The New York round of the Cut&Paste championships is on tonight and Shapeways community member Aaron Trocola will be competing in the 3D Design Competition.

Head on over to Angel Orensanz Foundation 172 Nortfolk St. New York, NY 10002 7pm tonight (Friday, October 28, 2011) to cheer Aaron on to victory.

Shapeways is silver sponsor of the Cut&Paste championships so you are going to see more about the competitors, winners and there 3D printed projects.

For those not familiar with Cut&Paste:

"Through events and online programs, Cut&Paste works to increase relationships between emerging designers, creative companies and media. Our mission is to help designers be better understood for better opportunity. Born in New York City in November 2005, Cut&Paste's signature event is the Digital Design Tournament, a live, competitive showcase held throughout the world each year. Cut&Paste additionally powers design-driven contests and events with industry partners worldwide"

Take a look at the video from last year and book your tickets via Eventbrite.

Cut&Paste New York 2010 from Cut&Paste on Vimeo.

Congratulations to Daniel Matarazzo who has won himself an Ultimaker and a 3D print of his Hashi: Chopstick Aid and Spoon Rest by Shapeways of his winning entry in the 3D Printing at Home Design Competition.

This chopstick aid helps beginners and pros alike. The flexible walls provide tension to assist in picking up food. The aid doubles as a spoon for soups and can be flipped over for a chopstick rest.

Second and third place go to Rainy Day By Mohammad Alaswadi and Breathable Roots By Kostika Spaho, each of which will be 3D printed by Shapeways. 

Are you ready to join the Robot Nation?  

This seriously fun site uses WebGL to assemble and customize your own robot ready for 3D printing. This is one of the easiest systems I have played with so far that makes it fun to create your own model, absolutely perfect for kids, addictive.. Go and play...

Every day we try and post cool stories on the Shapeways blog about what people are doing with Shapeways 3D printing from information we gather in the forums and from your model pages.  Bart had a great idea to simply use the blog to ask what the Shapeways community has been working on over the weekend, any cool ideas, projects, tips, experiments or links you would like to share? Let us know so we can start the week with a little Shapeways inspiration...

We know what Virtox has been up to, what about you? 

Shapeways community member KTerra has created a replacement Mirror Bolt Cap for a Yamaha BT1100 using Shapeways 3D printing. Like the part created to repair the Bugaboo Stroller, this is a perfect use of 3D printing when 'official' replacement parts are astronomically high or simply no longer available. As you can see in this brief forum thread on SVrider.com and Stormtrooper.com, when a part like this goes missing you are often forced to purchase an entire assembly rather than just the part you need. 

If you have a replacement part you would like to share either for sale in your own Shapeways Shop or for free download, it is important to make sure you specify it is not an "official replacement part" but a "part that fits xxx". You may also want to consider not using official logo's or trademarks if you intend to sell the items.

When Shapeways was featured in the Economist back in February the cover image was of a Stradivarius Violin 3D printed by EOS. Following is a video of 'In the Meadow' being performed on the very Stradivarius that inspired the Economist Article 'Print me a stradivarius: the manufacturing technology that will change the world'. Sounds amazing to me....

Friday is the day we take a look at some of the latest 3D printing awesomeness to be shared in the It Arrived and Feature This sections of the Shapeways Forums. Be sure to share your models as they arrive to inspire the Shapeways community and staff.  We especially love seeing any post production techniques realized on your 3D prints.

Just in time for Halloween Kspaho (not his real name) has mass produced glowing spider earrings.... 

Michael Mueller (actual name) shared his Silver Crown Ring along with a tutorial to achieve similar effects with water, electricity and baking soda...

Ammnra's Gold Plated Solid Steel Pendant based on Assassin's Creed Apple of Eden gets some extra mystical power with a rubbing of black paint.

Father of the RepRap and nearly all things DIY 3D printing has managed to bypass the tyranny of the triangle to 3D print directly from OpenSCAD's CSG representation without using an STL file in the workflow.

What does this mean?

Printing directly from CSG is much more robust than using the flakey (literally) STL file format.  A CSG file can be wrong - we can all make mistakes - but, unlike STL, it always represents an unambiguous solid.
It should also be faster (5%)........  Finally, it should allow us easily to do fancy things like filling solids with scalar and vector fields representing build parameters, so you can have an object that is flexible (and/or green) at one end and rigid (and/or blue) at the other.

Visit the RepRap Wiki for instructions on how to use this process on your RepRap.

Perhaps this will actually pave the way to better communicate multiple materials to Objet 3D printers which currently require multiple STL files to create multiple material parts?  

Thank you Adrian

Australian company uses 3D printing for it's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

The CyberQuad is an Australian made Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) designed by Cyber Technology in Western Australia that uses 3D printing for the production of it's parts, not just for prototyping. It is interesting that this is one of the first waves of waves of manufacturers using the ability to make extremely complex, lightweight parts in in extreme conditions from military applications, to investigate chemical spills/napping employees, or to just peer through your window.

