 Representative DiCano is, as you might imagine, a very busy man, but he values 3D printing so much that he has graciously taken a few minutes to address you all here today. So I will turn over the microphone to Representative DiCano. Thanks so much. Good afternoon. Is there anyone here who can 3D prints a new air conditioning system? Oh my God, this is part of the capital. Well, I want to thank Public Knowledge and Fractured Atlas for hosting this event. So thank you very much both of you, both of those organizations. As the co-chair of the Congressional Maker Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers working to support the maker movement, is my privilege to talk to you today about 3D printing, one of the fastest growing and most empowering maker technologies. A visit to Volcademy, a maker space in my district, first sparked my interest in the maker movement and 3D printing. I'm amazed by how much the technology has advanced since then. That was about three years ago. Now it is possible to print in glass, metal, and even rock. The last year, when NASA astronauts realized they needed a specific tool, they printed it up in space. 3D printing is part of the revolution in manufacturing that is transforming our lives. Children are designing and printing their own toys. We have a congressman who says to his own children, you can't have toys unless you make them. That's true. Families are personalized in their homes with their own creations. Sculptors are using CAD and printers to create original artwork. And makers are becoming entrepreneurs and taking their freshly printed ideas into the marketplace. This technology is even helping NGOs create affordable prosthetics for children. But we cannot capture the full value of 3D printing without a highly trained workforce that can fill these high tech specialized jobs. I believe that training should begin before high school graduation and we should offer students the training certifications and internships that prepare them for these jobs. Educators have the means to teach these skills through maker spaces set up in community centers, classrooms, and libraries. In addition to learning technical skills such as CAD, students who participate in making activities, learning collaboration, communication, and entrepreneurship, skills valued by employers. Learning through making will help fulfill jobs and companies that need workers who are trained to think differently about design and can work with multiple disciplines. Now I saw the future last month on a tour of a University of California Riverside lab where researchers are creating 3D printed building blocks that can be assembled to create custom instruments for biological and chemical testing. These instruments can replace far more expensive medical equipment not readily available in developing countries. If policy makers can come together in support of this technology, it will be a catalyst that redefines manufacturing and creates jobs here in America. I said this last year but it remains true this year. I am the only member of Congress with a 3D printer in his office. I am raising the bar and introducing the first and only congressional thingiverse page where you can download and print 3D files that we've created. Today I'd like to unveil the first 3D printed product that I'm putting up on that page. It is a plaque that reads Give Judge Garland a Vote. Check it out for yourself. Even better, print it out, put it on your desk and share a photo online. Thank you for being here today and being a part of this movement. Thank you. Thank you very much Congressman. We really appreciate you taking the time. We have two more panels left before we wind down the panel programming session in 3DDC 2016. This panel I'm very excited about. It focuses on 3D printing and bridging the workforce skills gap. We've got a really dynamic series of panelists here and I will turn things over to my public knowledge colleague Dallas Harris. Take it away Dallas. Maybe we can get someone in here to print Representative Takada one of those famous red pens for him to use next time he marks up something. Alright, so we're just going to jump straight into it. We don't have much time. I'm going to go ahead and let everyone introduce themselves and then we'll get right to the questions. First we have Diego Tamborini and he's from Autodesk, Diego. Thank you Dallas. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Diego from Autodesk. For those who don't know Autodesk, we are a software company. We develop software tools for anybody who wants to design and make things ranging from the enterprise to the maker in his or her garage. Of course, by being in this industry, manufacturing, we are very much into 3D printing and we have tools and software platforms to help with 3D printing. Great, thank you so much. Oh, I'm sorry. And I should mention that we were also very invested in skills and training. And proof of that is that all of our software is available for free for students, academic institutions or teachers of all levels. So for those students in the room, I'll give you a try. Alright, next we have Charlie Wapner from the American Library Association. Thanks, I'm Charlie Wapner, Senior Information Policy Analyst with the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy. I know that's a mouthful. Our interest in 3D printing stems from the fact that 3D printing is rapidly taking off as a service in libraries and libraries are increasingly providing this service at low or no cost to the public. And so from our perspective, from iWork and iOI's policy office, we're focused on elucidating policy implications of 3D printing in the library context so that we can position our community to violating role