Product Design Experts Tom and Tracy Hazzard Share Insights on the 3D Printing Revolution from The Strip LIVE with Maria Ngo

The rise of 3D printing has begun. With so many industries seeing what it can do, the future of 3D printing design is shining so brightly. In this episode, Tracy Hazzard, together with her husband Tom Hazzard, stops by on The Strip LIVE with Maria Ngo to discuss the benefits and future of 3D printing. They shed light on the many entrepreneurs it provides to entrepreneurs, no matter what level they currently are, and how they can get themselves on the bandwagon and learn how to do a 3D design. Witness the start of the 3D printing revolution. Take a peek at this conversation!

Listen to the podcast here

We’re back on the Red Carpet and with me as a husband and wife team who are expert product designers. They’ve actually created over 250 products that’s generated over $750 million. They’re also the go-to people for everything, 3D design and 3D printing. Please welcome, Tracy and Tom Hazzard. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Maria.

Thanks for having us.

3D design, 3D printing is the hot topic now. We’re seeing it from Ellen, Jimmy Fallon, two TV shows like Bones and also Grey’s Anatomy. How are you seeing this new form of technology being integrated into our lives?

3D Printing Revolution: Entrepreneurs don’t really yet grasp the understanding of how cost-beneficial 3D printing can be for them today. It’s extremely expensive and risky to launch a retail product. If you want to do that, the best thing for you to start with is a 3D printed prototype.

We’re glad that the producers of Grey’s Anatomy are adopting it and bringing it in, Ellen and all of those places because it’s great that we’re creating awareness for 3D printing. It’s going to completely change, various parts of our industries, retail medicine. It’s completely changing medicine already. Automotive, it’s already changed, aerospace. There are many industries that are being impacted by it that we don’t yet know what the future is going to be like.

This is the beginning of where we are with desktop 3D printing and students learning it at home and in schools. Just wait 10 or 15 years, you won’t even believe it.

The cool thing that you had mentioned before is that people in the Culinary Arts are using 3D printing for chocolate. Also in the fashion industry, check this out.

This is a design of ours. It’s a 3D printed tie all the way around the chain on my neck and it’s just to prove how 3D printing even with technology is here and now. You can make real-world products that have value to people.

They have different forms and designs. This is printed all in one piece with nothing to assemble, nothing to put together and it just comes off so completely different. Imagine how much our styles are going to change.

Before we hop on the 3D printing design bandwagon, there are probably some things that we should know or maybe some questions that we need to ask. What should those things be?

The first thing is, is what is 3D printing? 3D printing, it just sounds like this crazy thing. It’s so far out there and 3D printing, probably as accurate. It’s more like a sewing machine than it is like a printer. You’ve got to think about it. It’s a craft tool. You don’t just spit it out. You don’t press print and it prints. It takes time, craft, you have to learn, you have to design and you have to take the time for that.

It’s not something that you can decide you’re going to do, go buy a printer and then on a weekend, be printing all sorts of things. At the same time, it is very real and attainable to average people. You do need to take the time and be willing to take the time to learn.

For instance, it took Tom about 200 hours to design this tie and, keep in mind, we’ve been designing for many years so we should be able to design a product like that. We designed 250 products. We know what we’re doing but it took 200 hours to design this. It takes time to design something you’re proud of that is different and has the skill level that you want.

It’s designed, it’s testing and it’s perfecting. You have an iterative process back and forth between yourself, the computer and the printer to really create something unique and different.

One of the cool things that you’ve done is you created a resource site that will have all this information. Tell me about that. Where can people learn how to become a 3D designer and how to do 3D printing?

We started with creating a podcast in early 2015 to help communicate to people. It’s all about 3D printing called WTFFF?!, which is What The Fused Filament Fabrication. A little geeky term but that is what 3D printing is. WTFFF?!, it starts with what you want to print.

You have to get into your mind as to what it is you’re looking for. What is your industry, what is the future of it? If you just want to go out there and learn, 3DStartPoint.com is the website as well as WTFFF?! the podcast. It’s all about jumping the learning curve. Jumping into where you want to go. Getting it in, in the industry, in the what you already want to make, in the resources that are already known to be useful for that particular one.

You can come to 3D Start Point to start to investigate your interest in 3D printing, to learn what are the materials, the machines, the tools, the tips that you need to know to get started to learn and be productive.

Now that we understand the benefits of 3D printing, what is the one thing that we can do now to start heading down that direction?

I think that every business owner, every entrepreneur ought to be thinking about 3D printing in their business. The reason why I say that to them is because they don’t yet grasp the understanding of how cost-beneficial 3D printing can be for them. Now, it’s extremely expensive and risky to launch a retail product.

If you want to do that, the best thing for you to start with is a 3D printed prototype, and then maybe even a 3D printed first run, that way you can test out the market, where the market costs now are the most expensive part. Imagine launching on Amazon and only having to make ten pieces instead of having to make 10,000, what if you made a mistake? Here, you don’t, you just start all over again, scrap it and within a couple of weeks, you’ll have your next round, and you’ll be able to try again.

Not only businesses. I think every parent should be considering 3D printing for their children, and every school system needs to be considering adding 3D printing to their curriculum because it is the future of manufacturing in the world. Manufacturing is going to go through a major transformation in the next 15 to 20 years, to more local manufacturing of products and less of the mass-market have to make 10,000 if you’re going to make one. That way also, everything doesn’t have to be the same. You have this unique opportunity with 3D printing to personalize it and make it yours to differentiate.

The 3D design economy is the future. We have three daughters and we started our six-year-old on it. The hardest thing was grasping how to use the mouse, which we didn’t think would be so hard but it is. She’s excited about it and she always say, “My dad can 3D print that.”

She’s doing it herself. She is making her own models, learning with free software, that’s available and free tools. We do have 3D printers because we’re in that industry but they’re not very expensive. Anybody can get one.

Thank you so much for closing up this gap and the space. For anybody out there who’s wanting to learn about 3D printing and 3D Design, we invite you to go to the website, shoot over your questions, and we’re happy to answer them. Thank you again for being here on the Red Carpet.

Thank you, Maria.

Important Links:

• 3DStartPoint.com
• WTFFF?!

Watch the episode here:

The Strip Live

Maria Ngo