So what will I miss most now that I've left Shapeways?

My colleagues? No, what I will miss is the Shapeways Makerbot. We got a beautiful Makerbot Industries Cupcake CNC some weeks ago. Our Makerbot is quite noisy but we love it. Hans put it together for us and he is trying to add things to it all the time. We really wanted a 3D printer around the office and we're very happy to have this now. Our findings:

• The entire process of getting a Makerbot and putting it together is a lot of fun.
• Assembling a Makerbot is not difficult if you're a Dremel owning techie type of person.
• Your Makerbot will not work all the time so you have to keep at it.
• You will get stuck but there is a great Makerbotting community out there to help you.
• Owning a Makerbot will make you feel like you came from the future.

Watch the rather noisy video of our Makerbot below (and I was kidding I'll miss my colleagues a tonne!) . 

Dear community members, I will be leaving Shapeways as per tomorrow. I'll continue to do some Shapeways blog posts but will no longer be your Community Manager. I'm leaving Shapeways in order to pursue other opportunities.

The past two years have been the most invigorating & exciting of my life. To be able to let Shapeways grow from a group of beta testers to a large and vibrant community with tens of thousands of members, tens of thousands of designs and more than 8000 models ordered a month was an incredible experience.

Those first few months were rather chaotic. It started with a bang with articles on TechCrunch and Boing Boing. We were inundated by email, questions & problems (and in one fell swoop thousands of members). Materials had to be introduced Black Detail, White, Strong & Flexible; Transparent Detail, Full Color, Stainless Steel, Glass, High Gloss Glass and above all else we were impatient.

Impatient to show you what you could do using 3D printing technology. We were getting to grips with letting you "upload and print" but already working on the Creators, the Co-Creator platform and all the other features you've seen. The learning curve was steep, not only for our growing community but also for us. Nonmanifold, open edges and coming to grips with software packages we'd never even heard of meant we were learning all the time. Bugs were popping up everywhere, as if we were gallivanting around the jungle tossing sugar cubes every which way. At the same time we had to organize and visit events such as SIGGRAPH, Dutch Design Week and Makerfaire. As a net result I've explained 3D printing to more people than I'd ever think I'd meet in a life time. Somewhere along the line I managed to write 347 blog posts: some of dubious quality, many in dire need of editing but hopefully some good ones in there somewhere.

I also got to dive into model trains, 3D puzzles, space ships, design schools, jewelry designers, Fablabs and many other communities we engaged. So not only has Shapeways let me meet a large number of people and these people have been very diverse. I've also gotten to learn about 3D printing and: graduation ceremony deadlines, N & H0, sculptural intent, live action role playing, remote control helicopters, replica steam boats, racing teams, 3d scans of clavicles, jet engines, fashion accessories, dinner wear, knives & forks, Snoopy, the Virgin de Guadalupe, LEGO swords, fractals, elves, chocolate molds, brass knuckles, Facebook games, UAVs, action figures, Second Life, insects, proteins, DNA, photography, stamps, RFID tags, augmented reality, watches, chess sets, manga, robot arms, fighting robots, board games, desktop wargaming and many other things. Opening up your eyes every day to new communities, new designs and new challenges was wonderful. Thank you all for letting me learn about your community!

We've spent the time since trying to encourage and marshal the incredible skill and energy level of the Shapeways community by holding contests and reaching out through You Tube, this blog and our lively forum. Whereas initially we were focused on just letting people upload to Shapeways, later on it became a question of inspiring people in creating more and more diverse things. The quality of work in the gallery and on It arrived (Ralph's idea!) has continually improved remarkably as people have mastered designing for 3D printing. The sheer variety of the designs on Shapeways right now is mind blowing. While I'd like to think I played a small part in this I know that it is really the community that made this happen.

Fairly quickly the first heroes started to emerge in our community. Whether by tirelessly submitting bug reports or suggestions, spending hours helping on the forum, writing tutorials or by spreading the word it was these community heroes that really have made Shapeways what it is today. Shapeways is a very high engagement community and it is these people's pioneering work that has made this possible. We've had members spend 10-12 hours fixing someone else's complex design and others have spent over a 1000 hours on Shapeways. We've seen hundreds of blog post and tweets by community members spreading the word.

