East Coast Rep Rap Festival is renaming to 3d Printopia
They haven't said why. I'm very curious. I hope it's just a branding thing and not a sellout. I really like the community atmosphere and that is not a trade show.
https://twitter.com/EastRepRapFest/status/1708303491230282153Open linkView original on lemm.ee
Was just there yesterday… honestly. While there’s a lot of “RepRap” spirit, it was like 75% big company booths (PrintedSolid, Prusa, E3D, LDO, 3DGloop, Protopasta, Polymaker, Slice Engineering to name a few) this year. Which is cool, but it’s not the small little hacker space sort of vibe it started as.
Did you go upstairs or on the edges? I feel like the big guys in the center as you describe, but the edges and upstairs were the hacker space vibe.
I did. It was a better setup than last year where the companies were smaller and they had the empty “artist/hobbyist” tables, but it was definitely more corporate this year as well.
Makes total sense to me. Only the oldest of 3d printing nerds are going to know what Rep rep is. 3dPrintopia does what it says on the tin.
Most people getting into 3D printing today have no idea what Rep Rap is.
You're right, I bought my first printer at the beginning of last year I kind of know what reprap is but is be willing to bet my neighbor who bought his first a year plus before me probably has never heard the name.
Sad, it feels like it's selling out the open source spirit of reprap.
“ERRF” was terrible to say out loud, and as hell weaver said above, even many people interested in 3d printing won’t know what RepRap is.