{"id":19785,"date":"2015-02-09T10:10:32","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T10:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/?p=19785"},"modified":"2017-04-17T12:48:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T16:48:35","slug":"3d-printing-the-nih-and-the-future-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/3d-printing-the-nih-and-the-future-of-science","title":{"rendered":"3D printing, the NIH and the future of science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I traveled to Maryland for the 2015 Bioinformatics & Computational Biosciences Festival, Science-In-3D<\/a>. \u00a0The industry-wide festival featured presentations about the emerging role of 3D technology by noted experts in academia, government and the industry. \u00a0The event included speakers and, as a Shapeways Crew member, I was representing Shapeways in the exhibitor space and gave a talk during the final lightning round of presentations.<\/p>\n

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3D printed cell and DNA models at Science in 3D<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve used Shapeways to sell fashionable hats, goods, pen holders and color proteins through my Shapeways shop<\/a>, but I have also used it to 3D print models which have enabled me to build incredible models for the science community, including the NIH 3D Print Exchange<\/a>, and as proof-of-concept to secure business contracts for processing medical scan data for private commercial websites and corporations.<\/p>\n

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Melanie Robinson of Molecular Jig Games and Michael Astra from XVIVO admiring 3D printed molecules at Science in 3D<\/p><\/div>\n

While I enjoy freelancing as a designer and working on various collaborations, I love demonstrating how everyone can print anatomical models with very little investment using open source software packages and Shapeways.<\/p>\n

For example, I created these hearts just for the NIH Science in 3D festival:<\/p>\n

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3D printed hearts in Frosted Ultra Detail and White Strong Flexible plastic<\/p><\/div>\n

I found the models on the NIH 3D Print Exchange, and 3D printed them with Shapeways in Frosted Ultra Detail (left) and white strong and flexible nylon plastic (right).<\/p>\n

To learn more about how to use data like that available from the NIH 3D Print Exchange<\/a> to create printable models, I created this tutorial specifically geared towards modelers interested in printing anatomical models.
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