Ice 3D Printing explained

Ice 3D printing explained:

• Ice 3D printing is a proprietary 3D printing process developed by Shapeways.

1. The process uses desalinated water.
2. Extrudes it using a nozzle on a printing head that looks a lot like the printing head on your home printer.   
3. This printing head moves horizontally (Across the X-Y axes) across a metal bar.     
4. A soon as a layer of water is deposited on the build platform a second printing head supercools the water
5. This second printing head travels along a second bar in tandem with the first head.
6. The supercooling technique used is similar to the one shown in this video.
7. The Supercoolant Printing Head then mimics the deposition head and deposits an aditional layer of supercool water.
8. This freezes the build layer. This layer is aproximately 0.8mm thick 
9. The next step consists of the build platform lowering itself 0.1mm. This gives your sculpture 'depth' or Z.
10.  The Supercoolant Printing Head then returns to its initial position.
11. The whole process(from 1-10) repeats itself until your model is built. It does not require any support material, as traditional printing processes do since the build material is water.

Warnings!

WARNING: This process uses Sodium Acetate to supercool the water and produce Ice. Sodium Acetate is also known as sodium ethanoate, and even though it is also used as a food additive it might be harmful if ingested. This is not regular ice!

• If you have any questions please look at the Material Safety Data Sheet.
• Symptoms of over exposure: please contact your local Poison control center if you experience any of the symptoms listed below.
• Inhalation:
  May cause irritation to the respiratory tract. Symptoms may include coughing, sore throat, labored breathing, and chest pain.
  Ingestion:
  Large doses may produce abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.
  Skin Contact:
  May cause irritation with redness and pain.
  Eye Contact:
  Contact may cause irritation, redness, and pain.

Practical Information

Please note:

• You need to login to be able to use the Creator. If you do not have a login yet you can get one by signing up here
• The maximum build volume is 176 cubic centimeters. The maximum dimensions are thus: 56 by 56 by 56cm.
• All shipments are sent out with UPS. UPS does not deliver to PO Box addresses.
• We use PayPal as a payment provider: you do not need a PayPal account to pay with PayPal, you can just use your credit card.
• From the moment of your order we take 10 working days to ship the model to you.
• To keep your model from melting, we need to ship it in an alumide freezer bag. These alumide & plastic bags have been banned from use by the Government of  Southern Australia. As such we can not ship to Adelaide nor any other location in Southern Australia. Our order portal can at the moment not filter out the provinces in Australia. We will thus manually have to cancel your order and refund you the money.

Getting started

With the Shapeways Ice Sculpture Creator you can create your own personal & unique Ice Sculptures! You don't need any 3D modeling skills and it takes just a few minutes. You can change the shape as you want and even add text. If you like the result you can order it and we will print and ship it to you.

We hope you enjoy using the Shapeways Ice Sculpture Creator beta. If you have any feedback or questions for us about the Creator, please go to the Creator section in the forum and leave your comments. You can also contact  Joris.






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Photographs Creative Commons, Attribution: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,