'Saskatoon Berry Jam' and camper trailer among 3D printing creations at Saskatoon open house
Randy Janes says he's trying to push the boundaries with his 3D printing business
From door handles to sink fittings, there's a building in Saskatoon where 3D printing is used for almost everything.
Wave of the Future 3D held an open house at its cafe on Circle Drive to show off its printed creations on Saturday.
A 13-foot camper trailer and an ultra fuel-efficient concept car named Saskatoon Berry Jam, designed by Saskatchewan Polytechnic students were among the items on display.
"I want to get into printing all sorts of unique things and just pushing the boundaries," said Wave of the Future 3D owner Randy Janes.
"More and more people are realizing — when they walk through the door they think 3D printing is trinkets but as you start walking around my cafe you're going to realize it's working guitars, it's lampshades, it's trailers, it's cars."
I love when I have ideas to know that by the end of the day I could have that in my hand as a physical product.- Lance Greene, designer at Wave of the Future 3D
Janes said the camper broke the record for the biggest indoor print by six times. It was made from a material similar to a recycled pop bottles. The company has a printing "farm" where members of the public can print items of their own design.
His work involves helping companies prototype and patent new products, including a seed sampler designed by some local customers in the farming business.
He said 3D printing allows people who want to create new products to test individual prototypes without having to pay for a mould to be created.
Janes wanted to build his own trailer to eliminate some of the problems he noticed while working for a manufactured trailer company.
"I want to offer the industry a 13, 16 and 19-foot travel-trailer," said Janes.
"Sky's the limit, if they think of something they want to design, they can send it off to me and I'll work with them."
He's currently planning to make the printer even bigger to fulfil his goal of being able to build any car or boat that his customers have in mind. Janes said the new printer will be able to print about 15-30 kilograms an hour, compared with the current speed of about 3 kilograms per hour.
"I'm a huge nerd and I thought 3D printers were awesome so I bought one and then I started doing design," said Greene.
"I love to create, I love to make things, I love when I have ideas to know that by the end of the day I could have that in my hand as a physical product."
Members of the Saskatchewan Polytechnic team that built a race-winning eco car were at the open house on Saturday to talk about their car.
"We 3D printed as many parts on it as we could to kind of prove the technology and we did well," said mechanical engineering technology (mech-tech) student Ryen Stallmann.
Its structure consists of broken carbon-fibre hockey sticks collected from local rinks.
Lindon Goodall, also a mech-tech student at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, said the car currently has a top speed of about 45 kilometres per hour right now, but could go up to 100 kilometres per hour.
"I had our other car doing 100 kilometres per hour and that was probably one of the scariest moments of my life," he said.
They said the shell would have taken a lot longer to create if they had not been able to use 3D printing.