Tutorial Thursday: Making professional pictures
Every last thursday of the month we will help you to put yourself in the picture and to optimize your sales. This month: the importance of making professional pictures.
A picture says more than words. That’s why it’s so important to have descent, professional looking and creative pictures of your design. Do you need a professional photographer for that? No, not at all. If you follow these guidelines, you will have professional pictures in no time.
1. What camera?
A professional camera is nice to have, but it also costs a lot. At i.materialise we make most pictures with a compact camera which makes very good pictures if you master some basics.
2. Make place for your own professional photo studio
To make good pictures, good lighting is very important. The best way to shoot small 3D printed objects is in a light box. Of course you can buy one, but it’s so much cheaper and fun to make it yourself. On this blog, Kateryn explains you step by step how to make your own light box
Students: Come and get your 10% discount at i.materialise
UPDATE: This post is from 2013. Click here for the latest promo code for students!
It can be hard for students to finance their final school projects. That’s why i.materialise wants to help: every master student gets a 10% discount on her or his thesis project.
Worldwide, students 3D print concept cars, architectural models, functional models, prototypes, and all sorts of other things with us. We really love working on those projects. So, if you’re a student at a College or University and want to use 3D printing for a thesis project, we’re giving you a 20% discount. We’re especially interested in Design Academy students, engineering students, product design graduates, and fashion students. Nevertheless, feel free to surprise us with your work from any other discipline.
However, there are some rules and remarks to get the 10% STUDENT DISCOUNT.
- You have to be enrolled at a College, University or Technical school.
- You must contact us using an .edu or other universit
Nokia Lumia 820 GRAND FINALE: Make it personal, make it you!
We were happy to show you a 3D printed Nokia Lumia 820 file that’s functional. But now it’s time for some fun; Enjoy our big customization show!
A man once said: “Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are.” At i.materialise we have an other saying: “Show me your 3D prints and we will show you who you are.” 3D printing is all about personalizing and customization. We just launched our basic file on Thingiverse as you can read in our previous blog. But that doesn’t suffice for us. So the past days and hours we let our product designer Bert go wild with the Nokia shell.
Enjoy the results; we hope you’ll be inspired.
3D printed in polyamide, dyed in black.
What does a man need more than his phone his (credit) card to go out? So here you go, all in one:
3D printed in polyamide and dyed in red.
A Nokia shell with wings, it doesn’t fly, but hey; we gave it a try!
3D printed in resin, finished with white paint.
Do you want a softer look? Go for velvet, it f
Nokia Lumia 820 shell: Live on Thingiverse!
We’re happy to announce to you the only functional Nokia Lumia 820 file is now live!
Do you want to print your own Nokia Lumia 820 shell? Go to the i.materialise Thingiverse account and download your file! You can customize it or just print it in a color through our service or with your home printer. Enjoy!
Episode 5: Enjoy our sneak preview for the grand Nokia Lumia 820 finale
Our mission is almost over. Have a peek and warm up for our big finale!
During the weekend we printed our last test: the polyamide version! It’s a functional, smooth and cheap material to 3D print in!
Now we finalized this Nokia project, we are proud to present you the one and only 3D printable, functial file tomorrow. You will find our file on our i.materialise Thingiverse account to print your own shell through i.materialise or your home printer. One of our engineers will provide you with information to get the best print quality!
But of course in the consumer world of 3D printing it’s all about customization! So here’s a little sneak preview:
So hang on there! We can’t wait to show you our special designs tomorrow.
Episode 4: Nokia Lumia 820 shell: functional and smooth!
We promised yesterday to show you an upgraded Nokia Lumia 820 shell, so here we are again with the newest shell: harder, better, stronger, faster!
FULL POWER
After episode 1, 2 and 3, fasten your seatbelts for episode 4! Our engineering team worked on full power again with the 3-matic and Magics software to fine-tune the shell even more. The version you see here is 3D printed in ABS, a very accurate material. Unfortunately it’s not the cheapest material to 3D print in, but wait until our next blog to see the perfect alternative.
So what did they do? The engineers created what they call a ‘fillet‘: they smoothened and flattened the edges of the camera whole. Maybe it’s not that visible on the picture, but wait till you feel it in your hands…
The shell was printed like this, to get the best results:
And, because of the support structure, it’s very important to take the print out very carefully so you don’t damage the buttons.
It’s been four days now since our ve
Featured Friday: Showing your 3D printed designs!
Thank God it’s Friday. Check out our new gallery entries!
The first design is made by DAMN, two ladies who make damn good designs. This is a diamond shape accessory you can wear with your scarf. The design is printed in Stainless Steel gold plated and polished.
ORGANIC
3D Materialize Ltd made a nice pendant ‘Organic Mystery’ in brass.
Christopher Ouellette made a pendant, called ‘Deathly Hallow’. The name refers to the deathly hallow symbol that’s incorporated into the pyramid shaped pendant. He printed his design in Brass gold plated.
The Nokia Lumia 820 story continues: the first functional print is born!
After all the nonfunctional prints, it’s now time for our good news show: the first functional Nokia Lumia 820 shell is alive and kicking!
After day one and two of the tests, it was very clear to everyone: The Nokia file needs engineering to work correctly. So our engineering team was sweating off a lot the past few days, but now it’s official: i.materialise can release the first 3D printable ánd functional Nokia Lumia 820 shell!
To be correct: we can actually show you two shells in different materials (resin and polyamide) that passed our test.
Dries, one of the engineers, can tell you exactly how they prepared their work: “We used 3-matic software to perform the needed design operations on the STL file, such as cutting the shell in two parts and thicken the outer shell (from 0.9 to 2 mm). Then we changed the tolerance on the buttons of our resin design because we needed more space between them. On the picture you can see that the buttons are loose, printed in transparant
Will it print? Taking the Nokia Lumia 820 shell tests a level higher
Yesterday we did a few tests to print the Nokia Lumia 820 shell on our printers (in ABS, resin and polyamide). Today we’re comparing the other materials. Check it out and stay tuned to find out our next steps!
As we found out yesterday there are big errors when it comes to the functionality of the 3D printed Nokia shell files: the buttons don’t function as they should, the wireless charging function disappeared and you need to be careful with your material choice.
Now take a look at our next tests and see what came out of our printers today:
1. Transparent resin: it looks smooth, it feels nice in your hand and gives the phone a more sophisticated look. If we had to give an award for the best looking shell, this would be the winner. But do the buttons work? Unfortunately.
2. Prime gray: the shell fits, but again: no functioning buttons!
3. High detailed resin: to make the file printable, the engineer made the wall of the design thicker by adding an extra millimeter. Ano
Myth buster: printing a Nokia Lumia 820 cover is a piece of cake
It looks like 3D printing is getting even more mainstream with the just launched rear shell for your Nokia Lumia 820. Easy to download, but what about printability?
The Nokia Lumia 820 has a clip-on interchangeable back which can be downloaded on the developer site. It can then be 3D printed on your printer or by a service such as ours. We’re happy that such a major player in the world in mobility embraces 3D printing and customization. They’re the first manufacturer to do so. But the problem is: it looks very simple and cool to 3D print, but knowing that it takes a lot of research and test prints to have a functional phone cover or shell (like we did to make sure the KEES covers fit), we’re taking this one to the test on several printers!
What do we need? A Nokia Lumia 820 of course! We jumped into our snow boots to buy one and get it to our office. First thing we did was trying to get the cover of. Once we got the back removed there were two things that caught our attention.
