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3D printing becomes a kiosk-friendly technology

Imagine it's the holiday season and instead of trudging from department store to department store, or surfing from website to website waiting and hoping the right gift is delivered, you can simply walk up to a single store kiosk and create custom gifts for your entire family on the spot.

September 24, 2014 by Nicole Troxell — Associate Editor, Networld Media Group

Imagine it's the holiday season and instead of trudging from department store to department store, or surfing from website to website waiting and hoping the right gift is delivered, you can simply walk up to a single store kiosk and create custom gifts for your entire family on the spot.

Arden Rosenblatt, CEO and cofounder of Piecemaker Technologies, thinks this is what the future holds. His company is one of the latest examples of firms pursuing custom manufacturing via 3D printing – and although he admits the holiday scenario just described isn't quite here yet, it's getting closer.

Rosenblatt's Pittsburgh-based company has taken the first step: integrating 3D printing technology and software templates into an easy-to-use, automated kiosk-based system that can be hosted in just about any retail environment. A retailer's customers can produce customized jewelry, toys, guitar picks, and much more, manufacturing their new goodies right before their eyes in just about 15 minutes.

KioskMarketplace spoke to Rosenblatt about the kiosks, the Piecemaker process and his plans for the future of customizable self-service goods.

KioskMarketplace: What's the history of Piecemaker?

Arden Rosenblatt: My partner and I have been building printers and software for a couple of years. We founded Piecemaker early last year. We initially wanted Piecemaker for the home, but decided it wasn’t a great idea because marketing for other 3D printers is very aggressive. We also didn’t think the home market was ready. Then we began talking to retailers and realized they’re looking for ways to leverage the personal nature of retail. And it's cheaper than online because there’s no supply chain, so we realized it was a great fit for us. We launched the concept at Toy Fair this year.

KioskMarketplace:Take us through what it's like for a retail customer to use a Piecemaker kiosk.

Arden Rosenblatt: The first thing you would notice is the kiosk itself because it's usually right in the front of the store. You walk up to it, touch a screen to get started, and it then takes you to the first screen and asks you what you would like to make and provides the choices available to you.

We have wearables, which are jewelry, pendants, and rings and can have moving parts like gears and gyros; we have playables, which are toys; and we have collectibles like regional souvenirs. We have brick toy compatible parts, where customers can build plaques with their name on it for a Lego set. Kids can take trucks and cars that will work with the brick pieces, and grab the wheels and snap them on.

If you select jewelry, for example, you'll see additional options like pendants and earrings; then there's another layer where you can select features like whether you want an astrological sign or a heart pendant or the outline of your home state integrated into the piece. Then you get to the customization process where you pick the color, text, add a picture or both, and watch the kiosk digitally transform your selections every step of the way prior to printing. 

Then the confirmation window comes up and once you confirm you get a receipt at the kiosk to take to the cashier. You walk over to pay for it and the employee takes the receipt, confirms the print, and it goes into a printing queue. It takes about 15 minutes for the 3D printing system to create what you've selected.

The kiosks do a lot of robotics work to make it easy, reliable and efficient. Our goal is to go to completely automated kiosks; one of the tricks is that it's not instant. But by leveraging this minimal input from employees it goes a long way.

KioskMarketplace:Can customers bring in their own designs to manufacture?

Arden Rosenblatt: No, all personalization starts from base templates within a product library provided by PieceMaker. Part of our job is to ensure that no matter what combination of designs consumers come up with, they will print reliably every single time. As we move forward, the degree of freedom consumers have with core design and uploading their own files will increase. 

KioskMarketplace: What are some features of the technology?

Arden Rosenblatt: As far as the hardware, we spent a lot of time making sure it was as easy for store employees as possible. The print control process is done through a touchscreen interface and is highly automated, allowing employees to control the printing process without going into the printer. We chose ABS plastic as a printing media because it's relatively easy to work with, comes in a variety of colors and has a long history in the consumer products industry. It is also more durable than PLA [another form of thermoplastic], which is typically the alternative. As the system evolves, we would like to explore new materials such a nylon and metal. 

KioskMarketplace:What audience are you targeting? Are you considering other types of designs for different audiences?

Arden Rosenblatt:Toys stores were the first market because we make fun, colorful plastic items. The core of the business is really about getting customers to personalize items and getting systems to spit out their final product. Our main demographic is tweens, who enjoy expressing themselves and want to make pieces that complement other toys.

But we've also had popularity with tech-savvy parents. They can watch the 3D printers go. Kids who watch the printer have very normal reactions; they're much less blown away, but parents are the ones usually blown away by it. So it's attracted older people too, who tend to want to make collectibles and pieces of art.

KioskMarketplace: What does the customer typically pay for a 3D-printed product?

Arden Rosenblatt: Examples of prices are usually around $10, maybe $5 to $15. Things like a custom guitar pick, game pieces, pendants, playables, and some more complicated pieces are priced toward $15.

KioskMarketplace: What kinds of venues are you looking at for Piecemaker?

Arden Rosenblatt:We just wrapped up pilot testing and we'll be rolling out again in November. You'll have to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to find out where, but we'll be back for the holiday season.

KioskMarketplace: What are the benefits to these venues adding a 3D-printing kiosk?

Arden Rosenblatt: During our pilot, our kiosks brought in the most sales per square footage in the store. Right now we’ll give companies the system for free and do revenue and cost share with them, and split it at end of the month as well as costs for raw materials. It's a low-risk, low upfront investment with high sales per square foot.

It's also possible for stores to lease our equipment, or even license the software, but our primary focus is to make this new technology as accessible to retailers as possible. This typically means owning and maintaining the equipment, providing quality materials, and delivering a complete system with great content and personalization tools. 

When a customer joins PieceMaker, they are really investing in the future of custom inventory on-demand. So, as custom manufacturing technology develops, our real duty to our customers, to retail stores, is to deliver them cutting-edge methods of making custom products in a way that's fun, easy, engaging and very personal to consumers. And we also have to make it very simple and profitable for stores. 

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