3D Printing @ Startup Saturday Kolkata, October 2014

Just after our very successful September 2014 event, which had speakers like Supreeta Singh (Head PR @ Park Hotel) & Navonil Das (aka Nil, from Dev R Nil), when we started planning the October Edition. We knew we had a very challenging task at hand. The event was to be organised on 11th October, just after the Durga Puja vacation. We anticipated that, most people would be on leave/vacation, making it tough to find attendees and speakers. So we started our work early, soon to be proved right. We were lacking logistics and few other components. It was 8th October and time was ticking against us, we were heart-broken and was about to call-off the October Edition due to lack of necessary logistics. On 9th, a certain phone call and everything turned on the toe. We suddenly had an alternate logistics support. All of the volunteers pounced on the opportunity and within 2 days pulled out a full-fledged event. It’s definitely a hack-story worth sharing in this blog. All the thanks to the “caller’ Shrenik and my fellow-volunteers.

A little flashback :- Few months back, one of my friends told me “Did you know you could ‘Print’ a Football or even Gun at home?” and my reply was “Consult a psycho, you are nuts”. I was so wrong. 3D Printing is what it is called and I know it today.

Mr. Prateek Lohia of 3DLabs.in was the guest speaker for the evening. He came in at around 3:30pm, brought in & setting up some ‘strange’ looking machine. For a guy who has never visited any electrical engineering workshop, this machine looked ‘odd’ at the first glance. Some rods, bars, handles, wires. As the session progressed, we faced almost ‘divine’ enlightenment about the 3D Printing Technology.

3D Printing is the nickname for Additive Manufacturing, a technology that was invented and patented in around 1980’s. It was under wraps till recently. There are various technologies used in 3D Printing like Fused Deposit Modelling (FDS), Single Laser Sintering (SLS), Stereo Lithography(SLA), Single Deposit Laminating (SDL) etc. Based on the technology, there are different types of 3D Printers and in various price range, starting at Rs 30,000 and going upto crores. Though patented, this technology was/and still being used outside India in various sectors. It has recently put its foot in India and already created a buzz. This technology is making immense contributions in Medical Field – where surgeons can now create live models for better study, education & planning or even replacing the

steel rods with 3D Printed artificial limbs etc, Manufacturing – where they can now ‘print’ moulds for various purposes, Fashion & Retails – ‘print’ your innovative jewellery, custom-made dresses, Real Estate – where they can make small models & prototypes of their projects, Gaming – think of gloves with gesture control for games and many more. Also great to know that Amazon has an outlet where they take custom order and 3D print them almost instantly. From the way Prateek explained, it can, shall and will help in any and all industries. Prateek also dazzled us and shared facts like:- in James Bond movie Skyfall, it was shown a ‘Aston Martin’ being blown up. Relax, it was a 3D Printed model car.
Prateek didn’t stop at that. The setup was ready, printer was hot and our keen eyes were longing. We all formed a huddle around the Printer and ogled the view of a Printer printing some amazing art-work within minutes. (video to be posted soon on facebook.com/SSKolkata)
However, every technology has it curses. A 3D Printed gun if made of hard-plastic (other than the firing pin) will be very hard to detect by normal scanners/detectors.
The 1hr 30mins talk zoomed past like seconds. Our audience even forgot to blink. A pin-drop would have sounded like some mortar-blast of recent Indo-Pak border tension.

Our October 2014 edition also had two very interesting Lightning Pitches:-

Desicourier.com is a website where you can search for the lowest price offered by various courier companies. Not just that, you can arrange for pick-up, where courier company reps would come to your place, inspect the consignment, weigh and pickup. They are in private beta and hope to launch soon.

PI LABz .com is a startup from IIT Kgp and incubated at STEP. They have a unique idea of selling embedded boards and robotic kits through their online store. They wish to manufacture many of the Embedded boards & Mechanical kits here in India.

It was also amazing to note some of our audiences this time.

We got some people aged around 55yrs showing up. Also, some very interested attendees from TCS, IIT KGP. Post-event, we had a great networking session over some samosas and coke. Many people were first time attendees who lauded the ‘ecosystem building’ effort of Startup Saturday Kolkata and showed interest in the various initiatives of Headstart Network. People also showed great interest in attending JagritiYatra.com, our new partner.

Shared By:
Subham Das

Special Thanks to:
• Mr Prateek Lohia @ 3DLabs.in
• Mr Shrenik Bhura @ Intelliant

Our Headstart Kolkata Team:

• Mr Abhinaba Dey @ AVOW Group
• Mr Avijit Mondal @ Mobile Heathcare Technology
• Mr Subham Das @ TutStu
• Mr Ajay Pandey @ AncileTech Solutions
• Mr Pankaj Pilaniwala
• Mr Kumar Chandan @ ExamVeda
• Mr Saket Jajodia @ Dzire 2 Dzine
• Mr Aman Singhania @ Red Launchers
• Mr Prakash Jhawar