in shaping the policy frameworks that are just now beginning to take shape around this technology. But people on the ground like Adam are very invested in building workforce skills through this technology and we're looking to be a partner with librarians on the ground. So it's a good opportunity to be hearing about what's going on on the ground in DC Public too. Great, and that leads perfectly into Adam Schaefer who works at the MLK Library here in DC. Adam! Hello, my name is Adam, I work down the street. Hello, my name is Adam, I work down the street for DC Public Library at the MLK branch. I help run our makerspaces there in the library, which all of you with DC library cards can come and access. We don't see that many people every day because it's really tiny room, but we do three orientations a week. Each orientation has about 30 people. I think we've oriented over like 500-600 people so far so that's how many people have the ability to come through and start actually reserving time on our machines with their library cards. You check out a printer, you check out time on the scanner or the laser or the mill or whatever it is you want to do. So my role is, somebody on one of the panels earlier said something about how we need like the Willy Wonka in each space to show you all the machines. I really feel like that dude, like I'm the Willy Wonka dude in the lab and I'll show you where everything is and what it does and maybe get you started. And then after that you're kind of on your own. So come see me down the street if you get some freedom. Great, thank you. And to my left we've got Gaston Merrill from TechShop. Hi, good afternoon. Gaston Merrill of TechShop DC Arlington. TechShop is a national chain of makerspaces, membership-based workshop. It can be a third technique studio, fabrication lab, whatever you want to call it. We have about a million dollars worth of tools and software and anyone who wants to come into the shop can take classes on how to use any of our machines and then they can build whatever they want. So our slogan is build your dreams here. I think that happens every day. Great, and last but certainly not least, we have Robin Giuliano from the National Economic Council at the White House. Hi, I'm Robin Giuliano, Senior Policy Advisor at the White House for the National Economic Council. What we do there, and to be honest I didn't know what they did until I got there, if you're wondering I was too, we coordinate economic policy across the federal government for the president so that making sure his agenda is implemented across all of the federal agencies. And actually, directly before that I worked here in the House of Representatives, so it's really great to be back. Alright, welcome back. So let's go ahead and just get right into it. Diego, if you could, from the manufacturing perspective, what does the skills gap look like? What kind of skills do you notice that employees are lacking? Sure. So I'll speak to manufacturing in general and many of the remarks I'm going to make apply to 3D printing. So it's really about digital manufacturing and advanced manufacturing and the new factory floor but it also applies to 3D printing which is the topic here. So there are two main areas that are going to require like a reshuffle of the skills needed. There is the group that develops or designs the things that are going to be 3D printed. So 3D printing really changes the approach towards design because it's very different to design something for 3D printing than it is to design it to a subtractive manufacturing or traditional methods, injection molding, etc. So that mentality needs to change and also understand what are the right things to 3D print. I mean, just as I wouldn't barbecue my ribs in the microwave, you wouldn't do everything with the 3D printed. So as the technology matures, our workforce needs to understand the difference. The other group is the one that actually operates the 3D printers. It's usually the worker who's actually in the factory floor who used to probably operate other types of machines. So that group is arguably the most impacted by the skills gap right now because, first of all, these are complex machines, particularly 3D printers. I mean, in the factory floor, you don't have the desktop maker bolts. You have these big machines that look like scary computers. So the operator of these machines, they need to know to a decent level computer programming, computer data design, digital numerical control, things like G-code and whatnot. So those are things that are relatively new to this force. 3D printing specifically is unique in that it doesn't have a counterpart in the whole world. So, for example, today, numerically controlled milling machines or lathes or jet cutters, they have a counterpart in the manual all world. 3D printers were born in digital, so there isn't a skill that is transferable. It's completely new. So to close my answer, specific skills. Of course, there is the stuff you can teach in school or vocational colleges or community colleges. Use the tools to design, operate the 3D printers. But more profoundly, the intellectual level of the new worker in the manufacturing needs to be higher, more analytical, more creative. It requires a different level of intellect if you want to, for example, figure out why this part didn't 3D print correctly. So things like that. And of course, things like in the maker movement and kids printing things in the local libraries, that's fantastic. I mean, that's going to go a long way towards at least getting people really interested in manufacturing, digital manufacturing, and more specifically 3D printing. Great. Thank you. Charlie, Diego kind of got into this just a little bit at the end of his answer there. But libraries are, you know, stable institutions in our communities. What role do you see libraries playing in helping bridge this work gap? Yeah, I think it all revolves around libraries as these informal learning labs. So it's useful to juxtapose what libraries do and what the school would do with a 3D printer. 