[rp-ml] Rapid Prototyping Mailing List, you are acknowledged for your contribution to this archive.

Marshall Burns ListMail2 at fabbers.com
Tue Jun 9 20:47:46 EEST 2020


Elaine, I’m sure that your archive, had it been preserved, would have more historical significance than mine. On the early technologies, I was just a reporter. You were in the trenches.

 

 

 

From: Elaine & Bill Hunt <ewhunt at bellsouth.net> 
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 10:09
To: Rapid Prototyping Mailing List <rp-ml at rp-ml.org>
Subject: Re: [rp-ml] Rapid Prototyping Mailing List, you are acknowledged for your contribution to this archive.

 

3D always used support structures. One of the grads from Clemson helped write support structure Software for stratasys.. Quadrax used a huge tank of polymer which required disposal. They built that ball and cage and brain gear very early in the 90s.  Materialise was very early in the RP groups from either 1990-1992. I met them in 1989 at a user meeting.  I had everything RP but when I retired Clemson disposed of it.. oh well...Who remembers Guy McDonald? 

 

Elaine Hunt

 

 

 

 





On Jun 9, 2020, at 10:46 AM, Jim McMahon <jim at layergrownmodel.com <mailto:jim at layergrownmodel.com> > wrote:



I was looking back through old emails comments and stumbled on this one from around 2006.

"In the longer-range chart, Stratasys is the star, multiplying in value over 18 times since its inception in 1994, with 3D not quite doubling since either 1991 or 1994. We see in this chart the painful experience of those of us who were here ten years ago, when this industry completely sat out the huge tech boom of the late 90s. But then in 2003, Stratasys began to outpace the NASDAQ, and has continued to do so ever since"  

This rapid prototyping technology story is interesting to read back on and then to have questions about the history of files used in this technology should make people wonder what 3D printing was  really like at the 'beginning". Was there 3D printing with support structures at some point? When did 3D and Stratasys begin support structures? This quote I show says "Stratasys' inception in 1994 and 3D (Systems?) in 1991 or 1994" and the comment that "the industry sat out the huge tech boom in the late 1990's". 

I will respond to Marshall that I did receive an email with thanks for contacting him in 2016 which may have helped with the Penn State Ennex contribution but I would love to see the dates when Trispective files were used. I never heard of them.  I will contact Jan about the date of this Quadrax "Ball in Cage" file origin unless someone else knows the date. That certainly would require a support structure internally and I am wondering how they did it. Was early Materialise involved? When were support structures first incorporated in a model file without outside CAD party cooperation? Without support structures a model is not a true 3D structure? Would anyone else accept this idea? The Helinski Patent for support issued on 8/4/1992 and some companies licensed it. 

If anyone has any dates for these early files above,  I would be glad to receive them. 

Thanks for this new burst of curiosity, I am enjoying it. 

 

 

 

 

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 9:26 AM Marshall Burns <ListMail2 at fabbers.com <mailto:ListMail2 at fabbers.com> > wrote:

Thanks for the comments yesterday.

 

Jonathan, thanks for stepping above your presumed pay grade with your kind remarks.

 

And let me offer some special acknowledgement to the other two people who responded. 

 

In 2016, when I was preparing the digital section of the archive, I found that I had a number of old Trispectives files, but could not find any software to read them. I posted an inquiry here on the RP-ML and got a response from George Sachs that he had the original software and offered to convert my files to newer formats. He was able to convert most of the files, and did that to eight different formats, including dxf, stl, and jpg. So I was able to see again what was in those files and I included the conversions in the archive for current researchers to also be able to see. 

 

The following year, I sent another inquiry here looking for an stl file of the old Quadrax ball in a cage. Jan Andrzejewski of the 3DP Museum responded that he didn’t have the file, but offered to recreate it for me from my photograph of the item, and he did that in several iterations and gave me the results in SolidWorks and stl.

