Loom Launcher is a mini rubber band shooter that is made with on-demand manufacturing via crowdfunding on Kickstarter.
It’s designed for digital warehousing and made to order with no assembly needed. The innovation in this 3D printed novelty is a mechanical assembly with multiple moving components, printed as one part.
While 3D printers have been around since the early 1980s most people have never held a 3D printed object. A technology that has been around for almost as long as the cell phone is only now being dubbed a catalyst for the next industrial revolution.
3D printing is pretty impressive. It’s now possible to 3D print in ceramics, metal and glass. Other notable developments include applications in the 3D printing of prosthetics and artificial organs.
Democratized production and decentralised control is
accelerating as 3D printing technology becomes more affordable. These trends are
allowing novel applications to emerge.
It’s this intersecting of trends that has inspired me to reinvent a classic toy. The Loom Launcher is the world's first 3D printed, mechanical, multi-shot, self-priming, rubber-band launcher, printed fully assembled with moving parts.
Adrian's created 6 different designs: The Classic, The Princess, The Dirty Harry, The Wizard, The Spy, and The Powershot. You can take the virtual models for a spin on Kickstarter.
I should start with a disclaimer of sorts - this article isn’t about the gun control debate nor is it an argument for or against 3D printing firearms. What's impressive is how the 3D printing of firearms has brought the technology to the forefront and been a catalyst for change in the way we interact with 3D printing.
Even though commercial 3D printers have been around since the early 80’s, most people still struggle to separate fact from fiction when thinking about 3D printing. But it's crazy to think something that has been around for three and a half decades has only now been dubbed by some as the next industrial revolution.
In the last 35 years we’ve hardly made a drop in the ocean of the potential of 3D printing in the consumer market. It has some pretty impressive applications in medicine and healthcare, creating limbs for amputees and even printing artificial organs. Its primary use has been accelerating development cycles in the manufacturing industry but consumer applications are somewhat lagging. The one area that has caught the attention of the world's media, politicians and terrified parents everywhere is the 3D printing of guns.
This application of 3D printing is sparking debate over whether centralised gun control is a solution to escalating gun violence – perhaps not, when anyone can print a gun on a $300 printer. The associations with crime and violence that guns represent are a big part of the reason that 3D printed guns have sparked such a frenzy. Many fear 3D printers will make firearms available to the wrong people and result in an increase in violent crimes and the type of mass shootings that have blighted recent times. There is a fear that whilst today’s 3D printed guns don’t match up to ‘real’ firearms, one day they might. Case in point: we are seeing increasing innovations in 3D printed firearms.
The 3D printing of guns has prompted discussions about the laws and regulations surrounding 3D printing. Many are understandably uncomfortable with being told what they can and cannot print on their own personal printers in the privacy of their own homes. You could argue that 3D printed guns have given 3D printing some bad press. But hasn't it just changed the way we think about how products are made and who can make them, taking some of the power from the regulated and centralised monopolies back into the hands of the consumers? 3D printing enables us to create products that meet our exact, rather than globalised needs.
3D printing has already changed the world. Guns are the most controversial example of how it's actually happening and, love them or loathe them, they have been a catalyst for revolution and have launched the technology into the limelight. 3D printing will to continue to change the way we play and interact with each other, the way we prepare food, the products we wear, how we travel and take photographs. It’s no longer a case of if, or even when, but are we ready for it? Can society, our views and the laws of the land keep up with the changing consumer landscape brought about by 3D printing?
I’m sensitive to all those parents out there concerned about toy gun play as contributing to a foundation for violence. We need to address the root causes, as prohibiting guns, 3D printed at least, is not practically viable. In fact, for some, prohibiting gun play is creating a virtual obsession on the glamour of guns as a forbidden fruit, having the opposite effect.
I've recently invented a “gun” that shoots mini rubber bands and it's called The Loom Launcher, taking a poke at the idea of a 3D printed gun. It's a crowdfunded idea bringing attention to the possibilities of 3D printing. In reality parents and even kids can now print their own toys. For those who are uncomfortable with even fictional firearms, it doesn't have to be a gun. It can be a wand for kids to cast their spells by spreading the loom love around the house!
Contrary to popular belief 3D printing isn’t actually the new
kid on the block, with many still nervous of a future found in sci-fi novels.
