Crowdfunding helps inventors bring ideas to life

by Jason deBruyn, Triangle Business Journal

Attention all inventors who just need a little seed money to get your idea off the ground: Indiegogo – and other crowdfunding services like it – say that if your idea is good enough, you will get the money from ordinary folks.

Crowdfunding Allows Inventors to Bring Creative Ideas to Life

Sort of like, if you invent it, the money will come. At least that’s the idea.

Danae Ringelmann co-founded Indiegogo five years ago after she realized that it was really hard for inventors to get funding to grow their ideas from the concept phase to an actual business with manufacturing and sales, etc. Ringelmann spoke at the annual Emerging Issues Forum hosted by the N.C. State University Institute for Emerging Issues. The event this year is focused on manufacturing and is looking at ways for North Carolina to grow as a national manufacturing leader.

On websites like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, inventors can post a video of why their invention deserves funding and then just wait for others to donate. It might be $1 or $5 or it might be hundreds – even thousands – of dollars they receive from anyone who likes the idea.

Read more…

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Crowdfunding Industry Takes on Depth with with Successful Kickstarter 3D Printer Campaign

By Robert Hoskins, Front Page PR

DeltaMaker reached its funding goal of $107,000 and surpassed it within the first few days of launching the project on Kickstarter. So what does this mean for the 3D printer? Since DeltaMaker has reached its goal and raised the necessary funds, the creators are now able to move the project to the next phase; production. But, with just over two weeks left in the printer’s Kickstarter campaign, the DeltaMaker creators plan to make a grand exit and put DeltaMaker on the map.

DeltaMaker Personal 3D Printer Takes Crowdfunding by Storm

Why has this particular 3D printer gained so much popularity? It’s simple: DeltaMaker’s clean and elegant feel positions the 3D printer as an entertainment piece, fit for desktops, classrooms, living rooms, waiting rooms and more. Gone are the days where 3D printers are created for industrial spaces, spitting out prints somewhere in a back room.

“A 3D printer doesn’t have to look like a microwave oven,” says Zack Monninger, one of the four founders of DeltaMaker. “…so we created a 3D printer that runs faster, looks better and is just more fun to watch. The DeltaMaker prints big and it prints fast!”

So how exactly does a 3D printer work? Making objects is usually a subtractive process, meaning an object is created by starting with a block of material and carving around it until the final object has been created. However, 3D printing is an additive process in that it lays down successive layers of filament until the desired object has been created.

3D printing has come a long way since it was first developed in the mid 1980s and the technology is now used in jewelry, footwear, industrial design, architecture, engineering, construction, automotive, aerospace, medical industries, education, geographic information systems and many other fields.