Blog
Tuesday, May 31. 2011The 3D Printed FUD Abomination at 65mmFrosted Ultra Detail gets freaky on Shapeways thanks to Turkka Kylliäinen  Read on for more gruesomeness or skip if you would like to pass on disturbing images. Continue reading "The 3D Printed FUD Abomination at 65mm" Friday, May 27. 2011Friday Finds: 3D Printed Designs From the Shapeways CommunityAfter a brief hiatus, the Friday Finds weekend kickoff is back! Enjoy a look at some of the awesomist stuff being made by our community this week. If you'd like to see more, just check out these designers shops, or the It Arrived section of the forum. Happy Friday. MJoachim designed his own protective case for his Panasonic, wowing us with his product design prowess.
Vertigopolka's algorithmically generated Implicit Surface B.
The Frosted Detail and Frosted Ultra Detail is continuing to roll in. CGD's amazing paint job of his tiny M24 Chaffee Light Tanks shows us just what this material is capable of.
TomZ's fully functional 12mm 3x3x3 cube -- looks a bit like the teeniest ice sculpture ever.
3D Printed Transforming Robots Are Go!One of the coolest things about my role at Shapeways is that I get the opportunity to see the amazing diversity of amazing stuff that is being 3D printed by the Shapeways community. I get to take a peak into where you all hang out online when you are not hanging out in the Shapeways forums, and I get to see the excitement that spreads into other members of your communities when they see the Shapeways awesomeness. 
I recently stumbled across a few sites dedicated to Transformers that have a fertile community including TFW2005 that had a few interesting threads singing the praises of Shapeways and showing some fantastic models that have not cropped up in the It Arrived forum, yet.
James from TFW was kind enough to direct me to a few threads including Share Your Shapeways Finds which at five pages long only starts to cover some of the 3D printed robot action that is happening through Shapeways.
Continue reading "3D Printed Transforming Robots Are Go!" A Conveyor Belt of Continuous 3D Printing
It looks like the Shapeways production team's dream may be a reality in the near future with a the announcement by voxeljet that they will be releasing "the first continuous 3D printing machine" (actually it is the second) at GIFA 2011.
”The innovative system design allows unprecedented performance to be achieved. While printing is carried out on one side of the system, unpacking can take place synchronously on the other. This is all done without operation being interrupted. It raises production, in particular patternless small batch production of moulds and models for metal casting, to a higher dimension of speed and cost-efficiency.” Dr. Ingo Ederer, CEO of voxeljet technology They are calling it a concept study, so it may be a while before we see it available to the Shapeways community but it is a pretty impressive concept that actually could make a massive difference to the speed of turnaround and size of objects printable. With a build space of 500x500 millimeters that is already quite substantial but the fact that the system uses a conveyor belt to move the build along while it builds it up means you could 3D print an object of great length... Continue reading "A Conveyor Belt of Continuous 3D Printing" Wednesday, May 25. 2011Tumblr 3D Printing Love
Shapeways
is always on the lookout for ways to spread the word about your 3D
printed projects and recently we have been experimenting with a new Shapeways Tumblr feed. We have been testing the format with the type of posts that are most popular from articles, links, videos, the Shapeways widget and images.
I recently posted an image on Tumblr of a quirky concept by Cunicode for the Octo Handle Cup, which is part of a One Cup A Day project. A great idea to do a design a day to stimulate your creative juices and generate some interesting items. The Octo Handle Cup has struck a chord with the caffeine junkies on Tumblr and it has now spreading across Tumblr with Continue reading "Tumblr 3D Printing Love" Tuesday, May 24. 2011Configuring the Status to Display and Sell Your Models
We've deployed a small change to our site to clarify a model's visibility and for-sale status settings. This change will appear within the the model visibility control on the Product Detail Page and the Model Upload page.
To start, we changed the label to "Display and Sale Options", and the new UI works as follows:  The first checkbox controls whether a model is displayed publicly in the user's shop, galleries, etc. If the box is checked, it will appear in these places for site visitors. If not checked, it will only be visible to its creator. The second checkbox controls whether it's for sale or not. If not for sale, it will appear as "not for sale" in galleries. The way to let a user share his model privately with a hidden link still exists. The user should not select the box for "Listed on site?", but should select the box for "Allow others to purchase?" Default behavior is for both boxes to be selected. Like a Gramophone for Your iPadSimple, 3D printed coolness.... The Mega Toot by cheewee2000
So your iPad is not quite loud enough, you want to stay wireless, don't want to plug into external speakers and don't want to wear your great grandfather's old ear trumpet? Then we have the solution for you, the Mega Toot turns you iPad into a digital gramophone with no additional batteries, no hand crank and 120% style.... Rock on.
Monday, May 23. 20113D Printing to Replace Irreplaceable Parts
One of the (many) great potentials of Shapeways 3D printing is to replace otherwise irreplaceable parts. Whether it be mechanical parts for a vintage car, a design flaw in a pair of headphones or replacing cosmetic components in collectibles such as musical instruments or toys, 3D printing is a really efficient way to create highly accurate copies to repair an item of value.
