gMax 3D-printed 3D printers are shipping [PHOTOS]

Machines are self-replicating in Bed-Stuy and no one is doing anything about it.

The first crowdfunding campaign we wrote about on Technically Brooklyn was for the gMax, a 3D printer that, itself, is 3d printed. The campaign was successful and Gordon LaPlante, the founder of the company, now called GCreate, tells us that they have begun shipping printers. Four went out last week and he expects more to go our very soon. They have produced 85 units from their Kickstarter.

The gMax isn’t the first self-replicating machine, of course. But it’s still a sight to see it in person, as we did when we visited LaPlante at his live-work factory in Bed-Stuy. He’s got a spacious place by New York standards, but fitting a manufacturing operation inside an apartment inhabited by two people isn’t easy.

They have had their existing gMax’s running nearly 24/7 much of this month making more gMax’s, so they have no problem telling their community members that they have built a reliable machine.

“If something breaks on here,” LaPlante told us of his creation, “I can’t just fix it. I have to make it so someone else can fix it.” That is, he said, the company’s whole philosophy about its machines.

• The gMax is overdesigned. So, for example, they made some parts to be bolted together when it wasn’t essential to add bolts because he wanted to make it easy for people to take the pieces apart, as needed.
• Everything about the printer is Open Source and much of its software and firmware is built off open source code from the 3D printing community.
• The electronics are based in Arduino and the Arduino Shield was designed by the RepRap community.
• Some of the parts are found parts, not manufactured for the device, such as the electronics case pictured in the slideshow below. It was made from window shade covers cut for the purpose, which saved them a lot of money over paying for fabrication.
• One of the key features that got people interested in the gMax was its sheer size. It prints in a much larger area than most other available printers.
• The printer runs very quietly. More quietly than other devices LaPlante has tested.
• Future goals for the gMax platform include adding an additional extruder, which the software already supports, and potentially adding other tools that could be switched out with the extruder, such as a Dremel-like grinder or even a laser.

LaPlante, 31, was trained as an architect at the Pratt Institute. He graduated at the worst possible time for architects, he said, as the housing collapse started in 2008. He eventually secured a really good architecture job that he held for several years. A 3D design maker before architecture school, LaPlante grew up in a handy household where he learned you can teach yourself to make what you want to make. Architecture led him into 3D printing, as he got interested in it as a way to create models of buildings to show clients.

His overall vision for GCreate is ambitious. He’s the only person working full time on the company now, but his partner puts in a lot of part-time work at home. He described to us a number of different verticals for makers that he would like to get into, saying,

“My end goal is to have all the companies be a fabrication company, maybe eventually bring it all back into architecture, where we will make all the stuff in your home.”

Check out this slideshow of gMax printers making gMax printers and other scenes from the GCreate home factory by using the arrows on either side:

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