Last week, I mentioned that Thingiverse had been acquired by MyMiniFactory. Now both sites share the tagline “Dare to be human.”

This week, I spoke with the new CEO of Thingiverse, Romain Kidd, who was in Taipei, Taiwan. Kidd was the founding CEO of MyMiniFactory, starting in October 2013.  He said that the deal to acquire Thingiverse closed at the end of January, though the companies had been in talks to buy it for more than eight years. 

Thingiverse, which was created by MakerBot, has bounced around through several owners from MakerBot in Brooklyn to Stratasys to the Netherlands, home of Ultimaker.  Now, Kidd said, “Thingiverse has found a home with people who really understand content.” It is no longer the side project of a hardware manufacturer.

MyMiniFactory is a content-creator platform that found its niche in tabletop gaming for RPGs.  Thingiverse, which Kidd said is the #1 player in this space, will remain separate from MyMiniFactory. However, Kidd said they plan to introduce new features such as human curation, collaborative tools and monetization. 

“Human curation is key to MyMiniFactory,” said Kidd. In the early days, all 3D designs uploaded to site were printed out by team members.  Now, they have other ways of validating a design but it still involves humans in the process.  Once the problem was that 3D designs were easily copied; now it is that they are easily generated by AI. To protect the creators who sell their designs on MyMiniFactory, the company focused on identifying and removing AI-generated content.  “We’re not fighting AI with AI,” said Kidd. They rely on having humans as part of the process. 

Maintaining quality is important to the community.  “We don’t want low-quality AI slop,” he said.  “We came up with “SoulCrafted” label to identify designs made by human creators. 

The SoulCrafted initiative is a self-certification program that a creator can use, a bit like marking produce as organic, to differentiate their work from AI-generated content. The site will use curation to make sure that label is properly used.

Kidd said that Thingiverse’s audience is much different and broader than MyMiniFactory consisting of engineers, designers and open source hardware developers.  They will be pragmatic about allowing AI-assisted designs because AI is embedded in the tools that engineers use but they will introduce the SoulCrafted label on Thingiverse as well. 

The biggest concern of Thingiverse users is whether the site will remain free to use and whether they’d have to pay for downloads. Kidd said they are committed to continuing to have free access and for downloads on Thingverse to be free, said Kidd. At the same time, they will be adding monetization options, which he believes can help attract higher quality models from the best designers. Designers, he said, want and need the ability to sell their work online, and Thingiverse can be a much bigger marketplace for them.  He added that successful designers are the ones who are able to build a community around their designs.  On MyMiniFactory, the company has experimented with different monetization models, apart from download fees, including subscriptions (Tribes) and crowdfunding (Frontiers).

As a marketplace, Thingiverse must attract buyers as well as sellers.  I asked Kidd about functional designs, object that have some utility. Thingiverse’s Customizer tool allows user to modify parameterized designs. I once used it to create a custom stovetop knob of the dimensions I needed.  Kidd acknowledged that the customizer needs some work but a lot of people rey on it.  

Kidd and his team held an AMA earlier in this week.  “The feedback has been really positive,” said Kidd. After passing through many different hands, maybe Thingiverse has has landed with a company with a vision that cares about the platform and its community. 

Concerns about the growth of AI-generated content aren’t limited to 3D models. A recent LA Times article (behind paywall) by PJ Frantz argues that Spotify needs to label music created by AI rather than human artists.

I learned on Thursday that Moxie Lieberman of Made by Moxie passed away. “I make sculptures out of soft materials and hard feelings,” she wrote in her artist statement. Moxie was a needle felter and her needle-felted monsters were on the cover of Craft: Vol 6.

Here’s a PDF of the article she wrote for Craft Magazine on her felted monsters.

Ryan Jenkins of Wonderful Idea Company who wrote Remembering Moxie said “you couldn’t find a kinder, funnier or more generous collaborator.” His post linked to a talk that Moxie gave in 2012 during an Open Make at the Exploratorium. Gareth Branwyn introduced her.

Among other things, Moxie organized the Needlefelting Playground at Maker Faire Bay Area in 2007. Moxie will be missed. Our deepest sympathies go to her family and many friends in the maker community and we appreciate looking back on her creative life.

We had a full house for the Make: Live this week. Make: editors Keith Hammond and Sam Freeman joined me and our panel of contributors to Make: Vol. 96:

Carrie Sundra, Founder of Alpenglow Industries, announced this week that she was closing the company. “It's time to call it,” she wrote in a message on the site, “and just send out a huge thank-you and hug to everyone who has supported us, been excited about our products, and sent us kind words ever since this business started in 2009 with actual hand-dyed yarn.”

I wrote Carrie and asked her if there’s anything we could do for her. She asked if we share news about her Closing Sale.

Here's a link to the soldering kits specifically:
https://www.alpenglowindustries.com/collections/soldering-kits-all

Here's a link to the whole Closing Sale:https://www.alpenglowindustries.com/collections/closing-sale

You can also find Alpenglow Industries on Maker Shed.

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