I have news! In the last year I have been directing my efforts towards a new website.
Fresh out of a job and looking to start something new, I have been learning how to 3D print. I purchased a simple consumer 3D printer and got myself some plastic filament to start churning out some models – art that I created myself and models that I found online. Then I hit a snag…
When I got some fresh new filament – Matte White by Protopasta – it wouldn’t print! It made a huge mess and looked terrible. I changed settings, I emailed the company, and finally I turned to the huge facebook community where people asked questions and got answers. I wanted to know where the repository of settings were so that I could download them and have a great print just like the other more experienced makers in the group, but to my dismay this great big online repository didn’t exist… yet.
I thought it would be a perfect test of my programming skill to see how long it would take me to spin up a website, get some ‘slicer profiles’ (the settings for truing a print into instructions) posted, and build utilities for other people to upload them too. I started to get ramped up on some new tool kits and frameworks. I bought some domains! I researched affordable web hosting. I sat in cafes with strangers. I got to know the fine folks at Chipy the Chicago Python meetup. I started researching the consumer 3D-Printing industry. Finally, the path ahead was really starting to take shape! Then the pandemic hit.
More people faced the reality of spending more time at home and wanted to invest in stay-at-home hobbies but something else happened too – when personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages started to get reported suddenly makers everywhere began to 3D print PPE to make up the supply. People were printing with new materials! They weren’t sure how to print and they needed help! The time to launch had come! I courageously clicked ‘publish’!
Since then Strand has been slowly evolving. What started as a simple repository for the settings you need to turn a digital 3D object into the series of commands that a machine needs to print it out is taking shape as a hub for 3D printing makers to meet others, learn, teach, and share their creativity.