These heroes were brought to us by sites linking to us and writing to us (over ten thousand!). I'd like to especially thank Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, the Wired Blogs, the guys at Makezine, Gizmodo and Engaget for bringing us talented creative people that have helped shape Shapeways. I'm intensely proud of Shapeways and the Shapeways community. Not only am I proud of what we've all achieved together so far but I know I will be proud of what you'll achieve after I've left. I would like to thank each and every community member from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for your friendship, ideas & encouragement. I am indebted to you for inspiring me with your creativity and hard work for this community.

Should you wish to keep in touch with me you can follow me on twitter here or email me at joris (dot) peels (at) gmail. (dot) com. 

A few weeks ago Steve of Third Fate Creations approached us about showing off his painting skills on some of the space ships on Shapeways. Steve works with mini designers in a very selective way. He chooses designs that inspire him and then paints them. Mostly this is for a fee and sometimes when Steve is really inspired it is in return for credit and keeping the painted mini. You can check out the pricing and also a lot of airbrush and painting tips on his site.

We gave Steve a few models so he could show off his skill for you guys and hopefully get you all to start thinking of the possibilities of combining airbrushing with your 3D prints. For Shapeways Steve painted two of  Charles Oines intricate and wonderful spaceships: the Ryuushi Warleader and the Martian Icaria Class Strike Cruiser.

Steve, "used an airbrush on all but the "gem/glass reflection spots" and on those used a 00 brush.
The paint is a combination of GW, Createx, and Autoair, depending on what effect I needed.
It took, roughly, 4-6 hrs total time to prep and paint each one."

If you look at Charles' Shop you can see that the models are tiny.The Dominator for example of 0.9 by 3.6 by 3.9 cm. The intricate painting detail that Steve managed to with at this scale is just crazy. 

From today until the 22nd of next month there is a significant discount selected models on the site. Sean's Oloid is not $95 but $66. Basically models with a density higher than 10% that are larger than 20cm3 get 50% discount on the cm3 that exceed the first 20cm3. The discount is over the material price not the mark up of the designer so there will be differences between models. Why & how are we doing this? Have we gone nuts?

We strive to make Shapeways as accessible as we can. We want to make it easier and more affordable all the time. Eventually it is our goal to let you make anything. The more you order the more we scale and the cheaper we can make it for you to order, this encourages you to order more etc.. This is a virtuous cycle that benefits us both. Up and until now our pricing model has been encouraging you to make thin tiny wispy things.  Larger things and more dense things are comparatively cheaper for us to make however. There is simply less cleaning & handling involved per unit of size (and also per $1 in revenue).

Because of this we are able to, for a month and as a test, offer a discount on models that fit the following criteria:

• only valid for the materials White, Strong & Flexible; Black Strong & Flexible; Summer Blue; Summer Green & Summer Magenta
• only valid for products ordered from today until the 23rd of July.
• They have to have a density that is higher than 10%.
• On a White, Strong & Flexible model you will then pay the regular $1.50 per cubic cm for any model that is less than 20 cubic cm as well as a start up fee of $1.50 per model.So no change there.
• On  White, Strong & Flexible model larger than this you will pay a start up fee of $1.50. You will also pay $1.50 per cubic cm for the first 20 cubic cms. Any additional cubic centimeters are only $0.75 per cubic cm. 
• On a Black, Strong & Flexible model there is a $4 start-up cost + 1.78/cm3 for the first 20 cm3 + 0.89/cm3 for any consecutive cm3 over 20cm3
• On the summer colors there is a  $4 start-up cost + 1.99/cm3 for the first 20 cm3 + 0.99/cm3 for any consecutive cm3 over 20cm3    

You can check density in your 3D modeling application (or totally old school divide the bounding box by volume of your model).

The discount has been implemented on the site but it might take the site two hours to work through all the galleries.

The discount is over the material price not over the mark up made by the designer so there will be differences in the discount between designers.

This means that large White, Strong & Flexible models have become a lot cheaper on the site for this one month. We hope you guys have fun with this!

Our design intern Artur made a wind chime for you. This wind chime uses the musical properties of glass to full effect and mixes 3D printed glass with White, Strong & Flexible, fishing wire and wooden beads. Combinatory manufacturing ftw. The video is below. 

We can now offer you two new glass materials: High Gloss Black Glass and High Gloss White Glass. Open the floodgates of your creativity. What images does their super shiny sheen conjure up in your mind? What will you guys make with these materials?

