Category: Events

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Valentine’s Open House

Location: Cranberry Municipal Building

3DPPGH hosted an open house event for elementary kids to adults at the Cranberry Township Municipal Building where we showcased:

  1. Bob Gould and his chocolate making process using 3D printing and vacuum forming
  2. A Drink-bot that mixed up kid-friendly love potions
  3. A vacuum forming station which created custom molds to take home
  4. Love hurts: Ally Bearer’s Battle Bots
  5. Alan Bachman’s Raspberry Pi powered photobooth
  6. General 3D printing Q&A
3D printed conversation hearts with a Yinzer twist

Click here for the Google Photo album.

Below are some awesome animated gifs from Alan’s photobooth:

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Beer Coaster Design Challenge with Brew Gentleman

Location: Brew Gentleman

Chris and Ryan met Asa Foster, Co-founder of Brew Gentleman, at the Jellybox group build event supported by 3DPPGH, and we have been thinking of a way to work with Asa ever since. Asa and Brew Gentlemen generously hosted our 1st Beer Coaster Design Challenge! The winners took home awesome prizes like a growler of Brew Gentlemen beer (from Asa), filament and merch (from MatterHackers), and bragging rights within the ‘burgh. In addition, Asa gave us a nickel tour of the Brew Gentleman brewery, and we learned why Brew Gentleman is Ryan’s favorite Pittsburgh brewery.

Chris and Ryan raising a glass of General Braddock at Brew Gentleman’s very svelte taproom. [Photo credit: Chad Elish]

We did have a couple of rules… All beer coaster designs and prints must:

  • Use a Creative Commons license (CC BY)
  • Be either a 3.5” circle or 3.5” rounded square w/ 0.25” radius
  • Allow glassware to sit flat upon it
  • Incorporate the Brew Gentlemen logo

The design submissions were rather awesome: dual filament, resin encapsulated, motorized with LEDs, chocolate, and sintered sugar with a saki binder… I repeat, “sintered sugar with a saki binder”.

A special shout-out goes to Chad Elish for taking some really awesome photos of the event.

Click here for the Google photo album.

Congratulations to the award winners:

Left to right: Jeff Bearer (2nd place), Asa Foster, Dillon Nichols (1st place), Chris Yohe, and Ryan Priore [Photo credit: Chad Elish]

1st Place: Resin-filled Three River Topographical Coaster (Dillon Nichols)

Dillon 3D-printed a topographical map of Pittsburgh’s three rivers and then filled it with clear resin. It was so gorgeous that I could not imagine covering it with a beer glass… You can download his design on Thingiverse here.

Dillon’s 1st place coaster [Photo credit: Chad Elish]
Asa and Dillon holding his winning coaster entry [Photo credit: Chad Elish]

2nd Place: Spinning, LED-Flickering, Rule Trolling Coaster (Jeff Bearer)

Jeff took his design to another level with the incorporation of LEDs and a motor to spin the beer as if it were on display. You can download his design on Tinkercad here.

Asa and Jeff holding his winning coaster entry [Photo credit: Chad Elish]
Ryan was trying out the spin function of Jeff’s coaster [Photo credit: Chad Elish]

Other Designs

Ryan’s Filament-Swapped and Buzzed Two-Tone Coaster is a dual extrusion design that incorporated a filament containing remnants from beer brewing. You can download his design from Thingiverse here.

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3DPPGH Goes to the BoXZY Factory

Location: BoXZY

Happy Birthday to 3DPPGH- we just turned 1! Joel Johnson was too kind and invited us to tour his company’s factory. BoXZY was a successful multi-platform digifab tool Kickstarter turned business. Even cooler, they started it all from TechShop Pittsburgh.

Click here for the Google Photo album.

We got more than the nickel tour. We saw the entire BoXZY build process, played with cool 3D printed items, and cut our birthday cake with a sword (seriously, we did) which was fabricated on the BoXZY system.

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Bringing Together Makers & The 3D Printing Community

Location: HackPGH

Wow… Just, wow…

Rapid + TCT took place in Pittsburgh this year, and our humble little 3D Printing group brought together MatterHackers, Ultimaker, Make:, Lulzbot, 3Dprint.com, and Makers for a fantastic night of 3D printing tech talk and a little southwest food flair.

