Sara Bonomi is from Italy and has been living in San Francisco for a few months, having learned English by living abroad. She is a trainee in marketing at Type A Machines, a start up company in San Francisco that designs and makes 3D printers. Her job involves communicating and reaching out to potential customers and finding new external markets to sell printers. Customers include architects, industrial designers and engineers etc.
Sara describes the ways in which 3D printing incorporates green technology; it is between manufacturing technology and an environmentally sustainable type of business, which produces an object by using only the exact type and quantity of materials required. It involves an additive process, meaning successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes to make a three-dimensional solid object.
Sara explains that Type A Machines operates a green business model, sourcing materials as much as possible from local suppliers and running the whole operation at the Tech Shop in San Francisco. Their preferred type of material is PLA which is a type of bio-plastic that is non-toxic and recyclable, in that if it is left outside it eventually decomposes and goes back into the environment.
3D printing is an industry that is really growing and companies are looking to hire in this expanding market.
