Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Rotary.
You're tuned in to Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly today with Yushan and Dingheng.
Coming up, there's a new attraction popping up in China's malls.
It's 3D printing stations where anyone can design and print a custom object in under 10 minutes or so.
Is it fun?
Yes, but if you look past the gimmick, you'll see a push to make this tech household friendly.
The question isn't whether the machines work because yes, they do.
It's whether we'd actually use them if they were in our homes.
After that, have you ever ordered lunch at 11?
You're suddenly busy and you get to sit down with it a couple of hours later?
Yep, me too.
But here's the thing, summer heat doesn't play nice with your takeout.
And the sneaky part is food can go bad without looking or smelling like it.
So what's the real window before your meal turns risky?
Good question and absolutely worth knowing the answer.
Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts.
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For years, 3D printing has been seen as a tool for engineers and designers and maybe hobbyists, but not something the average family would ever own.
But in China, that perception is beginning to change.
Leading companies are opening interactive retail stores where shoppers can watch products being printed in real time.
They can explore hundreds of custom made creations and discover what a 3D printer can actually do.
The goal isn't simply to sell machines.
It's to convince customers that one day they might actually want one.
The timing isn't really a coincidence either.
Consumer 3D printers are becoming more affordable, easier to use and increasingly powered by AI.
But every successful household technology, from microwaves to smartphones to robot vacuums, became popular because it solved an everyday problem.
So can 3D printers come up with a way to find their way into our hearts and homes?
We're going to share our opinion on that as we get through the story.
But yeah, it's happening these days.
3D printing companies, they're suddenly opening physical stores.
That's what's up.
At a time when everybody seems to go online and go live streaming China's leading 3D printing brands, they are opening physical stores instead.
So that's happening very recently, in June this year where Bamboo Lab, one of the leading brands, they opened its first brick-and-mortar store in eastern China.
And around the same time period, the Shenzhen Creality 3D Technology Company Limited, which is another global consumer 3D printing leader, also went public in Hong Kong and become the first consumer 3D printing company to debut on the Hong Kong market.
So that means a lot for the company.
But on the other side, they also opened an experience store inside JD Mall Shanghai.
We can tell from there that, as an emerging segment at the intersection of intelligent manufacturing and creative consumption, the global consumer 3D printing industry has indeed become one of the fastest growing market here.
These stores, though these aren't your typical traditional electronic stores, in the sense that they are designed to let people experience the technology firsthand, to to see how it actually works.
Indeed.
For example, if we take a look at this Bamboo Labs Shanghai store, the first thing any visitor can see is not a wall of products or price tags.
It is actually a large 3D printed city model placed at the front of that particular store.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
So the miniature cityscape has really become its biggest attraction, I guess, in shoppers especially.
Young kids often stop outside the store to watch the tiny buildings and streets created through 3D printing.
And so, as a result, I guess that's why many parents bring their children over, treating it almost like a, so to speak, a tech exhibition.
Yeah, I saw the pictures from the news where these brick and mortar stores were decorating themselves.
It's crazy.
Kind of like semi-Apple flagship store and semi-Lego to me.
It's all like families with kids in it.
Yeah, I like the idea of having the 3D printed city there because it's almost like a social media worthy stop.
You know, you have a reason to visit there and take your pictures for social.
And then while you're there, you can look around and maybe that would garner some interest.
I'm curious though, because 3D printing has been around.
It's not new, it's been around for a really long time.
And I feel like 3D printing has tried to break into our homes.
That sounds illegal.
Tried to enter into our homes many times over, but it's been unsuccessful.
So i'm wondering what these companies are hoping that people are actually going to print.
Like what's their killer?
What's their killer app?
The killer app is like the the tech that does so well at something that it convinces millions of people to buy it.
Like a smartphone is so good at taking pictures That it convinces people to buy the phone.
So what's the killer aspect of a 3D printer, I wonder?