3D printers are taking off in schools too. The difference is when you're using a 3D printer in a school, it's usually in connection with the established lesson plan of an instructor. When you're in a library, you're not beholden to the strictures of an instructor's lesson plan. So you're free to use a 3D printer in pursuit of learning whatever it is you're personally interested in. And I personally believe that 3D printing anything builds important workforce development skills because you're learning how to create a CAD model. You're learning how to manipulate printing and slicing software. You're learning how to just generally translate a digital model into a physical object. If you happen to be doing that in connection with something you're personally invested in, then I think the learning that happens as a result of that, the skills that you cultivate as a result of that, the neural connections that you build in the process actually become stronger. If you move back up to 10,000 feet beyond just 3D printing, you're learning libraries offer scores of classes and other activities around how to build, how to write a resume, how to write a cover letter, how to interview well, how to use social media in a professional environment. And we do it in a very non-judgmental, non-competitive atmosphere. The difference between libraries, all the incubators and accelerators do these things too. But the difference is in libraries, again, it's non-competitive, but it's also for university ubiquitous. In every community, every state, every county, every city, every school district. So we're not just in urban centers like accelerators and incubators, but we're in rural areas and urban areas and everywhere in between. We're in high-income areas and low-income areas and everywhere in between. So it's this universality coupled with this non-judgmental and non-competitive atmosphere overlaying with these digital technologies like 3D printers and laser cutters and CNC routers that are taking up in libraries now that I think set libraries apart as centers for worse development. Great, yeah, libraries clearly have an important role to play here. Adam, so you have the hands-on teaching experience at the MLK Library. Can you tell us about the classes? What kind of questions do you get from people, right? What are some reactions that you get from people who are new to 3D printing? So, depending on the age group, the questions can be very different. So if I'm working with kindergartners, the question is, you know, when can I have one? And then if I'm working with, like, I do programs with AARP and they'll be like, where does the paper go in the printer? So it could be anything in between those two things. But that's when I go out of the library. When I'm in the library, those classes are more stimulating because it's all those age groups sort of mixed together. So I might have a grandfather with his grandson. I might have a bunch of kids filling, like, a school requirement. Some people that just wandered it off the street. But they'll all be in there together. And it's, I think, one of the biggest problems is establishing a base level of computer skills because it's like, when I'm teaching that class, I have to assume a certain level of knowledge. Like, I have to assume you know the difference between left and right mouse click. I know that sounds silly, but, I mean, if you didn't go over here, if I say double click and they're like, double click what? The mouse. Yeah, that's the mouse. Double click it and they're like, which one? It's the left one. And I've spent like five minutes explaining the mouse and they're frustrated and it becomes this tiny block becomes this huge obstacle. And I think one of the biggest things I learned teaching these technology classes in my first year at the library was you have to anticipate those obstacles and that was particularly difficult from a position of, I grew up in a position of privilege. I mean, computers were a toy in my house and they were a fun thing to play with. My dad would give me one and say, take it apart. What if I break it? He's like, that's great. Okay, cool. So, you know, I broke a lot of computers, but I learned a lot about them. But if you never had one growing up, or if you never had access to one as a toy, you didn't have that privilege. And I sit you down and I'm like, all right, we're going to learn how to 3D print today, but first you have to design or download this thing from a website. So, if I say to Charlie, Charlie, go to Chrome, go to Thingiverse, download the STL. And he's going to be like, cool, he's going to do it, probably a two minute process, less depending on his internet connection. Hopefully, I get people in class who I say, all right, sit down on a computer and go to here to get this model and how do I get to there? And it's like, oh, crap, that's, one level is heartbreaking, another it looks like it's a really fun challenge, because now I've got this end goal, and there's a goal post that's not going to move. It's a really tangible goal post for this class. At the end of this class, your reward is this 3D printed Yoda figure. And this is what you're going to get. But to get there, you're going to have to learn basic graphic user interface interactions. What we're going to do is, this is an icon, we're going to double click on this. We're going to learn about the universal resource locator bar. It's