3D Printing Guinness Record Shattered By LeTourneau University, Quickly Has Challengers

Last week we did a piece on LeTourneau University, who was in the process of setting up to break the Guinness World Record for having the most 3D printers printing out the same object, all within the same location, at the same time.  The University, located in Longview Texas, had their work cut out for them, as the previous record was 39.

Yesterday, well over 100 students gathered at the Solheim Arena, most with printers in hand, to try and break this somewhat odd, yet very intriguing record.

“LeTourneau University is big on hands-on projects,” said freshman Brooks Jarrett, who is among the roughly 90 percent of Friday’s participants who built their devices in the fall. “It’s definitely pretty exciting.”

There were a total of 108 printers in the arena, as the students worked feverishly to get each one of those printers working properly.  In the end, a grand total of 102 Printers were able to simultaneously print out the same object, a cog with the date melted into its design, shattering the old record of 39, and putting LeTourneau University and their students in the record books.

Several independent sources were on hand to verify the record, and it may take as long as 12 weeks for the record to officially be recognized.  In the meantime though, another group is already claiming to have broken the record that was just set yesterday.

Taking nothing away from the tremendous accomplishments of LeTourneau University, Jeff Moe, CEO of Aleph Objects, Inc., makers of LulzBot 3D printers, claims that their company has 135 3D printers within their facility.  He stated that he can easily have them all running at the same time, and in fact does so often. Moe has been posting at 3DPrintboard.com, and has uploaded the following video to Youtube, showing his company utilizing 109 3D printers at once.  Moe plans to submit the paperwork to Guinness soon.  In the meantime he offered up some further details on the operations of Lulzbot at 3DPrintBoard,

“In the video we are printing RepRap parts for our next generation TAZ. We’ve printed hundreds of thousands of parts. Printing some medallions simultaneously won’t be hard–in fact, it will be easier.If you really want to see the nitty gritty of what we are printing, we have a LibreOffice spreadsheet of our current production batch here.

The very fact that the day a record within the 3D printing industry is to be broken, another group comes forth claiming to be able to break that record, clearly shows the rapid pace of growth within the market.  Stay tuned to the 3DPrintBoard Guinness Thread for updates on this developing story, and congrats to LeTourneau University.