Featured Friday – Showing your 3D printed designs
Because we’re continuously seeing more and more nice designs being printed, we just have to feature them on our blog. A warm welcome to ‘Featured Friday’ where we’ll post some of your designs that caught our attention. A great start to get noticed, is to begin uploading your design(s) to the gallery with some nice photos. Enjoy the following designs and have a wonderful weekend!
Biomimicry shoe by Marieka Ratsma, in cooperation with Kostika Spaho
Photography Thomas van Schaik
3D printed in polyamide by i.materialise
Beautiful Japanese tea ring by Flavio Bellantuono
3D printed in sterling silver
Reflection by Cynthia Aldershof
3D printed in polyamide
Ohio Electric interurban freight trailer by Volkmar Meier3D printed in prime gray
Pirate Mouse and Dragon Treasure Wedding Cake Topper by Marty Hon
3D printed in polyamide
Aislin by Yarrid Henrard
3D printed in prime gray
Fiona gift box set by Mark Bloomfield
3D printed in polyami
A look back at yesterday’s meetup
Yesterday we held our summer meetup at the Materialise headquarters. As with the previous meetup, we saw an international community visiting our facilities filled with curiosity about 3D printing and about what happens behind the walls of this company. We also combined this event with the announcement of the winner of the wires challenge we organized with Mookum. To present this award we had Gert Gijbels from Mookum attend our meetup where he also gave an interesting view behind the creative platfom that is Mookum. And of course, as the final cherry on top we provided our attendees with a quick look into the customizable capabilities of our friends at Digital Forming.
The group got an introduction to 3D printing and i.materialise in the form of a presentation. This was then followed by the traditional guided tour of our facilities and of course a get to know each other moment at the end of the event. But before we got to the great socializing bit, there was the presentation of M
3D Printing Toys & Figurines: Recreating Lost Action Figures
Today we have an intriguing blog post by special guest writer Mike de Coninck, a Belgian visual effects supervisor. He’s with us today to share the story of his long journey that ended up bringing his lifetime dream toy to life with the use of 3D printing. It’s a story that shows true dedication and an unquestionable passion for realizing a lifelong dream. (more…)
The Month of June in 3D Printing
As tradition has it, we bring you the month of June in 3D printing. It’s has been a very interesting month that brought us some more crowdfunding projects, a wonderful Metal Month at i.materialise and a 3D printer that helps you make your own burrito! Yes, you’ve read it correctly… So let’s dive straight into the juicy details.
Let’s start this month off with a well deserved unlocked achievement by Materialise CEO Wilfried Vancraen: Get Chosen as the Most Influential Figure in Additive Manufacturing by industry professionals around the world. Read all about it here.
And of course there was the Metal Month at i.materialise. It brought two design challenges that are currently still ongoing, new metallic materials and finishing processes with a nice increase in the items available at our gallery. During this period our community could also enjoy a nice 10% discount promo code called metalmonth2012 on all metallic orders (still valid till June 30th!)
At the same time we saw
Introducing Brass 3D Printing
Looking for a high detailed metallic material that looks amazing and doesn’t cost you a fortune? Then Brass is the way to go for you. It’s a very shiny material due to its high-grade polished gold plated layer while offering a high level of detail giving it that 18-carat golden look. It’s a material that fits perfectly between 3D printed gold and gold plated stainless steel and here’s why…
- Gold Plated Stainless Steel: Cheapest option but less detailed
- Brass: Cheaper than Gold but same level of detail and beautifully shiny
- Gold: Highly detailed like brass but more valuable
Gold plated brass is a great way to go when designing things such as small jewelry or Steampunk based designs. It just looks phenomenal and expensive when it’s actually quite affordable compared to the real thing. Let’s have a look at what it would cost you to 3D print in this new material:
- 1cm3 will currently cost about 25 euros
- 5cm3 will currently cost about 95 euros
- 10cm3 will currently cos
Finish it!
The surface of a 3D printed model is determined by the material and the technology. It will define the look and feel of your printed design.