like the address on your house. You're going to type in the address, you're going to go there. Now you're going to ask for packets from the internet by clicking on the download link. And then, wow, you have this model, let's print it. There's the end goal. So lots of unexpected teaching happens whenever I'm trying to, I'm going to teach you the 3D print, but in the process, we're going to learn all these other things. I just learned what URL stands for. I have no idea. Am I the only one? Okay. Okay. I'm going to forget it in five minutes. Universal resource locator. Clearly, there's a different level of understanding for different groups. And it's not just broken down by age group, but where you might come from, economic status. GAD has been working with a particular group of veterans. They comprise a large group that are impacted by the skills gap. And TechShop has been partnering with the VA. Could you tell us about that partnership and how it's working to reduce the workforce skills gap among veterans? Sure. So TechShop fills kind of an interesting space somewhere in between what Adam and Charlie were just describing and what Diego was talking about, where we have a giant playground full of tools and equipment and anyone can come use that. People who do use professional CNC machines all day long, they're highly skilled. We have people who need to be taught how to save money. They have no exposure to the technology, the tools they're going to need. So we have a huge range there. And veterans have been a really interesting component of that. So our partnership with the VA, it was the VA Center for Innovation. They sponsored 2,000 memberships for veterans so they could get a year of access to TechShop and $350 in credit for classes. So they can come to the shop and it's a very simple application process. They can just go online, verify their service through an independent website, and then come to the front desk, sign up, and they're good to go, they're in the door. They can pick whatever classes they want, they can decide on a project for themselves. It was completely self-guided. And obviously with that you have a wide range of results and I should say also the GE was in the partnership too. They also sponsored an additional 1,000. And this was in eight locations across the country for the last couple of years. And I'm happy to say they were all awarded, all 3,000 memberships, and it was very successful. It's been very, very cool results. I felt like I was saying when it's self-guided, you get a really interesting mix of people and I think that's probably the coolest thing about it. You have people who want to build a new dining room table and that is their sole goal and they don't really care about anything else. And they learn woodworking, they learn maybe a little bit of digital design, but primarily it's a table. Sometimes they'll come in and they'll have a product already in mind, something that they want to turn into a business. Entrepreneurship is a very easy route to go when you have everything in front of you that you need. You have resources to prototype, like free printing in particular. You have injection molding equipment, you have computer-controlled mills and lathes and all this sort of stuff. You can produce anything. You have people who have reinvented themselves to sell crafts that they build in the shop. You have people who have prototyped electrical adapters so you can charge your cordless power tools all from the same base station. You know, really a tremendous variety. And Robin, kind of from the large-scale federal perspective, can you give us a little taste of what the administration is doing to work to close that workforce skills gap and prepare the American workforce for the economy of the future? Sure. So there are two things that I wanted to highlight. First is, in 2014, the President called, issued a call to action and tasked the Vice President with doing a massive review of the federal job training programs across the government. And, you know, I've been working in government for a while and one of the challenges is people are in silos and so you have different agencies very familiar with their own processes and the populations they serve and the programs they run. And that, you know, there are job training programs at the VA but there also is one at the Department of Labor and we need to talk more and we need to align these programs so that they are making more sense from a holistic perspective. And so as a result of that review, a report was issued and presidential memorandum went out to address this coordination. So that was the first thing and then the second is that some of you might be familiar with the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. That's the law that governs our public workforce system. The last time it had been reauthorized so it was reauthorized in 2014 the last time before that was 1998. So a lot had happened clearly between almost 20 years and one of the really exciting things that that act is doing is it requires coordination across, again, breaking down silos across education, vocational rehabilitation labor, commerce. It brings all of these strings together so that we're looking at these challenges such as the skills gap from a multifaceted point of view and some of the most successful and exciting partnerships that I've seen that are addressing the skills gap and training people for high demand, high growth jobs that lead to living wages. You have everyone at the table and it's easy to put that in the law to say everyone needs to talk but it's difficult to actually make that happen in practice but I think that is really the secret sauce to making this work. Another piece of that that we're very excited