We regularly hold student 3D printing contests together with universities and colleges. These contests are way for us to engage students on Shapeways.  The animation, product design or engineering students learn how to design for 3D printing and have a fun assignment that might result in them having a 3D print made. Usually the professor picks a regular in class assignment and tells the students that they can upload to Shapeways and that the best design will then get their model 3D printed. We hope it is a "everybody wins" scenario. We did one of the most recent contests with the Pennsylvania College of Technology's Manufacturing Engineering Technology department and their MET460 Rapid Prototyping class. 

The Winner of the contest was Megaloxana's (Lukasz Sztobryn) Ear Bud Keeper.This is a handy little compact design that keeps your ear buds safe.

We asked professor Eric Albert, who taught the class, how the contest went & more about what seems to be a future ready college course.

Joris Peels: what kind of people were in the class? 

Eric Albert: Our class consisted of 26 undergraduates who were seniors in one of two four year degrees:  Manufacturing Engineering Technology and Computer Aided Product Design  

Joris Peels: What do they use to 3D model? 

Eric Albert: We use either AutoDesk Inventor, SolidWorks, or ProE.  We are fortunate to have well equipped labs and students become proficient on each of these.  

Joris Peels: What was the assignment? 

Eric Albert: Their assignment was to create a useful product that fit the Shapeways site in terms of manufacturability by rapid prototype machines, cost effectiveness, and overall product offerings meeting the terms of the site.  The students presented each product as part of their final examination session, and the final determination was made by the class as a whole.   

Joris Peels: What course was it for? 

Eric Albert: The course is called MET460 Rapid Prototyping, which is a required course of our Manufacturing Engineering Technology students, and a technical elective for the Computer Aided Product Design students.  This class covers the entire field of rapid prototyping, including even building a RepRap Mendel and a Makerbot this semester.  The overall goal is to have students know and effectively use the technology in their fields.  

Joris Peels: Why 3D printing? & Why Shapeways?

Eric Albert: The ideas of zero inventory, just in time manufacturing are taught here but to actually create a product and display it for sale is a unique learning opportunity afforded by Shapeways.  We are a “hands on” style college and this was a great means to put theory into practice.    

Besides an easy user experience and set up, something that Shapeways offers is working within a global view of product design and sales.  The assignment was well received and the process went very smoothly.

If you want your college to do a contest with Shapeways then email joris (at) shapeways (dot) com.

In order to let you give us direct feedback and in order to meet more of our community we will be doing two events soon. The first will be a Skype call & presentation by me tomorrow at 19:00 CET and the second will be a Shapeways Community Member Summit in Amsterdam on Thursday the 20th of this month in Amsterdam.  

Shapeways Live Materials Presentation

The Skype presentation will be a short 20 minute presentation about our different 3D printing materials. I will run through each material, talk about its uses and limitations and answer any questions you may have about the material. We hope that we can teach you a little bit about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the materials. In turn we would like to learn from you what kind of information about materials you guys want and what kind of materials you would like to see us introduce. 

How to join: add joris.peels to Skype towmorrow 19:00 CET. Here is what time that is in your local time zone.

The Community Member Summit

Email joris (at) shapeways (dot) com to reserve a place for our Summit in Amsterdam on the 20th. We want to meet you in order to see how we can improve Shapeways. We want to find out what what you don't like about the site and how you see our combined future. We will also reveal some future developments and ask for your feedback on them. The meeting will be informal, include snacks and drinks. Please email to reserve a place!

Disclaimer, our meeting will not be like the one pictured. Create Commons Attribution World Economic Forum.

From today until the 30th you can order Gold Plated Stainless Steel. This new material gives our 3D printed Stainless Steel a pure gold finish. This will let people create jewels and jewelery using 3D printing with a lot more bling than before! A product in this material has an introductory price with start up cost of $5 and costs $10 per cubic centimeter. The lovely Polyoptic Ring by Euphy above would cost $25 including shipping $29 including shipping. We hope that you can see just how significant a step this is in offering affordable personal production. You can now make a unique ring for your loved one, in a familiar material: gold plate and have it delivered to your house anywhere in the world for $25.  Nervous System's gorgeous 1-Layer Twist ring, made to order in your size, costs $20.

Whystler's fun Three towers ring is $17.50

 

Designerica's innovative Triple Moonball ring is $65.

Bulatov's Bracelet would be $41

Gijs' Pendant Five Hearts would be $14.50 

The process 

Designs made in this material will take 18 working days to reach you. The process is identical to the Stainless Steel 3D printing process only as a final step your model is lowered into and submerged in a gold bath. The outer layer is then firmly coated in gold. In order for us to be able to do this there has to be some kind of eyelet or 'limb' that we can use to tie the model up so we can lower it into the gold bath (and I bet you thought we were all high tech). If you look at the models above they all have something like that. A marble on the other hand would not work.  Furthermore the model must be able to sink in the gold bath so enclosed spaces that make it float are not permitted. The maximum build volume for this material is 31 CM by 26 CM by 20 CM so feel free to start ordering your Buddhist temple parts from us.

