Father and Son team up to design and 3D print kite photography rigs for a range of smart phones then document the world around them, from above.

Taking the father and son project to new heights (sorry) hobbiestoomany have designed and 3D printed a range of kite ariel photography rigs for the Samsung Infuse, Galaxy S3 and the iPhone.

Making great use of the super light yet strong 3D printed Nylon on Shapeways they have constructed cages that can safely carry a smartphone up into the sky to record with either video or photos. There are already a whole range of 3D printed GoPro camera mounts on Shapeways for a wide range of uses but this is one of the first mounts we have seen designed to take the smart phone to the skies.  Each of the kits are available in hobbiestoomany's Shapeways shop with simple instructions in the video below how to assemble the cage and send your phone into the sky in a playful mash-up of Benjamin Franklin's kite experiments and a modern surveillance drone.

Check out the video of the test, amazing images and how to assemble then the second video whale watching with a kite...

UPDATE: It seems like our experiment worked for one day only, Happy April Fools Day.

While looking for a way to recycle our excess Nylon powder we found a way for anyone to 3D print at home with an iPhone and a magnifying glass.

At Shapeways we recycle most of the Nylon powder from our industrial 3D printing process but sometimes the powder does not meet the standard required for use in our 3D printers.  We were looking at the testing process when we made a really exciting discovery, with a tightly focused beam of light you can solidify the Nylon powder into a solid.  

We did some experiments and discovered a way that anyone can 3D print at home using an iPhone and a magnifying glass with our Nylon powder.  Take a look at the simple video below and email freenylon@shapeways.com and we can send you (for the cost of shipping) some of our excess Nylon for you to try at home.

Check out this amazing video of a Gear Ring 3D printed in Sterling Silver by Shapeways.  The design was 3D modeled in Autodesk 3D Studio Max uploaded to Shapeways to be 3D printed in Sterling Silver in multiple parts then blackened with 'liquid smoke' and assembled in place to make the mechanism work.

How to extend the life of a kitchen appliance using Shapeways 3D printed ceramic parts.

When a small part for Shapeways community member Mitagaki's Panasonic Bread maker broke he looked everywhere for a replacement part.  The manufacturer no longer supported the model so what was a $5 replacement part became unobtainable and the $200 appliance was rendered worthless. 

Rather than throwing the entire appliance away, Mitagaki 3D modeled a copy of the broken ceramic part and then 3D printed it in ceramics with Shapeways. 

After successfully testing the 3D printed ceramic component he made a minor adjustment to the design and has now made the Panasonic SD-YD250 breadmaker replacement bobbin available for others to repair their appliance using Shapeways.

We found a squishy 3D printing material back in early 2012 that was not quite ready for us to use with our 3D printers so we found another flexible alternative that unfortunately was not up to our standards so we had to stop supporting the material when the trial ended.  

We are super excited to learn the original flexible material is finally ready and we are preparing our 3D printers so that we can offer it to everyone to 3D print.  

Do you want more flexible 3D printing for your designs?

Some of the best uses of 3D printing is the ability to connect things to things, whether it is your a plant to your bike, your GoPro camera to your drone or your Raspberry Pi case to your Lego castle.

The MagSafe Adapter Key Ring by jbobrow makes sure you do not lose the Magsafe Adapter for the new MacBook and connects it to your keyring 3D Printed in Stainless Steel using the adapters internal magnet.  Clever.

Another app plugging into the Shapeways 3D Printing API is the Magic 3D Easter Egg Painter By Vishal Srivastava that uses the accelerometer in iOS devices to navigate around and decorate an Easter egg that can then be 3D printed in full color by Shapeways.

Imagine your Easter Egg as an object floating in the Real World.  Your iPhone becomes a Movable Window that allows you to see and paint all sides of your Egg from every possible point of view. STAND UP, hold up your iPhone, and spin around your Egg (seriously!) to see and paint all different sides!  Done painting the front of the Egg? TURN ALL THE WAY AROUND the Egg while holding up your iPhone, and you can paint the back!  Need to paint the top? Make your iPhone flat, look down at the Egg below you, and you can.  Don't forget to paint the bottom! Turn your iPhone up, so you're facing the ceiling, and you can paint under the Egg!  When you've finished creating your Egg, you have the option of ordering a "3D printed" figurine of your creation from inside the app! They make great keepsakes or can be hidden in Easter Egg hunts!

