3D Printing. Next Exit: The Future

Technology
1

Dear Poppy Team,

your open source project is really amazing! For my Master Thesis I initiated an anonymous online survey on hardware development in 3D printing communities and would be incredibly thankful for your support. In return for investing about 10 minutes of your valuable time, I would be happy to share a presentation of the main results with you. Thereby you can learn more about user motivations, valuable platform features and ways to improve community services - let me know if you are interested! Please find more information and the participation link below:

Dear Survey Participant,

Open Source Hardware (OSH) development is a fascinating phenomenon that recently gained momentum. Given the potential of 3D printing and OSH to disrupt entire industries and revolutionize the way we design, produce, recycle, manufacture, distribute and commercialize physical products in the future, this is worth in-depth inquiry. To begin with, this survey, conducted at the Universities of Hamburg and Osnabrück, Germany, shall provide insight about 3D printing communities and their motivations and drivers. It shall also give developers the possibility to provide feedback on community services and to name key features that would help to improve their favorite platforms. The anonymous and aggregated data will be used for research at the Chair of Management and Digital Markets and be provided to platform managers. The survey will only take about 10 minutes. Your contribution is crucial to the project and is very much appreciated. Many thanks.

To participate, please follow the link:
http://survey.digital-markets.info/index.php/914511/lang-en

Best regards,
Melanie Kern, BA (University of Hamburg)
Prof. Dr. Piet Hausberg (University of Osnabrück)
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Späth (University of Hamburg)

You can access the project homepage here:
http://www.wiwi.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/departments_and_institutes/technology_and_innovation_management_prof_hausberg/research.html

Or on the social media site:
https://www.facebook.com/3Dprintingresearchproject

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Hi Melanie,

I’m doing your survey yet I find some questions confusing…

Your survey is presented as being about Open Source Hardware development and 3D printing but most of questions are about open hardware development for 3D printing, which is not the same scope.

In my case, I develop a lot of open source hardware but it is not for 3D printers… however I’m a strong user of 3D printing to produce my open source hardware mechanical parts.

Can you be a bit more specific on which user profile your survey require so I do not introduce any biais ?

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Hi Matthieu,

thanks for participating in the survey! The survey actually addresses both:

  1. open source hardware for 3D printers, e.g. RepRap

  2. open source hardware for 3D printing, e.g. designs uploaded on Thingiverse

I’d say that you fall under category 2 and thus fit perfectly. Really sorry for the confusion!

Thanks,
Melanie