 

George and Jan are both cited in the acknowledgements of the archive in the category of data conversion. So thank you again to both of them for their contributions to this project.

 

 

 

From: Marshall Burns <ListMail2 at fabbers.com <mailto:ListMail2 at fabbers.com> > 
Sent: Monday, June 8, 2020 12:43
To: 'Rapid Prototyping Mailing List' <rp-ml at rp-ml.org <mailto:rp-ml at rp-ml.org> >
Subject: RE: [rp-ml] Rapid Prototyping Mailing List, you are acknowledged for your contribution to this archive.

 

Hi folks, I’m wondering if the e-mail below was received here because I haven’t seen any comment on it, even from people telling me how much you hate the word “fabbers,” or that the briefcase in the picture is ugly, or something?

 

 

 

From: Marshall Burns <ListMail2 at fabbers.com <mailto:ListMail2 at fabbers.com> > 
Sent: Saturday, June 6, 2020 15:50
To: Rapid Prototyping Mailing List <rp-ml at rp-ml.org <mailto:rp-ml at rp-ml.org> >
Subject: [rp-ml] Rapid Prototyping Mailing List, you are acknowledged for your contribution to this archive.

 

Hi RP-ML,

Thank you to the many friends here who shared with me the greatest adventure of the 1990s. The acknowledgements of the archive <https://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fwww.ennex.com%2F_file%2F_%2F~Ennex%2Fproject%2Ffab%2Farchive%2FFabbersArchive_Acknowledgments.pdf/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/QOLXXjHiqnXZPEWhm3vrcLnb4Bk8jlER_guakOwQbhw=144>  announced below cite the Rapid Prototyping Mailing List in the category, "Industry colleagues," as well as, of course, many individuals from here in that and other categories. It is an honor to have been able to preserve this record of our work together.


  _____  


News Release


Ennex 3D Printing Archive Acquired by Penn State


Announcing:

Fabbers: The Ennex Archive
of 3D Printing Resources and Artifacts
at the Eberly Family Special Collections Library
Pennsylvania State University

Ennex is pleased to announce that its archive of artifacts and resources <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2FFabbersArchive/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/f2xY_V6Rph9gKLZ9nx4sw4qQWwT5p3UbNEV3eeophyI=144>  from the earliest days of digital fabrication has been acquired by Pennsylvania State University. The archive was acquired in early 2018, and after two years at work curating its more than 20,000 items, Penn State has now published its finding aid <https://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fcatalog.libraries.psu.edu%2Fcatalog%2F22088363/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/-wN7K1CDSwWnJm80UHGR7-Qiqwogdqj9uQxgl2xeSWA=144>  for use by students, faculty, researchers, and the general public.


 <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2F_file%2F_%2F~Ennex%2Fproject%2Ffab%2Farchive%2FArchive%2Fartifact%2Fphoto%2FCIMG6006.jpg/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/3PhS_JHX56AOvue7x8hIQEIwzv9ATBpRybsDpjJOmqA=144> 

 <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2F_file%2F_%2F~Ennex%2Fproject%2Ffab%2Farchive%2FArchive%2Fartifact%2Fphoto%2FCIMG6006.jpg/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/3PhS_JHX56AOvue7x8hIQEIwzv9ATBpRybsDpjJOmqA=144> <image001.jpg>

 


Briefcase used to show capabilities of digital fabrication in client meetings, 1994. (Enlarge <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2F_file%2F_%2F~Ennex%2Fproject%2Ffab%2Farchive%2FArchive%2Fartifact%2Fphoto%2FCIMG6006.jpg/2/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/-FmXc89K_5_fMATS5ze93o2ngyN3w53XkoHulH2GG7c=144> )

Athena Jackson, head of Special Collections for the university at the time of the acquisition, said “This is an exciting collection that fits the mission of our new 3D printing lab. Our faculty are excited that a collection like this exists. It answers the ‘why’ question – helping to explain where the technology comes from.”