Connecting to the Shapeways 3D Printing API the iOS Stand Creator is an app that makes it easy for anyone to customize a stand for their iPhone and 3D print it with Shapeways.

Usually when we think of iPhone apps we think of applications within the iPhone but this application makes it easy for anyone without 3D modeling skills to create a customized stand in just a few mouse clicks.  

What makes this app really interesting is that it uses 3D printing to make functional, not decorative items.  Most of the apps so far plugging into the Shapeways 3D Printing API on the Create page are making sculptural, cosmetic products or jewelry while there is a huge potential in making 3D Printing apps that connect things to things. 

If you want to 3D print a custom product but do not know how to 3D model the iOS Stand Creator App is a great way to get started, if you are a designer and/or developer interested in getting into the 3D printing app market this is a great example of how to make a customizable, functional product.  Take a look at some of the stands made so far that are now ready to 3D print.

Congrats to Kioròdesign and Archipelis.com. 

Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community is a new book by Alessandro Piol and Maria Teresa Cometto that looks at the exploding tech startup scene in New York City including an interview with Shapeways CEO Peter Weijmarshausen.

“Tech and the City” is the first book telling the story of how and why this is happening: from the birth of Silicon Alley in the ‘90s to today’s level of activity and important milestones, such as the building of the Cornell NYC Tech campus. Based on over 50 interviews with entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, university professors, members of the Bloomberg administration and other stakeholders, this book’s objective is to inform and inspire the current generation of entrepreneurs. 

The Desktop Factory Competition launched in June 2012 challenged makers to design a cheap, open source method to turn plastic pellets (which sell for $10 kg) into filament suitable for a desktop 3D printer (that currently sells for $50 per kg).  83 Year old inventor Hugh Lyman developed the Lyman Filament Extruder II which for under $250 in parts can take standard plastic ABS pellets and squeeze them into filament.

The fact that this device is released as open source hardware means that others can modify and improve the mechanism to lower the cost and increase the efficiency, just as we have seen with the open source desktop 3D printers based on the RepRap.  

Not only will this result in a massive reduction in the cost of raw 3D printing media, but it is also a very small step away from being able to grind and reuse failed 3D prints to feed into fresh new filament, or perhaps adding conductive media into the hopper to create filament suitable for making basic elctronic circuitry, or any type of tweak to customize the base material.

The speed of innovation in the open source 3D printing world is making many of the large industrial 3D printer manufacturers appear to be moving in slow motion.  We are not seeing the same rate of innovation in machines nor materials and we at Shapeways would LOVE to have new materials to share, or have a way to drop the material cost by a factor of five or ten as we see made possible by innovations like the The Lyman Filament Extruder.  

Congratulations to Hugh Lyman who scored a giant $40,000 cheque for his invention and the respect of thousands of makers around the world.

via Time.com

Anyone who owns a desktop 3D printer knows that sometimes you need to replace some of the components to optimize performance.  In many cases you can simply 3D print a replacement part with your 3D printer which is an incredibly rewarding process of self sufficiency but when it is a critical component that stops the 3D printer from functioning properly it can quickly become frustrating dead end.  

Shapeways community member Schlem discovered the extruder gears that came with his Printbot Kit were warped and his 3D printer was not functioning properly.  Of course a non functioning 3D printer can not 3D print repair parts so he used Shapeways to 3D print his replacement parts in laser sintered Nylon.  By using Shapeways to 3D print the parts for his 3D printer he now has a more durable, higher resolution part that will make his desktop 3D printer more accurate and reliable.

He also made it possible to make the 3D printer even more awesome by designing the Skulltruder, adding a little gothic bling to what is essentially an engineering project.

If you have any 3D parts to share on Shapeways, be sure to tag them '3D Printer' and the type of 3D printer they are for so others can easily find them and repair their 3D printer too.