There are a few of really unique aspects to this happening on Shapeways. Firstly the Shapeways 3D print service, with no file reading fee and a $25 minimum order that includes shipping means anyone can afford to replace a rare part without necessarily having to go to an engineer, prop maker, industrial designer or other specialist and pay large amounts of money to replace a small component needed to maintain the function or value of an item. All you need is a way to accurately measure the item then a way to 3D model it and the replacement part is only an upload away in a range of materials, one of which is bound to have suitable material properties for your particular needs. Eventually we are bound to see an extensive inventory of replacement parts on Shapeways 3D Parts, Thingiverse, Google 3D Warehouse or some other 3D model repository to make it easier for anyone to repair, replace, configure or just hack existing products. Continue reading "3D Printing to Replace Irreplaceable Parts" Sunday, May 22. 20113D Printed PC CaseAn awesome industrial design project that uses 3D printing to construct a custom PC case from scratch. Very ambitious and very impressive project by Pazu....
We see many projects on Shapeways where a 3D printed component is combined with a single other component to improve or extend the capability of a product. We see a lot of protectors and stands for mobile gadgets, especially the iPhone and iPad. We see occasional projects that combine multiple 3D printed materials together to make the most of there different material properties, but we rarely see them combined in one big project. Pazu aka ArkAngel has spent a couple of months designing, detailing and constructing a stunning custom PC case that utilizes 3D printing in an intelligent, efficient and aesthetic manner that is a great example of how to realize a relatively complex item.
Continue reading "3D Printed PC Case" Saturday, May 21. 2011Maker Faire Here We ComeThe Shapeways team are on their way, getting the 3D printed goodness ready for Bay Area Maker Faire!
We will have loads of awesome 3D printed products from the Shapeways community on show in all of our materials from the classic WSF to the brand new ceramics. Come and MeetUp with the Shapeways crew, chat about the materials, processes, your items and your shop. We love these events as we get to share the enthusiasm and excitement in the flesh... see you soon......
Friday, May 20. 2011Shapeways San Francisco Bay Area User MeetingWanna meet some fellow 3D printing and design enthusiasts? We do! Meet us in the bar of the Courtyard San Mateo Foster City Hotel in Foster City on Friday the 20th at 8.30pm, and bring your work! Drinks are on us.
We are in town for the Bay Area Maker Faire and would love to meet as many of you as possible, show off some of your stuff and have a beer with the Shapeways crew. How To Design for 3D Printed Silver
We are getting many really cool designs in silver. One current issue we have is trying to balance enabling our community to create things, no matter how challenging they are and ensuring that the amazing designs actually can be printed. Sometimes, this means adding or changing design rules, sometimes, this means modifying our methods of production to accommodate.
For silver, one issue we often run into is that very thin designs do not survive the wax process. For example, if you have a thin bar (like a pin, an earring hook, or a necklace hoop) attached to a thicker object (like an earring stud), handling the wax can be quite difficult and often results in having the pin snap. Of course, we do not want to say "no more earrings or pins" because that would just be too limiting. To solve this, for some parts, we may print the pieces separately and then weld them together after they've been cast. We have worked with our supplier to ensure that the end result is indiscernible. For example...   The left side is a picture of the computer generated model, the right side is the hoop welded on. We have received customers informing us that the welded parts do not conform to their original designs. We have worked with our supplier to ensure that we do not use stock items, but will print the pieces of the actual design. We have also stepped up our quality check in our Netherlands distribution center to catch these prints if they still come through. For the long term, we are investing in more advanced machine that can produce stronger wax models, which will eliminate much of the need for welding altogether! We hope with this technique, we will simultaneously maintain the integrity of the design while enabling more interesting and "fragile" designs. If you have any questions, or you feel like the welding was done improperly, please e-mail our lovely Customer Service department at service (at) shapeways (dot) com and they will take care of you. Let me know if you have any questions! Thanks, Nancy Thursday, May 19. 2011Recap: ICFF 2011
Continue reading "Recap: ICFF 2011" Wednesday, May 18. 2011Shapeways: 3D Printing in Schools
Shapeways is already well known among students and teachers at schools, colleges and universities around the globe. Every event we go to we get hundreds of students approaching us to let us know they have an assignment where they must use Shapeways to 3D print a product, or that it is cheaper to use Shapeways than their 3D printers at their school where they are paying for material only. We also get the occasional request from teachers for content for a presentation or to find out other ways they can incorporate 3D printing into their curriculum.
 We would like to encourage students, schools and teachers to get into contact with us and let us know how we can help bring 3D printing into your curriculum. If you are a teacher, professor, lecturer or head of school, please get in contact with duann (at) shapeways.com and we can discuss how we can help your students. If you are a student please pass on this message to whoever is in power to make things happen at your school.
Continue reading "Shapeways: 3D Printing in Schools " Tuesday, May 17. 2011A Flood of FUD: Ultra High Detail 3D Printing is a Hit
Since the introduction of Shapeways Frosted Detail and Frosted Ultra Detail we have had a flood of orders from people making most of the high resolution 3D prints. Many of you have shared your items as they have been delivered to your door and it has been really exciting for us to see your reactions. Our printers are working around the clock, and even the UPS crew are struggling to keep up. Check out some of the images posted so far in the It Arrived forum.
Baltimore must be on intimate terms with his local UPS driver. What is most amazing is how incredibly small some of the prints are and just how fine the details are, models that make a pin look huge like CGD's military models....
Read on to see more amazingly detailed 3D prints in the almighty FUD..... Continue reading "A Flood of FUD: Ultra High Detail 3D Printing is a Hit" |
QuicksearchArchives |
Yesterday afternoon, the Shapeways NY team disassembled our first ever booth at 
Twitter
