3D Printing @ 2015 International CES - A Perspective

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OK, so here we are with one hour to go at one of the most brutal of trade shows we do in the year. Yes, trade shows are hard in any country, but CES is a special beast and sends its participants home battered and bruised with a sore throat from all the talking and the smoke in the casinos, sore feet because near in Vegas means roughly a mile and because at a trade show your diet goes out of the window you are invariably under fuelled and inappropriately fuelled in equal measure.

All that said though this years CES, and in particular the 3D Printing Marketplace has been a huge success with all of the exhibitors in the zone enthused and happy with the traffic they have had past their booth. Hats off to the CEA and their team for a seamless transition from the LVCC - the move worked brilliantly and we are delighted to continue the partnership into 2016.

From the star studded 3D Systems booth adjacent to TCT at which Steve Wonder, Will.I.Am and Kenny Lee Lewis all appeared at some point during the week to the smallest start up the four days have been a blur of new announcements and interesting conversations.

Our erstwhile team have interviewed someone from every booth where they could spare people, and the results are appearing on www.tctmagazine.com as soon as they have been edited - our video crew have been buried in the editing room all week, we'll let them out blinking into the Vegas sunshine sometime tomorrow when it is all done!

Highlights for me from a booth perspective, Makerbot went big this year with a double decker..and they have announced some new filaments of which can read more here . 3D Systems surprised everyone by buying Bot Objects who have a questionable, to say the least, customer service record - sadly they were too busy to talk to us during the show so we'll report on the plans for this new part of the empire when we get back.

Old friends Materialise and Mcor spoke to us early in the week - and Formlabs had plenty to shout about, confirming their place as the emerging force in this sector. We also spoke to Voxel8 who certainly had tongues wagging in the hall with their new multi-material printer out of Harvard allows you to print functional parts, one to watch for sure.

We also killed it with our own conference, a day of 3D Printing with presentations from Carl Bass of Autodesk, Dr Phil Reeves of the Econolyst, Peter Weijmarshausen of Shapeways, Bram de Zwart of 3D Hubs, Jenny Lawton of MakerBot, Fried Vancraen of Materialise, Terry Wohlers and Max Lobovsky of Formlabs. Possibly the single best day of programming we have ever assembled, and we'll be looking to step up even further next year.

So, our 2016 booth is picked, and the sound you hear now is of expensive booths being torn down in a hurry, it is time to get out of Dodge...after one more trip to Fremont Street and the casinos ;-)