The Shapeways Blog: 3D Printing News & Innovation
Entries from June 2012
Friday, June 29. 2012
Summer means Silver
As the sun gets hotter and the days get longer, I want to wear flowy dresses and some sparkly silver accessories. Luckily I can shop right from my desk amongst Shapeways awesome designers!
Check out some of my favorite designers who make gorgeous silver pieces.
Friday Finds: 3D Printed Designs From the Shapeways Community
For this week's Friday Finds, we have a selection of new twists on old ideas. Happy Friday everyone!
Micro car with opening doors and turning wheels by Sunny Factory. Dont believe me? Check out the video here.
Bear Trap Necklace by GothamSmith, for which they note, "Hold onto your man (or woman), but not too tightly."
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Learn How To Design a Toy Rocket for 3D Printing
As part of the Shapeways Skillshare School Kevin Wei is teaching Toy Rocket 3D Printing Workshop for Beginners on July 3rd in NYC, just in time for 4th of July....
Learn how to design and 3D-print your own soda/vinegar-powered toy rocket and launch it into the sky. Select and use a software of your choice: Tinkercad, SketchUp, Sculptris, or Rhino and Grasshopper. I will introduce the basics and work with you side by side to design your own toy rocket.
3D Anamorphosis with Cylindrical Distorted Shape : Made with Math
More amazing math made real with 3D Printing from the Shapeways community, this time the 3D Anamorphosis with Cylindrical Distorted Shape by fdecomite.
Thursday, June 28. 2012
Wednesday, June 27. 2012
3D Printing Very Small Things
Frosted Ultra Detail is the material of choice for people 3D Printing very small things at Shapeways with the ability to 3D Print o.3mm walls and details down to 0.1mm but we do see other materials used too. Take a look at just a few of the thousands of 3D Printed miniatures in the Shapeways gallery....
Designer Spotlight: Kostika Spaho
This weeks Designer Spotlight focuses on Kostika Spaho. Turning his hand to designing everything from coffee cups, jewelry and iPhone cases, he's an architect inspired by natural forms His most recent project is a fashion collaboration on a pair of shoes modelled after a bird skull...Read on to find out more!
Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?
Nature's genius along with some of the latest 3D-modeling programs fuel my design tank. I am inspired by deriving beautiful and elegant forms through trying to read "The mind of God" (scientific version) and through observing the natural environment and its rhythms.
Tell us about this current project you are working on?
The Biomimicry Shoe is the result of a unique collaboration between Dutch fashion designer Marieka Ratsma and myself. The idea for this shoe highlights the aesthetics and the shape of the bird skull, along with the characteristics of the lightweight and highly differentiated bone structure within the cranium. This kind of structure requires minimal support material, resulting in optimal efficiency, strength and elegance. Nature has been the main source of inspiration for the making and shaping of this shoe. Fast developing techniques such as 3D printing make it possible to approximate nature.
What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?
I discovered Shapeways in 2009 when I was a student at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. One night, while taking a break from school work, I stumbled across Shapeways through randomly searching for digital 3D-models. During this time, I was working with a Zcorp printer, which produced models in only one material. Once I saw what materials Shapeways had to offer, I immediately signed up.
How did you learn how to design in 3D?
Since 3D-design is highly integrated with architecture, I was lucky enough to go to a university that offered almost all the Autodesk programs and a few others. Therefore, I took advantage of this situation and learned as many as I could handle. Today, I always find myself using multiple programs in order to execute one project.
How do you promote your work?
I promote my work through actively contributing to blogs, social websites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, physical meet-ups, and literally tell everyone I have a conversation with. Lately people in town, refer to me as the "bird-shoe guy".
Who are your favorite designers or artists?
Some of my favorite designer's are: Peter Cook, Zaha Hadid, Iris van Herpen, Sergio Loureiro Da Silva, Pierre Sabas and Pawl Howse.
Who in the Shapeways community has served as an inspiration to you?
The designers from the shapeways community that have inspired me are: Saad Alayyoubi (SaGa Design), Nervous System, Michiel Cornelissen and Theo Jansen.
If you weren't limited by current technologies, what would you want to make using 3D printing?
If I was not limited by current technologies, I would attempt to build a mobile-home that would be entirely 3d-printed, in one run.
Check out more of Kostika's architectural work and his Shapeways Shop Spaho Design.
Tuesday, June 26. 2012
Shapeways Shop Owner Email Update
Around once a month we send an email out to the Shapeways Shop Owners to keep them up to date with latest news about selling their 3D printed designs in their Shapeways Shops. In the latest email we covered Shapeways Labs, updates to the inventory management tool and a little about selling their 3D Printed products via Behance Network.
If you are a Shapeways Shop owner and did not get the latest email you may want to check your spam filter (oh no) or subscribe to get the latest news (oh yes) to make the most of your Shapeways shop.
If there is anything you would like us to cover please let us know.
Monday, June 25. 2012
Solve the Rubik's Cube Single Handed with the Handicube
Oskar van Deventer has put a small but important twist on the classic Rubik's Cube to make it easier to solve single handedly and for speedcubing with the HandiCube.
It looks like a Rubik's Cube and it turns like a Rubik's Cube, but what is it? Of course, it is a Rubik's Cube. HandiCube was suggested by Jens Renders. The regular Rubik's Cube is impractical to solve one-handed, as the solver would need to block two layers to make a slice move (middle-layer "M-turn"). This problem is solved in HandiCube by building the puzzles from a 2x2x2 cube, and having the edges and centers hang between the corners.
Saturday, June 23. 2012
A Short History of a Digital Object : The 3D Printed Gyro the Cube by Virtox
Following is a reposting of an interesting post by Virtox aka Stijn on the history of a digital object, Gyro the Cube... Fascinating to see the evolutions of a very cool design.
A little over three years and leading a life of its own.
After the first trials in early 2009, with the final model published in March of that year, it spiked some interest among peers, which was pretty cool! Posting it on YouTube and showing it on a few fairs and trade shows, resulted in a wide variety of unexpected (and sometimes hilarious) responses:
My new favorite desktoy
That's fake, that's a time-lapse video!
Is that a real perpetual motion machine?
It took a while to break out of the 3d printing niche, but it slowly kept gaining in interest and to this day I see it pop up all over. But, I would never have guessed that it would be as inspiring and popular as it has been the last few years! Which (can't help it) just makes me really proud of my little Gyro the Cube, they grow up so fast don't they?
It appears on blogs and blurbs by people who are happy to have bought or gotten it as present, which is very rewarding!
"While smaller than I thought, it works exactly like it does in the video. Its going on my desk at work. The coolest thing about it is that it's made on a 3d printer."
Nerdy but Good at It
"The Gyro Cube from Shapeways, one of our many amazing wedding gifts."
365.25 on Tumbler
"It is not only the objects themselves that fascinate,
but also the fact that many of them really couldn't have been manufactured any other way."
The Age of 3D / Let's Play!
The little guy even made it onto several television shows (argh, where are those links), with the help of the wonderful people at Shapeways. And it got a spot on their T-shirt! (bottom right)
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Meet Burritob0t, 3d printed burritos in minutes... 3D Print Your Breakfast
Burritob0t is the thesis project of grad student Marko Manriquez at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. This is in many respects similar to the Cornucopia. I'm skeptical if the world's first 3d printed burrito has happened yet or if this is just concept but I am so hungry. Mmmm, extruded piles of beans, cheese, guacamole & sour cream. Imagine the implications in the fast food industry & @ 2am when you've maybe had too many drinks...instant burrito! Enjoy.