Gijs' egg cup big hearts is $40

The Angel pendants as seen above are $23

The candle holder below is $89

The materials have a start up cost of $5 and will cost $6.99 per cubic cm. Initially the start up costs for Glass were $15 so this represents a significant price drop in the start up costs. The start up costs of the Milky White Glass has also been reduced by $10 and this material will cost $5.99 per cubic cm. Even though the design rules are the same, the gloss materials are nicer to the touch and stronger.

Process

The materials are made by 3D printing recycled glass. The fine powder is built up layer by layer and a binding material is applied to the glass powder that will become your product. When the 3D print is complete it is baked in an oven to fuse the glass powder. Your products are then subsequently enameled to get their glossy finish. 

Expectation Management

As you can clearly see in the Angel picture there is a fair amount of "definition" from the 3D printing process in the form of bumps and the like. The enamel smooths the 3D prints out considerably and these prints are closed so not porous as the Milky White Glass material is. The models are however far from completely smooth. A lot of the objects made with this process look really good and very arty. But, significant warping may occur and the overall dimensional accuracy of this process is still limited. 3D printing glass is amazing but also very new and a very experimental process. 

Shapeways community member David Bhella 3D printed a 5 CM model of the Herpes Simplex Virus. The Herpes was as a gift for a retiring professor. Presumably, said professor is one of only a small group of people that are glad to have been given herpes. Intrigued I asked David to tell us more about what he does at the MRC Virology Unit, Institute of Virology, University of Glasgow with 3D printing. 

Joris Peels: Why are you interested in 3D printing?

David Bhella: I am interested in all aspects of 3D technology (rapid prototyping, 3D displays and commercial 3D animation software), as my work is entirely focused on solving the structures of viruses in three-dimensions and I find visualisation in 2D media deeply unsatisfactory.

I think that rapid prototyping is a really interesting way of allowing one to appreciate the complexity and symmetry of viruses. Holding the model in your hand is such a 'human' way of understanding an object. Unfortunately the potential for understanding these structures at high-resolution cannot be realised in this manner, because proteins are extremely complex molecules, and a virus is a complex assembly of proteins.  So, the Herpes model I have printed through Shapeways is comparatively low-resolution (about 2.5 nanometers resolution - the object itself is 125 nanometers in diameter). We are now working at better than one nanometer resolution. At this level the 3D shape of individual protein molecules becomes visible, showing us how they fold up. To show this as a polygon surface becomes less meaningful then, and we have to start looking at more complex means of visualisation, also the poly count becomes so high that commercial 3D software cannot handle it.

For the moment then, the strength of 3D printing is in teaching and in public engagement (and in bespoke gifts for retiring professors). I am really enthusiastic about the prospect of producing large metal sculptures of virus particles that people can handle and walk around, I think that the beauty and symmetry of viruses really highlights the elegance of nature and evolutionary processes.  As I am the scientist responsible for public engagement in my department, I am lucky enough to be able to dedicate some of my time to this area. Furthermore, my wife is head of the science team in our local science museum (Glasgow Science Centre), so I have access to a great venue for P.E activities, which is staffed by motivated and enthusiastic science communicators who can help me.  A couple of years ago we created an art exhibition called molecular machines (http://www.molecularmachines.org.uk/), which got a lot of media attention. I think it would be great to produce a molecular machines 2.0 that exploited the latest in 3D panel displays and 3D printing.

Joris Peels: What do you do?

David Bhella: I work on many aspects of the virus life-cycle using cutting-edge electron microscopy and image processing techniques to understand the structures of viruses in three-dimensions. Viruses are the smallest of pathogens to infect man and range from ~30 - 500 nm in size (A nanometer is 1/1000th of a micrometer which is 1/1000th of a millimeter). They reproduce themselves by invading our cells and hijacking the cellular machinery to make thousands more viruses particles. As they have a very small number of genes, they assemble from multiple copies of only a few types of protein. They are therefore highly symmetrical, employing either helical or icosahedral symmetry to make a shell (called a capsid) that ferries their genome between cells while protecting it from damage.

So, we take 2D images in the transmission electron microscope and use image processing methods to average together images of thousands of particles into a 3D reconstruction. I attach a raw image from the microscope of a Feline calicivirus. I am interested in this virus as it is from the same family of viruses as the noroviruses that cause winter vomiting disease.

