How we Built one of the most successful Desktop 3D Printer manufacturing companies in India!-Chapter3

(The first time I saw a 3D Printer)

Continued from the earlier part…

I did not know the answer to his question. I knew I wanted to do something in the 3D Printing space, but I was not sure of the exact role I wanted to play. I said, “I want to explore 3D Printing and I am still not sure about the area in which I want to play”. He looked at me carefully while I answered, and gave a sly smile on hearing it. He did not utter a word after that, and I just kept following him as he struggled against the slender staircases to his workshop on the first floor of a newly painted building.

We then entered a small room inside his workshop. I saw two guys well positioned on the cemented flooring trying their hands on fastening pieces of metal together. On the other side of the room, a couple of guys had immersed themselves into a cloud of wires. The workshop was very different from my idea of a startup. I had always thought startups meant flashy Macs, well dressed geeks and lots of motivational posters on the walls. But here there was a complete reversal from my ideas. Old laptops with broken casings replaced Macs, guys with untidy dresses replaced the imaginary well dressed geeks and the walls had tools attached to them rather than posters. I brushed these thoughts aside and carefully walked towards the demo area.

I saw a 3D Printer for the first time in my life. It was making a melodious sound and I thought that it was programmed that way. Later when I found out that these were the sounds of stepper motors, I never discussed what I had thought back then with anyone. I always feared people would laugh at how naive I was.

I could not take my eyes off the 3D Printer as it gradually danced along the tunes of the g-code and extruded small amounts of materials to form objects that looked beautiful, and as I envisaged using one of these 3D Printers, the objects looked even more beautiful. I asked one of the guys there whether I could touch one of these parts and he responded by picking one of them and giving it to me. He said, “Take it, we will print more”. I looked at him like a poor kid looking at a rich kid buying toys at his liberty. I looked in awe as he opened a website, downloaded a few CAD files and open an Orange and Red looking UI on the screen and gave the 3D Print Command.

The 3D Printer Nozzle after doing some starter steps again started dancing on the tunes of the g-code creating the object that it was instructed to create. I was even more fascinated by seeing the 3D Printer work and I was quite sure that I wanted one of these. I was fascinated at how one could create objects at his whims.

As I started contemplating the various things I would do when I will have 3D Printer, I suddenly realized that there was a financial aspect to it as well. I knew I had to clear one last hurdle of managing the financial resources before being able to take a 3D Printer home. My thoughts were running like wildfire and I was thinking of a million ways of meeting numbers that were quoted to me. I finally ended the chain of thoughts and figured out a way to convince the guy who owned the company to give me 3D Printer for free for a few days and we would look at the payments later. I knew I was a complete stranger to him and convincing him would be difficult, but I was quite sure that I wanted to take one of the 3D printers home.

Continued in the next part…