about from the administration's point of view is increasing access and using data. There's a lot of data out there in federal databases that either just sitting there is not accessed but could be access for a variety of reasons and we're talking to a lot of states that are implementing this new WIOA which is the acronym for the Workforce Law now they're hungry for it which is really exciting because that means they want to know where the jobs are businesses want to know where the people are and so data is the glue that kind of helps keep this all together so we are the Workforce Innovation Act past in 2014 but we are in the process of implementing our final regulations over the next couple of months which will mean the Act will really be taking off and running and there's a lot of energy and excitement right now in the field of workforce development as a result of both the Vice President's review and WIOA so we're really excited about that. Please tell the President and the Vice President thank you the next time you see them. I'm just going to open up a couple of questions to the whole panel and then I'll throw it out to you all for a question or two. For anyone who wants to answer how is 3D printing going to change the way we work? Diego please. Well if you listen to the hype in many many many ways but I do agree with a lot of it. One of the things that has already impacted the way we work particularly when we develop products, designers and manufacturers is the allowing the ability to rapidly prototype your ideas. That's arguably the most impactful thing right now because it's just a spurs creativity you get the instant gratification of what you had in the monitor and you can touch it and discuss it with your peers and potential customers so that prototyping is great. The other big impact will be in the nature of things that we design so the shapes that can be achieved with 3D printing are completely different. So you'll see designers designing things that look more organic that look more natural and not just because aesthetics but also because in many cases they perform better, they're lighter so you'll see progressively designers changing because 3D printing has allowed them to make it possible. So like I said as far as the way we work on the high part, the part that I don't subscribe to is that it's going to replace everything in the factory and our grammars will be 3D printing stuff in the house probably but it's just the wrong approach it's the wrong way to view 3D printing 3D printer at the end of the day is an additional toolbox, a tool in your toolbox so there are things that will be you couldn't do before that now you can do with 3D printing but if I have to produce 100,000 rubber doggies I will not 3D print them I will still injection mold them so it's going to change of course for the better in the house, in your household the whole thing of personal manufacturing that is called you'll probably see more and more and that's not in the way we work granted but you'll see more people for example downloading a model from GE appliances to replace something that broke in the refrigerators as opposed to going to Home Depot to the GE appliances website and talking to someone I'll just print it, right? so those things are coming they're already in the most adventurous type of people they're already doing that anybody else want to take that picture? I agree with pretty much everything Diego just said but I think they're also valuable in terms of an educational tool the way you explain something at work like is it John and Becky in this morning how they printed some kind of hyperbolic function a mathematical model that you just can't really look at or draw with a pencil in favor you can print that out and show it to someone and say look it's like this if you have a complicated and expensive part that needs to be repaired and you want to show someone at work how to repair it you might not want to take the one out of service and take it apart and risk damaging it you can print a model of it you can print an instructional tool I just wanted to say I think the extent to which 3D printing changes the way we manufacture things will be highly dependent on the extent to which we support efforts that are already ongoing particularly I'm thinking about the National Advertisement Manufacturing Institute so there's a facility in Youngstown, Ohio it's a national facility dedicated to advancing 3D printing as a manufacturing technique it's part of the Obama Administration it's a larger, broader advanced manufacturing initiative and it's co-branded as America Makes and America Makes has already been working with us and I know with others and so these efforts are already underway and I think we need to all of us at this table probably all of us in this room should get behind the efforts that are already ongoing Go ahead please This is more about the prototype to the product pipeline Can you speak up please sir This question is about the prototype to product pipeline but I think there's a workforce skills angle here because you need people with skills to make it possible for someone to design something your prototype and then push a button and get 100 drop ships in a nice package for sale there's a lot of infrastructure and a lot of people need to support that infrastructure is there a few Hello Yes so we have had and I was surprised we have had several people come through the library who were working on patents and they're inventors and this is very uncomfortable So they're working on patents and they come there was one guy in particular he's like I'm leaving for Brazil today and I need this prototype printed okay you obviously don't know how long it takes to print things but let's see