Joris Peels: Was it just fun?

David Bhella: It is always fun!

From today until the end of the month we will be holding a super quick SIGGRAPH competition. Just add the tag SIGGRAPH2010 to your best model to enter. There will only be one winner this time, winner takes all! This winner will have their model displayed at SIGRRAPH as the centerpiece of our stand. After the show we will also send you the model and give you an additional $250 coupon in 3D printing. We will be looking for the best, most impressive display model. The model can not cost more than $200 and must be inspiring as well as show people the possibilities of 3D printing. Don't forget only two weeks to design! Fame and fortune await! Enter now! 

Mitchell Jetten is a great guy and despite his young age is a successful Shop owner on Shapeways. Jettuh as he is known on here, exclusively models Dutch model trains & model train accessories for his SpoorObjecten Shop on Shapeways. Despite asking for very low mark up per model sold Mitchell has made over $4000 with us so far. He is an enthusiastic & very helpful community member and it has been a pleasure to see him prosper. Indeed my "power lunch" with Mitchell in Amsterdam on a sunny Gustavmahlerplein surrounded by basking bankers was not only thoroughly enjoyable but also a professional high point for me. Mitchell is on the right in the foto below next to his good friend Niels.

Joris Peels: What modeling software do you use? And how long have you used it?

Mitchell Jetten: In general I only use 3ds Max for my trains. At school I learned how to use SolidWorks, and for the company I work for (freelance) I also sometimes use Autocad 2000 for CNC projects. Funny thing is, I started using Gmax (a free version of 3ds Max) in 2004, but I couldn't make more then a station platform with a texture on it back then. But when I discovered this great place where you can 3D print your objects, I started doing research about how I would have to build it, and what I could build with it (because, who wants an expensive easy station platform?). This happened in February 2009, a month later I finally had my first model in my hand, a Dutch small train signal So, to get back to the question, I've only known how to 3D model for a year and a half right now.

Joris Peels: How old are you?

Mitchell Jetten: I think I'm one of the youngest shop owners on Shapeways, I just turned 19 on the 7th of June.

Joris Peels: How did you happen to find Shapeways? 

Mitchell Jetten: If I remember correctly I heard something from my dad about 3D printing, and I thought he was nuts. I think I reacted the same as all people do that haven't heard about 3D printing........"What, you make a 3D picture,, and you print it on a standard printer?" Only after a month or so, I had nothing to do on school and found a Shapeways clip on Youtube a and this made me interested!

Joris Peels: What do you make?

Mitchell Jetten: I make Dutch model trains in the scale 1:160 (N Spoor) and my next step is to try making an affordable train in 1:87 (H0)! So for this moment just trains and scenery for model railways.

Joris Peels: How is your Shop doing?  

Mitchell Jetten: My shop is doing really great, seriously, thanks to Shapeways I met my girlfriend in some sort of way. Because of the earnings I made with Shapeways, I had enough money to fly to Munich with a few friends. Over there I met my girlfriend that weekend! I will fly to Munich again next month thanks to my Shapeways earnings! I eventually see myself getting rich with Shapeways' service.

Joris Peels: What is your most successful product?

Mitchell Jetten: To be honest i don't really know! At the moment the VIRM 9500 part 1/3 and VIRM 9500 2/3 are sold the most but that is also the first model I created so it has been online for a longer time. 

I think most people want it, because it's a very common train in the Netherlands.

 
The SGM(Sprinter) is also sold a lot, and there are about 5 persons (that I know of), that have finished it, and have a working model up and running!

Joris Peels: How do you see it in the future?

Mitchell Jetten: Ok, just a small sneak peak of my thoughts: In the future, I see myself building my next train...wait I'm doing that already... but not printing it in White, Strong & Flexible, but in a perfect and smooth material (like Envisiontec Perfactory). After the print I will cast it with resin, and make about 10 of those trains (not just the body, but the entire train completely finished).

Joris Peels: How do you market and sell your products on Shapeways?

Mitchell Jetten: There are 2 forums where I promote my trains, well not really promoting, but i do show the pictures of the model, and show them where they can buy it if they like, but it's not that I do a lot of promotion for my models. Also I've been to several model railway exhibitions to sell trains and also just to inform people about this amazing Shapeways website! Maybe I need to promote myself better, but i don't have a lot of time lately because of school!