Most technologies print your model layer by layer. The goal of post-finishing is to reduce evidence of these layers as much as possible, without damaging the geometry of your model. However, the difference in surfaces can be seen when the natural surface option is chosen – for example, a powder based model will be rougher than a resin based model.
So what can you do with your model after it’s printed? Well, we already have a wide range of post-finishing options available but a lot of times, our designers create their own magic. Welcome in the world of polishing, dyeing, painting, and so much more. Don’t consider these pages to be omniscient but will add more and more information as time goes by.
Check them out here:
http://i.materialise.com/materials/finishing
Tinkercad Father Day’s challenge winner
About 2 weeks ago we announced the winner of the Father’s Day Challenge hosted by Tinkercad. Sam McCulloch’s Vulcan Bomber was voted as the number 1 design. Not only was his Dad very happy with the 3D printed gift, he also did a nice job on painting the model.
But there’s more to it. Sam’s Dad, David McCulloch is a volunteer at the XM655 maintenance and preservation society. He’s been a lifelong fan of aircrafts, got his pilot license at the age of 17, and works closely with the Oxford 150 Squadron Air Cadets.
As Father’s day 2012 coincided perfectly with an annual event called “Wings and Wheels”, the real Vulcan Bomber did some taxi runs, engine blasts, and was available for the public to examine.
Being a volunteer, David McCulloch dedicates a lot of time to the restoration project. It also seems they’re actively looking to continue to raise funds of ongoing restoration costs. So, all you aviation enthusiasts out there get in touch!
Tinkercad is the easiest way to do and l
3D print something in Bronze
Metal Month is in full gear now! We’ve got two metal based design challenges running, we’ve given you the ability to gold plate your stainless steel designs, and all of this at a 10% reduction through the month. Well guess what? We aren’t done yet. How about being able to 3D print in bronze as well? Does that sound cool to you guys? It sure as hell does to us, so without any further ado…
Starting today we’re giving you the possibility to 3D print in bronze.
To celebrate this new material, we’ve already taken our time to 3D print some nice designs by different designers for you. Below you can have a look at what bronze 3D printing looks like.
Okay great… so what about the print size? Well for now we are offering the ability to 3D print in bronze on a 5 x 5 x 5 cm bounding box. This will eventually change, but as we consider this a trial phase we want to start off small and work our way up as time goes by.
As for the pricing… well considering we’re trial
Announcing the Metal Accessories Challenge
A new Design Challenge in Stainless Steel
As was promised at the beginning of the month, we proudly introduce our second design challenge centered around metals. This time the weapon of choice is stainless steel and the theme is revolved around creating an accessory that makes your life easier. The challenge will be running from today (Friday the 15th of June) until the end of July (Tuesday 31st). So what are the typical kind of accessories that you could design or redesign in stainless steel? Below are some examples to get your brain stimulated…
Just some basic metallic accessories you could design or redesign
Of course there are other accessories as well, but this should give you a quick idea or reference to start with. So… the next obvious question would be “What’s the size we’re allowed to design in?” The answer to that question is: Anything that fits within a bounding box of 250cm3. So for example a bounding box of 10x5x5cm would be just fine. Your design has to be
Let your steel get a taste of Gold
Today we are introducing a new finishing process for your stainless steel designs: Gold Plated Stainless Steel. This is a finishing procedure where we take your stainless steel model and dip it in a gold bath giving it that gold plated look. We can offer your model in a polished or unpolished gold plating. The big difference here is that your polished pieces will feel smoother and look shinier whereas the unpolished ones will have that natural gold plating feel to it.
The model that you see here was made in Tinkercad by one of their community members called Whystler.
So… what’s it going to cost me to add some gold to my stainless steel? The answer is 6,00US$ whether its with a polished or unpolished finish (please note that this is on top of your cost for the stainless steel model).
The above model was designed by Tommy Rombouts (www.tommytones.com)
Okay… so I like the way it looks, but what I would also like the know how it feels in my hand? For this we