I would write more in this post; however, Sarah Goehrke, Editor-in-Chief of 3DPrint.com, already did! Check out her coverage of our event here.

Sarah Goehrke, Editor-in-Chief of 3DPrint.com, wrote an article about this month’s massive meetup!

Chris and Ryan had press credentials, and they got to hang out at the conference as well. You can see more about that here!

Yohe is not only a Printrbot fanboy…
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RAPID + TCT Conference 2017

3DPPGH was fortunate enough to have this year’s RAPID+TCT conference in our backyard. Chris and Ryan explored the show throughout the week and observed some exciting releases both in the industrial and consumer additive manufacturing spaces. Consumer 3D printing manufacturers included folks like MakerGear, Ultimaker, Lulzbot, Affinia, and much more… Demonstrations of a variety of industrial processes rounded out the event.

Stratysys announced their additive manufacturing cells.

The most interesting (and I use that word loosely) was the 3D-printed, accessory fashion show.

Click here for the Google Photo album.

We spent Tuesday evening at Heinz Field, and Chris and Ryan were able to grab a photo with Pittsburgh Steeler greats, Mean Joe Greene and Franco Harris!

Ryan and Chris met Mean Joe Greene and Franco Harris.
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Midwest RepRap Festival (MRRF) 2017

Chris and Ryan attended MRRF 2017 as a Bronze Sponsor via 3DPPGH.

3DPPGH was a Bronze Sponsor of MRRF 2017, and Chris and Ryan spent the weekend Goshen, IN for another fun-filled, community-driven event. Goshen is the home of SeeMeCNC, a superb open-source 3D printer company and the host of the Midwest RepRap Festival.

After renting a vehicle large enough to transport any 3D printer home if necessary, the 3DPPGH team had a rather eventful trip this year. It is hard to get the complete story devoid of half-truths; however, from Ryan’s point of view the following may or may not have happened:

  • We ran out of gas while Chris was driving- just presenting the facts.
  • An Indiana State Trooper may have allegedly assisted Ryan in stealing a gas can from a nearby gas station.
  • When pulling into the gas station after a tense refill on the side of the highway with a stolen gas can, the van was driven into the bollard protecting the pump. Chris was driving- still just presenting the facts.
  • Upon stopping the van, the vehicle was left in drive and may have allegedly dragged Ryan a couple of feet. Chris was still driving…
  • The cap for the gas can broke, so the bozos decided to make a temporary cap with layers of shopping bag plastic held atop of the can while screwing on the remains of the broken cap. 20 miles later into the drive, the makeshift cap broke (surprise, surprise), and Ryan held the now open gas can between his legs in the front seat. We drove the rest of the way with the windows down with only some”minor” spillage
  • Matt and Mandy Stultz greeted us at the table they commandeered for us. After hugs were shared, Mandy said, “You smell like gasoline”…

Here are a few noteworthy events for Ryan as a complete 3D Printing Fanboy:

Josef and Ryan with the Make: magazine
Daniel and Ryan with the OpenRC Formula 1 car

Here are a few noteworthy events for Chris (from Ryan’s perspective):

  • Chris, JetGuy, Tom, and James were able to make a multi-material Prusa MK2 by connecting the Mosaic Palette before the weekend was over
  • Chris got to talk shop with Printrbot’s Brooke Drum while we hung out at the SeeMeCNC factory after hours.

Click here for the Google Photo Album.

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Midwest RepRap Festival (MRRF) 2016

3D Printing Pittsburgh (3DPPGH) came about during a typical conversation between Ryan and Chris at HackPGH. They attended MRRF 2016 with the intent of demonstrating a Printrbot BigE… It worked- eventually. They were able to get this bad boy capable of printing an object up to 1 m3 in volume to print a 20 mm calibration cube. The lead-up and attendance of MRRF made it very clear that Pittsburgh needed a 3D printing hobbyist group. We were a couple of white chubby dudes doing this stuff in our basements, and we were sure there were more than us out there.

So, we created 3D Printing Pittsburgh (3DPPGH). Ryan is the Chief Bed Leveler, and Chris is the Chief Hot End.