Sponsors are a huge part of Hackagong. Without the generous contributions from our sponsors, we wouldn’t be running this awesome Hackathon! This is Sponsor Watch, where we take a quick look at one of our sponsors.

Company: MADMAT 3D Printing
Company Website: www.madmat3dprinting.com
Location: 75 Princes Highway, Albion Park Rail, NSW, 2527. Attached to the right side of the Danics Building
Number of Employees: 5

What does your company do?

MADMAT 3D Printing allows people to get items 3D designed and printed at an affordable cost. We also now sell one of the widest ranges of FDM Filament including 22 colours and over 8 different materials. With a wide pool of knowledge available we hope to help the 3D Printing community take off and sell printers in future that we can support directly.

How did your company first get started? What’s the origin story?

When I was younger I was always amazed by the idea of 3D Printing and thought it was going to be out of reach for another 20 years, until one day I found out that it’s affordable and here today!
The motivation to take it from just a hobby to a small business was due to their being such a lack of local support and knowledge in the field so I wanted to establish that at a local scale and hope to take it further in the future.

Why did you sponsor Hackagong 2014?

Because it sits perfectly within our business plan and to help local people to achieve their goals.
Once approached without hesitation I knew it was the event that we needed to be apart of.

Has your company ever held internal hackathons?

Not yet as there are a lot of demands on time running them, but not something that we’ll rule out for the future.

What is the most awesome thing or project your company has done?

Well besides actually setting the business up, building our own Kossel 3D Printer and designing the parts to get the best possible quality out of it has been the best project. Taking a bunch of parts, electronics and spool of plastic and telling it to be a printer and it actually working is really exciting.

What’s an internal/industry problem your company would like to solve?

Lack of education and after sales support. It seems to be a rather common practice of 3D Printing for someone to buy them and then they don’t know what to do with them or how to get the best quality out of it. We would like to solve that by allowing more local training classes and showing what can be done.

What are you most looking forward to at Hackagong 2014?

Being able to reach such a large audience that all have a passion for making things. From the 3D Printing training days I noticed that a lot of designers weren’t aware that 3D Printing was so attainable so it will be an awesome 30hrs

Are you currently hiring and if so, what type of person are you looking for?

Yes and no, primarily we outsource a lot of jobs to keep running costs low during these early stages.
We are interested in meeting with people in design and anyone with a 3D Printer. During busy periods sometimes it’s not possible to keep up with demand on either of these.

If you have experience in design or access to some premium CAD software we would be more than interested to meet up and talk.

What trending technology are you most excited for over the next 5 years?

Virtual Reality stuff I think is going to be really awesome and can’t wait for it to be here and now just like 3D printing is.

Hackagong thanks MADMAT 3D Printing and our other sponsors for their generous contribution for this years event.