Joris Peels: Do you do market research?

Mitchell Jetten: Not really, I think that's just 10% of the reason why I created the trains I have finished.
I just build them because I like those trains. And if people like them to, then that's a big plus.
A lot of people want me to build old trains, but to be honest, I don't feel a lot for old trains, I like modern stuff!

Joris Peels: Why trains? 

Mitchell Jetten: Because I like trains, I never had a working model railway in my room, but I do have Dutch trains in my room. So by making my own trains I feel special, because not a lot of people own the trains I've made!
 
Funny thing people ask me is:
Why 1:160? Most people use 1:87!
 
The answer to that is:
In 1:87 almost all trains I like have already been made and sold by the big companies, so it's useless to sell an unfinished train, if they can already buy a good finished train, right? In 1:160 there aren't a lot of Dutch trains, also because of the small scale, it's a lot cheaper to print those trains.

Joris Peels: Is Shapeways a job for you? 

Mitchell Jetten: In some sort of way you can say that Shapeways helped me making my dream come through. I always liked to make 3D models, but i never knew how to do it. (Yes I knew how to make a station platform, but that's easy) Since Shapeways I've learned a lot about how to 3D model an object. So now I do freelance work for a company, making 3D models for them. But I also have my own company (SpoorObjecten) because of what shapeways does! So, yes, i think it's a job for me, maybe not 100% yet, but give it some time...

Everbody, keep up the good work with your models!
 
@Shapeways, thank you so much for the wonderful website! Without Shapeways I wouldn't have been to Munich.......

John Chen (Madox on Shapeways) has just added some great products to his line up. His propeller hat cufflinks are now available in gold. He also has a great pair of locomotive train cufflinks. My favorites through are the Lego compatible cufflinks. You can add your Lego bricks to these cufflinks to customize them. I would not recommend adding the Lego Millennium Falcon to your cufflinks however. Wearing one's heart on one's sleeve is never a good idea. Also, it would not be practical.

 

Designer Banlu Kemiyatorn has a lot of great designs in his Shop. My personal favorites are his Bracelets. Each of them is a co-creator and you can customize the inner diameter of the bracelet. Bracelet Number 6 looks very modern to me.  I also love Bracelet Number 9 and the mega spiky Bracelet Number 3.  They're high tech without being cold, if that makes sense.

A few of the Shapies are BWM nuts. Arno our head of software developments has a racer in some rather interesting colors, Peter (our CEO) has two M3s and Robert (our CTO) has this lovely little convertible he got second hand from a local hairdresser. It was therefore a brilliant move by Peter Paul (himself a Volkswagen fan) when he started to develop the guaranteed crowd pleaser: the customizable gear shifter for BWM.

This steel 3D print can be attached to the standard gear shift knob in many models of BMW. You can Co-Create by uploading any image of your liking, a logo, some initials whatever you want and then for $40 we will ship a customized gear shift insert to you for you to install. For a few days you can even still get it in gold. Any guarantees on our part however do not extend into the realm of taste.The one on the left below by the way is manually polished. What do you guys think of that finish? The one on the right is for Arno and in the logo of his four man racing team.

This gear shifter is a product. And you could buy it. But, more importantly it is a bit of inspiration. Right now we have a steadily growing number of Co-Creators on Shapeways, 450 or so. A lot of these focus on jewelry, accessories and interior decoration items. But, there is a lot more in the world you could "custom fit" to people's liking. We hope that this inspires you guys to think outside that dastardly box, the home!

In cars for example you can see the enthusiasm Jay Leno has shown for replacing automobile parts. The car aftermarket/turning/customization industry is a $31 billion a year industry in the US alone. There are millions of car nuts like Arno, Peter and Robert. They all love their cars and many of them would like to improve them or personalize them in some way. Ultimately of course the car manufacturers themselves will be using design tools and 3D printing production equipment to give you customization options from the get go. Indeed the sheer volume of choice in car accessories and models has been accelerating. Right now the first 3D printing techniques are already used in very high end automobiles and in Formula 1 and we can 3D print metal parts of up to 1 meter so, money no object we could 3D print your entire car. In time costs will be lowered for this to become more and more accessible. But, as we've shown with the gear shifter there is a lot of opportunity to make less expensive things, today. So what are affordable designs that people can customize in order to personalize their iron steed right now?

