Featured Friday: Showing your 3D printed designs
Happy Friday everyone! Watch our newest gallery entries.
James William Kincaid III designed this cool belt buckle in gold plated brass:
The second design is created by Visa Jaamuru in natural white polyamide. It’s a phone stand for the Nokia Lumia 920: “I think it’s a stylish design coupled with added functionality. The phone can sit nicely in both portrait and landscape orientations. In portrait orientation the sound from the phone speakers is amplified by built in design. That makes it perfect for skyping, watching videos or simply browsing the internet on your Nokia Lumia 920.”
marco ferrarin has got something with spaghetti. He designed these nice earrings for real pasta lovers and 3D printed it in gold plated brass.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
Tutorial Thursday: stand out from the crowd!
There are so many artists and designers out there that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. But nothing is impossible: follow our tips and tricks.
Marketing yourself is hard work, but if you’re a designer and you want to make a living, it’s a necessity. There are so many ways to put yourself in the spotlights, but it’s very important to come up with your own personal plan that suits your style.
1. Start networking
If you’re just starting to expand your network, there is one simple rule: start spreading your news in familiar places. Contact friends and family, use your social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or Google +.
Go step by step. Try to get in contact with interesting people through the people in your personal network.
2. Seduce bloggers (or seduce us)
It’s very important to make a good impression. Start simple by making good pictures and visuals of your project (see our previous tutorial to make your pictures tip-top). Do you have a a design with mo
Lighten up with the Instructables Lamps and Lighting contest!
Instructables.com is coming out of the dark and hosting a Lamps and Lighting contest! Got a bright idea for a 3D printed lamp? Make it and publish it on their website!
CREATE
Create a new step by step, photo, or video instructable that fits the guidelines outlined in the right-hand column. Instructables must be published between April the 15th latest (11:59pm PT) to be eligible.
Upon publishing your Instructable you’ll see checkboxes for open contests. Select Lamps & Lighting Contest. If you have entries currently eligible for entry, it will also show up by clicking ‘Enter this Contest’ on the right side of this page. ACCEPTING
Entries are accepted by Instructables staff within one business day ( from Monday till Friday). What matters is the submission time, not acceptance time.VOTING
Instructables members can vote for an entry during the contest plus 3 days after the contest closes.JUDGING
A panel of judges made up of Instr
Goodbye Tinkercad. 3DTin anyone?
It’s so sad to hear Tinkercad will disappear. But luckily it’s not the only modeler tool that works in a browser. Jayesh Salvi, founder and developer of 3DTin has ensured i.materialise the continuation of his software platform.
We haven’t heard from 3DTin in a while, but this web based CAD program is, like Tinkercad, also an app that lets you save and share the designs you make. If you export your file you can print it through the i.materialise service.
Some people say its user interface is more complex, but Jayesh Salvi is working on that: “Over 3 years we have built a simple 3D modeling workflow in 3DTin. A lot of users who find traditional 3D modeling tools too daunting, use 3DTin to quickly put together their ideas. We have built a well thought interface for this crowd. At one point we reached a feature-complete state for 3DTin. It became clear that adding more functionality to the existing tool without careful thought is going to spoil it for our existing user-base. So
Tinkercad announces its closure
Only one hour ago we heard the sad news about Tinkercad its closure. The founders decided to concentrate on a new simulation environment called Airstone.
” Our vision was that a software platform created specifically for supercomputers would let us build some very exciting applications. In early 2011 we launched Tinkercad on this platform. It was the first cloud-based 3D CAD ever built and has grown to be a successful product in its category.
In parallel with Tinkercad, we continued development of the core platform. In October 2012, we launched a scripting interface for one of the key components, the Gen6 geometry modeling kernel. And finally, in late 2012, we had several major breakthroughs in our research work on the core platform that opened up application possibilities we had never imagined possible.
In response to these breakthroughs, I’m excited to announce an updated roadmap. There are two major parts to the new roadmap: 1) we are working on an innovative new simulation
First tests with our flexible material!
Our Product Designer Bert is having a blast with the material. Read more about his experiments!
When we open this window in our office and the wind is too hard, the window normally slams against the wall. But not any more! Bert designed a boxing glove with the flexible material TPU which you can attach to the window door handle: bye bye wall slamming windown!
Or what about this cute ergonomical grip for your pencil?
Or this cute squeezable octopus?
We’d love to hear your opinion about this material! What would you do with TPU?
The first fully-functional flexible material is entering the i.materialise building!
Did you like the latest Iris van Herpen dress with the strong and flexibe material? Then we have some good news for you: we’re doing tests to offer you the same material!
IMAGINE
Wasn’t it lovely to see the first flexible 3D printed dress on a model? Designers and engineers have been challenging Materialise to come up with a flexible 3D Printing material that is durable enough to withstand the wear and tear of an end-use product, and TPU is their response. Materialise launched it ten days ago and now i.materialise is doing research and tests to provide you with this material as well. The official name of the material is TPU 92A-1.
Just imagine what you can do with it: use it for functional parts, objects that need shock absorption, fashionable items,…
CUBE
If you look at the pictures you clearly see just how flexible this material really is.
There is only one downside to this material: for the moment it can’t be produced and distributed in the US directly due t
Featured Friday: Showing your 3D printed designs
It’s almost weekend, so that means it’s time for our Featured Friday! Check out the latest entries.
Designer Armand Graham created this beautiful bracelet in gold plated brass:
Marc Fournier designed this great ring in silver:
And last but not least: Software companie Uformia, which we wrote a previous blog about, created this ceramics cup by using 3D face scan data of a real Norwegian Viking.
Enjoy your weekend!
Don’t forget to put your designs in the gallery.
Bronze: only offline price request available
We’re the only online 3D printing service offering bronze, but we want to ensure the quality for this material. Because we can’t currently guarantee this, we will -temporarily- only offer an offline price request. By doing this we can take a closer look at your design and make sure you’ve got an optimal print! So stay tuned, because our bronze story isn’t finished yet!
The i.materialise team
Parametric Parts: Making customization a piece of cake
Are you looking for a specific model; but can’t find the right size? Dave Cowden, a mechanical engineer with a passion for 3D printing, came up with the solution: Parametric Parts. An interview!
What’s your background?
David: «I was educated as a Mechanical Engineer, but I’ve always enjoyed ‘making things’. I moved into the IT industry about 15 years ago, and managed an e-commerce team for 10 years during the dot-com boom. Today, I count software engineering, agile software development, and programming as my trade, but I still make things at home as a hobby. Home projects include making CNC machines and 3D printers. I first worked on 3D printers back in 1992, when they cost > $250,000-at that time at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft. I’ve followed them ever since. 3D printing has always been fascinating to me, along with all other technologies used to make things.»
Why did you start Parametric Parts?
David: «I had the idea while working with my 3D printer at home. I was frustrat
