Jerry: Welcome to another episode of the Co-Extrusion Podcast. JJ, I think we have a pretty good topic for today. So I have been getting emails from a company called Maker Road. Maker Road, they've partnered with Sunlu. And actually, I saw this in person. It's an actual product that exists. I saw this in person in Shanghai. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Hmm. Jerry: at DCT Asia, MakerRoad is designing kits similar to Bamboo Lab. You know Bamboo Lab, I don't know what name of it is. You've got those kits for like RC cars and controllers. What are they called? Cyberbrick, okay. So they're designing something similar to Cyberbrick, Cyberbricks and it's... My understanding is they deliver you a whole electronics kit package and then you go and you 3D print these JJ Shankles: The cyber brick, yeah. Jerry: F1 style race car shells and it's open source so you can print your own shells or let me rephrase or let me say I think it's open source, but the point here is You go and you 30 print your own race car shells now you have a toy, right? The difference between maker road and cyber brick from my understanding is it's more tuned towards adults rather than tuned towards JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry: Like, I don't want to say like a child's toy, but cyber break really feels. Cyber break feels like it's more geared towards like a teenage, like middle school, high school kind of environment. Maker road feels like it's geared towards people in their mid to late twenties. So super cool. JJ Shankles: Yeah, looks, from looking at some of the pictures and comparing a bit more, it looks more tuned for racing RCs versus like, that's one of the downsides that's disappointing with cyber brick is that like they're not very fast. And even the ones that try to use different gear ratios to like speed it up a little bit, it's like the motors in the cyber brick kits just like aren't very high. They're not super powerful. Jerry: Yeah. JJ Shankles: And so you just can't make it very fast. Versus this, in one of the pictures, the guy is using like a legit RC car. Controller. Yes, like an actual RC code. Jerry: an actual an actual controller versus a 3D printed like, which is cool. Not not poo pooing on cyber bricks at all. I think it's cyber bricks is incredible. But JJ Shankles: Yes, yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. But it's kind of targeting a different use case of racing versus open source or open... I heard a different word recently of the difference between open source versus open platform, maybe. So it's like, here's the platform to build on and it's open for you to do whatever you want versus like, we're not releasing our source code. So, but it could be, you know, it's an open platform. Jerry: yeah. Mmm yeah, I see, yeah, yeah. JJ Shankles: to say, hey, design your GT3 cars, your Formula One cars, your whatever cool car you want to put on top of this chassis and electronics setup. It's such a cool project. I think that's so cool that companies are doing this. Yeah. Jerry: Well, so on Maker Road, they published something for their official launch and this goes back to March. So this isn't new, but it says at the recent TCT Asia 2026 in Shanghai, Maker Kit made its debut with the RC car series showcased within the dream powered creation space sandbox installation. So that's where I want to get to sandbox installation, which sounds very much like. This is like when you say a sandbox environment, that's basically saying this is kind of like your oyster. You take it and you go build upon it. Right. So if you want to take this RC or this F1 RC series environment, you want to build a different racetrack and you want to race against your friends in like a custom track, custom hills, custom, you know, S turns, U turns, whatever. Like it's a sandbox environment. And JJ Shankles: Yeah. Yeah. Jerry: They go on to say, you know, marketing jargon, but this is a vivid demonstration of the deep integration between 3D printing and electronic components and the deep integration between 3D printing and electronic components. That's another thing that I really want to hit on because cyber bricks. That is what cyber bricks is. We provide you the electronics that you don't have to source. You don't have to design, develop, build the PCBs. We've already developed the hard part. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: Here you take the hard part and you integrate it with the 3D printing. Go make the custom F1 car shells. Go make the custom whatever and paint it to your liking. know, whatever filament you... clear filament. The fun stuff. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So when they talk about this open sandbox, will it be a design studio that they're making? Or just sort of the bottom part of the car? There's all this flowery language they're putting around it, so I'm trying to understand what it is more than just, here's some hardware. If there is more than just, here's some hardware. Jerry: So... I think so. So I guess this is all like kind of leading up to a lot of I don't knows and more. If we talk about it, this is cool. I'd like to see this. I think the broader community would like to see this. I am supposed to be getting a maker road kit in the mail is supposed to be delivered by now actually, but it's been delayed. I don't know why, but I guess. