Bre Pettis

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Bre Pettis
Bre Pettis 26C3 1.jpg
Pettis at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress, December 2009
Bornc. 1972or1973(age 50–51) [1]
Education Evergreen State College (BA) [2]
Pacific Oaks College (Education, teaching certificate)
Known forco-founder and former CEO of MakerBot Industries

Bre Pettis (born c. 1972/1973) [1] is an American entrepreneur, video blogger and creative artist. Pettis is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of MakerBot Industries, a 3D printer company now owned by Stratasys. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Pettis was raised in Ithaca, New York, a childhood spent climbing trees and playing in the woods independent and self-reliant. [4] At the age of 13 he moved to the Seattle area, where he later graduated from Bellevue High School. [5] Pettis is a 1995 graduate of The Evergreen State College, [6] [7] where he studied psychology, mythology and performing arts. [8] [9]

After college, Pettis worked as floor runner and camera assistant on feature films in Prague and as an assistant at Jim Henson's Creature Shop in London. [10] He then attended Pacific Oaks College and graduated with a teaching certificate. [7] He worked as a teacher for the Seattle Public Schools from 1999 through 2006. [11]

Career


After graduating and working on various films in Europe, Pettis moved to London and began working at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and making super-custom animatronics, or high-performance robots. Pettis learned prototyping here, as well as building one-of-a-kind things from scratch, allowing him to eventually be paid for his work. [4]

He is also known for DIY video podcasts for MAKE , [12] and for the History Hacker pilot on the History Channel. [13] He is one of the founders of the Brooklyn-based hacker space NYC Resistor. [14]

Pettis is a co-founder and former CEO [3] of MakerBot Industries, a company that produces 3D printers [12] now owned by Stratasys. Besides being a TV host and Video Podcast producer, he's created new media for Etsy.com, hosted Make: Magazine's Weekend Projects podcast, and has been a schoolteacher, artist, and puppeteer. He was the artist-in-residence of art group monochrom at Museumsquartier Vienna in 2007. [15] [16]

Pettis was featured in the documentary film Print the Legend. [17]

He left Makerbot in 2014. [18]

In June 2017, Pettis acquired start-up Other Machine Co. — now called Bantam Tools — from its founder and CEO, Danielle Applestone. [19] In November 2019, Bantam Tools moved their facilities to Peekskill, NY. [20]

Related Research Articles

S. Scott Crump is the inventor of fused deposition modeling (FDM) and co-founder of Stratasys, Ltd. Crump invented and patented FDM technology in 1989 with his wife and Stratasys co-founder Lisa Crump. He is currently the chairman of the board of directors of Stratasys, which produces additive manufacturing machines for direct digital manufacturing ; these machines are popularly called “3D printers.” He took the manufacturing company public in 1994 (Nasdaq:SSYS). He also runs Fortus, RedEye on Demand, and Dimension Printing – business units of Stratasys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stratasys</span>

Stratasys, Ltd. is an American-Israeli manufacturer of 3D printers, software, and materials for polymer additive manufacturing as well as 3D-printed parts on-demand. The company is incorporated in Israel. Engineers use Stratasys systems to model complex geometries in a wide range of polymer materials, including: ABS, polyphenylsulfone (PPSF), polycarbonate (PC) and polyetherimide and Nylon 12.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MakerBot</span> American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company

MakerBot Industries, LLC was an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Project. It was acquired by Stratasys in June 2013. As of April 2016, MakerBot had sold over 100,000 desktop 3D printers worldwide. Between 2009 and 2019, the company released 7 generations of 3D printers, ending with the METHOD and METHOD X. It was at one point the leader of the desktop market with an important presence in the media, but its market share declined over the late 2010s. MakerBot also founded and operated Thingiverse, the largest online 3D printing community and file repository. In August 2022, the company completed a merger with its long-time competitor Ultimaker. The combined company is known as UltiMaker, but retains the MakerBot name for its Sketch line of education-focused 3D printers.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maker culture</span> Community interested in do-it-yourself technical pursuits

The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.