what you got and so he shows me the model and he's like I've got a guy in China who engineered this for me and I've got a factory tool ready to pump these suckers out if I can get an initial investment and I'm like okay show me the prototype and it was a modified chip clip that's small and printable and it was right when Snowden released off the NSA spying stuff and it was a clip that went over the computer on your laptop and all I could think of was just use a piece of tape but he was dead set on this thing being like revolutionizing private safety and so he's like I need this prototype now because some people are super interested in it I've got the manufacturer, I've got the designer and now I've got investors and I'm like who's gonna invest in this thing that sounds crazy and mind you this is like week one of us having a 3D printer our first one and I'm sure some of us have saw stories about the 3D systems Cubax Trio not working out a box but we had that sucker working finally so I printed it out for him and he took three prototypes and he did a pitch to his investors and then he comes back super tan and happy from Brazil like a month later he's like hey it worked he's gonna listen to my pitch and I'm like you never tell anybody he's like oh yeah so I got on the show Shark Tank and so he went on Shark Tank with these printed prototype chip clips that he was gonna put on laptop computers to prevent NSA spying with these prototypes that he printed at the library for like 30 cents and so they ripped them apart on Shark Tank but so many people were like hell yeah that's a great idea I want a clip from my computer so the pipeline was completed like he had in a weird order but he had he'd gone from like design and concept to getting the factory to getting the patent he seriously patented this chip clip to getting the prototype to getting the investor and we were the 3D printer in the library were an integral part in his pipeline as weird as it was but it worked so let's open to the whole panel but I think Diego and Rod will be particularly interested in this what more could both the private and public sector be doing to close the workforce skills gap or are we already there actually I have one more thing to say for your comment too if that's okay please one of the areas that we've been really focusing is investing in sector strategies where you get employers in a region that have similar needs together and they can agree on what skills do they need for their for their businesses and then when you align that with K through 12 your career and technical education system your community colleges and so the community colleges are talking to the employers and the employers are saying hey can you develop a curriculum that matches what we need and you know and again this is the ideal gold standard of when this all works together but that's something that we've had different great competitions and the workforce act as well is trying to lift up sector strategies as a solution to the skills pipeline so sorry no that's okay what more could both the private and public sector be doing to bridge the workforce skills gap well again the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act key members of the boards that are created by that act are businesses and private sector members and they are critical to making this work I mean if you don't know what they need and then businesses need you know what are you then training individuals for to fill you know are you sending people down dead ends where there are no jobs and you're just saying they've wasted time and money consumers have wasted time and money on these programs and so the boards were strengthened again through this act so we're very excited about that another question that we wrestle with is you know how you know there are the public dollars for federal for workforce training and how do you get and encourage more apprenticeships and which is where more employers are offering skin in the game and contributing money to the skills training on the job training so we've had a huge apprenticeship as well we announced $175 million last fall I believe which large chunk is going out to advance manufacturing Congress just approved which was very exciting a landmark investment for 90 million for apprenticeships but again we're wrestling with this question and trying to incentivize more private engagement but also just sitting at the table and sitting down with people is really critical great yeah go ahead please be sure to speak up I want to make sure that I understood what Gail was saying about like in a manufacturing setting about like an employee using an extruder versus like a 3D printing machine and potentially even have a moist bill to control that yeah I mean what I meant is that the the way to interface with a 3D printer is completely different than the way that you will interface with a more traditional manufacturing equipment so for example numerically controlled machines including 3D printers your interaction with them is normally through some sort of computer or graphical user interface whereas the traditional machine you just pull levers and push buttons and so the interaction is different and also when something goes wrong say a machine part has some defect or something figuring out what caused the problem is different from say a 3D printer where you probably have to trace it back to the computer model or probably something that got lost in the file translation or whatever whereas if it's a manual drill or cutter you did something wrong when you were using it it's a little bit more straightforward Is it the same workforce that's transitioning? So potentially yes I mean there are a lot of factors age and education probably