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Friday, August 26. 2011Keep Up To Date with the 3D Printing Materials Production Status We have introduced the Materials Production Status page to keep you informed of the current status of our production facilities. We will use this to let you know current lead times for delivery, the length of any backlog, or if a material is temporarily put on hold until our production is back up to speed. For even greater transparency we will also use this to keep you informed of the reasons behind any delays. Think of it as a little window into the machine that makes your 3D printing happen. Let us know what you think, does this help to manage expectation, is there anything else we can do to help you understand the status of your 3D prints.
Tuesday, August 9. 2011Additions to rules for White Strong & Flexible Polished (WSFP)
W would like to announce a few updates to the design rules for White Strong & Flexible Polishing. The more we work with these materials, the more we learn about what is possible and what isn't. Over the past few months, we have learned some important things to take into account when designing for this material process. Please take the time and look this over, it will save everybody time and disappointment in receiving their models broken or out of shape!
White Strong & Flexible Polished bounding box: we are asking for minimum of 10x10x2mm per part (not per STL) If your STL has multiple parts, the STL may still get rejected if any particular part in the STL is smaller than the above bounding box Why? This is because we are finding that pieces smaller are falling through the grates in our polishing machine, or getting stuck or lost among the media used to polish. We hope this won't be too much of an inconvenience. Most pieces of this size will lose details in the polishing process. White Strong & Flexible Polished wires supporting larger items (eg sprues): When you have a thin wire supporting a larger item, try making the wire at least 1.5-2mm thick for White Strong & Flexible Polished When designing for WSFP, try to avoid support larger masses with small wires. This is the helicopter problem, where the propellers are supported by a tiny wire that connects to the body of the helicopter. Why? When put in the polishing machine, it is very easy for these types of structures to snap. Thanks for your input and understanding as we refine these processes to ensure we can produce your designs reliably, at the highest quality detail. Wednesday, July 20. 2011How To Put Your Best Photo Forward Many of you know how to upload a photo of your 3D printed goodness to Shapeways and we are seeing an improvement in the quality of photographs taken on your model pages but some of you are still keeping the Shapeways generated greyscale render as your default image.
Once you have uploaded your photograph there is an option to specify Main Thumbnail Image, the Shapeways greyscale render will be called Default and all you need to do is select the image you would like to be used as the thumbnail. Ensure you have a clear, well lit image cropped nice and tight to the object for the thumbnail image. We are always on the lookout for great designs that are well documented and we will only feature them on the front page or any other galleries if there is a suitable photograph as the thumbnail... Ensure your images are 450x324 or 700x519 so they fill the thumbnail correctly. If you want to sell your 3D printed designs be sure to open a Shapeways Shop and if you want to embed your Shapeways shop or favorites into another site check out the Shapeways widget. Tuesday, June 14. 2011Updated Design Rules For Shapeways 3D Printing Ceramics
Hello all! We've been busy printing and learning about 3D Printing Ceramics. Thanks to all your awesome designs, we've learned quite a lot over the past few weeks about what types of designs work best for this new material. We've updated the Ceramics Design Rules, which will be the "Golden Source" for all ceramics related design guidelines from now on. Here are some tips we added: Continue reading "Updated Design Rules For Shapeways 3D Printing Ceramics" Friday, May 20. 2011How To Design for 3D Printed Silver
We are getting many really cool designs in silver. One current issue we have is trying to balance enabling our community to create things, no matter how challenging they are and ensuring that the amazing designs actually can be printed. Sometimes, this means adding or changing design rules, sometimes, this means modifying our methods of production to accommodate.
For silver, one issue we often run into is that very thin designs do not survive the wax process. For example, if you have a thin bar (like a pin, an earring hook, or a necklace hoop) attached to a thicker object (like an earring stud), handling the wax can be quite difficult and often results in having the pin snap. Of course, we do not want to say "no more earrings or pins" because that would just be too limiting. To solve this, for some parts, we may print the pieces separately and then weld them together after they've been cast. We have worked with our supplier to ensure that the end result is indiscernible. For example...   The left side is a picture of the computer generated model, the right side is the hoop welded on. We have received customers informing us that the welded parts do not conform to their original designs. We have worked with our supplier to ensure that we do not use stock items, but will print the pieces of the actual design. We have also stepped up our quality check in our Netherlands distribution center to catch these prints if they still come through. For the long term, we are investing in more advanced machine that can produce stronger wax models, which will eliminate much of the need for welding altogether! We hope with this technique, we will simultaneously maintain the integrity of the design while enabling more interesting and "fragile" designs. If you have any questions, or you feel like the welding was done improperly, please e-mail our lovely Customer Service department at service (at) shapeways (dot) com and they will take care of you. Let me know if you have any questions! Thanks, Nancy Monday, May 16. 2011Design Tips to Help You Get More Polish From 3D Printed Stainless Steel
Hey guys,
I hope you are enjoying the 3D printed Glazed Ceramics so far. Along with my goal to give Shapeways more smooth and shiny products, we've also been working with our 3D printed Stainless Steel production partners to come up with some tips on how to ensure your pieces gets a better polished feel.  See above for polished (left) and unpolished (right) We scrounged together a few tips, as well as some numbers to keep in mind when you engrave or emboss details. Please visit the Stainless Steel Polishing Design Rules page for more information. As always, remember to check the Stainless Steel design rules before designing to raise the printability of your design. Happy creating! Nancy Saturday, May 7. 20113D Printed Material Torture Test: Black Strong and FlexibleWednesday, May 4. 2011Promoting Your Shop With The Shapeways WidgetThursday, April 28. 2011Introducing Image Popper, a new way to easily 3D model and 3D printHello again! Today, I'm proud to announce two new developments in the way Shapeways enables your creativity: the remodeling of our creator page and a brand new creator to go with it! First, our new creator page…Shapeways is constantly looking for new ways to help people who do not know how to 3D Model to design and create new things. We do this via our Creators and Co-Creation Platform. Over time, we have accumulated a lot of different creators and variations, and our Creator page has gotten a bit crowded. This week, we've cleaned it up a bit. Hopefully this will make it easier to use and understand. Speaking of ways of helping you create, we are also happy to introduce our Image Popper! The concept is simple, upload a black and white JPG, or draw your own right on screen (currently the draw your own feature only works in Google Chrome). Then tell us how big you want it, how much you want to raise it, etc. and watch your design upload directly to your shop. 
