Trade shows come and go. Some you remember and some you don´t. Even though i haven´t been to that many trade shows shows as a exhibitor i´ve been to a few and one of my definite favourites was the Model Railway & Hobby Trade Fair back in 2015.
Joining Creative Tools
This fair was special for a number of reasons. One of them being that earlier that year i joined the Creative Tools team here in Sweden. So even though i had actually been helping out on the exact same trade show the year before this time was my first as part of the team. So the 3 person strong Creative Tools Stockholm team was me, Anton and Filip. They are both two really awesome dudes and of course that made the planning and preperations alot more fun.
The Model Railway & Hobby Trade Fair
This fair had quickly outgrown the smaller facilities from the earlier years and as the year before had been a success both for us but for the event organisers aswell the expectations for this years event was high.
As this was a hobby fair with alot of focus on model railway we planned on showing alot of 3D printed trains aswell as the stuff i had from the OpenRC Projects. And as we were going to showcase both FDM and SLA printers we did our best to print models to show of both techniques. Someone also came up with the idea of making a small mountain out of styrofoam. So we would go from a modern stage with a SW1500 train on the on side of the mountain and a wild west style setup on the other side using some 3D printed train we borrowed from my dad. We also had a “kids corner” with 3D printed trains & tracks in H0 scale with whiche the kids could play and there were even little toy trains they could bring home. Very popular i might add.
OpenRC F1 Release
The weeks before the fair i had also worked many nights designing and printing a new project, the OpenRC F1 and i finished it literally the night before the first day. So a bit tired but also excited to finally be able to show it off! Little did i know at the time how popular it would later become. Accompanying the new F1 was also the other OpenRC Projects, the Truggy, Touring Car and the 450 quad from the year before that gathered it´s fair share of attention.
3D printers
Except for all the prints we were showcasing printers aswell of course. We had the Flashforge Dreamer, Form 1+ and the (at the time) very popular Wanhao Duplicator I3 and they all drew alot of attention. Even though a few visitors were quite sceptical the majority was very positive to 3D printing as a complement to whatever area they were in. Especially the Form 1+ got it´s fair share of attention from some train model builders that came to the conclusion that “this is actually half decent”. All in all there were positive reactions and alot of great discussions emerged.
3D Scanning
As part of our presence at the show we also did a 3D scan of swedish model train YouTube Christian ” Rallar Rookien” Hedlund. So Anton did a 3D scan of Christian that we then printed in the Form 1+. Once finished we gave the 3D printed model to Christian and it found it´s way in to a diorama he was building for his YouTube channel and later it was actually shown in a Swedish television show. We also printed a custom cover of a classic swedish train engine with Christians name on it.
Check out the Gallery
I´ve gathered a bunch of pictures from the event in a gallery that you can check out here. So either if you want to see all the stuff we showcased or if you want to see what i look like without hair and beard there´s something in there for you. Also if your going to attend the 3D Meetup Sweden in Helsingborg in April you will be able to see alot of the stuff in these pictures.