Why One of Our Idols Is Soichiro Honda, Founder of Honda Motor

Before we dive into Soichiro Honda, you may have noticed that we have a lot of content about 3D printers such as the “Why Modovolo’s BFP (i.e., “Big F***ing Printer”) is the most bad-ass 3D printer ever” article.  

That probably prompted you to ask this question: why is a drone company building a 3D printer in the first place? 

First, before we answer that question, let’s talk about Honda. Specifically, Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motors. A guy with an insane amount of grit. He started and built Honda in the aftermath of World War II when Japan was beyond destitute - lacking money, food, and manpower. 

And, just like our 3D printer, Soichiro Honda was a bad-ass. He just did things that others simply didn’t have the balls to do. 

When the Japanese government tried to shut down his fledgling auto manufacturing business (at the behest of Soichiro Honda’s would-be competitors who realized that he was a bad-ass), Soichiro fought back and beat the government - something no one in Japan had ever done (and likely has never done since). 

And when he found that he couldn’t afford the massive stamping machines and other production equipment to build his new cars, he decided that he and his team of engineers would just build the stamping machines and production equipment themselves, a tradition that Honda carries on to this day for much of their production equipment. It’s one of the reasons why Honda’s production lines are insanely flexible, allowing multiple different models to be built on the same production line. It’s also why Honda is insanely efficient - more so than Toyota - because Honda’s production equipment is tailor made for exactly what Honda needs (and Honda doesn’t need to repurpose machines from other vendors).    

We wish we were as bad-ass as Soichiro Honda, but we aren’t. For starters, we have government officials begging us to build our drone (yes, shameless brag). 

But just like Soichiro Honda, we didn’t have the money to buy a new 3D printer (some of which were well over $300k) and, besides, those 3D printers were just absolutely terrible at printing. Well, let us be fair. Those 3D printers are likely fine at printing ordinary plastics but they were terrible at printing Modovolo’s proprietary plastic blend.  

This is why Modovolo’s 3D printer (which we call the “Big F***ing Printer” or “BFP”) is a fraction of the cost of any commercial 3D printer yet has 4 times the speed.