OLO sits over the screen of your smartphone and transforms it into a 3D printer. It works in cloud, and is controlled by an app available for all platforms. The bottom of the printer is transparent, and its form is a plastic box. You insert your smartphone with the display pointing up, having initiated the printing process. Special resins are poured into the box and after a few hours, your printed object is ready. How does this work: the light from the screen solidifies the resin layer-by-layer.
The Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the OLO low cost (99 dollars) started rolling at the beginning of March this year with a campaign objective of 80,000 dollars. That goal was reached within hours, whilst the campaign went on to raise 2,7 mil-lion dollars (16,000 backers) between printers and “backer” kit add-ons, making it one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns for a 3D printer ever.
Filippo Moroni e Pietro Gabriele, two young businessmen from Rome, founders of the creative ecosystem “Fonderie Digitali”, invented and built the OLO prototype in 2015: “The First Ever Smartphone 3D Printer”, and once they had done that they just didn’t look back. Their marketing campaign on Kickstarter was pure excellence, demonstrating that creativity and determination are enough to achieve anything.
Financing on kickstarter works through pre-orders. The earlier you are (early bird) the less you pay, and you pay when you get your printer. So OLO’s first big challenge is delivering its first printers around September of this year. 16,000 printers.
But of course the success isn’t stopping there. Distributors are elbowing to become suppliers of the OLO printer, and OLO’s business plan is constantly being reviewed to change the dimensions of the production.
OLO is an international success story with a local beginning. To achieve success they had to go to the States, like so many creative young Italians. But today they are working in Rome. With their help maybe one day the Rome Ecosystem will change.