The next Shapeways Live will be on Thursday the 17th at 19:00 CET. I will host it together with Bart, our Blender guru. We will have a Q & A session where we will answer any and all questions you have about 3D printing, 3D printing materials & designing for 3D printing. If you have any questions you would like to submit in advance just email them to joris (at) shapeways (dot) com. You can see us live on Ustream here

Sadly Bart can not make it today so we will move the Shapeways Live to another day. We will keep you posted!

.

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen make up Belgian design studio Unfold. In addition to teaching at St. Lukas in Brussels they are also the most interesting designers working in 3D printing today. From their curating of Bits 'n Pieces in New York to their pioneering work on inventing their very own ceramic 3D printing process using a RepRap derived 3D printer to their latest fantastic work: a virtual pottery wheel, Unfold leads the way in design and 3D printing.  

Joris Peels: What is Unfold exactly?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: Unfold is a design studio and a platform for everything we do. We have a strong multidisciplinary background in design, technology and art. Our focus is on spatial design, products, computation and production methods, and design theory. 

Joris Peels: Who is Unfold?

Unfold is Dries Verbruggen and Claire Warnier and we work frequently with a vast network of kindred spirits and specialists. 

Joris Peels: Why does Unfold like 3D printing?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: Because it opens a lot of opportunities concerning the production and distribution of artifacts. It introduces new form languages and is a bridge between the virtual/digital and the material/tactile world. The edge between those two is blurring and 3d printing is one of the tools that aids removing that distinction. 

Joris Peels: Do you design everything with 3D modeling?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: Not at all! We always use a mix of techniques that suit our purpose whether they are analog, digital or anything in between. We are not interested in committing to one kind of toolset. 

Joris Peels: What software do you use? 

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: Depends on what we need for a certain project. When you consider software as toolkits with a certain range of tools in them, we use some tools from various toolkits and we often switch between them. For example for the Brainwave sofa we used BioExplorer to visualize the EEG data in 3d waveforms, 3D Ripper DX to extract the 3d data, Cinema4d to model the meshes and create visualizations of the complete sofa, Pepakura to unfold the meshes into textile patterns (not used) and finally Rhino to convert the mesh into nurbs for milling the foam. For 3d printing we use Netfabb, Meshlab, Pleasant3d and Skeinforge. Since L'Artisan Electronique we started developing our own experimental software with code-electro-typeface-pencil wizard Tim Knapen of The Indianen. LaserClay 1.0, the software used for the virtual throwing wheel is the first result and there's more to follow hopefully. 

Joris Peels: Normally designers just make things, why do you want to play with the process?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: It is important that you know and explore the tools you work with. Artisans used to start with making their own tools, before they even could consider to make an object. In this digital era, designers are not aware of the tools they use and the limited set they are working with. Unfold likes to put some time in making and understanding the tools they use, so that they can adapt these tools to their needs and design new tools. New tools lead to new form languages and in the end to new designs. 

Joris Peels: How does your ceramic 3D printing process work?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: It uses a normal Reprap, a Rapman from Bits from Bytes with an adapted toolhead based on the Frostruder design by Makerbot. A pressurized syringe is filled with clay and objects are drawn layer by layer with a coil of slowly extruded clay. The system is simple but you need to trow together knowledge about ceramics and 3d printing to get it to work. 

Joris Peels: How did you come up with it?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: It just came together one day when we saw the first hackable open source 3d printers online. At that time we were also working a lot with ceramics and found it particularly interesting because the printing process that uses extruded ABS filament resembles somehow the coiling technique used in ceramics. We were fascinated by the reprap tool, but we didn't like the standard material it uses. Ceramic is a very delicate and valuable material, plastic isn't. It doesn't mean you cant make a valuable item from plastics or cheap stuff with ceramics but people have a different emotional connection to both materials. To use ceramic together with 3D-printing, offers us to make products to which people relate more and have a higher perceived value. Hopefully those objects will last longer and won't end up as fast on on landfill as plastic objects. 

Joris Peels: What 3D printers/processes do you play with? 