So next time you get that feeling that you are being watched listen for the faintest of hums (65 dBa at 3 Meters), smile sweetly and get back to work as your every movement is captured at up to 60 frames per second and stills of up to 14MP and infrared, while the CyberQuad executes a fully autonomous circuit of your surroundings, thanks in part to 3D printing. 

via sUAS news. 

After a brief hiatus while we refined the fabrication process, we are now bringing 3D Printed Glazed Ceramics back to Shapeways. The previous trial was so popular we had to pause production while we organised more infrastructure to handle the massive volume of designs submitted by the Shapeways community every day.

We are maintaining the same price of $0.18 per cm² with a few tweaks to the Design Rules. For example, we've increased the build size over 70%! The new max build size is 30x22x17cm (11.8x8.6x6.7 inches). Minimum wall thickness and details remains the same at 3mm and 2mm, respectively. Note, glazing process can add up to 1.5mm of thickness to your item so some finer details may be lost or softened. This is especially true for the nooks and crevices, as well as the bottom portion of cups.

This material will be off by default and mark-up set to zero so if you would like to make it available in your shop you will need to manually update your products.  It will also take a while to propagate through the entire database so check back if your model is not available in ceramics straight away.

So Cunicode, we can start printing your 30 Cups in 30 Days project again, Studio Hansen can bring their coasters back, Virtox can drink coffee whether hung over or sober, and you can start designing your own food safe table ware.. 

Want to purchase some Ceramics goodies right away? Check out Cunicode's A Cup A Day project. Cunicode took on the ambitious challenge of designing a cup every day for 30 days. You can browse and buy the collection right now in the Cunicode Shop.

More Ceramic inspiration below: 

- is like having a personal helicopter for $49.90!

Shapeways community member Sergey Menshikov has designed a range of 3D printed mounts for the extremely popular GoPro Hero camera including the Mast Mount designed specifically for windsurfing.

Take a look at TrickCam where Sergey shares a little more about the product along with some videos of/from it in action.

Also check out this 3D printed 3-Axis Gimbal for GoPro previously mentioned on the Shapeways blog 

Shapeways community member Erckgillis has shared some great tips on how to patina 3D printed Silver using Liver of Sulfur, along with some patina processes for other metals.

Patinating Silver

While Liver of Sulfur is usually used to form a black or gray patina on silver, there are a number of intermediate interference colors formed, especially if a weak solution is used. These include yellow, reddish brown, purple and blue. Some people recommend adding a small amount of household ammonia to the solution claiming it intensifies the lovely blue-green-red-purple interference colors one gets when using a dilute solution and slow approach. These pretty colors are not very stable over time because they continue to react with sulfur in the air and darken. You can sometimes 'save' them by spraying a lacquer over them. They may be retained if the surface is properly sealed. Acrylic resin is the recommended sealer for durability and resistance to darkening in light. Some jeweler's lacquers also work. Envirotex® works very well for this.

Using Liver of Sulfur on Silver

1.Take a piece of Liver of Sulfur, about the size of your finger nail, and dissolve it in a cup or more of warm water.

2.Heat the piece of metal to be treated and then dip in the Liver of Sulfur solution.

3.Rinse in water after each dip. While Liver of Sulfur is usually used to obtain gray and black colors on silver, there are a number of intermediate interference colors formed, especially if a weak solution is used. These include yellow, reddish brown, purple and blue. Some people recommend adding a small amount of household ammonia to the solution claiming it intensifies the lovely blue-green-red-purple interference colors one gets when using a dilute solution and slow approach. These pretty colors are not very stable over time because they continue to react with sulfur in the air and darken. You can sometimes 'save' them by spraying an appropriate lacquer over them. They may be retained if the surface is properly sealed. Acrylic resin is the recommended sealer for durability and resistance to darkening in light. Some jeweler's lacquers also work. Envirotex® works very well for this.

4.The piece may be sanded lightly and polished. Raised areas will show the original color of the metal, recessed areas will remained blackened.

5.Be sure to wear gloves and protective clothing when working with Liver of Sulfur. The fumes are dangerous and it should be used with good ventilation and covered right after use. It must not be allowed to come in contact with acids as a toxic gas is then rapidly evolved.

Dr. Arthur Olsen, Professor of Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute, demonstrates software that allows a webcam to track the motion of 3d printed models along with a 3D printed model of a virus that self assembles when shaken (not stirred).

via 3ders.org and the Olson Laboratory

Joshua Harker's 3D printed skull project on Kickstarter has 7 Days to go and he is already around $59,000 above his goal of $500.... If you want to launch your own project on Kickstarter take a look at some of the stats of Kickstarter backers and see how you can best aim your campaign.. Congratulations to Joshua, and if anyone wants a skull of their own to play out your favorite act from Macbeth you have 7 Days to back Joshua.... How high can it go?