the group that is going to suffer the most in that transition is the one that doesn't want to upgrade their skills right? But if the person or the individual has the drive and the intellect to pick up these things regardless of age in my opinion they can make the transition now of course 10, 20 years from now a kid who's today playing a tech shop or the library they'll have a leg up I mean because they play with this stuff 3D printers since they were little kids so it's going to be more natural to them but I think that anybody can make the transition given enough interest and drive You guys are reading my mind I'm going to throw it back out to you guys for a couple questions but I just want to ask one really quickly since it follows perfectly on what we were just discussing do you all think we should be focusing on training the next generation or retraining our current workforce and please anyone feel free to jump in I would just say I think it needs to be everybody I think if you look at 3D printing one interesting thing I mean it's not a new technology by any means it's been around since the 1980s but at least from my perspective is somebody who works on public policy I see that it's just now beginning to gain some real traction in the private sector among institutions like schools, museums and libraries and among government decision makers it's a stable and federal level and so I don't think that young people have I mean young people don't have a prohibitively large head start in leveraging 3D printers to innovate so I think to wall off the innovative capacity of a whole cohort of Americans because they happen to carry an ARP card or collect Social Security is doing us all a real disservice we need to harness the energy of the creative energy and the innovative capacity of people of all ages I mean I look at my dad is 63 and he the baby boomer the baby boomers are retiring he traveled across the country in the 60s in a BW van again he went across overseas and taught trans-devil meditation they're not really going to retire I mean they have a lot of pent up energy they're going to want to release toward productive pursuits so why shouldn't we channel that energy toward building things through 3D printing innovating through 3D printing I think it's imperative that we do that yeah Diego is it worth teaching them right click from left click well yeah I don't think it's an or issue I mean you don't have to settle on this one I mean of course like the approaches the teaching methodologies and even the purpose right if you're teaching a kid who's going to college 3D printing at least the idea is that he or she will apply that and make it a profession whereas if his dad will probably be more for a hobby it's less likely that they're going to produce something for a war force or for a company probably I'm saying it's more for a personal fulfillment but this is not an or issue I don't see why we have either the old dogs or the new kids no it can be both there has to be different approaches and different outcomes Adam? in my experience both has been the most successful especially both at the same time because if there are skills gaps but all the skills are just in the same room they tend to co-teach each other especially around a really fun project and there's something universally wonderful a novel about 3D printing that sort of strips away any layers of this interest and sort of reignites that curiosity it's just so new to both kids and older adults that when I'm teaching them they just sort of all open up the curiosity interest because it's just such a new cool thing and they can really sort of explore and ask questions without feeling silly because there are some right answers but most answers are this and that or this or that or all of these things together and no one really has wrong answers except you should never touch the extruder when it's hot that's always a bad idea but other than that it's an open ballgame and it's just awesome watching them learn together so you'll get senior citizens and with teenagers and outside of the lab they might hate each other actively but inside the lab all they want to do is just print lightsaber hills and that's something they share and they'll do it together and it's super fun so the age doesn't matter anymore just what's really fun like what sort of really fun cool thing can we do with this super cool new thing that's in front of me Star Wars bringing this all together I'm going to start with this gentleman back here Hi, yes I have 10 3D printers and I can confidently say that I am making America great because I have brought a lot of manufacturing here I'm a product designer before I used to send whatever design that needs to be manufactured to China so inventors would come to me and just the shipping back from China was like $50 and I would have to wait 3 weeks and the part would be wrong and it would be redesigned now with my 3D printers I'm able to create these parts within a matter of few hours and to address your questions about labor and training it's really whoever wants it there's an old generation that doesn't want to there's nothing you could do about it I could understand the left right click thing I was consulting General Dynamics years ago the head of the M1 tank division did not know how to use a mouse he didn't want to learn anything with computers in that situation you need to separate desktop printers from industrial printers now the skill required to run a 3D printer is not as the learning curve I should say is faster than using the old traditional machines if you have an industrial printer you're not allowed to repair it there are usually 100 to 500 thousand to a million dollars in industrial printers you have to pay 10 