Got feedback? Let me know on the forum. What can you make with this?Continue reading "Introducing Image Popper, a new way to easily 3D model and 3D print" Tuesday, April 26. 2011How strong is 3D Printed White Strong & Flexible?Thursday, April 7. 2011Tutorial: Designing Medal Clasps for 3D Printing In this step-by-step tutorial by Mike Sweeney shows how to design and 3D print your own medal clasps in Carrara Studio using existing photographs as reference material. Mike writes: 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.He takes you through the following steps:
Link: Medal Clasps via Shapeways. Monday, April 4. 2011Creating a Twisty Puzzle for 3D printing in SolidWorksFriday, April 1. 2011An Awesome Month of March at ShapewaysWhat a month March was for the Shapeways community.
We started the month with an invite to join us at Makerfaire UK in Newcastle, which turned out to be a great success with Ralph and Bart joined by community members Euphy and Stop4Stuff who had an awesome time talking until their throats were hoarse about 3D printed coolness. We launched the ICFF contest to give you the opportunity to have your 3D printed designs on show in NYC, already the contest is hotting up with some great entries, make sure you get yours in soon. Shapeways updated it's dyed strong and flexible range to include Dark Grey and Indigo to Winter Red and Night Black. We made it possible for you to log in to Shapeways with Facebook and Twitter making it easier for new users to sign up and purchase your designs, Like your items and tweet the love. The Stainless Steel Design Rules were given a tweak to ensure that there is greater consistency and reliability with the stainless steel process.
SILVER made a long awaited comeback after months of being sorely missed with a better pricing model for you, tell us what you think and show us your stuff... Continue reading "An Awesome Month of March at Shapeways" Thursday, March 31. 2011The Dizzying Demand for Dungeons & Dragons Dice
Ceramic Wombat recently generated quite a bit of traffic with his range of Thorn Dice Set with Decader when it was featured on Boing Boing then promptly, tweeted, facebooked and generally created quite a buzz online. (UPDATE: Doctorow's stories "Makers" and "Printcrime" along with Bruce Sterling's excellent "Kiosk" inspired Chuck to try rapid prototyping in the first place, so "I am especially happy that he likes my work")
So what makes this item 'go viral' when others may be ignored? I am not initiated in the world of Dungeons and Dragons so I may be missing some major point, and please let me know if I do, but here are a few reasons these designs are working.
What can you take from this for your items to help them get exposure to others who are as passionate about your hobby/interest/game/sport/gadget/obsession as you are? Is there an existing fan base of obsessives just waiting for the next cool thing to show off to their friends online and in real/physical life? Design it for yourself?them and let them know. Iterate your designs until they are perfect and then take good photographs of them.. Submit your items to the blogs, forums and sites where you hang out (including Shapeways It Arrived and Feature This) Like your items with Facebook, get your friends to, get your Mom to, get your Mom's friends to and spread the word. We have updated our Facebook integration to make it easier for you to share because it has become such a major force in the internet, make it work for you. Oh yeah, in the time it took me to write this post there have been over 100 more tweets about the thorn dice, over 1500 more hits to the Thorn Dice page on Shapeways bringing it up to a total of 70,467 so far and the traffic keeps rolling in with Facebook being a MAJOR factor in driving traffic.... Check out the Made by Wombat site for your D&D addiction.And Congratulations to Chuck....... Tuesday, March 22. 2011Mash-Up Your Mesh with Meshmixer Direct to Shapeways
We have mentioned the 3D mash-up coolness that is meshmixer in a previous post on the Shapeways blog but with the latest update to the free software you can now upload your mixed up models direct to Shapeways via our API.
So if you are new to this whole 3D modeling dealo and you want to experiment then this may be a perfectly playful introduction that you can easily output to Shapeways for 3D printing. If you do have 3D modeling chops it is still great fun and may even be perfect for holding your own Cut & Paste 2 minute challenge with you friends, classmates or co-workers. If you are looking for a source of 3D models to play around with check out this great list of 60 sites for free 3D models that includes 3D Total, Turbosquid, Google Warehouse and, 57 more... The latest update of Meshmixer now supports OSX along with 'deform tool' for pushing geometry around, and a 'smooth tool' for taming gnarly meshes that might otherwise create problems for 3D printing If you are involved in any kind of 3D software and you are interested in making it easier for people to output their models for 3D printing, take a look at the Shapeways API, take a look at the tutorial and please contact us if you need any assistance implementing it into your software. |
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