Whilst reading a blog post by Seth Godin entitled The forever recession (and the coming revolution) with the line "When everyone has a laptop and connection to the world, then everyone owns a factory" it reminded me of the book 'Makers' by Cory Doctorow and in turn of the potential of Shapeways 3D Printing as New Work.

Seth's post looks at the current employment recession as a long term revolution, where "The internet has squeezed inefficiencies out of many systems, and the ability to move work around, coordinate activity and digitize data all combine to eliminate a wide swath of the jobs the industrial age created."  This echoes elements of Cory's Makers where an economic and employment revolution happens thanks in part to product hacks, access to 3D printing and internet notoriety.

If we look at the potential of Shapeways online 3D printing in the context of these visions which speak of 'employment' in terms of a series of projects you just do, whether they be self initiated, collaborations or by consultation for cash, a factory plugged into your laptop is an incredibly powerful asset.

Take a moment to read Seth's post, set aside some time to read Makers which you can download for free in various formats and prepare yourself for New Work.

Copeland-Chatterson Company, loose-leaf systems factory composing room, Brampton, Ontario ca. 1905 By Toronto Public Library Special Collections

This tutorial is for those with a bit of HTML prowess and want to use the Shapeways Shopping Cart to sell your 3D prints from your own external shop.  Plugging into the Shapeways API it offer levels of customization and complexity not possible with the Shapeways Widget.

Take a look at the tutorial, experiment with your own website, share your examples and let us know if this is something you would like integrated into your Shapeways Shop to sell your own 3D printed designs?

By Universal Joint Design via Carl Rodenberg under Felix Klein.

There are plenty of amazing math models 3D printed by the Shapeways community that I like but do not fully understand but none seem to be hurting my head with weirdness quite as much as the recent series printed by Universal Joint Design.

The models presented on Shapeways are recreations of a Classical Mathematical Model Collection originally made by hand in plaster in the 1800's. This portion of the collection was originally modelled by Carl Rodenberg under the direction of the famous mathematician Felix Klein. 

The main portion of this research involved recreating a series of 24 cubic surfaces which demonstrate types of singularities possible on a cubic surface. In topology, singularities are opposed to smooth surfaces in that they demonstrate abrupt changes in curvature at their surface. 

The guys at Makerbot are running full steam ahead with improvements to their machines and with the latest Mk7 extruder they are outputting really nice quality 3D prints. Makers of commercial FDM 3D printers lookout.

In July last year we used our Mk4 Makerbot to print Baroba's Bowie the Bunny with some fair results, but the latest as shown on the Makerbot blog are looking really nice.

A big congratulations to the entire team at Makerbot for the constant improvements, the recent funding and to Bre for his latest 3D Printcess.

Rock on. 

Want to make your own soaps with 3D printing, the perfect personalized gift? Take a look how Fredrik Perman of the Product Farm and his girlfriend used 3D printing to make his own Pawfect Suds.

The Pawfect Suds paw print shape for our silicone mold finally arrived from Shapeways! We’re really excited to get some OOMOO silicone compound and start experimenting with making actual “negative” silicone molds from this “positive” soap shape.

Check out the amazing finish on these stainless steel and sterling silver 3D prints by Larry Williams aka THE1REBEL aka Nexus Studios.

Techniques used include the inlay of holographic carbon fiber, clear and colored resins, melted plastic an hand polishing. Take a look at his forum post for more details on the materials, tools and processes used.

Well it seems the Objet printers we use for Black, White and Transparent detail are now capable of printing Bio-Compatible Materials..

Objet Bio-Compatible material (MED610™) is a rigid material featuring great dimensional stability and colorless transparency. The material is ideal for applications requiring prolonged skin contact of over 30 days and short term mucosal-membrane contact of up to 24 hours. Objet Bio-Compatible material has 5 medical approvals including Cytotoxicity, Genotoxicity, Delayed Type Hypersensitivity, Irritation and USP Plastic Class VI*

 

As you can imagine the cleaning process of the machines and parts is quite intensive to ensure all toxic nastiness is removed from machines and prints, but still kinda cool... So, what would YOU do if you had access to this material? 

