8 minute read
STARTUP GOA
MiniBuild3D, “ is a brainchild of duo Archit
Borkar & Rukma Bhonsule. Archit is doing his final year in Mechanical Engineering from Goa College of Engineering while
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Rukma Bhonsule is doing her graduation from Goa Engineering college in
Electronics and Telecommunication.”
By IG Team
MINIBUILD3D A BRAINCHILD OF ARCHIT & RUKMA
B o t h h a v e b e e n w o r k i n g together in many projects right from the First Year of their c o l l e g e a n d t h e n f i n a l l y d e c i d e d t o e n t e r i n t o a partnership with the startup called "MiniBuild3D" that deals with Design and 3D printing. Archit handles the Technical part of it while Rukma takes care of marketing and social media. The Incredible Goa team approached the duo to find out more about their journey and these are the excerpts of the interview conducted with them.
IG - Please tell us more about yourself and your startup.
ARCHIT: I am very passionate about this field of Engineering & Product design where I always find myself involved and working on projects by ways of r e - e n g i n e e r i n g t h i n g s o r working on them such as Smart W a t c h e s , S m a r t S w i t c h Controller, etc and that is how I entered this field of 3D Printing and having a 3D Printer is really a useful yet resourceful tool for a CAD Designer because it helps project the imagination and brings it to life. How a 3D printer works is that by melting the material which is a polymer filament and this is printed by using 3-axis which is done in a sequential method thereby creating the model. RUKMA: We have been friends from First Year at the College, and together we worked on many small projects including making a Smart watch out of a Coffee Lid and we required 3D printed parts, but back then we didn 't find someone who helped students as 3D printing w a s e x p e n s i v e a n d inaccessible to the student community, so we ourselves decided to get a 3D Printer, and here I suggested the idea of coming up with a Startup to help all the other students and the student community in their personal and professional projects.
I G - H o w d i d y o u r background in Engineering help you with the startup that you are working at the moment?
A R C H I T : I n i t i a l l y I w a s introduced to this segment and field of CAD which is basically Computer – Aided Design through my Curriculum and I took up some freelancing jobs, a few internships, and been designing for Startups. I have been working on developing t h e s o l a r s t r u c t u r e s , A I Products and CAD was always the basic ingredient of all these. Before making the final product we make prototypes on 3D printers since it is one of the most economical ways of creating the prototypes even in small quantities. It is faster quicker and fully customisable. RUKMA: I am more towards the Creative side of the Startup where I look after the marketing and the graphic designing part of the startup.
IG - Name the projects that you have worked on, How did you think about this 3D Printing Start-up?
ARCHIT: Basically it was my idea to create a few projects in my day to day life, I took part in a competition which was held at the national level by “Bolt IOT” where they conduct a competition called “Innovation Challenge” and my idea was to create Wall mounted Switch Controller that would operate on the basis of voice command r e m o t e l y , o r C o n t r o l l e d through the Smartphone. Using t h e s m a r t p h o n e s v o i c e command feature of “Ok, Google!” I could control my fan and lights at my home. These are the type of projects that I have been a part of and have also won 3rd place in this particular competition itself. These are the types of projects that I find myself drawn to, But during those initial days I didn't have a 3D Printer we used to work with the parts made of cardboards. The prototypes would work but the longevity of keeping the prototype was less as they were not reliable as compared to a specifically 3D printed model. This is how the idea of the 3D printing start-up came to mind, as building projects for the students who really relied a lot on these parts that needed to be crafted and c o u l d n ' t p r o c u r e t h e m otherwise. As engineering students need to fabricate the parts for their final year projects, this is how the brainchild behind our 3D
printing start-up came to place. We have worked on many projects for Engineering and Architecture students for their final year projects, and one of the model of the Mars Rover that we ourselves made is part of the Public Astronomical Observatory Goa at the Junta House, Panaji.
IG - Tell us about your startup 'MiniBuild3D' and your plans to take this idea forward.
RUKMA: The concept behind the name 'MiniBuild3D' comes from the Size of models that we craft and create which as at the scale of 20cm3. If a customer wants bigger than this particular size, we have to make several models of this size and later on put them together. The fact that our products are in the 'Miniature' or 'Mini Sized' and in the 3D category is also how the name comes about. We started the operational work on 26th May 2021, where we would design for customised products and repairs for existing products. We also do workshops for Students, where we teach them the electronics, after w h i c h w e t a k e u p t h e designing, and finally the 3D Printing. With this workshops help, the person can build a fully functional model for a demo or a product itself. This gives them more insight as to how things can be or should be built and helps us build the c u l t u r e o f t h i s i d e a b y motivating the students. In the long run, we want to take Minibuild3D further by making it accessible to the students a n d h a v e m o r e s u c h likeminded people on board in the future so that ultimately it would be a body of students that help run this start-up.
I G - Te l l u s a b o u t t h e Challenges Faced by you in your journey.
ARCHIT: The major challenge faced by us here is during the task of Designing something from scratch, but since I have had some experience with Freelance so I have to carefully take the job of sometimes repairing what people send for 3D Printing as many of these design have a few ambiguities that need to be sorted out before printing the final p r o d u c t , a n d t h e r e a r e incidents where I have had to do the entire thing right from scratch, so I always feel that a design sector or side is needed in this line of work that stays independent of all the other technical work. There is the issue of time m a n a g e m e n t w h e n t h e projects are too many, as the printer takes few hours to print a moderate size model, and if there is the issue of power cut, this ultimately delays the final product.
IG - Any Message that you would like to give to the budding startups in Goa?
ARCHIT: A message that I would like to give people especially the students, is to get into building, crafting and creating new products and to indulge in the innovation process as now it is possible and there are means to get things done which wasn't as p o s s i b l e a n d a c c e s s i b l e before. If the product that you make is useful and innovative then there are chances you can patent the same and put it to greater use. RUKMA : A message that I would like to give to the budding start-ups is to make the best use of technology and social media. Interacting and Networking plays a vital role in growth of startup. Empathy t o w a r d s t h e c u s t o m e r ' s r e q u i r e m e n t i s a l s o v e r y important.
