What you need to know: French startup “Drawn” offers 3D printed furniture and design objects. Now it is launching it’s first Kickstarter campaign. All creations will be printed by a modified industrial robot called Galatéa. 

Today at 10:00 am CET, French startup “Drawn” launches its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. They aim for €15.000 ($18.000) in order to launch their first range of decorative objects created  from french designers. Drawn promises to “involve its clients with the production, delivering customizable designs, which are locally produced right before their eyes” in just two hours (the latter will happen mainly at trade shows).

Anyone who uses a 3D printer knows this printing speed for a piece of furniture sounds far fetched. But Drawn’s founder, Sylvain Charpiot, “adopted” a 2-ton industrial robot found in a dismantled car factory. After a two years of experimenting, Galatéa, as Charpiot calls the robot, was showcased in June 2014 in Paris during MakerFaireParis. And it managed to print a chair in two hours. Drawn uses different plastics for their objects, especially the one used to make Lego bricks.

https://vimeo.com/104415859

Individual 3D printed furniture : “You design, we print”

If the campaign gets funded, Charpiot wants to convince suppliers to launch innovative and environmentally friendly materials charged with wood, linen or miscanthus. The entrepreneur is hoping to create a smaller, movable brother of Galatéa, which can manufacture i.e. at trade shows. In the long run, Charpiot dreams a network of shops, where you can personalize furniture and watch them 3D printed right before your eyes. The press release continues: “During the campaign, backers will help the locally made design adventure by simply supporting the project, or buying some decorative objects, some part of furniture in exclusive edition, or get customized objects or even become a designer.”

For us, it sounds like there are some “if’s” and “maybe’s” involved in the campaign. But we’ve seen Drawn’s designs and even sat on their furniture on 3D Printshow in Paris. They were comfortable, great looking, high quality and had a warm, organic feel to it – French design at it‘s best. So if you’re into industrial design and want to be involved in the creating process yourself, you might want to take a look at Drawn’s Kickstarter campaign.

UPDATE: The Kickstarter campaign was  funded on 6/26/2015, just three days after the start.