to 15 thousand just on maintenance for somebody to come out and fix it with the library and I have desktop printers too I'm in Virginia by the way 3dhubs.com is a world website where you can locally find 3D printers that have small 3D printers or industrial level but I could repair my own printers so I taught that myself and if I had traditional tools and so forth I would have to hire technicians and so forth so it really depends on what kind of 3D printer you have and what kind of interest the person has in terms of what generation wants to learn and just to announce next year I am going to open up a technical school in Virginia for 3D printing I went to aviation high school had four periods of shop I had a lot of hands on experience and I got a mechanical engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and I learned more in a high school shop than I did at a 120 thousand dollar degree at that time that this vocational and whatever the White House and government is doing they really have to focus on a new generation to really go back to vocational hands on to bring that manufacturing back to this country. Great thank you we have just a couple more minutes one more question and I may reserve it for myself let's see do we have any congressional staffers in the room one staffer okay well then I'll allow you guys to ask the question then I'll be generous go ahead I just want to do a metaphor in your title 3D printing and bridging okay you're using the word bridging which we 3D makers use all the time in order to allow the filler to go across so I think this is a metaphor for what we need to do with the workforce skills gap we need some support structures and meshes everybody who is using 3D printers knows what I'm talking about you need something to hold up the people while they learn the skills great great guys just like Adam we're doing just that and we're going to close in just one minute but Adam I know you have one other story of a friend of yours who came to the library you were telling us on the phone and I want to kind of close with that so that everyone can have a feel good for the next panel did you ever get your your cat piece yes we for a couple hours but thank you Adam and good to see you Aira Aira's house the stories you're referring to are we supposed to substitute names I guess that's up to you okay my friend Mike he's probably in the lab right now um Mike is currently homeless he lives on the streets and Mike was one of my first students so when I first started teaching 3D printing 101 and 3D modeling 101 like three years ago and 3D modeling 101 consisted of let's make a tinker cat account and we're going to make a snoopy house make a block and you're going to put a roof on it group them together you did it now let's print it and that was it that was the whole class and it was great like people had little snoopy houses with their initials on them and that was their thing and Mike came to that class and he made a snoopy house and you know it wasn't very good but he was super excited about it he was so pumped and he just never stopped so he came to my classes dozens of times and remind you material every time I might have some new jokes or new stories but it's still the same program but he just kept taking them over and over and he just kept getting better and better and over the years we just kept getting more and more printers and it eventually got a little ridiculous when you walk into the library you probably remember this you walk into the digital console where we used to be and there were all these megrobots sort of like crowded in this catastrophic like aircraft carrier and making all this noise and it was a mess so we lobbied for it on space so that's where we got our fabrication lab and the first person through the door was Mike and I'm like Mike what the hell's up man how are you doing he's like I'm ready to print some stuff so he was one of the first people I trained on the printer and I can teach you how to use a 3D printer in like under an hour it's not particularly difficult to get a model onto the printer and going everything after that it's going to take more time because a lot of times you have to wait for it to break first and then be like ah now we're going to talk about why it's broken but Mike was there in the door and he had all these designs he'd been working on for years and he showed me the designs and you could see that the skills improved over time and I like to think it was from my class but it probably was just from them playing around and I was happy to see that most of them were Star Wars related and but it was all jewelry like R2D2 necklaces R2D2 earrings and all this other stuff and he just started printing away like crazy and making all of this 3D printed jewelry that he customized and started selling it on the street to people and he still does that today, you can see him all over town and you'll have this incredible unique jewelry that he's made but he's like made it from point zero with an empty build plate on a computer all the way it's where he's you know end point where he's pulling it off of the build plate and he's done that all himself almost all self taught but um that's an entire new set of job skills that he learned at the library and I didn't necessarily teach him all those skills but I was there to kind of usher him in like the wizard at the gate like come on in Mike we've got all this stuff here I can't hold your hand man but if you're willing to you know fail a whole bunch eventually you're going to succeed and get something cool so now he's got lots of somethings that are cool and he'll sell them to you at a reasonable price if you see him on the street and if we could give our panel a round of applause