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: For example L’Artisan Electronique is an installation that was first exhibited in the Design by Performance show in Z33, Hasselt. Unfold created -aside from the ceramic printer- some kind of a virtual pottery wheel in collaboration with the previously mentioned Tim Knapen. This pottery wheel gives visitors a chance to ‘turn’ their own forms. At regular intervals, a selection of these designs is printed in clay and exhibited in the space. We wanted to add an input method for the printer that felt like a natural user interface for creating digital pottery, making it a start to end process. As to other 3d print processes, there is much experimentation left in our Rapman machine so we'll continue with that, testing various other materials like glass and building new toolheads. One day we might dive into some of the fascinating open source printer designs that use a bed of powdered material and see what we can do with that and we still use commercial services to print prototypes and moulds in various techniques. We also love the laser cutter at Sint-Lukas Brussels, the University College we both teach at. Unfold just finished a project in which we laser cut ceramic green sheets (an unfired ceramic material in sheet form) which is pretty interesting to explore further. From time to time we also pick up the unfolding technique from which we took our name, like for example for the giant sleeping cat we did for the Habitat festival in Antwerp. 

Joris Peels: Why did you choose the Utah teapot for a design?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: The Utah teapot is a 3D model created in 1975 by Martin Newell which has become a standard reference object in the computer graphics community. It is a simple, round, partially concave mathematical model of an ordinary teapot. Since its inception it has been re-used millions of times, starring for example in Toy Story and The Simpsons. The objective of Utanalog by Unfold was to return the iconographic teapot to its roots as a piece of functional dish-ware while showing its status as an icon of the digital world and showing the traces of a 34 year long digital life. The Utah is a very iconic model and a lot of people recognize it but don't know the story behind it, and besides that its just a good looking teapot! 

Joris Peels: What is a Brainwave sofa?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: The design of the Brain Wave Sofa is the result of a brain wave scan measured by means of an elektro-encefalogram (EEG) using a set of electrodes connected to the head. The data is represented as a 3d landscape by a computer application for neurofeedback, the depth is the frequency of the brain-activity in hertz, the height is the strength of the signal and the length is the timescale. The role of the 'designer' is challenged in this procedure, by looking at the 3d visuals you are directly influencing your design. In this case Lucas Maassen controlled the form by opening and closing his eyes while measuring a specific wavelength known as the Alpha activity (8-12 Hertz). The Alpha activity is peculiar because it strengthens when you close your eyes in contrast to other brain activity that dims. This to prepare your brain for the large input of signals when you open your eyes. The resulting 3 second computer file is sent to a CNC milling machine that mills out the Brainwave in soft foam. It is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a futuristic production workflow in which the designer only has to close his eyes and a computer 'prints' the result out as a functional form. A warm grey felt with buttons in the valleys is applied by hand to the foam honoring the traditional codes of a sofa. 

Joris Peels: Do you have tips for designers who are starting out?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: Keep on doing the things you love to do and don't worry too much about the industry and getting things into production. There are so many ways to produce your own objects these days, that you don't necessarily need to find a label or a producer to make nice objects which you can sell as well. Make good work - document your work online - make more good work etc 

Joris Peels: Do all designers secretly want to be artists?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: No, we think designers and artists both want to follow their dreams. Whether design is a subset of art or art a subset of design is something you can debate about forever but in the end it all boils down to the context in which you work and not so much the work in itself. 

Joris Peels: Would you rather have the bestselling item at IKEA or an exhibit at the Venice Biennale?

Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen: Both, it depends on the context and the questions that are asked. An exhibit with IKEA at the Venice Biennale maybe?

As you may know we use Objet 3D printers for our White, Transparent and Black Detail materials. These printers have two settings Top Quality and Top Speed. The difference between the two setting is in the layer thickness of the 3D print. Top Speed has a layer thickness of 28 micron and Top Quality has one of 16 micron. We always set them to Top Speed because this is faster and thus cheaper for you. A few weeks back we had a production hiccup. In response we printed a batch with the Top Quality setting and got several very enthusiastic responses. Because of this for the next two weeks, until the 15th, all orders of the Detail materials will be printed at the highest detail. There is no additional charge. 

The difference between the two settings is hard to see on photographs. Andy (Sadwargamer) says of the higher detail prints he received, "The new high quality white detail print mode almost completely removes the “stair effect” currently exhibited when using white detail – especially on curved surfaces. For small models even greater detail is now possible – opening up further avenues for modelers.  In particular it reduces the amount of post production work needed to take the printed model to a master production model for commercial sale as either a resin or white metal model."