3D printing processes have actually been around since the late 70’s with the
first commercial 3D printer invented by Charles ‘Chuck’ Hull in 1984. That’s
just 12 months after the first mobile phone became commercially available. Yet,
today, over 90% of all Americans own a mobile phone but I can’t even find any
statistics for the number of US citizens who owns a 3D printer for personal
use. How many people do you know with one? Exactly.
I, on the other hand, bought my first 3D printer back in 2002
and have spent the last two decades or so running JDi Design - an industrial
design and product development service provider. In a nutshell, I take an idea
for a product and turn it into a reality for clients in a variety of sectors
from medical to industrial and 3D printing has been an integral tool.
This business is centered around my passion for design and
environmental sustainability. I firmly believe that if we want to combat the
negative effects of industrial production the environmental issues need to be
addressed at the design stage. But this is expensive for the typical corporate
client who is driven by their bottom line and is dependent on maintaining their
existing investments instead of exploring more sustainable options.
I was convinced that there had to be a better way. I took on
some high risk projects with some high risk clients but after a series of
unpaid invoices, and unforeseen circumstances, it cost me my life savings and
with it my faith in the corporate world.
But all was not lost, still convinced that there had to be a
better way to do business and the chance to, as Benjamin Franklin said, ‘do
well by doing good’, I started analyzing crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter to
leverage design and help grow decentralized digital democracies.
I must also mention the time I sat around a campfire with my
brother-in-law and he started talking about how cool the ‘ultimate cooler’
would be. We threw out ideas whilst we drank beers, everything from speakers
and lights, even dry ice puffing out in a cool, dramatic cloud as you open it
to the sound of heavenly angels singing - pretty much everything but brewing
the beer itself ( this would make a good Kickstarter perhaps?!) Then one day,
months after our fireside brainstorming session I noticed that a guy had indeed
come up with the ‘Coolest Cooler’ and was raising funds for it on Kickstarter.
Kitted out with speakers, lights, the ability to charge your iPhone, and many
more ideas above and beyond our own fantasy cooler. Low and behold, Ryan
Grepper, the brainchild behind the ‘Coolest Cooler’ , has now raised over $13 million
in funding on Kickstarter - $13 million!
Ryan’s story just showed me the true power of the people. Sat
around a boardroom in the corporate world, the idea, and many like it, would
probably have been dismissed quicker than you can actually say ‘Coolest
Cooler’. But sometimes the craziest ideas are the coolest (literally in this
case) and capture the imagination of the public in a way that not even the most
experienced market analysts can predict.
And it's no secret that sometimes the best ideas are the
simplest too. Another Kickstarter campaign to produce a bluetooth controller
for a paper aeroplane managed to raise over $1 million - a few bucks of which
was my own donation and I went on to buy a few as gifts which were well
received to say the least.
I was more than suitably impressed and inspired so embarked on
my own 3D printing Kickstarter journey. My kids were playing with a wooden
rubber band toy and it got me to thinking. How would this look if made with 21st
century technology? And, what do you know -- 27 prototypes and many handcrafted
mouse-clicks later, the Loom Launcher was born.
The Loom Launcher is now the world's first 3D printed,
mechanical, multi-shot, self-priming, rubber-band launcher, printed in one go.
I’ve created 6 different designs so far including: “The Princess”, the
wand-like “Wizard”, the “Dirty Harry”, and the sleek “Spy”.
It also has the added bonus of making use
of all those loom bands left lying around the house that only last year kids
just HAD to have. They adorned the shelves of stores across the country only
for its fickle audience to move on to the next must-have craze, leaving the
loom bands in the lurch. So in the spirit of sustainability, the Loom Launcher
revitalises your leftover loom bands. It’s made on-demand, never over produced,
only made for those who want them and, being 100% Nylon, it is recyclable.
The Loom Launcher, whilst hours of fun and bringing a new lease
of life to the much-loved elastic band launcher, is more than just the product
or even the idea. It’s my homage to a new era of on-demand production and
pushing the limits of additive manufacture, it’s an attempt at dipping my toe
into the power and potential of crowdfunding.
I plan to write more about 3D printing and the power of
crowdfunding in my upcoming article ‘Change is Gonna Come, 3D Printing and
On-Demand Manufacturing’.
