Shapeways Blog - What's Hot

Introducing the Ring Poem

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:10:02 +0000

I don't know about you, but here at Shapeways we're starting to get into the holiday season spirit.

And it looks like we're not the only ones - community designs for our Christmas Contest are already starting to come in (there are 11 days left to submit your work, by the way! Deadline is november 30th).

We couldn't really curb our own creativity either, so we set out to find something that would look cool on your dinner table and would be easy to make for everyone.

The result is the Ring Poem, the small cousin of our Light Poem. Just enter your message into our Creator, select a font and Ring Poem type and you'll get an instant quote. We did our best to keep the Ring Poems affordable - priced around $10 a piece, you can leave each guest a personal message during his or her dinner.

What do you think? Do you like it?

Creating hinges and moving parts

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:20:28 +0000

There were some questions on the forum lately about printing working hinges and what kind of tolerances you need to make them work. Some test objects were uploaded by pzich and we're currently printing those to see how they work.

While we're waiting for them, we thought we'd share a few insights that we gleaned from some test objects that we already have on our tables here

1. Flexible hinges
Instead of making a mechanical hinge, you can use White Strong & Flexible to make flexible hinges. Here are two example: one using a 'harmonica' structure. In this case the material is about 0.5 mm thick:

Another approach is to make a long, flat piece of plastic which can bend. The material here is about 0.5 mm thick as well:

2. Moving parts

This 'GearCard' was printed as a single model in White Strong & Flexible. You can make moving parts by modeling air gaps between the gear and the axis. Although our minimum tolerance is about 0.1mm, we do suggest that you keep gaps above 0.25mm to be safe (these measures apply to White Strong & Flexible only).

We'll get back to you once the new testparts are in!

We've got shipment tracking!

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:20:30 +0000

Here's something that should make you happy (well, at least a little bit!): as of last week, we offer world-wide shipment tracking for all our orders. At no extra charge, of course. Great, now I have another site to reload all day! \o/

How to make money with free software...

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:12:25 +0000

Dutch designer Stani Michiels won a contest by the Dutch Ministry of Finance, the goal of which was to design the new 5 euro commemorative coin with the theme 'Netherlands and Architecture'. He explains both the creative and technical process in great detail on his website. An interesting detail: he used only open source software for this project: Python, the Gimp, Inkscape and Phatch (a photo batch processor).

Oh, and before you ask: no, we don't print money

AWN contest - the winners!

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:18:14 +0000

"Does your character have character?" Heck yeah! Ranking this contest was awesome as we had an great collection of wonky, cutesy, scary, artistic and simply strange models - we've saved the contest gallery, check it out!

In the end it was a very close call.. The winner of the $250 free printing coupon is daddymack. His 'Ode to the Boogieman' got your highest votes. Congratulations, daddymack! We'll carefully print out Looie for you and he'll be picking his nose on your desk soon!

Runners up were BAROBA's 'Cute hamster and his bear' and, (oh no!) daddymack again, with 'Looie likes worms'.

Awesome job, everyone! Take a breather and check out our new Christmas contest (deadline is november 30th so don't relax for too long

You can check out the complete contest results in our new contests archive.

Free easy to use 3d software: CB Model Pro

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:32:45 +0000

CB Model Pro is an entry level surface modeler that's published by Dassault Systèmes, the creators of SolidWorks. You can use it to create all kinds of objects just by pushing and prodding objects in 3d space - much like working with virtual clay. You'll be using a basic tool set containing tools like Point Pull, Flatten, Bend, Neck, Scale and Poke. You can also draw in 2D on your models and then use these shapes for extruding or bending. Finally you can also 'paint' on your models using colors and decals.

It's a great tool for anyone who wants to get his feet wet in 3d design and it's great fun to play with. Having said that, it's unclear why the product is called 'PRO' because it's certainly lacking a number of pro-features (like having more control over your model and it's dimensions).

Download

CB Model Pro is available for both Windows and Mac OS X, and it's completely free (although after 15 days you'll have to register for a free key to continue using it).

Download page
Documentation (884kb, PDF)

Uploading to Shapeways

Due to the nature of this modeler, it's hard to create non-manifold objects, and it contains an STL exporter - the basic ingredients for having your model printed are both in place.

The exported STL files need a bit of cleaning up though - they trigger a 'non manifold' error after uploading to Shapeways (even though they're not!). This is easily solved though by downloading the open source package MeshLab, opening your STL with it and saving it as STL again. The default objects (cube, sphere etc) have a dimension of 1, so you should use 'inches' as the STL unit when uploading.

