An Interview with Anton Månsson of 3D Print Tech Design

I recently stumbled upon a YouTuber called 3D Print Tech Design (Anton Månsson). His channel explains Gcodes, shows how to separate different file formats, and reviews printers. He does mainly 3D Printing videos and from what I can tell it’s more than just parts and printers. I emailed Anton and we setup a Skype call a few days later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qaen4OdbVc&feature=youtu.be

How would you introduce yourself? – 3D Print Tech Design

‘Well, that’s always a bit tricky. I think of myself as the nerd that doesn’t get too nerdy about things. I love technology, design, architecture and science. And games… And computers. And… Ok maybe I do get a bit nerdy about things. I’m a younger guy (26) from southern Sweden that has a background in 3D-vizualisation since 2003 (worked professionally since 2009). I’ve come to grown into filming and 3D-printing and 3D-scanning through my work and I just can’t seem to get enough of the 3D-concept.”

That’s right, you do work with 3D as a day job? – 3D Print Tech Design

“Yes, I have the honor to manage hardware sales, and our Stockholm showroom at Creative Tools, a Swedish reseller and distributor for everything related to 3D. We’re talking some of the best 3D-printers on the market, around 15 manufacturers at the moment. We also have a full portfolio of software and in-house experts to make sure our customers get the best combination of tools for their creativity. May it be Photoshop, Rendering engines, CAD-software or just a toy-3D-scanners. If it’s related to 3D, we know it.”

How did this lead you into 3D-printing on YouTube? There are a few others showing of the same products that you do? – 3D Print Tech Design

“Well…. I can answer your question about entering YouTube first. At Creative Tools we do a lot of demos and I wanted to become more efficient at doing this and since our country [customers] have long distances I wanted to bring the users in to a virtual demo room. We started off with some live casts, but realized it took too much time and it was difficult to collect all the potential viewers. I proposed that we created some digital content and put it on YouTube. At the moment we had too few employees as we were growing rapidly and we couldn’t launch a project like that during work hours.

A while later I were given the opportunity to start up our second office/showroom and that meant that I had access to hardware and could control my time a bit better after work hours. Since I had more or less free access to the showroom I setup filming on weekends and evenings, investing my own time to benefit my own YouTube channel while supporting Creative Tools exposure. A good deal for both parties!”

At this point Anton asks me to stop him in case we run out of time. I can tell he’s passionate about 3D! – 3D Print Tech Design

“Well, to answer you about the other YouTubers I feel that they are doing an amazing job covering projects, mods and machines I as a European can’t get access to [them]. I try to focus on content that shares the vision of what 3D-printing and 3D Tech and design can become. I want to spread my knowledge of everything related to 3D, may it be reviews, guides how to model, a breakdown of a project or similar… I see the 3D-printer reviews I do as bonus since I print on them every day. It’s just natural to share when I have this deep knowledge. And the reviews I do is focused on the machines I have access to. Maybe someday I can get machines sent to me as well….”

Wow! It sounds like you have a plan about this YouTube channel. What’s the goal with it? – 3D Print Tech Design

“Well, I really like sharing and engaging with users of 3D. I unfortunately don’t show up in the forums/Facebook groups as often as others, I simply have less time and actually do focus some on other 3D-projects that might be bigger.

For now my goal is to grow, help the community, share my experience and best-practices. We’ll see what it leads into. Hopefully more fun content and ideas on what can make an impact on our not-yet-converted-3D-society. ”

How do you spend your time? You seem to have a bunch of other projects, can you tell us about those? – 3D Print Tech Design

“Well, I don’t have any family yet, so I have the luxury of being really egoistic and spend my time how I please. I think that’s a winning concept (I can hear him smiling…)

I work full time at Creative Tools, helping people get into 3D-printing and finding the right solutions for 3D as well as growing the business in the capital city of Sweden. After that I usually create some type of content. 3D-videos, tweets, pictures, posts or similar about cool projects before I go home.

I’ve created an Open-source camera rig that is 3D-printable. It’s called DSLRigger and can be found on thingiverse or the Google plus group called “DSLRigger Project”. I have a few new versions to be released soon as well. (More info here http://bit.ly/DSLRigger)

I’ve also tried to be engaged in my colleague Daniel Norees amazing Open RC project (http://bit.ly/1XeBd9s). Trying to print parts for my own car and creating a new version of the car in form of an exotic Ferrari.

I also try to get some time into my start-up. I’m currently working with a few BETA-users, but are planning to launch during the end of the summer. The company will help sharing and utilizing knowledge and workforce from all the experts around the world, giving students, hobbyists and companies a way of earning some money helping other 3D-enthusiat. The goal here is to cover a gap of knowledge in CAD that we can expect in the market for the next years. 10-year olds right now will start to learn 3D in school and have a better understanding on creating 3D-content than almost everyone above the age of 20 have. But for the next 5-15 years, most people will not be able to utilize a 3D-printer in the way it can be used, therefor I want to close that gap with a really nice service. The time is right to bridge this gap, since printers and software is getting cheaper and more powerful, but the level of knowledge can’t keep up. That’s about what I will disclose right now.

I’ve also been prompted to write a book about 3D. As you now noticed I can go on and on about 3D and a few people have really given me a lot of love and complements after talks and presentations, So I thought maybe I can try to compress some of my thoughts, ideas and tips to a eBook about 3D and 3D-printing. So that’s also something that I’m working on right now.”

That’s really cool! Wow, a book! When can we expect it? – 3D Print Tech Design

“Haha, Thank you! We’ll as soon as it’s getting ready for pre-order, you will see hints about it on the Youtube channel.”

Great. Speaking of that, Where can our readers find more about you and your awesome projects? – 3D Print Tech Design

My YouTube is the central hub here. The most important content is being posted there in form of videos. www.youtube.com/amid2d3d (Anton changed the name from a previous company he ran)

You can also find more in depth content at my fairly new website; www.antonmansson.com

And of course a bunch of stuff at my links: