The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is a mid-century modern design classic first released in 1956 by husband and wife design team Charles and Ray Eames but even after ovder 50 years of being in production, even the reproductions are prohibitively expensive, until now.

The Mini Eames Lounge Chair by kspence is a 1:20 scale miniature is about 2 inches tall and at just over $25 as a full color 3D Print is 1:67th the cost of a full scale reproduction.  Do the math, it's a bargain and you can hold a piece of design history in the palm of your hand, maybe even make the perfect seat for Sad Keanu?

The backbone of Shapeways is the 3D Printing materials we offer to our community. From the versatile Strong and Flexible Plastics, to the beautiful, hand-polished finish of Premium Silver, materials inspire everyone to create new products that no one ever dreamed of before. 

Our mission at Shapeways has always been to enable anyone to make anything they want. First, we built a system to allow Makers to design and purchase models for themselves. Then we created Shapeways Shops to enable anyone to launch a business and sell their products worldwide. Now, we want to make it easier for Makers to gain access to the newest 3D printing materials on the market and test them with us. Think about it like one big, global 3D Printing R&D team.

We're excited to announce the launch of our first 'Maker Only' material: a flexible, rubbery plastic called Elasto Plastic! The finish, color, and properties are not yet ready for sale to a wider audience, but it's a perfect material for any Maker out there who can work with a textured surface and maybe a little extra powder arriving with their model.

The new, improved Elasto Plastic is a great option for Makers as it is an incredibly durable material with a lot of really interesting properties such as high impact resistance, flexibility and compression (depending on the geometry), along with a high level of static friction because of the surface texture. Though not strictly water-tight, it can hold liquids, but it does not like high temperatures or fire. It is a valuable addition to our 3D  Printing material options here on Shapeways that we are sure you will find incredibly useful and fun.

Beautiful, delicate, finely balanced mobiles 3D printed to dance on the breeze.

These 3D printed mobiles are the result of a collaboration between Marco Mahler and Henry Segerman, available 3D printed on demand through their Shapeways Mobiles Shop

Mecube is an easy (and addictive) app to 3D design and 3D print direct from your iOS device.  The intuitive interface is a simple 'voxel modeler' where you add cubes together to make a 3D form like assembling single blocks of Lego together. You can use the same process to cut away or even 'skew' cubes for some slightly more complex variations.  Each voxel can be assembled as a solid color or you can go back and paint each surface, by touching a surface multiple times you increase the saturation of the color, this allows for quite a large variation of colors from such a simple interface.

Keep an eye out for the MeCube Game that will take the same principles into (an even more addictive) puzzle game that will also connect to the Shapeways API to 3D print prizes. 

Check out the tutorial below. 

Sometimes we see some of our really popular products on Shapeways enter the world using other manufacturing processes. On some occasions, due to licensing reasons a product may no longer be available on Shapeways if it is being produced by another manufacturer, and sometimes it remains available simultaneously as a 3D print and a mass produced item when the designer retains all ownership of IP.  We are always incredibly proud to help a designer take their product to market no matter which way they go, a little sad if they leave Shapeways, like sending a child off to college, but happy for the designer's success.

The latest product looking to go down the mass production path is a recent favorite on Shapeways, the MagSafe Adapter Key Ring by jbobrow now hitting Kickstarter as the Keybit. Jonathan's Kickstarter campaign pays tribute to the speed and ease of 3D printing and taking a product to market with Shapeways in his video and in his rewards which includes a Shapeways 3D printed version at reward levels over $30.  Jonathan also offers a one on one google hangout to help a backer over $200 take their own product to market using 3D printing.

Check out the video and support Jonathan on Kickstarter.