What Obico/The Spaghetti Detective means to me

Let me introduce myself first. I’m Mitch, a team member of Obico and I’m in this world for 25 years now. I live in Belgium and I like longboarding, riding with my motorcycle and hanging out with my friends. I’m also interested in formula one, MotoGP, DnD and 3D printing. I am very into technology to make my life easier. You could call me a geek although my friends prefer the word nerd because I’m also a big superhero fan. The word nerd isn’t as offensively used anymore then back in the days anyway so I’m cool with that.

Anyway, let us get to my story. And that starts with DnD (Dungeons and Dragons). I’ve been playing DnD for quite some years, I had a great group that thought me all about it. We were playing with those standard miniatures you can buy in the store. But as time turned out, there were so many enemies and characters that not everything was covered by the factory’s standard miniatures. Insert the 3D printer. A whole new world opened, not only could I print custom DnD miniatures but also superhero busts, cosplay props and practical things like coat hangers and adapters to make different things fit on one and another for example.

I quickly noticed that going with the SD card back and forth to the pc and printer was not going to cut it for me. It was too big of a hassle imo. I quickly came across OctoPrint and a raspberry pi. This was the start of many future DIY projects. I quickly got used to the remote control and interface OctoPrint has to offer. I started looking for solutions to see my prints away from home. It did not take me long to find TSD. A remote AI monitoring software. Not only could I now see my prints from work for example, but it would let me know when the print went south and pause it for me. This saved me quite some spools of wasted filament.

I also joined the discord channel for some help I needed with the webcam streaming. Before I knew it, I started helping other people with problems they had, and this did not go unnoticed by the team. I soon joined the team and the ball got rolling. I saw TSD grow from the front row and realized TSD is more then the software alone. The community really helped each other. 3D Printing-related or not. After some time, we came up with the Spaghettilapse contest. People could share their time-lapses and collect as many likes as they could get and there, something unexpected happened. I started chatting with Marc, a guy from Germany very into 3d printing comic and superhero related masks, busts, gadgets and so on. Every 3d printer help question ended in an hour-long conversation about comics, movies, differences between the two countries, ...

It was nice to meet someone with the same interests as me. My girlfriend and I decided to go on a holiday in Germany so I could meet Marc in real life. I do have to say this was situated at the beginning of corona. So, we really wanted to go on a vacation before a lockdown would come in play. We had a great time meeting him. He became our personal guide for the day, and it was awesome! And now, we stay connected and play video games together. Also, this summer I’m going back to Germany to meet him, and I look forward to it already. If it weren’t for TSD back in the day, I wouldn’t have met such a great friend!

I guess what I’m trying to say is that TSD, to me, quickly became more then just failure detection software. It’s a community, a social platform as you will for people all over the world with the same interest (3d printing). And because of what The Spaghetti Detective has become and according to Kenneth (the founder) where it will grow in to, the name doesn’t really work anymore. Kenneth aims to create true smart 3d printing, aims to create something no one will think about doing, aims to stay ahead of the, albeit small, competition. Doable? With help of the community. Too ambitious? Probably. But you know what they say: Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star. Kenneth put quite a lot of his cards into the community which he believes that distinguishes Obico from the other players on the market.

I admit that it’ll take a while before I start calling it Obico instead of TSD but the rebrand makes sense to me. We are getting closer and closer to true smart 3d printing every day. Thanks to the input of our community Obico will get there and we should never forget the roots of how it all started.