• Why not...? - on sharing sales information of objects. Would YOU want us to share your shop's sales?
• Already printed model being rejected - on the frustration of having a previously printed model rejected. This is one of the major issues that we're working on now - as a first step we now have a "Printed Before" flag in our internal systems that should reduce this. Read Natalia's latest update here.

Do you need to know if your model is properly balanced? The first step is to determine where it's center of mass will be. Fredd shared an excellent tip on the forum - you can use the free MeshLab software to calculate it! Fredd writes:

Meshlab can detect it:

• Import your model, click Filter/Quality Measures and Computations/Compute Geometric Measures.
• Then click show layer dialog icon. [It] looks like a sheaf of papers (It is under the Window in the top header)
• Center of mass looks like what you are looking for. Plus gives bounding box dimensions, surface area and volume.

Lots of goodies, besides it being free.

Our community manager Bart will be hosting a talk on the future of production at the Thema Cafe in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. He will briefly touch on the technology behind 3D printing and then move on to demonstrate the current quality of the materials, and the impact that Shapeways has on designers and consumers. Of course there will be plenty of objects to see!

The talk will be in Dutch and starts at 16.00. The event is free of charge. If you'd like to join us, please RSVP at the Thema Cafe

Last Friday, about 30 Shapeways enthusiasts met in Amsterdam. This made it the largest usermeeting so far! Many brought their own work, and we discussed all kinds of topics like what's going on in the company, technical stuff and how to start up a Shapeways-based business.

Many people asked me if we had already planned a new meeting, and you've made me realise we should do this more often. So: stay tuned - I'll make sure there's another meetup in Amsterdam this year. I'll also make sure there's space to present your own project next time.

It certainly was a very inspiring evening for everyone and it was awesome meeting you all. Thanks for coming, and see you next time!

With the introduction of the new Frosted Detail and the re-appearance of Silver, our production facilities have been pushed beyond their limits. As a result, some of you may experience a delay in delivery of your items. Let me take a moment and talk about the specific issues that we’ve run into and what we’re doing to solve them.

Frosted Detail

I think it’s fair to say that we’ve never seen a material introduction that has been as successful as Frosted (Ultra) Detail. Just within the first few days we received the same number of orders as we usually do in one month for the regular Detail materials and they are continuing at the same rate. At this moment, our printers are running 24-7 but it’s not enough. We’re adding more printers this week to match the demand. We should be back on track in two weeks from now, but until then you may experience a delay of up to 10 working days.

Silver

We’ve offered Silver a couple of times before in the past, but its current popularity is unprecedented. In addition, people are no longer designing small objects (like rings), but also beautiful larger objects of up to 10x10cm. It seems like silver has been discovered by a new breed of designers!

While this is fantastic news, it also places a heavy burden on our wax printers (which can take up to 70 hours to print a large model!). We’re working hard to add additional wax printers early next week and solve the backlog by the end of next week. Until then, you may experience a delay of up to 10 working days.

Detail

As if the sudden growth of orders in Frosted Detail and Silver was not enough, our Objet printer has broken down. We’re busy getting a new one - hopefully early next week. Once its in, we should be up to speed again in 4-5 days. Until that time, Detail orders may be delayed up to 10 working days.

What about your order?

As soon as we see that your order is delayed, we’ll get in touch and keep you informed of the progress. If you have ordered parts in multiple materials, we’ll ship the each part as it’s ready. Of course, if you have any questions you can always contact us at service@shapeways.com.

We’re sorry things are taking longer than you’ve come to expect from us, and we’re all working hard on a solution. Thank you for your patience!

Theo Jansen is a Dutch kinetic artist, since 1990 occupied with creating new forms of life. He is father to the "Animari" beach creatures, or "Strandbeests", made of PVC tubing, that walk the beach powered by the wind. As time progresses the Beests evolve, with the ultimate goal of living their lives on their own.

Now Theo Jansen's Strandbeests have found a way to multiply by injecting their digital DNA directly into the Shapeways system. From now on several small strandbeests are available from his shop . Next to being a great abstraction of the inspiring work of Theo Jansen, these strandbeests are also an example of what 3D printing is capable of. Right after birth from the 3D printer these models will work straight away and do NOT require any assembly.

Designing the Beests this way proved quite the challenge. They consist of at least 76 separate moving interlocking parts. Multiple prototypes were used to come to the first viable solution, "Animaris Geneticus Parvus" #5. But the evolution process continues with evolutions #6 with lightweight bone structure and #7 with pointy feet.

3D printing is very suitable for rapid design changes, and as time goes by the Beests will evolve and new types of DNA will be added to the store, while others are removed. Expect more evolutions and variations in the future, with possible variation in size, shape, material or means of propulsion.

Also worth mentioning, a big brother to these Strandbeests is the limited edition "Animaris Geneticus Parvus XL", which is only available from Theo's Dutch Gallery Akinci

Animaris Geneticus Parvus is a joint project of Theo Jansen and Dutch Designers Bo Jansen and Tim van Bentum.

Check out the models in Theo Jansen's Shop.

• OBJ is a unit-less file format, so you'll have to tell us the scale of your model when you upload it: millimeters, inches or meters. For example, if you select millimeters then 1 unit in your 3D model translates to 1 millimeter in your printed object.
• We currently do not yet support material/texture files (.MTL) - this is planned for the future, however. NURBS are also not supported. But in our research we found that NURBS are not commonly used by OBJ exporters of 3D software packages.

The Médaille Coloniale -- the French Colonial Medal -- is a prime uniform decoration for any good 19th-century soldier. Adding some campaign clasps to a recreationist friend's medal seemed like an excellent project to test out the Shapeways workflow, from reference images to final prop.

This instructable is mostly concerned with the method(s) of working in scale from photograph to final item.

• Gathering reference material and processing it in Photoshop.
• Setting up your working size in Carrara Studio.
• Designing the clasps.
• Checking if the model meets the Shapeways design rules.
• Exporting and uploading the model to Shapeways.
• Finishing the printed models.

Some of you may have seen the plethora of puzzles that have been uploaded to Shapeways in the past few years by members such as Tom van der Zanden and Oskar van Deventer. Well, I'm one of these twisty-puzzlers, and I've just made a video showing how to do it.

Bored out of my mind in freshman CAD class, I decided to find better things to do with my time, and promptly began to design twisty puzzles. In the 5 minutes that follow, I'll walk you through through the design of my most recent puzzle, the Master Heximate, ending with me holding the finished puzzle in my hands. It goes by kind of fast, but if you've had any experience with CAD you should be able to get the gist of it.



Enjoy!