Valentine story #2: How to propose with the help of 3D printing
Hywel Vaughan and his girlfriend Sarah had been together for just over three years. As his New Years resolution of 2012, he decided to ask her to marry him. Being an industrial designer though, Hywel figured he could do something much better than just buying a ring from a shop.
Hywel has been so nice to post photos and instructions of how to make the ring on Instructables. It includes everything from buying the gem stone to the actual proposal! In December of 2012, he surprised Sarah with a trip to Bruges in Belgium. Sarah had no idea they were going anywhere until Hywel came down the stairs with packed bags and directed her to the taxi waiting outside! A brief Eurostar trip later, the couple was in Bruges walking next to the canals in the moonlight. At a quiet spot next to the ‘lovers lake’, he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. She said yes, with the biggest smile he had ever known her to have.
“The finish on the ring was fantastic, and the accuracy of the product
Valentine story #1: Engaged with 3D printing
There’s nothing more romantic than an engagement story involving 3D printing. When we saw this story of Joris Donders in our mailbox; we had to share it with you!
«I’ve always been someone who tries to be creative in my own way and I couldn’t afford my proposal to be any less. I wanted to have something which would help us remind the moment every time we would look at it. A picture of course would have been too simple. At the same time I wanted something that could help me explain the question just in case that I was to nervous to say it myself. You never know how you’ll feel at such moments.»
«I didn’t exactly know what I was going to make, but then it hit me. As an engineer I knew about the 3D printing capabilities and someone pointed me towards i.materialise. I was expecting a lot of difficulties and a very high price but I couldn’t afford not to investigate. I had to know if it would be possible to design what I had in mind.»
JOKE
« Deep inside my own heart lied a questi
Plenty more possibilities in Polyamide!
It’s our second Material Monday and this month it’s all about polyamide. Find out more about dying larger pieces and get a sneak peek at our new color!
POLY…WHAT?
Polyamide is a very popular material and is constructed from very fine, white nylon powder. The technique to build your designs with this material is called ‘ laser sintering‘. The result is a strong, somewhat flexible material that can take small impacts and resist some pressure while being bent.
Pricewise, the material is quite affordable. All designs that fit within a bounding box of 125 cm3 and have a maximum dimension of 200 mm comes at 12,5 euro a piece. Examples of those designs are rings, iPhone cases, dices, earrings etc. If your models are larger, then pricing will mainly be based on the bounding box. Also, the more copies you order, the larger the discount.
Polyamide is typically used for small series of models, complex models, lamp shades, but we’ve also seen people use it for jewelry and accessories.
Featured Friday: Showing your 3D printed designs!
Happy Friday! Let’s go into the weekend with some wonderful new designs. Let’s hit it off with The Ring of The Monkey Pirate King.
Inspired by Pirates of the Carribean, Tintin, Monkey Island, and ancient Inca gold, Ben Dansie created this dazzling ring. 3D printed in silver (gloss finish) and hand finished with Liver of Sulphur for the dark patina.
Human White Matter Tracts
Prevue Medical presents the world’s first accurate model of the wiring of the human brain. It seems these structures have never been reproduced in 3D, until now. The model scale is 1:1 and shows various connections between parts of the brain. These connections are beneath the familiar gray matter, embedded in the white matter of the brain. The individual fibers are actually microscopic, so bundles of fibers are here represented by millimeter scale tracts.
Bogies for R Class Diesel
And last but not least, a nice work in progress from Richard from WA SN 3-1/2 Models. 3D p
3D printing a GoPro Scuba Mount
Described as the world’s most versatile camera, GoPro has sold over 3 million cameras over the past three years. It’s a camera that is quite unlike what you are used to. A GoPro is not meant to be handheld but to be mounted on surfboards, skateboards, helmets, bikes, and so on. And if the standard sold mounts are not your thing, you just design one and 3D print it. Just like Felipe De La Torre, a high school senior/scuba diver from Pacoima, California did.