Tutorials

The website CB Model Pro Fans has published a number of nice video-tutorials and demonstrations that should get you started:

Walking House

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:32:36 +0000

Who says a house has to remain in the same place all the time? The Danish art collective N55, together with engineers from the MIT have designed a house that can simply walk away if you fancy a better spot (say, if a flood is coming or you simply don't like your neighbours anymore). It has all the basic necessities for living on board - a living room, kitchen, toilet, bed and a wood stove.

Shapeways Christmas contest!

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:10:11 +0000

Christmas is coming

Can you design the most christmassy model: perhaps an ornament to go in a tree, a 3D printed stocking, a personal touch for your living room, anything really, as long as it brings Christmas cheer.

To participate, upload a model and add the tag christmas to it.

The winner will win:

The song White Christmas by Bing Crosby from Itunes.

Christmas Set of 20 Folding Gift Boxes!!!

A Christmas Carol (Ultimate Collector's Edition)

Blizzard Bucket Snow in Seconds

and

$250 in 3D printing!

Submission deadline: 30th of November, Winner announced 1st of December. Some have asked so we shall give: Shapeways staff will judge this contest. The winner will be determined to be: that model that can give the most Christmas cheer to the most people.

Image credit: Creative Commons: Attribution, Fabio Luiz Santos.

Vote!

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:30:42 +0000

Did you think that you were done with voting? Vote now for our Does your Character have Character contest. The winner will be announced on the 14th.

I know that previously we said that the contest would be over by now but AWN and we decided to extend it to give people more time to submit their models. I should have posted this earlier but was sick, sorry. So run over to our contest gallery and vote now!

3D printed chair, a marble kitchen and fruit canon

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:13:15 +0000

Thomas Linssen of StudioThol designed a full sized 3D printed chair for Dutch Design Week and we were proud to have on the stand. The Hypernurbs chair was so inviting that despite the do not touch signs people couldn't keep their hands off of it. Some of the 3D printing astute will note that the chair could not be produced in one piece. This is true, currently the build envelopes of 3D printing machines make printing a chair impossible. Thomas therefore printed out his chair in parts and then glued it together after. Unlike the other items on the stand Hypernurbs is not a final product. Thomas is looking to have it produced in bronze right now. Be sure to check out his site and the great kitchen on the index page. His cocktail glass is another strong piece of design. As are his childrens kitchen appliances including this canon that cuts fruit.

I for one salute our RobCup overlords

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:40:26 +0000

We're in a rather strange building here on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. The ancient building we are in has two large open atrium-like areas in it. During the day they are unused. In the evening hours though these areas often surprise us. I've walked for coffee to find a usually empty atrium transformed into a full table tennis competition complete with official tables, referees and onlookers. It is also really weird to walk around your office building and suddly realise that you are one of the few people not wearing a judo outfit because the classes just started. I know not to work too late on a Tuesday because then the Philips Harmonie Orchestra practice tends to shatter any productivity gains.

One of the neighbors that I was the most curious about was the Philips RoboCup team. They are a group of 15 enthusiasts, here every Wednesday night, that get together to enter into competitions revolving around autonomous robotic football players. They write the code, the algorithms and hack the hardware so that their team of autonomous soccer robots will beat out teams from all over the world in competitions.

This is why in the middle of this atrium next door to our offices there is a RoboCup football pitch. The pitch itself rather confused me on my first visit but it has always intrigued me also. So, today I went over to shoot some pictures and talk to the guys on the team.The robots have very little in the way of processing power and come with a modem. But, they only use this modem to upload and download software to them and to communicate with the other robots on their team. The robots tell each other where they are on the field, where the ball is and how close they are to the ball. An individual robot can then "claim" the ball to make the ball if it is the closest to it and tell the others that it will go for the ball. Some robots are assigned defensive or offensive roles and there is a goalie also.

The robots use a camera pointed at a mirror to see the area around them, one processor handles the video the other movement. The processor that they use to determine where the robot should move has around a 100 MIPS of power. 100 MIPS(Millions of Instructions Per Second) is comparable to the power present in a 90 Megahertz Pentium processor. This was the power of a regular desktop PC, in 1994. If you do not know what Pentium means, think slow, think Windows 95, think Forrest Gump tops the box office. The power that you used to play Colonization in 1994 is now used to move a robot autonomously around a football pitch. You are currently viewing this blog on a PC that probably has 2.4 gigahertz. Although I can't be sure because gigahertz used to mean something and now it doesn't.