Blank Label is a great start up specializing in customized dress shirts. On their site you can choose a fabric, cuff style, choose lots of colors, you can add your initials, choose what kind of buttons you want, enter your height and weight etc. etc. Their customization tool is great and we loved the combination between their shirts and our customized cuff links. So if you go over to Blank Label to get your very own customized unique shirt made just for you, type in the promotion code: shapeways and you can get a 15% discount here.

I made a new Design Rules for Stainless Steel tutorial for you. This tutorial should help you guys tackle the issue of designing for Stainless Steel 3D printing. I basically used the Glass Design rules tutorial as a starting point and was able to recycle all the images in that along with some text. This should give you an idea how similar the processes are. They are however different, more is possible with Steel. I like for this to be a "living document" and update it with new feedback from production or you. So please either email, comment, or write in the forum if you think new things need to be explained. I hope you find the new tutorial useful. 

The main issue that we are seeing right now are moving parts. This causes a lot of Stainless Steel models to fail. We are cognizant of the fact that we would love to be able to tell you upon upload if a model will work or not. Our automated filters have come a long way, especially with the recent introduction of Mesh Medic. However we still are not able to always tell you in advance if a model will print or not. With the thermoplastic 3D printing processes we are further along then with steel and glass. This is partially because the Steel and Glass processes are so new that they and their design rules are evolving. Another reason is that these processes themselves are much more complex. 

The moving parts issue is one such issue. Moving parts are possible but I would discourage them. If you do want to do any kind of moving or loose part a 10mm gap between both loose parts is necessary. Any loose part can not be longer than 80mm. Even then your part might fail.

With regards to these rules, Cooldjez's great ring, pictured above was posted on the forum with "defying the steel rules" and indeed it does. We can still print it but we did not anticipate being able to do so ahead of time. We would love for our design rules to be set in stone. We know this will be much easier for all of us. Indeed, its no fun having to tell people that their design is not printable. We hope you guys understand that all this is very new and things change. 

Objet, the company that makes the printers that we use for White, Transparent & Black detail is really doing well in the movie business! After effects artists using Objet printers won 3 Oscars now the mega hit bearing down on all of us: Iron Man 2, uses them also. Fast Company has the entire story & on Gizmodo there is a interview with the guy that actually made Iron Man.  

To make Tony Stark's 3D printed glove they uses on of the same machines we also use, the Objet Eden. The paintwork though is stunning and really shows what some paint can do to a 3D printed model!

A few months ago we started the "co-create your community manager" process. The basic idea is to let the community evaluate me and determine what my job is. This survey is also meant to get an initial understanding of what the community thinks our priorities should be and where they think Shapeways should be going. This, rather long, blog post will present the results of the initial survey.

Michiel Cornelissen's work transcends & extends 3D printing while being both inspirational and fun. We're very proud that he is a Shapeways community member and also proud that we played some small part in helping him launch his solo career. As part of New York Design Week 2010, Michiel will exhibit at the Model Citizen NYC show at the Hosfelt Gallery starting on May 15th. To celebrate this, we interviewed Michiel.

Joris Peels: Why did you want to become a designer?                                   

Michiel Cornelissen: It's how my mind works, I suppose. I look around and get all these ideas for things that I'd love to have around but aren't there yet. Looking back, I was doing things at a very young age that you could call design. Some of those, I still like, even...

Even so, getting a design education and a job as a designer was sort of due to a succession of seemingly random events. I probably only realized how much I enjoyed designing after college.

Joris Peels: When did you decide to become an independent designer?
Michiel Cornelissen:It's a feeling that started growing on me in, say, the past 5 years, but again, there were probably earlier signs. I got serious about it in the beginning of 2009, and started my company in the second part of the year. First, part-time, next to the product design and creative direction I was doing for a certain large electronics company in the Netherlands, and now full-time.

Joris Peels: Has Shapeways helped you to become an independent designer?
Michiel Cornelissen:I probably would have made the step anyway, but what's incredible about Shapeways is that it allowed me to create an independent portfolio of actual products within a few months, weeks even - and not only that, but have my designs available for sale around the world at the same time. The great response I've been getting on the work certainly helped making the decision.

Joris Peels: Tell us about your Icosahedron?
Michiel Cornelissen: It's one of these cases where restrictions make you creative. After a few jewelry pieces, I was itching to make larger products, but ran into the price limitations of 3d-printing. It dawned on me that I might be able to combine 3d printing with existing parts, but in order for it to work for anyone, anywhere, they would have to be parts with worldwide availability, preferably even things that many people already own. I always have a few color pencils around on my desk - and suddenly, the connection was made.