“This was my first 3D printed design. I always found the technology really interesting… thought I’d give it a go. Honestly, it was a bit difficult for me to design this, considering I didn’t have much experience going into this. However I got ideas from similar mounts and figured I would make a derivative composed of multiple ideas. Luckily, it worked out in the end… the design was everything I thought it to be.” – Felipe De La Torre
Why a tool for his camera? Well… the real reason is that he just didn’t have the heart to dri
Win your 15 minutes of fame!
We challenge you to get inspired by the Pop art movement and design a 3D printable piece which will blow everyone’s mind. A piece so cool it will win you your 15 minutes of fame.
From June 10-12, 2013, Materialise will participate in RAPID 2013 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Produced by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the RAPID Additive Manufacturing Solutions Conference and Exposition is the largest prototyping fair in the United States, hosting more than 1800 participants.
On the opening night of RAPID, Materialise, in conjunction with SME, will host an event at the Andy Warhol Museum unlike anything you’ve seen before. A special 3D printed installation, curated by renowned gallery owner Murray Moss, will be on display at the Warhol Museum, combining Pop art with 3D Printing. And you too could earn a spot at this event as a winner of the i.materialise Challenge!
THE CHALLENGE
Let the big artists from Pop Art, the movement that started in the mid 1950’s i
Join our Spring Meetup 29th of March!
Get ready for the next i.materialise meetup! We’d love to welcome you to our Spring Meetup 29th of March.
WHO
Every designer, independant business owner, working professional,…. that’s interested in 3D printing. Journalists are welcome as well to meet our designers and follow a tour through one of the biggest 3D printing facilities in the world.
WHY
It’s a great opportunity to meet fellow designers and share your experiences, so don’t forget to bring your 3D printed design. You’ll get to know more about the services we offer, you can see the widest rang of materials you can print in and ask all your questions concerning 3D printing to our support engineers.
PROGRAM
- Welcome
- Presentation and see materials
- Tour
- Drink & Talk
WHERE
Materialise
Technologielaan 15
3001 Leuven
WHEN
Friday 29th of March 2013, 14.00-18.00 GMT +1 (Belgium time)
REGISTER
You can register on this website!
QUESTIONS
You can always contact tatiana.dewee@materialise.be, I’ll
Featured Friday: Showing your 3D printed designs!
Happy Friday everyone! Check out our latest entries.
Andreas Damhofer designed a framed painting-like sculpture in natural white polyamide.
Jason Goodman designed a vase in gloss black ceramics, but you can 3D print it in 8 other colors as well. Goodman: “the vase consists of eight perfect ellipses that form an open basketwork. Fill with fresh flowers (if you put a small glass container inside), art supplies or kitchen tools.”
Last but not least Prevue Medical 3D printed multicolor. This model shows the correlation between resting-state BOLD MRI time courses in one hemisphere of the human brain. Areas that are brighter red are more highly correlated with activity in the rest of the brain. Areas in blue tend to have more local and less global connectivity. Colors are visible inside folds and undercuts as well, giving a hint of just how complex the brain’s structure really is.
Have a nice weekend!
Check out our 16 materials: starting from 0.55 euro per cm3
‘Cause we are living in a material world: Choose from the widest range, 16 materials, we have on offer. Can’t decide what to choose? Then check out our sample kit!
Discovering materials at i.materialise is pretty easy. If you want to know more about the pricing, you can just go to our 3D print lab, it’s an online instant pricing system where you can upload your model and check out the prices for your design in different materials.
With our 16 materials on offer, you really have a lot to choose from. Together with our finishes, we have 70 different combinations. The cheapest material, multicolor, only costs 0.55/cm³ (start up cost of 3€, not included). Another cheaper material is for exampe ceramics, our only food safe material; the price of ceramics is not based on the volume, but on the surface area of your model which costs -for every color-: 0.18 cm². Prime gray will cost you 1.55 euro cm³ and for polyamide; all polyamide designs that fit within a bounding box of 125 cm3 a