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Yes. Awesome. Yeah. Jerry: I don't really have an exact answer more so I think it's just here are the models. You can design your own models. You can paint the models that we provide this way they can be printed in the custom colors with the CFS AMS platforms. says looking ahead MakerKit will continue to unlock a wider range of product modules. So more modules module sounds click JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mmm. Yeah. Jerry: know, click into place. like sounds very much more like professional cyber bricks. JJ Shankles: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see sort of how it's different than Cyberbrick with these different modules and different things. I'm excited if it's just faster. If it's just faster, I'm all for it. Like, very much hitting a different demographic audience, you know, like use case here, because I love the Cyberbrick, but the speed is the one downside, I would say, to those projects. Jerry: Yeah. yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I completely agree with you. But I think from my perspective, like, this is a super incredibly cool project. Someone's going to really love this. Someone's going to buy multiple kits and then they're going to have fun with their friends and all. However, I think what's more important to see about this is that cyber brick. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: They were the first to be kind of a skeleton platform where they sell the skeleton to the customers or to the users. And then the users can customize with dirty printing on top of it. Now we have Maker Road. Maker Road maybe is the second or the third. Obviously this is difficult to tell, but let's just say they're the second one to do it. What is really good to see is that other people, other brands are adopting this. They're not going to be the last. So where does this go? Right? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: You're not supposed to eat electrical cords. So where does it end, right? Like, hopefully it doesn't. What happens when a brand comes out and they say, we're a tool manufacturer. We make professional garage tools, right? Let's say DeWalt, right? They come out and they've got some kind of an online platform where you can... JJ Shankles: Hahaha Yeah. Jerry: select all of the tools that you own that are DeWalt branded and you can make custom organizers for your garage. They have the skeleton platform. You buy the hardware from the company and now instead of having to go to the open source market and then get Gridfinity and get user built organizational tools, you can get custom fit tools. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or just more everything. Like everything could be so much more like integrated this where like the brand puts out the framework and lets you fill in the funds part where it's like, here's the base tool and then make your everything off of it. Because the electronics and the motors and the batteries, you know, that side of things is difficult for the average consumer to use. But making like Jerry: yeah. JJ Shankles: cyberbricks more children's friendly. Like we talk about cyberbrick being like, you know, it's not, I wouldn't give it to a toddler, but what if they made a cyberbrick alternative that was for like five year olds where it's like, yeah, these are real snap in place, like Lego duplo sized modules you're putting together better than Lego could do with their, whatever their new smart bricks are or something like, doesn't look smart, but this would be awesome. Yeah. Jerry: Yeah, well, at that point, at that point, that's like an educational tool at that point. So whatever brand builds it, whether it's Maker Road or Bamboo Lab or Cyber Bricks or some other brand new brand coming into the market, like this is and this is a concept that anyone can come to. So children's toys are that market is huge, right? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jerry: Because JJ Shankles: yeah. Jerry: STEM education, everyone talks about Lincoln Logs and Kinects and Lego. And if you can get kids to twist their brain around STEM early on, then it'll help them later on in life, right? And if you can get custom toys, like kids are kids. What if a kid doesn't want to play with a toy because it's yellow? JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah Jerry: What if a kid doesn't want to play the toy because it's green? Right? You could take, you could literally take this framework and print it in whatever color. I mean, that's, it sounds silly to say, but JJ Shankles: Yeah. And the printers are getting easy enough that like my nieces and nephews can use them at surprisingly young ages. Like, and they're just using like a Crayola to K1 and they're like using it. And I was like, wow. It's not even like, they have a bamboo lab, which is super easy to use. just like they're picking it up so quickly to be able to play with these things and make their own toys and customize and tinker. and so yeah, it's awesome that Jerry: yeah. Hell yeah. JJ Shankles: Now we're getting a second. platform, I would say. Hopefully it becomes more to make it this platform of tinkering and playing and... yeah. Jerry: Well, yeah, because right now the only way to offload a 3D printing project to say someone in middle school that has the ability to operate the printer is to give them a fully 100 % 3D designed thing that someone has upload some random person has uploaded to MakerWorld or to printables. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: And they can download that project and they can print all the pieces and assemble it. that's great. But that doesn't get you everywhere. Like what if you want, what if, what if you want to expand into electronics, like a clock, a 3d printed clock, right? Yeah. I mean, obviously you could do some kinds of crazy mechanical stuff, but that that's unrealistic, right? Like you just need the guts for the clock, right? Now, now a brand can come in. They, they build the framework. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. huh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: And then there's instructions on how to either design the components for the clock or you can go into some digital platform and tweak the way they've already got the components designed and you can tweak the way they look at different textures to them, whatever. then then you can send it off to the printer. And now you've got not now you're building a full project, right? From learning how to use the printer to learning how to assemble the project. JJ Shankles: Yes, yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: And it's like, cool. