Richard Hart, the television journalist who hosted the Discovery Channel series “The Next Step“, visited TechShop last week. He interviewed Jim Newton, TechShop’s founder, as well as some of the members. I happened to be there working on a 3D CAD model that I’ve built using the 3D printer, so he interviewed me about the 3D printer. Amazingly, the lens of the HDTV camera didn’t crack when called upon to record my ugly mug.

A “Drive to Discover” segment aired on the KGO-TV (ABC 7, San Franscisco) news at 11PM last night, and it actually included a brief shot where I compared the 3D printer to the traditional process of making molds for plastic injection molding. The video (Flash player required) and a transcript are available from the KGO-TV website.

We were told that a longer program is expected to be made available on the web, and it is possible that some of the footage may be used on the Discovery Channel and/or his new series “Next Step 2.0″. Several segments of the latter can be seen on YouTube.

I enjoyed meeting Mr. Hart. He seemed genuinely excited about the potential of TechShop. It was also great to learn more about some of the cool things other TechShop members are doing. I wonder whether there might be any interest among TechShop members of having a monthly show-and-tell meeting or the like.

Actually I’m fairly surprised at how many of my friends must watch the KGO news at 11 PM on Sundays, as three friends told me they saw the segment.

So far I’ve designed one piece, a calculator button similar to those of the HP-41C. I need to update the dimensions and add a draft angle for moldability. I have been impressed with how easy it is to use SolidWorks. The last time I used any commercial CAD software, it was incredibly difficult to create even simple 2D drawings.

I really wish there was a Linux version of SolidWorks. However, it seems to run fine on Windows running in a beta of VMware Workstation 6. I wasn’t sure how it would perform since it uses OpenGL heavily, but I haven’t observed any performance problems.

There is a Linux version of Pro/Engineer Wildfire, one of the competing CAD programs. I might buy the student edition of that for comparison. When I’m ready to start doing 3D work for business purposes, and need to spend big bucks on a commercial license, the availability of a native Linux version will factor heavily in my decision, unless Pro/E is significantly more difficult to use.