Well, I feel like right now these stores brick-and-mortar stores opened by these major 3D printing brands they are still mainly focused on demonstration education, trying to help consumers understand what 3D printing can do, on changing perception of this idea from say, a very high tech tool for professionals into something that could eventually become an everyday product.
But in terms of really, You know, offering any commercialized or any real opportunities for making real money.
We still need to wait and see in terms of how far it go into ordinary average people's households.
Maybe it's not fair for me to compare it to a smartphone.
You know, a smartphone solved a specific problem, for example, with the photos, right?
That's the killer app aspect.
But maybe with 3D printers, it's not about that.
No.
If you look at a microwave, well, the microwave killer app is that it heats up food.
It solves that problem.
But 3D printers, I suppose, can solve a multitude of problems.
And that's why maybe that's not a fair comparison, because you can print so many different things and it can help you with so many different aspects.
Yeah, the flexibility that it offers and it's kind of like its biggest selling point at this point is it's a killer app because it's not really about saving money or do one functional kind of operations.
It's more on the convenience that it provides.
Instead of searching online, for example, for niche plastic part of a broken electronic at home, you kind of can skip all that waiting for shipping and print exactly what you need.
That's the flexible side.
That's the really problem solving side.
Especially when it comes to customizing solutions for those moments.
I'm not sure if you guys have that moments encountered in your daily life, but there will be moments in my life that, oh my gosh, I wish there was a little holder for this.
Like a smartphone holder or something.
Or just a button broken or button missing on my shirt.
You can print the button.
I can't just go and buy one button.
Yeah.
I'm thinking a game piece, right, for kids.
A lot of games have little tiny pieces, right?
So you could print that piece to replace one if it got broken or lost.
Yeah, I was searching online and I kind of got a list of things that the 3D printer can actually help solve daily problems like managing or organizing the organizers in the drawers.
You don't need to buy from Ikea anymore and spend like dozens of yuan or whichever currency and just print something like that that fits perfectly.
Those little boxes you mean?
Yeah.
Yeah, little boxes like, and those that you don't need to figure out, like just how many measurements I need in order for everything to fit, but rather design and customize according to your very specific context given.
Yeah, they are multitaskers.
Mm hmm.
That is for sure.
So are people actually buying these, or are they just stopping by the stores out of curiosity?
What's happening right now?
Yeah, I feel like the experience provided by these stores.
They indeed appears to be changing some certain consumers' perception and attitudes about 3D printing.
I guess still many visitors.
They go there to take a look mainly out of curiosity, but we don't deny that some are gradually moving from simply taking a look and asking questions to seriously considering buying something.
A lot of online sales, though, right?
A lot of online sales.
That's during China's 2025 Double Eleven Shopping Festival, where consumer 3D printers were among the fastest growing categories in digital electronics, with tens of thousands of units sold across JDcom and also Tmall, the two main digital economic selling giants.
And I guess that's what's encouraging these companies to open up these stores is because the online sales are quite strong for them.
And if we zoom out a little bit to the market performance in general, data from China Insights Industry Consultancy Limited also suggests that people around the world spent about 6 billion on consumer 3D printing products in 2025.
Hmm.
That's a fact now.
People are buying.
And by 2030, that amount is expected to reach about $27.2 billion.
And if that growth happens steadily over the next five years, this year included, it would be equivalent to an average annual growth rate of 332.
A lot of other home appliances couldn't even reach to that degree or ratio, I would assume.
I want to counter your argument, which is strong. with the online market?
Because if you go on to, for example Xianyu, which is the secondhand platform right here in the country, You can commonly find listings for 3D printers where the description is barely used or like new, which is another way of saying barely used or bought on impulse.
Yeah.
Like a candy bar at the grocery store.
So what I'm trying to say here is that many users say, or seem to say, the excitement of owning a 3D printer perhaps faded away faster than they expected.
If we're finding these types of postings online, then is there a problem with expectation versus reality?
Yeah, indeed.