From the 22-25 September, Shapeways will be showing the 3D printed awesome at Tent London at the Old Truman Brewery for the 2011 London Design Festival.

If you are in London over the next few days swing by and check out the latest in contemporary design, introduce yourself to Bart, Ralph, Michon and check out the Fable Mantle Clock by Gilbert13.  If you can't make it to the event then head on over to The King's Bar, Hotel Russell on friday night for a 3D printing meetup. RSVP via our Meetup page and bring along your 3D prints..

A digitally crafted ornamental timepiece by Gilbert13, Fable displays the time in an engaging and captivating way. The classically shaped domed cage houses a tranquil scene, the rotating tree moves with every second gently swaying the swing as time passes by.

It is human nature to be fascinated by unanswered stories and in the abandoned scene portrayed within the cage the designers have deliberately given little away allowing for individual interpretation of the intriguing spectacle. This encourages the onlooker to take ownership of the product, provoking thoughts and allowing them to create their own narration of the scene.

Fable will be on officially launched at Tent London, Old Truman Brewery between 22nd - 25th of September on Shapeways stand A02.

3D Print your Star Fleet

Dolf Veenvliet aka macouno of Enotforms fame has been working on some fun tools to generate 3D forms for the 3D Cad illiterate.  Under the ShapeWright moniker Dolf has produced a random space ship generator entitled ShipWright that generates unique configurations of space ships ready for 3D printing with Shapeways... Yeah, awesome.. You can also have a personalized Space Ship generated by your name, or whatever text you enter into the build system... Yeah, super awesome. ShipWright is another awesome project that uses the Shapeways API to upload 3D files to Shapeways, if you have a project to generate 3D forms take a look at the API documentation to see how you can send the files to Shapeways for 3D printing too.

The original version generated space ships based on the nicknames of all Blender 3D coders The code is based on the entoforms scripts... which you can find here: http://www.entoforms.com

You can download the base blend from: http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/vehicles/shipwright-06/

You can download the scripts from: http://code.google.com/p/entoforms/

Last weekend it was New York, this weekend it is your turn London to spread the 3D printed love!

Join us for drinks, bring your 3D printed models and let's talk design! Friday, September 23, 2011, 8:00 PM at King's Bar, Hotel Russell, Russell Square. Please RSVP via our meetup page so Bart, Ralph and Michon can have a frosty cold (or luke warm) beer waiting for you when you arrive. If you can't make it Friday night come and say hello to us at TENT London..

Create your own silver ring on your Android device and 3D Print it with Shapeways!

kelecrea is developed for the Android platform by Shapeways community member Lajos Kelemen that lets you add text as engraving or embossing to 3D models. Currently you can modify a choice of rings, pendants, nameplates, coins, brooches and hairpins.  You can already see some of the designs generated in his shop gallery.

Check out the video of the app in action then download it from the Android market.

It is applications like kelecrea, ShapeMe, Endless Forms, 3DTin and Tinkercad that will really bring 3D printing to the masses.  

Awesome work Lajos 

How to succeed with Kickstarter and Shapeways 3D printing.

We mentioned Joshua Harker's Kickstarter project a few days back where he was looking for $500 worth of backing to get his intricate skull sculptures out into the world but with 34 days to go and over $25,000 dollars raised it is fair to say Joshua is very happy with his decision to put his project on Kickstarter. 

We also mentioned the Mathematician's Dice by Matt Chisolm who raised $19,620 when seeking $2000 to get his project off of the ground using Kickstarter. I am sure a market research department would have been hard pressed to find enough respondents to take the product to market through any other means, but crowdfunding reveals itself to be a perfect way to find a market for really unique items.

And of course you know how much we love the Glif which raised over $137,000 when seeking $10,000 to get their iPhone tripod connector off of the ground using Kickstarter. The guys from Studio Neat have become the poster boys for success on Kickstarter by successfully launching a second product, 'The Cosmonaught' that even trialled a Radiohead inspired 'Pay What You Want' pledge. Maybe not for everyone but definitely proving the point that products are becoming more digital, in that the way they are designed, fabricated, sold and distributed.