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Thingiverse is a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files. Providing primarily free, open-source hardware designs licensed under the GNU General Public License or Creative Commons licenses, the site allows contributors to select a user license type for the designs that they share. 3D printers, laser cutters, milling machines and many other technologies can be used to physically create the files shared by the users on Thingiverse.

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<i>Print the Legend</i> 2014 film

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fused filament fabrication</span> 3D printing process

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Desktop Metal is a public American technology company that designs and markets 3D printing systems. Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, the company has raised $438 million in venture funding since its founding from investors such as Google Ventures, BMW, and Ford Motor Company. Desktop Metal launched its first two products in April 2017: the Studio System, a metal 3D printing system catered to engineers and small production runs, and the Production System, intended for manufacturers and large-scale printing. In November 2019, the company launched two new printer systems: the Shop System for machine shops, and the Fiber industrial-grade composites printer for automated fiber placement. The World Economic Forum named Desktop Metal a Technology Pioneer in 2017. In May 2023, Stratasys agreed to acquire Desktop Metal.

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References

  1. 1 2 Dwyer, Jim (March 4, 2011). "Kittens With Jet Packs? Not Yet, but These Inventors Are on It". The New York Times . Retrieved September 20, 2011. The group that created the 3-D MakerBot printer — Mr. Pettis, 38, Mr. Smith, 27, and Mr. Mayer, 35
  2. Shea, Carolyn, "Making It: Educator, entrepreneur, and creator extraordinaire, Bre Pettis ’95 is a full-blown celebrity in the do-it-yourself, business, and tech worlds" Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine , The Evergreen Magazine, Fall 2013 issue
  3. 1 2 "Bre Pettis Interview on Founder Stories". MakerBot Industries. June 30, 2011. Retrieved September 20, 2011.
  4. 1 2 Roberts, Barbara (January 2022). "Flight paths Selling a business is just the beginning" (PDF). UBS Financial Services Inc. (“UBS”). pp. 11–12.
  5. Soper, Taylor (June 19, 2013). "Jeff Bezos-backed 3D-printing company MakerBot acquired for $403M". GeekWire.
  6. "Evergreen magazine: News & Notes (page 20)" (PDF). The Evergreen State College. Fall 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 24, 2012. Retrieved September 20, 2011.
  7. 1 2 "Bre Pettis". BusinessInsider.com. Archived from the original on Oct 8, 2012. Retrieved September 20, 2011.
  8. "The CNBC Next List: Bre Pettis". CNBC. October 6, 2014.
  9. "How Bre Pettis Gained Incredible Entrepreneurial Success". Expert Money. June 28, 2017.
  10. Oremus, Will (September 21, 2012). "The Steve Jobs of Useless Plastic Trinkets". Slate.
  11. "Bre Pettis, innovator, artist and advanced manufacturing pioneer, to receive honorary degree; speak at SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Commencement". SUNY New Paltz News. March 23, 2015.
  12. 1 2 Downes, Laurence (April 10, 2010). "Geeks on a Train". The New York Times. Retrieved June 5, 2011.
  13. Baichtal, John (September 5, 2008). "History Hacker: Bre Pettis explains Tesla". Wired.com . Retrieved October 30, 2008.
  14. Lee, Kevin (April 29, 2013). "Get a peek inside NYC Resistor and see where the maker revolution started". PCWorld.
  15. "Seven on Seven 2011". Rhizome. May 14, 2011.
  16. "MakerBot hat seinen Ursprung in Wien und würde sich an HP verkaufen". 3druck. 18 April 2013. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
  17. Zaleski, Andrew (December 1, 2016). "The 3D Printing Revolution That Wasn't". WIRED.
  18. Williams, Alex (2016-11-02). "3-D Printing Pioneer Goes Low Tech, With a $5,800 Watch Made in Brooklyn". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2016-12-29.
  19. Evangelista, Benny (June 2, 2017). "MakerBot founder Bre Pettis takes another run at DIY revolution". San Francisco Chronicle.
  20. "Look inside Peekskill's new Bantam Tools high-tech manufacturing facility". November 18, 2019.

Further reading