PBS Ask "Will 3D Printing Change the World?" 

We say yes.

Twisty puzzle superstar Oskar van Deventer has done it again with the 3D printed Cheese Block puzzle. A deceptively simple concept that quickly starts to look harder and harder to solve.  Oskar has been designing 3D printed twisty puzzles since 1978 including the Over the Top Cube which is now in the Guinness Book of records as the highest order Rubik's cube.  Order 3D-printed do-it-yourself puzzle kits from Shapeways or contact Oskar directly if you want to buy a fully dyed, assembled and stickered puzzle.

Check out this 3D printed iPhone case by Spaho Design, that is not only incredibly easy to fit, but also features a socially awkward penguin, surely there is something in this product each of us can relate to?

Many complained that iphone cases out there are really hard to put on and take off. Horror stories; girls breaking their nails, guys getting really mad and slamming their phones, just, really crazy stuff. So I decided to put an end to this madness by inventing an extremely simple way to fit the case around your iphone 5. 

3D Printing on Demand and Building out the Factory in NYC.

We were honored to have Andy Greenberg of Forbes visit us at our production facility in NYC to see our 3D printers in action, discuss the way in which the Shapeways 3D printing marketplace works and the way access to a desktop 3D printer can help to make you a better designer. Take a look at the video and slideshow to see the discussion along with some of the 3D printers and the Shapeways team in action.

In this unusual mechanism three gears mesh together in pairs, and yet they can turn!

If you take three ordinary gears and put them together so that each gear meshes with the other two, then none of the gears can turn because neighbouring gears must turn in opposite directions. Triple gear avoids this problem by having the three "gears" arranged like linked rings - the gears then rotate along skew axes, and the opposite direction rule no longer applies (although see also Oskar van Deventer's Magic Gears for another possible solution).

This is joint work with Saul Schleimer. We were inspired by another of Oskar's designs, his Knotted Gear, which consists of two linked rings that gear with each other, and of course we wondered if it would be possible to do three linked rings!

We see many architects 3D printing their models using Shapeways 3D printing service but most of them remain behind the scenes and never make it onto the Shapeways site or blog so it is always cool to see architectural 3D prints in the Shapeways marketplace to share what architects are doing.

One of the coolest architectural models we have 3D printed at Shapeways lately is the 1 WTC by Stefdos which is a 3D model of One World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) that glows when lit from within with an LED.

This amazing model that is 3D printed in full color at 25cm high is only $25 on Shapeways, that's $1 per cm... bargain. Check out the video below....

Also check out New Orleans tower Rotterdam 15cm by the ame designer that also glows when lit from within. 

Mixing digital sculpture with real objects and 3D printing, this video is playful, beautiful, inspiring. 

A sandstone block built from lego, blending real objects with 3d prints from Greg Petchkovsky on Vimeo.

We have seen the popularity of the 3D Printed Success Kid meme as it has made it's angry way across the internets but did you ever wonder how it was actually 3D modeled?  

Did he search the world for the child and scan it with Autdoesk's 123D Catch? No.

Did he use Facebook's creepy face recognition software to find multiple views of the child to be stitched together to create a 3D model? No

Did he use Sculptris (FREE), zbrush and a Wacom tablet to 3D model this from scratch? YES...

Check out the video of how Ryan Kittleson 3D modeled the Success Kid .. 

You may have seen from yesterday's blog posts that we were honored to have Mayor Bloomberg cut the ribbon at the groundbreaking of the Shapeways Factory of the Future, with 3D Printed Scissors, of course.

We designed a pair of slightly oversized scissors that we 3D Printed fully assembled in our White Strong & Flexible (Nylon). We tested the scissors on paper, napkins, hair and cardboard so that we were satisfied we would not be embarrassed on the day with non-cutting scissors.

We modified the design ever so slightly, introducing a slight curve in the blade to compensate for the 0.6mm gap that ensured the moving parts did not sinter together but there was still an easy shearing motion between the two blades. Then without further testing (yikes) we put the design on top of the build so that Mayor Bloomberg could take the scissors from the powder, clean them off and cut the ribbon.

Here you can see the progress with Mayor Bloomberg looking a little surprised that they worked perfectly straight out of the 3D Printer while Peter and Marleen look on relieved/joyous.  It was a fantastic event and a massive thanks go out to Mayor Bloomberg and all elected official and press (including Betabeat and Gizmodo who gave the scissors some love) who attended along with the entire Shapeways team for making it happen, especially Carine and Elisa who spent HOURS in preparation....