Part of what attracted Penn State’s interest is the archive’s diverse contents, from fabricated artifacts to print resources to experimental materials from Ennex’s development laboratory. Matt Francis, former associate head of Special Collections, described the archive as “a cohesive ecosystem of the history of the technology.”

Ennex was represented in the acquisition by Arthur Fournier <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.ArthurFournier.com/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/ZbeK5pU2Cm3bDNhUiRQc0RqA6B7uGnbGZ5drALSBm5c=144> , a New York-based rare archives dealer with a special focus on transformative cultural movements and disruptive technologies. Fournier explained that he took on the project because the archive “provides a unique overview of the historical circumstances surrounding the advent of 3D printing, a technology with explosive market growth and tremendous potential for transforming the means of production in modern society.”

The archive includes 90 objects fabricated as far back as 1991 on the earliest 3D printers made by 20 companies or university laboratories in four countries using eight different processes, over 300 books and periodicals amounting to over 23,000 pages, including all the books and conference proceedings published on this technology in the 1990s, as well as every print issue of the original industry newsletter, the Rapid Prototyping Report, plus dozens of video tapes and over 500 photographic slides. Permission was obtained from a number of Ennex’s consulting clients to include the previously confidential reports produced for them. In return, Ennex has also released into the archive its own previously confidential documents, including business plans, machine designs, and customer presentations, in both paper and over 12,000 digital files.

This e-mail is an excerpt of the full news release <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2Fproject%2Ffabbers%2Farchive%2Fannounce/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/1vcbMABEquhKLGKR1ub_7a7lFU_RTlI5KYooDLNTBHQ=144> . For more information, see:

*	 <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2FFabbersArchive/2/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/Z0ofEwFYnE-WxCaCkg8GNV7n5vbe6xwFZ2yjsQetDzw=144> The Fabbers Archive: The main page about the Archive on Ennex.com, with links to more resources about it. 
*	 <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2Fproject%2Ffabbers%2Farchive%2Fannounce/2/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/SCw0T9hQZsXDpdZgjef4gS7bcNf87B_pjbG0a-1ejP4=144> Ennex 3D Printing Archive Acquired by Penn State: News release announcing the availability of the archive at Pennsylvania State University. 
*	 <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2Fproject%2Ffabbers%2Farchive%2Fintro/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/4JX8Wfqk9rOkJB22DPCDf3z48oSlkYvToSrEj9hqu3w=144> Introduction to the Fabbers Archive: Excerpt from offering catalog by Arthur Fournier. 
*	Highlights of the Archive <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2Fproject%2Ffabbers%2Farchive%2Fhighlights/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/fE1dCMA3N8WgwQi3i_m4cv9_aPEXHp7L9tkFm2pO3ao=144> : An illustrated guide to a selection of more than a hundred examples of some of the most interesting items in the archive. 
*	 <https://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fcatalog.libraries.psu.edu%2Fcatalog%2F22088363/2/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/7svLrr49N6vDXrEIW-P6obccdZgkCzId1qJJVB9GVAQ=144> Guide to Ennex Corporation records, 1991-2005: Official finding aid for the archive at Pennsylvania State University. 
*	Acknowledgments <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com%2F_file%2F_%2F~Ennex%2Fproject%2Ffab%2Farchive%2FFabbersArchive_Acknowledgments.pdf/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/Q80HxSPQjqCTbWmDfC5DglQ2YtbKH7bT1MrsrYI7ktY=144> : Ennex thanks many of the most important people who contributed to our work throughout the 1990s.


  _____  


Copyright © 2016..20, Ennex Research Corporation <http://info.fabbersarchive.ennex.com/CL0/http:%2F%2Fwww.Ennex.com/1/010001728b659db5-194d53b5-38c0-4853-86bb-8cedaaa7e89b-000000/XF0z-OR3OYJY_KyivNyKL1Xz0TRMFPNBilaaNlRPZcQ=144> . All rights reserved.

<image001.jpg>

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