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny you picked clocks. That's like the easiest thing to do. Like they sell the modules for clocks where it's like it's a cube and you put it in the back and turn it on. Yeah. But yeah, no, all of these like, kind of like it's all about giving them step one. Like here's your first project. Now tinker it. And like with these, it's so easy to like you finish with a cyber brick thing and you're like, man, I wish the tire was cooler. Jerry: yeah. Yeah, the reason the reason JJ Shankles: here. I wish the the front bumper did this, not that. And it's like, I'm already thinking through the next iterations of things to make it custom, to make it mine, to make it different. And yeah, making it... it'll be interesting the ease of CAD programs towards younger and younger. For those... for the powerful customizations, I think, could be an interesting thing. How it's, you know... taken on by, whether it's Maker Road or Maker World or, you know. Jerry: Yeah, well, if you look at all the skills that go into some of these projects, if you do 100 % of it, even me, right, I am by trade, I am an engineer, and I've been doing it. And I'm not I'm not saying I'm 100 years old, but I've been doing it for a long time, right? I started CAD work when I was in, in like middle school. Even I wouldn't be able to start from literally nothing and build a whole entire project because that requires JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah. Jerry: Being able to use the CAD software. Start with up with something that you want to design. That problem is a hard problem to solve. Starting with that, then going to CAD, learning how to use that CAD software, then learning how to use the printer. And then if it uses electronic components, learning how to build electronics. And then once you know how to build them, then you got to learn how to manufacture them. Like it's such an absolutely massive project. Being able to just take chunks out of the top of it. JJ Shankles: Mm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: and I take chunks out of everything and just offload that on some other brand. This way you can make it a more manageable task. Making it something more manageable is easy for the yous and me's that are the end user. JJ Shankles: Yes, yeah. Yeah, that's very true. The whole not knowing where to begin is the hardest part of 3D print or of like 3D design and modeling where you're just like, it's a blank slate. What do I? What do I begin? Jerry: Well, I really love the example you gave about saying, I don't like the tires on this car. Let me remove the tires and update the tires. you can learn, like, if you don't have a car at all, you might not know where to begin with making the car. But let's just say, for instance, MakerRoad, and I don't know if they're doing this, but let's say they delivered you a fully 3D printed customizable car ready to go out of the box. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: But then they delivered the files for you to be able to modify it as needed. Now they've taken an even bigger chunk off the top and all you have to do is modify it if you want to. now you don't even have to. And so now it's like, I want new tires. So all you do is unscrew the tires and put two new tires or put four new tires on. and so now it's like so much, it's even easier to get to the point of like customization. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's what I feel like on these. blanked on what this is called. Maker... multiboard! Multiboard! It's now multi-build is the whole thing. So I was like, which one is it? But these surfaces are how it connects up together. And so it's so easy to just, like, in the 3D CAD, you cut it off here, make sure this part stays the same, and then you know it will work. You know it will connect correctly if it has this part. And so then you cut it off and then design whatever you want next to it. Jerry: sponsor, the board, the multi board. Mmm. Huh. JJ Shankles: makes the like, okay, you're starting with something that works, the connecting surfaces, you're not gonna touch those in CAD, change everything else. Makes it so it will connect to the board correctly. If it connects to whatever, if I wanted to be a cup holder or something else, that part's on me. But it will work with the board just so I don't touch that part of it. Makes it really easy to... Jerry: Yeah, yeah. yeah. JJ Shankles: to experiment and try things and it will technically work. Same with the tires example of an RC car where it's like the part that connects to the hub axle, don't touch that, but everything else you make crazy and do whatever you want and it will connect to this car. Whether it spins well, that's on you. Yeah. Jerry: yeah. That's another thing. Well, what's crazy is a lot of these projects. You know, you and I have both said it at least twice each, like it's a matter of like knowing where to start. What's crazy is if you're given a starting point and you have momentum to go. Momentum is the hardest thing to gain. And when you gain that traction and you're going, it's easy to keep going, even if you're learning something new. And so. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jerry: being able to start with a project that already exists, is already functional, whether it's multi board or multi bins or, or any of these things we've talked about or anything that a future brand could possibly like design and compile and provide to a customer or a user. If that allows the customer, just the immediate momentum to get going, print these files and it will work. And then JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: Once you do that and once you assemble them, you already have the momentum. You know how it works. You know how it gets assembled. You can keep going. It's like designing like this. This almost this this gets into crazy enough. It kind of gets into like twist your brain, right? LDOs, the kits they compile for 3D printed 3D printers. You get all of the pieces and then you have an instruction booklet and JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry: Now you don't have to you don't have to go source components or source hardware. All of it comes to you and you know, if you follow these instructions, it's going to work. So it. This is like, I don't know, this idea of compiling kits of literally anything that you can then go 3D print the remainder of is a genius idea. It just. We need to figure out how it can. Yeah. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm surprised there's not been more. Like, it's cool that there's like these tool... why is there not... every time the... even on printables they have all these brands that have worked with them and it's like... that's really cool. Why is it not more? Jerry: How do we get this out to the broader community and the broader audience? I opened up the example earlier about DeWalt Tools, one of the largest tool companies, at least in the US. don't know about the broader world. how do you get... Because 3D printing is very... It's in a lot of homes now. How do you get larger brands to adopt the idea of this? Because... JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: Sure. On the, on the backend, Dewalt has to go design a software in order to allow its users to fully customize organization, like OEM organizational, customized organizational structure. However, if they do that and they offer it for free for the community, how many people are going to, how many people are going to swap from Makita, Craftsman, just to go to Dewalt because now They've got this free software that they can use to make 100 % fully customized to the tools they own organizational structure. JJ Shankles: Yeah. And looking on this, I'm on Printables right now, and they have a list of the brands that have officially put models on there. And Festool is the only tool brand, and that's kind of a high-end tool brand. And they only have 27 models on there. It's cool that they're there, but like, and some of these are coasters and a headphone holder. Jerry: yeah. Yeah, it doesn't. But take it, take this, take it like one step further. Think about any brand that you have in your house. Like obviously you're not going to get Walmart brand or whatever, whatever, but like any name brand that you have in your house. Like for instance, we have tons of hex clad cookware. Now I don't want to get into comments about whether hex class good or bad because there's a lot of debate there, but it's a very, it's a very big named brand, right? Pots, lids. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Jerry: knives, all of these different things for your kitchen, for cooking. People hate organizing their lids. They hate organizing their knives. You can, if a brand can adopt 3D printing as a very real and valid functional tool in the everyday house, now you can make customized lid holders. What about like spice racks? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: go to printables, there's hundreds of spice racks. got you. But like. A name brand that makes name branded spice rack- sp- or spice jars. Now you can customize all of it. JJ Shankles: Yeah. If McCormick or something spent $2,000 to design a custom spice rack system, how it feels like that would be easy marketing for them. Basically free to spend how small amount would be to design a couple, you know, a handful of designs, like, and like the whole starting it going of being like, okay, cool. Here's a, here's the template for the spice rack. Jerry: It really- It would. JJ Shankles: now put it out there and see other people build on top of that. Like, free advertising. Jerry: This is, and it's not even necessarily just free advertising. That's a way to buy customers that are already deep in the ecosystem of another brand. Because I can tell you right now, if I have, I don't know, if I've got unstackable dishes of some kind, JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm, yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: and a brand just because just by just by nature of the design, right? Some designs just are more aesthetic and don't stack. But by nature, the brand if I've got these dishes, I don't stack, right? And this brand was like, by the way, if you print this thing that we already designed, you can now stack all these dishes neatly in your pantry or neatly in your cabinets. Might be good. What if I were I should say if I didn't own them, maybe I would be willing to go move over. Like, I think you get the idea. I'm saying is JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It'd be pretty hard to... It would have to be strong enough that it wouldn't work with your current pots and pans to pull you over to someone else. And with tools, whole like, to get me to switch to Dewalt would have to be like really cool. Jerry: Yeah. With tools, it's expensive, right? To buy all new tools. the idea isn't that necessarily I'm going to... Maybe I'm not going to buy all these other customers immediately because throwing away all of your old tools is expensive if you're to buy new ones. But in the long run, can... That's like, you know, a customer might look at your brand differently. Like, you're providing that to your customers free of charge. People like free things. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah, like... Jerry: people love when they're given extra and don't have to pay for it. