Like a scene straight out of Cory Doctorow's Makers, Disney World is offering visitors to be 3D scanned and 3D printed in a Hans Solo style figurine as part of their Star Wars Weekends..

The cost of the first figurine will be $99.95 plus tax and shipping. Additional figurines (featuring the same face) can be ordered for $74.95 each plus tax and shipping. This new experience was created especially for Disney Parks, and is part of their D-Tech Me line that uses technology to take Disney to the world of personalization.

The experience will officially open on May 18 with the launch of Star Wars Weekends

via 3ders.org and Disney

Now your designs can be 3D printed in a range of beautiful ceramic glazes with our new pastel palette of colors along with satin black finish to join our existing black and white gloss ceramic finishes.

The new ceramic palette includes Avocado Green, Pastel Yellow, Eggshell Blue and Satin Black we will also be introducing Satin White as soon as we are 100% happy with finish.

The design rules are the same as the existing ceramic materials and glazes requiring a minimum 3mm wall thickness to your designs but there will be changes in the pricing of 3D Printed Ceramics to reflect the cost of the glazes as we end the promotional pricing on the gloss black glaze.

Gloss White will be priced at $0.18 per cm2 of surface area

Gloss Black will be priced at $0.19 per cm2 of surface area

Satin Black will be priced at $0.19 per cm2 of surface area

Colored Glazes will be priced at $0.20 per cm2 of surface area.

The international Association for Robots in Architecture got their hands on a KUKA KR16-2 robot which of course means they had to program the robot to start spraying walls with the sort of style that would make the Graffiti Research Lab proud... But how do you get a robot to hold the spray gun? Enter Shapeways 3D printing. 

The gripper was printed as a single piece with movable parts, using selective laser sintering - so to get a working gripper, they only had to add two servo motors, connected to an Arduino board. The main challenge was then to find a way to let the industrial robot communicate with the Arduino board, to close and open the gripper at the appropriate time. A similar Arduino-based strategy was used to operate a spraygun, the mounting piece was also 3D printed by Shapeways!

Check out the video of the robot in action....

The Design for 3D Printing Class by Aaron Trocola presents the foundations of 3D modeling and 3D printing, reviews some of the free tools you can use to get started, and then outlines some of the considerations you'll want to be exposed to as you advance. Sign up now and get a $10 discount thanks to Behance... Sweet.

Various free tools will be explained their strengths and weaknesses articulated: Sketchup, Sculptris, Wings3D, Blender, 123D, Meshlab. You may want to install any or all of these to start off with a packed digital toolbox.

Next will be a category based explanation of premium software in different categories: 

-Animation suites like Maya/3DSMax

-Solid modelers ike Solidworks, Alibre, Rhino

-Sculpting programs like Zbrush, 3Dcoat

-Mesh fixing and conversion tools like Meshlab and NetFabb

Then dive in to the details of materials, file formats, wall-thickness, structural considerations and other aspects of designing for 3D printing.

With your ticket purchase you will get a variety of sample files to help you get started immediately, including Sketchup templates for the the latest iPhone, iPod Nano and Shuffle, so you can easily design an unlimited number of products around them.

If this class or time does not suit your needs, check out the Shapeways School on Skillshare for more options. 

3D Printed in sterling silver this super cute Heart Shaped Gear is a rare combination of engineering and romance. 

The Gear Heart by thehumanhive is a tribute to papercraft artist Haruki Nakamura's sculpture, Gear's Heart.

Neri Oxman, Director of the Mediated Matter group discusses the 'Multiversites Creatives' exhibit at Pompidou Center until August 6th 2012. Neri's work pushes Objet technologies to the absolute limit of their possibilities to the point where she worked with Objet engineers to unlock more then is currently possible with the machines as they are.  It will be fantastic if these extensions of possibility make their way to everybody who uses Objet machine, especially the file handling of multiple materials.  This would make it easier to print the Detail Materials at Shapeways in combination within a single print.... Something many Shapeways users would love to see.. 

Analyze, Recognize, Retrieval: Copyright or Share?

Fujitsu has developed a technology for retrieving 3D CAD models with partially similar shapes from an existing database.  This has been developed to speed up design time when engineers need to create new models by drawing in parts and geometry from existing models in the database, there fore making it possible for them to copy sections or incorporate the entire geometry.  They claim that this technology they intend to comercialize will save design time up to 90% (I assume that is when the part they are designing is EXACTLY the same).

This technology works by analyzing a database, segmenting the 3D models into component parts, distinctive shapes, protrusions, relationships between surfaces, size, orientation and more. The designer then specifies a search key and 3D models that meet that criteria are displayed in a color coded spectrum to be chosen by the designer.

Above is the way in which the database is queried for geometric features.

Above we see an engineer hunched over CRT monitors in a futuristic scenario where flatscreens no longer exist.

The idea from Fujitsu has implications for design engineers working within an internal database but the implications are far wider in a social context as the very same technology may be used to inhibit or promote sharing of 3D models with associated IP issues.

• What if this were a way to register a part as being protected by copyright as an artistic work?
• What if this technology were used to register a '3D Patent' of a unique 3D printed mechanism? 
• What if these registered parts were used to block a 'consumer level desktop machine' from 3D printing copyrighted works.
• What if we used this technology to make a free public database of 3D geometry that can be accessed by Tinkercad, 3DTin, 123D, Inventor Fusion, MeshMixer to make it easy for people to make awesome works from shared models? 

What do you think the potential use will be for this technology? 

We are running a Skillshare class at Material ConneXion on how to get started 3D printing on Wednesday May 9th at 6pm. 

This introductory class will cover the basic principles behind design for 3D printing, the free tools available to get started and the materials and processes used to make your ideas real.

It is a perfect if you or anyone you know want to get started designing for 3D printing but do not know where to start.  We will have materials there for people to play with to get an idea what 3D printing is all about.