Ginny's interview with Jeff Moe, the founder and CEO of Aleph Objects, Inc., and their conversation initially covers our LulzBot 3D printers, parts, and filament.
Skalski explains:
Moe has no shortage of 3D-printed parts. Aleph Objects operates one of the largest 3D printer clusters in the world, with 135 machines running at least 13 hours a day. The 1,000-square-foot room is a 3D-printer enthusiast's dream. It's packed with rows and rows of 3D printers. The company is constantly testing its own machines in the cluster by manufacturing the very parts that are used to make their desktop 3D printers. The cluster also prints prototype parts being tested by the company's research and development team for new products such as a dual filament extruder, miniature version of its TAZ printer, and a 3D scanner.
The conversation quickly moves to the undergirding Open/Libre Hardware and Free Software philosophy that makes our company tick. These are ideas that motivate us and are deeply ingrained in our development processes:
'We go to the extreme of publishing every last detail that we have about the printer,' Moe said. 'Even our internal file system that we share files on in the development of the machine gets synced to the public every hour so you can see exactly what we're doing,' Moe said. 'We don't do: Design it and then throw the code over the wall, as is done sometimes in software and in hardware. We're actually publishing everything well in advance of even making products so the community can develop it along with us.'
It's not just about us though. Our LulzBot community page shows some of the exciting projects, developers, organizations, and individuals participating. And of course credit is due to the RepRap community where we have our roots and continue to develop our products today. As it says in the article:
'By supporting us, users are also supporting free software development and open hardware development, so we're giving back to the community,' Moe said. 'All of the software we run in our company internally is free software. Even for things that aren't related to 3D printing, like our OpenERP system, we spent a lot of time working on that and fixing bugs.'
We are so proud of how we are building this company to celebrate user and developer freedom every step of the way. And we were excited to see the interview was promoted to the homepage of /. (Slashdot.org)! So help us spread the word: Read the full interview with Jeff Moe and share it on social media. We can't wait to hear what you think.
We recently had the privilege of speaking with Ginny Skalski, a journalist for opensource.com.