Tinkercad Raises $1 Million, Aims To Popularize 3D Printing

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/08/tinkercad-raises-1-million/

by FrejNorling • 15 years ago

31 21 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

joshu3• 15 years ago

I wonder how they managed to misspell my first name.

kaib8• 15 years ago

It is always my fault.. Sadly spell checkers don't help a dyslectic like me with names. Sorry, we still love you! :-)

joshu3• 15 years ago

Heh... Usually Techcrunch misspells my LAST name, so I was surprised.

kaib8• 15 years ago

Kai from Tinkercad here. Happy to answer any questions about the product or space.

scrrr• 15 years ago

Hi, I have an idea for something that I could really use but can't find anywhere.. So let's say I design my thingy, I'm thinking of roughly the size of 20cm x 5cm x 4cm, how much would it roughly cost to have this printed and sent to me? Would it get much cheaper if I ordered 20 or 100 pieces?

kaib8• 15 years ago

This depends largely on material choice and to a lesser extent on which supplier you choose. Tinkercad is a design package, we don't do the printing ourself but outsource it to printing services like Shapeways and i.Materialise. I would suggest taking a look at their sites to figure out prices and materials.

replicatorblog2• 15 years ago

Kai, What are the limitations you'll face in the browser? Will you be able to handle compound curvature in the future? I love the concept and it seemed to be a hit at MakerFaire NYC!

kaib8• 15 years ago

The first thing you need to realize is that Tinkercad is only partially a browser application, we also run a relatively complex cloud based component. Every operation you make is actually distributed across a 100 core cluster with the result shipped back in a few hundred ms. We try to hide this as much as possible so unless you look at the application with a debugger it's hard to notice. I did a tech talk at Google about the full architecture here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aY4a9QnLhw

The browser itself is pretty robust. Our biggest issue is with old graphics drivers that cause problems with WebGL, this is an age old problem from game development. Hopefully more 3D web application will help graphics hardware vendors push out more stable software.

To answer your specific question. Our stack should be able to handle compound curvatures, the big question for us is how to make the UI manageable.

replicatorblog2• 15 years ago

Wow thats pretty impressive. Do you think you'll eventually embrace a "configurator" approach where you give people freeform capabilities, to a degree, and then supplement that with more in depth functionality that is constrained in a way to make the UI easier to handle?

tjoff• 15 years ago

Interesting, but why? Just curious, I know nothing about javascript, WebGL etc. but what operations are not suitable to do on the client?

If WebGL is supposed to be able to drive games etc. shouldn't it be able to handle this, without any help? (avoiding JS might be enough but I often feel that the, practically unlimited, power of the client is ignored)

(only looked at the intro-demo of the google talk, will probably watch the rest when I have time)

TylerE• 15 years ago

Any plans on supporting objects in standard open CAD formats? It'd be handy on occasion to be able to be able to dump an IGES or STEP file out of Solidworks and get it printed.

kaib8• 15 years ago

Yes. Real Soon Now (tm). :-)

Generic import is starting to be pretty close on the roadmap. After that it's just a question of adding file types as people request them. IGES and STEP are definitely on the list.

jerguismi• 15 years ago

Will you keep your operations in Finland or move somewhere else?

kaib8• 15 years ago

I used to live in Mountain View, CA and only moved back to Finland quite recently so we have a very strong connection to the Valley. It's no coincidence that we took money from the likes of Joshua, Eghosa, Taher and Jyri who all operate in the Bay Area. And True is obviously based there as well.

Speculating about the future is always dangerous but I think we will end up having a strong engineering presence in Finland. I also think it's very probable that we'll have another office in North America, maybe in the Valley.

Mizza• 15 years ago

I LOVE Tinkercad. Really, really cool tool. I've made some stuff that got 3D printed using it.

joshu3• 15 years ago

Post some pictures, please?

Bdennyw• 15 years ago

Congrats Kai!

Tinkercad Raises $1 Million, Aims To Popularize 3D Printing

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