Faire or take photos but you can check out a slideshow of what I did shoot here from my Flickr set:

Huge thanks to everyone that came out, to MakerBot for supplying us with some great giveaways for the crowds and to the organizers for creating such a fun event.

I’m so glad I took Monday off to recover and regain my voice.

UPDATE: We’ve created a more public online space to discuss our 3d printers and called it 3D604 which represents our members from Chilliwack to the North Shore and all parts in between in the 604 area code. Right now it’s just a Google Group but we’ve got plans to expand it to include useful stuff like a wiki and more.

UPDATE #2: The 3D Printer Village took home the People’s Choice Award for MakerFaire Vancouver at the wrapup party last weekend. This is our trophy and prize(s):