Shapeways Blog - Community

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.

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.

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.

Gas Guy revisted

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:32:52 +0000

Some of you may remember GasGuy, Fabian Fricke's great model that was one of our SIGGRAPH contest finalists. Fabian has now posted a photo of the model on his blog, along with an updated rendering.

Our machines part II: Objet Eden 500

nospam@example.com (Joris Peels) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:32:33 +0000

One of the machines we use is the Objet Eden 500. Objet is an Israeli company that makes 3D printers. At Shapeways our White Detail and our Transparant Detail materials are Objet. These materials have a nice smooth finish and are very detailed.

The main issue with them is temperature sensitivity. So we would recomend you didn't use this material for ashtrays of the like. It does make for very pretty display objects though, such as printed out avatars, real versions of animations and art. The Eden 500

Continue reading "Our machines part II: Objet Eden 500"

Introducing Our New Community Manager

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:03:02 +0000

All good things come to an end. Today, I'm leaving my role as community manager for Shapeways (I'm a freelancer so I saw this coming - don't worry!).

So, I'll give a warm welcome to my successor: Joris Peels, who'll be making his appearance here shortly. Interesting times are ahead Joris, I'm sure you'll have a blast!

This doesn't mean I'm leaving Shapeways though - I'll just be spending less time here as I need to focus on some of my other projects. I'll still be blogging, researching 3d technologies, creating the occasional 3d model and giving customer support, so you'll see me around!

Cheers,

Bart

[image by Peter Kaminski, released under a Creative Commons license]

My First Design!

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Last week I received my first Shapeways design: a cube puzzle made out of seven parts. It was amazing to hold my 3D design in my hands and I was proud enough to make a little video showing it off and explaining a bit about the process.
Continue reading "My First Design!"