Bre Pettis of MakerBot stopped by our little show today and spent some time on the stage with John Biggs and other notables in the manufacturing space. But afterwards Pettis, co-founder and CEO of MakerBot, joined me on the TCTV couch to geek out a bit over the fantastic MakerBot Replicator. The company also has two MakerBot Replicators printing out random doodads and toys in our first ever Hardware Alley.

As Bre explained, the original MakerBot buyers were geeks and hackers but now it’s moms and dads (like me). With the MakerBot, kids and parents can create and manufacture toys together. The Replicator can make nearly anything. It is essentially a desktop toy factory — or, for anyone else, a prototype printer allowing for rapid manufacturing.

In short MakerBot is changing the world.

Crunchbase

• BRE PETTIS

Person: Bre Pettis

Website: brepettis.com

Companies: MakerBot, goTenna, I Make Things, Thingiverse.com, NYCResistor

Bre Pettis makes things that make things. Passionate about invention, innovation, and all things DIY, Pettis builds infrastructure for creativity. He is a founder of Makerbot, a company that produces robots that make things, and a founder of NYCResistor, a hacker collective in Brooklyn. Besides being a TV host and video podcast producer, he has created new media for Etsy.com, hosted Make’s podcast Weekend Projects, and has been a schoolteacher, artist, and puppeteer.

→ Learn more