I think one underlying issue here is that for many first-time buyers, they imagine a very, very simple or simplified process in their imagination.
Okay, I choose a design, I press a button and then I will definitely receive a complete perfect, finished product.
A little more complicated than that.
I feel like today's consumer 3D printing still involves multiple steps, including...
Finding or creating a 3D model, adjusting printing parameters, selecting the suitable materials and troubleshooting problems during printing.
It's really, not really, but more complicated than many people initially think.
Yeah.
So yeah, people have your.
You said it very well, Ding Hung is that people have this fantasy in their mind like oh, I want a coffee cup with my name on it.
So I'm just going to look at this machine and automatically a coffee cup with my name on it will pop out.
No, it's more complicated than that.
So.
If it is more complicated than that Yushan, where do we need to get to in order for this to become mainstream?
Because the tech is there, right?
The hardware is there.
How do we cross that bridge?
Because it seems like, if it does become easy to use, that it is something that could be in people's homes.
And not only that, something that people would really make a lot of use out of.
As a matter of fact, I see the very fact that these companies are opening offline stores as a key solution to that problem, just to have people know just what it takes to get a 3D printer to work and what it takes and what you need to equip and know in the first place in order for you to come up with that very product that you have in your mind.
So a lot of these i'm reselling it because of impulse buying comes from.
It originates from a mismatch of expectation.
After you get it, you weren't ready for it.
You think this can do, but actually you need to learn a lot of um, like basic knowledge about it before actually designing something for yourself.
So that's the first thing that these companies kind of need to solve, by inviting more people to their store and see how things are done and how machines are worked in their real experience stores, so that people have an idea before they buy.
AI, AI is going to be involved, no doubt, right?
You can incorporate AI and they are incorporating AI, where perhaps in the future you can simply speak to the machine.
Yeah, let them automatically generating printable model just by telling it what to print.
Yeah, you give them an order like I want a cartoon style toy and you print out for me.
Yeah, that seems very feasible in the future.
Dingheng, just very quickly, do you think that bridge can be crossed?
Do you think we'll see them in everybody's houses?
It remains to be seen.
So far, it is still a little bit too early to say.
I think we don't have enough to print at this point.
I think we have too many things to print.
That's the problem.
You go to an American family-style restaurant and they have 200 menu items and you don't know what to eat.
You go to a restaurant that sells one specialized item, because you know what you want and you know what you're going to get.
With a 3D printer, sure, it can print anything.
But that's confusing for us because we don't know what we're supposed to print.
Yeah.
And when a button falls off my shirt, I don't immediately think oh, I'll just 3D print another button quickly.
That's the last thing that comes to my mind.
So we got to get there.
It might, you know, take a little while.
But having these stores, I think, yeah, I agree.
It's a positive step.
All right.
It is summertime.
And coming up.
Next, we're going to give you some tips on if your food is safe to eat after it's been there for a while.
Looking for passion?
How about fiery debate?
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It is summertime, temperatures are hot outside, and if you are anything like me, then you don't like to cook as much when it's hot, because it makes your kitchen hot and it's just unpleasant.
So what do we do?
We open up our applications and we order our food more often in the summertime.
Now, oftentimes you might get busy.
So when that food arrives between the time that it arrives and you finally have time to eat it, it can sit there for a while.
That's what we're talking about today.
It's been making headlines as of late here in China.
Where people are curious about food safety.
Well, food safety is indeed a big health and kind of like a day-to-day concern that we all share.
But for takeout food, previously I thought cooked foods are not that big of a problem.
Or is it?
It turns out it's not the case, right?
Especially for some cold dish, the concern is always there.
But I think, generally speaking nowadays, across China's social media, a heated discussion has emerged regarding the safety and quality of takeout meals.
And I think the standard question is when the weather gets hot or hotter, the rules for food safety is changing.
So let's get straight to it then.
So how long can take out food be preserved?
Hear this out.