Joris Peels: What software do you use to design?
Michiel Cornelissen:Rhino.

Joris Peels: All of your work is currently 3D printed, will this continue?
Michiel Cornelissen: I actually have quite a few designs waiting in other materials and at other scales, but I will only publish them when I'm really ready and the time is right. I've given priority to the Shapeways stuff, because the barriers for production and distribution are so low.
I usually design around some sort of functional starting point, and sometimes I'll be able to get what I want with 3d-printing, but it's still limited in scale and price.

Joris Peels: What is your Show about?
Michiel Cornelissen:I feel very fortunate to be asked to join a group of independent designers in the Model Citizen NYC show at the Hosfelt Gallery, as part of New York Design Week 2010. I'll have a small exhibit showing icosahedra, pencil bowls  - with a bit of luck, including a new one - and various jewelry pieces. The show is at the Hosfelt Gallery, 531 W 36th street, right across from the Javits Centre. Opening night is on May 15, 5-8 PM, and the show is on until May 17.

Joris Peels: Do you spend a lot of time marketing yourself?
Michiel Cornelissen:I don't so much market myself, but my ideas. When I believe I have a good product, I think it's worth putting in every effort to explain it well in words and images, and to give it a chance to be known in the places where people might be interested in it. So that part, yes, I probably spend more time on that on the actual designing.

Joris Peels: Your work is currently for sale at Frozen Fountain how did you accomplish that?
Michiel Cornelissen:When I got the Merry Birds in, I realized I had a shot at creating an offering that could sell in shops, in time for Christmas. So I sent the best image I could make to the owner of the shop, and he immediately responded that he'd like to see one. I showed it to him, he loved it and ordered a bunch. It's not always that easy though, and you should be careful about what you show to whom. You want to open doors, not close them.

Joris Peels: Why do you think your A Bit Cross model became so successful?
Michiel Cornelissen:Taking such a well-known icon, and remixing it with practical functionality was fairly new, I think. In general, I try to create products that have value regardless of whether they're 3d printed or not.
A Bit Cross is probably also the sort of design that works well on the internet, because one image can explain the idea in a split second. Which doesn't mean that I expected anything like the avalanche of e-mails and website hits that followed...

Joris Peels: What do you think of Shapeways?
Michiel Cornelissen:You're onto something amazing. It's very addictive, and holds a lot of promise.

Joris Peels: What are we doing right, what are we doing wrong?
Michiel Cornelissen:I was a bit shocked when I read this morning that you're changing all the colors! I'd love to see a nice magenta/pink added to the range, and I can imagine that you'd want to ditch an unsuccessful color every now and then - but I get a headache when I think of all the work I'll have to do on my site and my images when everything goes. Gradual change in that area, please...

The technology you're offering is great. I literally can't keep up with all the material introductions you guys are having. The business model of taking production, sales and distribution out of the designers hands could be even greater than the technology aspect of Shapeways - and it doesn't have to be limited to 3d printing.  

Prices - I know you guys are probably doing all you can there, and they're pretty good for small stuff, but I really hope that the larger stuff can get a bit cheaper someday.

The next frontier is marketing. If I were you, I'd focus about 80 to 90% of my energy on that for the next year or so. Shapeways is already a great place for designers and modelers, but it should be just as great for shopping and browsing - and I don't think we're there yet. Just like YouTube needed its hits, in my eyes, Shapeways will need some hits. A few products that sell in 4-digit numbers, to compete with any retail chain - that would be proof that it's really working. 

Designer Anna Bullus was bothered by chewing gum. She saw used gum stuck everywhere. Anna designed the Gumdopbin a streetside bin where you can deposit your chewed gum. The next step she took was to spend months in the lab trying to find a process whereby chewed gum could be turned into a plastic that could be injection and blow molded. She succeeded and now the first Gumdropbins (actually made from recycled chewing gum) are being installed in the UK. When the Gumdropbin is full the entire bin is collected and recycled into more bins.

In a word: fantasic! We've all seen the dirty sticky chewing gum debris stuck to floors & the street. Anna did something about it by comming up with a end to end process that is self-reinforcing.  

Photographs propterty of Anna Bullus. Thanx to Renny Ramakers for the tip!

Currently it is possible to have us dye White, Strong & Flexible for you in 3 different colors. We want to continue to innovate so we will be replacing those three colors: Blue Jeans, Terracotta & Limestone with three new ones. This should happen in a month or so. So, you have a month if you would like to order something in those colors. We would like to ask you guys however which colors you would like to try. So what colors do you want as Shapeways next 3? Please take 30 seconds to pick your favorite three colors. The colors you can choose from are shown below. Arnoud is responsible for selecting the pink by the by.