Topics we’ve discussed at previous events loomed back, particularly intellectual property – if product designs could be shared online and printed at home, could manufacturers find themselves subjected to the same problems of piracy as the music and film industries? Is DRM really the best way to tackle that? Twitter commenter @RDBinns tweeted this white paper at us, that looks at some of these issues if you want to read more deeply. Also, just as we explored at our Sonic Boom and Instant Art events recently, will the enfranchisement of untrained people with technology lead to a glut of, in this case, poorly designed objects? Or will we just enjoy our creations on screens, rather than actually creating physical versions of them?

But there were new areas of discussion, even at one point touching on the still-occuring riots across Britain – could the decline of mass manufacturing lead to a decline in the kind of acquisitiveness and thrall to brands that has driven the looters? And in a world where we could print out luxury goods like flat-screen TVs and iPads, what might the new luxury look like? We’ll be expanding on these points and others in an upcoming podcast on Micro Manufacturing – keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks when we’ll be launching our podcast series.

I’d like to thank our guests, Brendan Dawes of Beep Industries, Assa Ashuach of Digital Forming, and Soner Ozenc of RazorLAB. Thanks also go to Edwin Foote, who lent us his Makerbot printer which made the MoviePeg that we printed out during the evening – check out his website Shoestring Prototyping if you want to order your own 3D printed objects from him. And thanks to Robosavvy, who put us in touch with him, and who will sell you your own Makerbot kit for just over a grand.

Thanks finally to Paul Armand from Inition for showing off what his larger-scale machines are capable of. What we didn’t have time to get into was that Inition also have two other companies: augmented reality producers Holition, and 3D film production company Pointy Stick. If you’d like to check out Inition’s 3D print demo studio, and see what they can potentially cook up for you, send them an email at inition@inition.co.uk.

Finally, here’s a Storify of some choice tweets from audience members last night. We’ll see you next month for Social Animals on September 14.