Collect all 6 shapes, the heart would have been perfect for Valentines Day, it's never too late..

An Epic Journey into the Grey Spectrum of IP, Creative Commons, Moral Rights & 3D Printing

Many of you may now be aware of the recent exchanges that have taken place over the 3D printed Impossible Triangle (Penrose Triangle) first posted on Shapeways on the 9th of Feb.  In a matter of days a sequence of events unfolded that are indicative of the speed that 3D printing community moves when something exciting happens, both good and bad. It has raised serious issues that we need to discuss as a community to ensure the vibrancy and innovation is not crippled by legal interference.

Ulrich Schwanitz first uploaded his item on the 27th of January 2010, which was to be the first ever 3D printed Penrose Triangle. He then received the print on the 9th, took a few simple images and made a mind disturbing video that showed that indeed he had succeeded in making a truly amazing optical mind twister.

We saw his item in the 'It Arrived' forum and reached out to a few of our press connections to share what we thought was a very cool design, the press agreed and sites such as Notcot and Fastco Design posted the item and generated a torrent of interest in the geometric wonder. This led to a bit of conjecture on the internet with a couple of people figuring out a solution including Constantine Zuev and soon after with a 3D model by Artur Tchoukanov where Joris posted the solution on the I.Materialise blog on Feb 16th and Artur also released the 3D model onto Thingiverse.. (but you may not be able to see it right now).

So, the Fastco article gets updated with Artur's CG renders and boingboing posts about Artur's solution on the 17th but unintentionally omitted to mention the 3D item was first realized by Ulrich.  Ulrich is disappointed that his concept solution has been leaked (perhaps a simple "I solved it" would have been enough without releasing the solution as a cad file) and that he was not attributed as the inventor on boingboing. Upon notification that Ulrich designed the original 3D model Cory Doctorow updated his post as soon as he could to rectify the omission.

It does not end here as Ulrich, disappointed at the decision of Artur to render the original design worthless by releasing it into the public domain also sent a take down notice to Thingiverse under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...

Check out this beautiful gear mechanism by JSP Math Designs. If anyone else has any amazing mechanisms, automata, engineering projects or just 3D printed trickiness, Please post on the 'It Arrived' forum, we would love to see more.

If that wasn't cool enough it even exports to 3D Print!!!!!

If you are keen to try 3D printing with Shapeways but do not know how to 3D model then 3D Tin may be the solution for you...

Like a fun cross between Lego and 8-Bit graphics with 3D Tin you assemble your model with cubes that are drawn by dragging your mouse on a grid, drawing on top of an existing cube ads another cube in height. Simple. You can also use the Extrude tool to add additional cubes in any direction, and an eraser to, you guessed it, erase and cubes...

This has to be the easiest, lowest resolution 3D modeler that makes Google SketchUp look like rocket science.  The perfect fun modeler for kids (or the young at heart)