It is awesome to see a Shapeways community member get some exposure and their chance to tell their story of how they use Shapeways and 3D printing as a viable production method (not just prototyping).  This is an important distinction the most Shapeways users already realize, but that the history of 3D printing is rooted in the term 'rapid prototyping' still creates a stigma in the minds who dealt with the earlier incarnation of 3D printed parts.  We now need to move away from the term 'rapid prototyping' and continue to adopt 3D printing or additive manufacture as a more accurate description of what Shapeways offers.   

The more articles that appear in mainstream print press such as Wired Magazine, The Economist and the New York Times that bring 3D Printing and the Maker Movement into the awareness of the broader public, the greater the opportunity we have to encourage more people to make, sell and buy 3D printed items from your Shapeways shops. The more users we have, the cheaper we can make 3D printing for everyone.

Get your design 3D Printed and Exposure at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC.

So you want to show your stuff in NYC? AWESOME.

Now is the time to enter the Shapeways 2011 ICFF Design for 3D Printing Contest.

The winner will get their design 3D printed in the material of their choice and displayed along with the best contemporary design in the world at ICFF in NYC.

To enter, upload your design to Shapeways and add the tag 'ICFF11' to it. It must be a new design to Shapeways and you also need to upload a full color render. The winner will be chosen by the Shapeways design and marketing staff in NYC.
You can submit designs to the contest with a value of up to U$400 and the design can be wholly 3D printed or they can incorporate other components (you will need to supply them if you win to display at ICFF)

Entries are open until the 17th of April 5:00 PM EST 2011

Full terms and conditions are on the contest page.

Images above include:

USB powered Helmet light by Psychobob

Mixup 5x5x5 by OSKAR

Figure for Tsunacon 2011 by Kaetemi

Irish Narrow Gauge Railway Carriage by Ben Racey Modelling

Hummingbird pendant by Roofoo

Gyroid ring (Silver!) by Virtox

2-Panel Barricade by HellJumper777

True Love Waits Rings by Freakinhuge

We look forward to seeing more of your items in the forums, Facebook and Flickr.

A hand full of cubes.

We are VERY excited to announce the return of Solid Silver to Shapeways with a better price and the same amazing quality.

Due to requests from the Shapeways community we trialled Silver late last year and saw some truly awesome items in the Shapeways Shops, especially in the jewelry section.  After the trial we looked at the products, process and price, taking all that we have learned and applying it to our new, permanent offering of silver on Shapeways.

The Price and Delivery Time

With our new production partner we have managed to reduce the price!

$40 for the first cm³, then $20 per cm³ for additional volume, with a minimum cost of $40

We will also be offering an additional Silver Glossy post process for $10 per item.

Delivery time will be 15 business days

This video has been doing the rounds of the blogosphere over the past few days but for anyone who has missed it so far it is worth checking out.  Surgeon Anthony Atala demonstrates an early-stage experiment that could someday solve the organ-donor problem: a 3D printer that uses living cells to output a transplantable kidney. If you are impatient skip to around 7:00 to see a nice desktop inkjet printer hack used to implant bone into a patient, and then goes on to show a kidney being printed a kidney-shaped mold being printed on stage and explained how one day – many years from now – the technology might be used to print actual organs. (update thanks to Glen Slingsby)

Anthony Atala is the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where his work focuses on growing and regenerating tissues and organs. His team engineered the first lab-grown organ to be implanted into a human, a bladder,and is developing experimental fabrication technology that can "print" human tissue on demand.

The printing of organs was also discussed in the Economist issue that focused on the 3D printing industry and a Time Magazine article from November 2010 featured Invetech and Organovo, a couple of the companies leading the way in Bio-3D-Printing.

I guess now we have to ask the usual question, what would YOU 3D print if/when Shapeways starts bio-printing?

With the latest site update Shapeways is making 3D printing more social with the ability to log on to Shapeways with your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

With this first round of integration it simply makes it easier for new visitors to the Shapeways site to sign in to upload their own items, or to purchase 3D printed products from the Shapeways shops.  It also means that existing users can link their Facebook and Twitter accounts to make it easier to share your designs, or recommend those of others by tweeting about them, or posting them on your Facebook wall.

This is the first stage of integration that will be followed by greater functionality over time to make it easier for you share and promote your designs in your social networks.

Why share items on social networks? Because there are really cool designs that the Shapeways community is making that your family and friends (and friends friends) may not know about.  It is really exciting for us to see the amazing things that come through Shapeways every day and this is another way to share that excitement.

For Shop Owners who have installed Google Analytics into your shop may be tracking the growth in referrals coming in from Facebook over the last few months is quite substantial in volume alone, but also the conversion rate is much higher than most sites making it even more important as a sales referral tool.  When we consider the reason why a higher rate of sales come from Facebook we have to understand the importance of social networks in connecting together people of similar interests and socio-economic backgrounds, and how when we share on Facebook we are sharing with people who know and 'like' you, are interested to see what you are doing, be it chugging beers or designing a 20 sided dice. Having a social connection with you as a designer also lends a level of exclusivity and authenticity when someone purchases an item from you.  So let your friends know, let your parents know, let that guy/girl you always had a crush on at school but were to shy to ask out so now you 'liked' him/her on Facebook so that you could check out his/her photos know, the cool things YOU are 3D printing with Shapeways....

Radio Netherlands recently took a visit to our Eindhoven office to do a feature on 3D printing and filmed the products and process. (I know, weird, TV on the Radio).. Anyway take a look, it is in Dutch but there are subtitles and you will get to see our brand new 3D printer in action..

Want to show your stuff in New York City alongside the best to press, peers and punters?????

We are about to launch an exciting new contest for all you budding designers out there. Winners will have their design(s) shown at the 2011 International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City, May 14-17 alongside the best emerging and established designers. Details will be released over the coming days but you will have to be quick to get in and have the opportunity to expose your designs to thousands of influential retail buyers, press and design loving public. 

Take a look at the ICFF site, the editors awards and previous exhibitions to see what might be suitable, get sketching because we are looking for new designs... More VERY soon...

An interpretation of Marcel Breuer's 1928 classic, the Cesca chair.

Chris Hardy's response to Powerhouse Museum's Re-loved exhibition arose from looking at modernist attitudes to adopting new technologies in the early part of last century. Just like Breuer's Cesca chair, one of the first cantilevered chairs brought about by the use of new fabrication techniques, this reinterpretation of the Cesca chair (a modernist classic) uses contemporary generative techniques and rapid prototyping technology as an homage to modernism.

The generative method used is voronoi subdivision of a point cloud. This enabled further meaning to be built into the chair by using an image of the chair's creator to influence the point cloud - Breuer becomes a ghost in the chair. The technology used to build the chair was selective laser sintering (Shapeways). This was used based on its strength characteristics and its ability to be formed quickly and easily based on the quite complex geometry.

The seat and back were sintered in pieces then assembled and attached to an existing frame circa 1970's. It will be interesting to see more furniture modifications such as this that build on an existing components in a post-modern kind of mash-up that also reduces the cost of production.