A big thanks to Rene and Todd for coming along and helping us out at the booth, handling questions and explaining the massive potential of 3D printing with Shapeways.  Our next events are Maker Faire in New York, Tent in London and Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, we are looking forwards to seeing you there.

Showing off the 3D printing awesomeness.

The Shapeways booth at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver has been an incredibly exciting place to be over the last few days.  We have seen thousands of people come through and the most common word I hear from almost everybody's lips is awesome.

The Shapeways team here have been doing a fantastic job of explaining how 3D modeling experts, teachers and students can use Shapeways to make their 3D models into reality with 3D printing.

Our booth is one of the busiest at SIGGRAPH with many people returning multiple times a day, bringing friends and colleagues to see examples from the Shapeways community to show the huge range of what can be produced with 3D printing with popular items including the work of Batsheba, Virtox and Ceramic Wombat.

Even our booth is 3D printed with the entire structure held together by 3D printed connectors to showcase the strength and flexibility of 3D printing, an ambitious endeavor that even caught the attention of some seasoned booth designers/constructors... The booth would not have been possible without the hard work of John Briscella, many thanks.

If you are in Vancouver be sure to drop in to booth 816 to say hello.

Oh, and....
Happy Birthday Bart !!!!!!!!!!!!

Shapeways Helps Users of Autodesk 123D Make Their Awesome Ideas Real with 3D Printing.

We are super excited to announce while we are mixing it with the 3D modeling glitterati at SIGGRAPH that users of Autodesk 123D can use the power of Shapeways 3D Printing to make their awesome ideas a reality.

123D is a free 3D modeling software program based on the same Autodesk technology used by millions of designers and engineers worldwide in software such as 3Ds Max, Maya and Inventor. With 123D's simple yet useful interface you can 3D model your own designs ready for 3D printing with Shapeways.

Once you have created your 3D model in 123D you can export your model in STL for most of our 3D printed materials or VRML to 3D print in full color.*

123D works as a solid modeler with tools ideally suited for creating objects for 3D printing.  You can start from a sketch or you can download and modify an existing design, this is a great way to get started if you are new to the concept of 3D modeling and 3D printing. There are also a number of tutorials to help you get started or to just introduce you to the tools and how they function.

Head on over to 123D and download it for free and give it a try, at the moment they only support windows but there are some rumblings in their forums asking for a Mac version which would be awesome. Also, when you download 123D keep an eye out for updates, 123D is in Beta version and they are rapidly adding cool new features and squashing bugs.

*There is an issue in the current build whereby when you export a file the scale can be too small by a factor of 10.  If you face this problem you can use the scale tool to scale your model up by 10 in 123D before exporting to correct this for now, but the bug has been reported and will be implemented in the next build soon to be released.  Also, you can export full color VRML's but there is currently no provision to export the bitmaps in a way to make it suitable for 3D printing with Shapeways.  You can assign color to geometry and print that in full color but no maps for now.

Just a quick update to let you all know that our 3D Printed Silver production is purring like kitten, running like clockwork and any other cliches that may apply to say that we are on target with our delivery times for silver.

As mentioned previously in the Shapeways blog, we added 3D printing capacity, have streamlined our distribution and we are seeing the benefits as 3D printed silver is racing out the door. 

Thanks for keeping us busy with the amazing designs...

Yeah!

Rolling out your orders faster then ever.

While the Shapeways logistics team have been working hard to process existing orders, they have also been upgrading our production facilities to handle growth so that we can continue to deliver your 3D printing to you as fast as possible.  We do not yet have a conveyor belt fed 3D printer, but we have installed the first of our conveyor belts to speed up and streamline our distribution center. 

This is true mass customization as each of your orders we 3D print and send is completely unique, yet we are using tecniques from mass production to reduce and amortize the cost of all aspects of printing and distribution through volume of production.  We are also working to reduce delivery time so that as well as reducing cost, we are continually improving our workflow to get your items to you as soon as physically possible...

A big thanks to you all for the orders coming in and keeping our logistics team busy, we LOVE seeing all of the amazing objects you are making with Shapeways 3D printing.

Ok, you may have one of the coolest prams on the market but when that thing fails the repair bills can be astronomical.. Thanks to 3D printing with Shapeways, a bottle opener and a pocket knife, a DIY solution is less than $25 away.

I have shared the tutorial of how to repair the Bugaboo pram on Instructables if any one ever finds themselves in the same situation. The part is on Shapeways to 3D print or Download.

But more importantly, are there any repairs that you have undertaken using 3D printing that you can share?  Are there any projects you have completed that you can share on Instructables? Let us know if you have any 3D printed projects already up on Instructables so that we can share them on the Shapeways blog too.

To win the Full Conference Pass valued at $1,270:

1. Make sure you have a (free) Shapeways account, as only members are eligible for this prize. Sign up here. if you are not already a member.

2. Follow us on @Shapeways on Twitter

3. Tweet the following message:

Win a Full SIGGRAPH Conference Pass worth $1,270. Follow @Shapeways and retweet to enter! Details here: http://shpws.me/2NHf

To tweet, you can also use this button: Tweet

4. The winner will be selected at random, and will be contacted via a Twitter Direct Message on Saturday, August 6th, 11am, Vancouver time. Reply within 12 hours, or we’ll have to select a new winner!

Good Luck!

If you just want to come along to check out the exhibition and visit us at booth 1150 we also have 50 passes to give away.  To get yours, simply mail bart(at)shapeways.com and include your full name and Shapeways username.

We are also holding a Shapeways 3D Printing Community Meetup in Vancouver on Monday the 8th at 8pm so be sure to come along, bring your 3D prints and have a beer.

See you there.

News over the wire is that Autodesk has now acquired Instructables, adding this to 123D Autodesk is becoming a significant part of the Maker movement.  We are excited to see Autodesk add to the momentum that Shapeways, Makerbot, Maker Faire are already pushing ahead at full steam

“Passionate, creative people want communities to support and encourage their endeavors,” said Samir Hanna, vice president of Consumer Products at Autodesk. “As a result of this acquisition, Autodesk will host a unique ecosystem that combines inspiration, accessible 3D software tools and fabrication services so anyone can be empowered to express themselves creatively.”

“Joining Autodesk will help us reach even more smart, engaged individuals and make Instructables an even better place to share projects and ideas,” said Eric Wilhelm, founder and CEO of Instructables. “Autodesk is a great cultural fit for Instructables, and I can’t wait to start changing the world together.”

An investment by a major corporation such as Autodesk adds legitimacy to the Maker movement, that there is great cultural value in enabling people to make exactly what they want and to share their creativity online. This is of course something the Shapeways community is a perfect example of already in the galleries of 3D printed products, forums of community interaction and when we meetup in person at events around the globe.