So this is suggested by Hong Kong Center for Food Safety, as well as the CDC in the US that perishable food is safe at room temperature for two And that window shrinks to just one hour if the temperature is above 32 degrees Celsius or 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
And in the middle of a summer heat wave, many deliver orders.
That runs on the road.
Of course, it spend this entire journey in this high heat environment.
So therefore, yeah.
It kind of shrinks based on that too.
And by perishable food I mean many dishes, as a matter of fact, that we often order from takeouts like fried rice.
Here in China, that's very common.
And rice noodle soup, or just simply noodle soup soup, noodle and all kinds of congee, rice noodle rolls and clay pot, rice stir fries and barbecues fish seafood, sushi.
That's one thing that's been red flagged by many of the online netizens, saying that yeah, sushi is just the dead zone in terms of takeout.
So you said, if it's 32 degrees outside, which it often is these days, then the window for food safety shrinks to an hour.
And part of that hour is on the way, on the way to you.
So after it arrives let's say it takes 30 minutes to get to you then you've got a 30 minute window in which to eat safely whatever you've ordered, And if you like, wait for 15 minutes before you eat it, then Yeah yeah, exactly.
Kind of makes me want to meet the delivery guy halfway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And have you guys heard about this concept like the danger zone of 4 degrees Celsius to 60 degrees Celsius?
What's that?
Because most takeout deliveries happens right in the middle of what experts call the danger zone 4 degrees Celsius to 60 degrees Celsius where bacteria are really prone to thriving.
And, unlike our home cooking, where you eat immediately afterwards or put your leftover inside a refrigerator, Takeout is often packed hot and then slowly cools down to this dangerous temperature range during this delivery journey.
Oh, that's some more, more bad news.
I really need to think twice before I place my next order.
I mean, what not all food delivery is the same though, right?
So some things must be more dangerous than others.
Like what about the cold dishes like cold noodles or fruit platters or braised meats?
Oh yeah, those are specifically marked as not recommended to order during summertime.
Yeah, from a lot of the articles that I've been reading actually, especially when it comes to seafood and like how do you understand something like that?
Like putting seafood into soy sauce as a as a flavor type of eating, kind of like sashimi, but more flavored.
So those things, including fruits and fresh fruits and cold dishes, are highly alerted and in a study in Qingdao which actually found that overall pass rate for these items was only about 32.
So less than one third of the above mentioned food passed their examination in terms of still remain in good health.
There's an old industry saying apparently, that said, good fruit isn't cut and good meat isn't braised.
So don't order fruit when it's really hot outside.
Don't order fruit that's already cut.
That's just good advice.
Yeah, because you don't know where it's cut from.
Maybe that fruit is already kind of going down a little bit.
How long it's been sitting there.
Yeah, and then sitting there out in the heat, you never know how many germs are growing on it.
So that's kind of like stealth poisoning in a way.
How do we know?
How can we tell?
Because if we can't smell it and we can't see it, then is there any particular way we can look for like physical changes or something?
So signs of the food getting bad can include changes in its color, some strange smells and some pulling threads like a sticky, stringing texture in sauce or rice.
You really need to be very careful.
You need to be a detective in this regard.
And don't forget if suspiciously, it looks bad or gone bad already.
You need to take care to do some reheating right.
That's a buffer that creates a safe buffer.
So if your takeout has been sitting there for more than an hour because you got tied up, but it doesn't smell bad, it doesn't look bad, you think oh, this is going to be okay.
The safest thing to do is to reheat it.
So pop it back in the microwave or throw it on the stove for a period of time just to be safe.
Better to be safe than sorry, as they say.
All right, that'll do it for today's roundtable.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
Ding Hong, it was great to see you.
Great to have you back on the show.
Yeah, indeed.
It's been a long time.
Yeah, don't be a stranger, my friend.
Yushan, thank you to you, as always.
And I've been Steve.
Thanks for being a part of our show.
Have a good one.
We'll see you next time.