The goal of all the RoboCup players is to make machines that are capable of taking on and winning from human soccer players. While at the moment our RoboCup players might look kind of cute and goofy, beware! I've read a lot of Isaac Asimov and can tell you that robots and humans never end up getting along.

Painting your 3D printed models

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:33:11 +0000

Bart and I had some fun painting some of our models with arcylic paint. You can use arcylics to paint White, Strong & Flexible and we wanted to show you guys that. For the both of us the last painting training & practice we ever did before making this video was in kindergarten. But, we can not wait to see what you guys will do with paint & Shapeways

Bvicarious tests Shapeways' White, Strong & Flexible

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:20:44 +0000

Bvicarious also known as Bryan Vaccaro has two Youtube movies online where he tests our White, Strong & Flexible material. He bends and manhandles a small piece to show you the material properties. We think that this is great and it should be really helpful in showing you what our materials can do.

The material White, Strong & Flexible is made by SLS(Selective Laser Sintering)on an EOS Formiga P 100. The official name of the material itself is Fine Polyamide PA 2200. If you are familiar with SLS parts and think that they are brittle, weak and don't look good then you probably have seen other materials made on other machines. I know I'm tooting our own horn since we have an EOS Formiga but this stuff looks amazing compared to all the other types of SLS out there. If anyone is on the market for an SLS machine, you simply have to pick EOS. And once you've seen Bryan's videos I think you can see why we named the material White, Strong & Flexible.

Marleen and model trains

nospam@example.com (Marleen) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:06:08 +0000

Dear shapies,

Some of you have met me already at Siggraph, but up to know I have not introduced myself yet at our website. My name is Marleen and since June I became a team member of Shapeways. I am responsible for finance. I have a quite diverse background that combines logistics and operations in paper manufacturing with strategic advice and mergers & acquisitions. I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur and Shapeways is the perfect place for me where Internet, production and lots of hard and fun work comes together.

Some weeks ago I was contacted by Hans van de Burgt working at TNO, and secretary of the Beneluxspoor.net foundation. This foundation runs several websites for model train enthusiasts and her objective is to spread the passion and fun of the model train hobby in the Benelux(Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg). Hans and his fellow model train friend Karst Drenth- who happens to be one of the specialists in the Netherlands in building handmade model trains out of ‘plotter-cut’ styrene – wanted to test whether 3d printing could be a feasible option for all model train hobbyists.

The great thing about 3D printing for model trains, is that it cuts back the amount of time of building a train from 3 months to just a few days. This makes it fun for so many more people than just the small group that has a lot of patience. In addition, it makes customized models affordable !

I immediately liked the idea, and because I have worked in the past for a train network operator (the REAL trains) I have an interest in anything to do with trains. Karst, Hans and I decided to print a scaled carriage in the materials that Shapeways currently offers. We learned a lot from this exercise. The train hobby demands a very high level of detail and easy finishing with sanding, spray painting and gluing. The material that right now suits well, is our White Detail but we are determined to take it even a step further; so keep checking our material pages. In the near future we will place an interview with Karst on this blog to share all the details and photos of our tests.

I was honored to be invited by Hans and Karst to visit Eurospoor 2008, which is a convention for the model train hobby. The Beneluxspoor.net Foundation had a huge stand with enthusiasts that are specialized in the electronics, scenery, model train building and so on. It was great to be there, share ideas and to learn that 3D manufacturing can be a solution for many enthusiasts. Hans, Karst and me have lot’s of great ideas to inspire, help and enable the model train community. So keep checking Shapeways, because encouraging members to buy Karst's model is only the beginning.

I bought a 6 foot green dolphin at Dutch Design Week and my mother and girlfriend think I'm crazy

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:59:06 +0000

So, I was at Dutch Design Week and I'm looking around and thinking about all the awesome stuff there: the design-y chairs, pretty frames, beautiful book cases etc. And out of all those things I fall in love with one item. This item is a six foot bright green foam filled dolphin made by Geboren im Wald.

After the design week was over I bought it. It is cuddly, soft and you can lie on it and I just think its a lot of fun. I do admit that it was a bit of an impulse buy and that it is not a very standard furntiture item.The net result is that I now have a unique design item and that my mom and girlfriend think I'm nuts.

Apart from the whacky and loveable appearance of the thing I really enjoy the concept of it. It is an indoor version of a common inflatable pool toy. Another piece by Geboren im Wald is "the island"(pictured below) which you might recognize as resembling quite closely the largest of these toys. So the deisgner took something standard and cheap that is for the outdoor use by playing children and turned it into something made for living rooms and grownups. Although some feel, incorrectly, that this purchase disqualifies me from belonging to this category.