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. And people love that, like, the ecosystem and community around a product that you buy. And so for the brand to be like, hey, yeah, you want to lean into that? Cool. You want to 3D print some more things with our name on it? Go for it. Like, for them to just lean in feels like such a great opportunity that the 3D printing community, think, would really enjoy. Jerry: yeah. I know. And actually, as we're having this conversation now, I'm thinking back to Ford. I think it was Ford. Ford designed a truck a couple of years, like three or four years ago that had a bunch of slots in the car and they designed some components that you could 3D print to have those slots in your car do different things. What if JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry: Every manufacturer like Chevy, Ford, everyone else said, we're not going to provide built in cup holders because everyone uses a different cup. However, if you want to, or actually, let me take this back. We're going to provide cup holders, but like we're going to provide you the model to adapt this cup holder to all these different sizes. So like how many times have you put a tall boy or like a Red Bull can inside your cup holder and then you hit the brakes? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: and the can just spills out and it gets everywhere. A lot of people have probably done it. But what if like Ford gave you an adapter? A model. They don't have to manufacture it and sell it with the car, but just a model. You can print it and it fits neatly inside the cup holder and now it allows you to nestle in a tall boy Red Bull can. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because those have probably been designed for most popular cars. And so for the brand to just go ahead and like get ahead of it, I think, I don't know, it's really cool for them to be like, hey, we already made that accessory for you instead of like, the community will do it. Like everyone else will figure it out later. It's like, no, like let's do that ourselves and get ahead of it. Get that free marketing buzz. I hope it helped Ford, but I don't... Jerry: Yeah. JJ Shankles: It's Ford. They're so big. Like, I don't think it changes people's opinion on Ford, like... Jerry: Yeah, they probably but It's it's an interesting thought though because now Ford can design things like they can design mounting brackets into the back of headrests and Now you go to the Ford website you download iPad 12 mount iPhone 13 iPhone 17 mount or like table mount for like chips like you want to put your bag of chips on the table and now you're JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: Pastures can have all these, you know, clickable accessories in and it's just. JJ Shankles: Yeah, and that customized, again, going back to the same of all of these, it's, they just need the clips and open up those clip files and then you add onto that and anyone can add on whatever they want to make it totally their own and totally custom to yourself and make the car yourself. Car, really customize it, you know, make it your own. That's so cool. And more brands should do it. Jerry: That's what I know. We're getting to the point where 3D printing is becoming more widely accepted. I think we're at the point now where most people have at least heard of 3D printing, right? If you go back two or three or four years ago, there's probably a lot of people that still hadn't even heard of it. I think we're at least at the point where everyone knows what it is, if not knows someone that owns a 3D printer. JJ Shankles: Yeah Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jerry: So I don't really believe it's too far out of the realm of possibility to get wider, larger brands adopting it this way, customize and adapt. I don't know. I think we're almost there. If not already. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think we're, it feels like we're on that tipping point of like, so many people have printers, or they're selling so many printers every year, and they are getting easier and easier. It's like, it's getting to that point where like, okay, I could see, I don't know, a cheap Creality Pie at, or not the SparkX, at Costco or something, being like the big ticket item for one winter, and like, everyone will have a printer after that. Like... Jerry: yeah. Or think about the other way around a big brand like Apple or Google designs and pushes a very serious, like 3D printable item that goes into your daily workflow. So think about from that side, they released this and then Walmart's like, Apple is selling or Apple's releasing models to which they wouldn't. But you get what I'm saying. This big brand is releasing a model. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Yeah. Jerry: Walmart now wants to jump on the bandwagon. They want to get the Spark X on the shelves because millions and millions and millions of people are like, I want to print that thing, but I don't have a printer. Where do I buy one? Walmart. So you think of it from either side, right? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Walmart. Yeah. Yeah, and the printer's easy to use and under 200 bucks, like, I could see that doing numbers, for sure. Yeah. Jerry: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's a very interesting topic. Getting larger brands adopting dirty printing and releasing models. We kind of ran out of time. We could probably talk for hours on this. yeah, definitely let us know in the comments down below what you guys think. What do you think it's going to take to get a larger brand to adopt, whether it's open source kits or models to update and customize cars and stuff? JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jerry: Let us know what you think it's gonna take to get brands to adopt this. We post every week. JJ Shankles: Yeah. And what do you think about Cyber Brick and Make Road? Are you excited about that? I'm interested to see who's used these project, these DIY kits and what they think about them. Jerry: Yeah, we post every week, every Friday at 9am. And if you haven't guys, make sure you like and subscribe, subscribe so you can see next week and the week after podcast episodes. So anyway, I think that's all we got for today. So yeah, yeah. JJ Shankles: Yeah. And we'll see you next week. Bye everybody.