Talking to Sylvain Preumont, Executive Chairman of iMakr and MyMiniFactory, via telepresence robot at The Digical Show in London
iMakr, the popular 3D printer reseller, has been a very strong advocate for desktop 3D printing. Their sister site, MyMiniFactory, is a platform for free 3D printable models, the main difference being that it is a curated platform. We’ve seen iMakr and MMF behind the advent of tipping designers for their work and MyMiniFactory Studios, which feature a select group of designers who receive revenue sharing based on the popularity of their designs. As the site has grown, the sheer number of 3D models that need to be test printed before being listed on the site has increased exponentially. Now, MyMiniFactory is calling on 3D printer owners to assist them by test printing models through the MyMiniFactory Wonderland program.
I attended The Digical Show in London remotely from New York, via telepresence robot, which was pretty interesting. I spoke to Romain Kidd, CEO of MyMiniFactory, who explained that MyMiniFactory is focused purely on digital model files now, not physically producing prints. Up until about a year ago, there was a team at MyMiniFactory running a print farm, painting the objects and shipping just to fulfill orders for prints of the models on the site. Not anymore. Now the curated site is maintained by a leaner organization composed of a team of developers and a team of marketers. They built a new tool called MyMiniFactory Wonderland to vet 3D printer owners who are members of the MyMiniFactory community and outsource test printing to these community members. They’ll be invested in making MyMiniFactory better.
Interviewing MyMiniFactory CEO, Romain Kidd (the telepresence robot was a little short)
“The MyMiniFactory Wonderland empowers the talented Makers in the 3D printing community to curate the 3D printable objects published on MyMiniFactory,” says Kidd. “The Wonderland is made of a group of expert desktop 3D printer owners who test 3D printable files to the high quality standard that is expected when browsing MyMiniFactory. These makers work hand-in-hand with 3D designers to test print objects to guarantee printability. In a nutshell, these are the superstar Makers making sure that people downloading files from MyMiniFactory avoid wasting time and filament, and more generally have a great experience with their desktop 3D printer while downloading free content from MyMiniFactory.”
I think its pretty cool that MyMiniFactory is putting so much faith in their users. If you’re interested in helping curate MyMiniFactory, you can apply to be a part of the Wonderland.