by Luis Hidalgo 

From Eleanor: Luis Hidalgo is a 3D modeler and designer, and Shapeways Crew member, living in Madrid, Spain. He runs the Panzer Vs Tanks shop, focusing on World War II miniatures and is very active in the Shapeways forums and started the thread for Spanish Shapies.

This past weekend Madrid hosted the first edition of the Replic_Age Fest and a related 3D Printing Event. From May 23 to 25 we attended conferences about 3D printing and exhibits that demonstrated different ways to interpret these news technologies.

Spain now is an almost completely new market, open to the latest tendencies and new forms to understand work and production tools after the huge destruction of enterprises during the recent economic crisis. As a result, Spain has many qualified students and workers who are on the lookout for new forms of industry and drivers of economic activity.

In this sense, at the Replic_Age Fest we could watch that small workshops are tending to open source printers, with a big presence of small Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology.

Some of the interesting ideas explored at the event included: establishing a printing cabin franchise in your existing shop like Tresdelandia is working on; Fab Labs that are already open to public and that work with children, some of whom are at risk of social exclusion such as Los Hacedores; RepRap’s focus on sharing technology and creating self-replicating, sharable machines; and other practical ideas for small workshops, such as using laser cut and milling machines to work with wood or cardboard. The event also explored 3D printing in fashion, publicity, cloth and fabric manufacturing, and drones, among other topics.

At the 3D Printing event, we attended talks about the industrial applications and artistic use of 3D technologies. I was interested to know more about how how Adobe Photoshop CC now interacts with 3D design and Shapeways model uploading. I also found the presentation of studies from Comillas Pontifical University about surface smoothing with chemicals or abrasives and anisotropy of printed parts changing the direction of consecutive layers, and getting ABS plastic parts with high strength and resilience quite engaging. In addition, Createc3d showed hand scanners of cheap construction that have the ability to scan people in a couple of minutes; Lawyers from Bird & Bird explained legal rights and intellectual property related to 3D printing; and the event highlighted artistic projects such Project Egg, which aims to create a collaborative 3D printed house, from the furniture designer Michiel Van der Kleig, and the application of 3D in arts from Hercules Fisherman.
Many people were also interested to know about Shapeways, and they asked me about the printing in a wide variety of materials and the great possibilities of Shapeways shops. I couldn’t resist bringing some of my models with me to show off the possibilities of printing in White Strong & Flexible and Frosted Detail Plastic, and Full Color Sandstone. That amazed people at the event, because in Spain there are very few printers for these materials.
In conclusion, a very interesting weekend that showed me, as a 3D designer and modeler, some more possibilities of this incipient and rapidly developing technology.