The Week in 3D Printing: Jan 7th to Jan 13th
The Second week of 3D printing brought us mostly news from the CES 2012 (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. Some new desktop 3D printers here and some new 3D printing apps there… let’s take a look at where that goes us during this week.
Thingiverse gets a makeover
The famous 3D printing online warehouse Thingiverse got their hands together to redesign their website. Could it be a coincidence that the Makerbot Replicator was released around the same time?
Belgium’s First Face Transplant with the help of Materialise
It was Belgium’s first and the world’s 19th face transplant. Materialise played a major role in this success.
Bre Pettis reveals the Makerbot Replicator
Three days before the official start of CES 2012, the CEO of Makerbot Bre Petits announced their new Replicator on YouTube.
The new Makerbot Replicator
3D Systems reveals the new Cubify.com
As announced last week, it was only a matter of time for this news to be revealed. 3D Systems did indeed keep
Five Reasons to come and see us at Rapid Pro-at-home
i.materialise will be present at the Rapid Pro-at-home event from January 25th until January 26th. For those of you that are lucky enough to be within the region of Veldhoven, in the Netherlands, this might be the ultimate opportunity to come and visit us. Below you’ll find five great reasons why you really should stop by and say hi!
Get introduced to our services through our presentation
For those of you that have not 3D printed with i.materialise before and want to know more about what it is that we do, we have a presentation that will be given on multiple occasions during the two days that we’re present. It’s a great way to get introduced to our services and find out why we’re the perfect support partner for your 3D printing dreams.
Meet the people that assist you on your designs
When you’re working on something personal, it’s always important that your project goes well and nothing can be more comforting than personally knowing the people that help you throughout this p
Belgium”s First Face Transplant + 3D Printing = Wow
A remarkable team of plastic surgeons, led by Prof. Blondeel at the University Hospital of Ghent, have successfully executed Belgium’s first full face transplant. Although it was the world’s nineteenth face transplant, this was the first time that the complex procedure was fully planned using digital planning and 3D printing. During the 20 hour long procedure the patient, who suffered from a large facial defect, received bone, muscles, veins, nerves, and of course skin from a donor who had just died.
Pre-operative planning for both the donor and the recipient was completed in collaboration with Materialise CMF (cranio-maxillo facial) clinical engineers using ProPlan CMF. Using CT data, a digital representation of the patient’s anatomy was created and used in the formation of a detailed plan for this complex procedure. In order to put the surgical plan into action, anatomical models and patient specific surgical guides were 3D printed for use before and during the operation. The anat
The Week in 3D Printing: Jan 1st to Jan 6th
Yes, we are bringing back a great feature from the past! A weekly overview of what’s going on in the world of 3D printing. The year has just started so it’s been a bit of a calm week, but this was also quite expected.
Here’s an overview of 2012’s first week…
3D Systems completes the acquisition of Z Corp and Vidar
3D Systems announced that it has completed the acquisition of Z Corporation (“Z Corp”) and Vidar Systems (“Vidar”) for $135.5 million.
Supercool 3D Printing in Ice
Ok, so we know that this article was from the 27th of December 2011, but we have decided (because it’s such great news), to add it into this week in 3D printing. It will be in the January version of Wired Magazine.
A First Glimpse of the $300 Makibot
If you’ve missed out on the Printrbot: Your First 3D Printer project on Kickstarter last month, then you don’t want to miss the Makibox – the $300 desktop 3D Printer!
Makerbot makes us curious for next week’s CES
On Makerbot’s twitter account you
The New Year starts with You
Before I continue writing… on behalf of the entire i.materialise team, I would like to wish every single one of you a joyful and creative 2012! We look forward to continue helping you bring your wonderful creations come to life and to strengthen our bond with you.
With that said, we would like to give you, our beloved customer an important voice. What is it that you would like to see at i.materialise this year? What new features would you like to see come to life on our website? Is there another service that you would like to get from us?
We have already started the year by giving you the ability to not only showcase, but also make some money by offering your designs for sale in our gallery (we will further discuss this in detail on this blog in the very near future) and there is much more great stuff to come…
But right now we are very interested in your voice, your opinion and your needs. So please don’t hesitate to post your comments, ideas, and thoughts on here so tha
The 3D prints of the M HKA Challenge are now in the museum
When we announced the winners of the M HKA Design Challenge, we also mentioned that they would be exhibited at the M HKA museum in Antwerp from Dec 19th until Dec 29th. So for those of you who won’t be in the region of Antwerp during the holiday period, we’ve decided to share these lovely pictures of the 3D prints.
My House by 11 year old Kristof van Loock
Holes by designer Luigi Vaghi
Facebooked by teacher/designer of de Kunsthumaniora Filip Verreyke
Facebooked by teacher/designer of de Kunsthumaniora Filip Verreyke
My M KHA Legs by Matthew Pauwels
Senne001 by student of de Kunsthumaniora Senne Roekens
Senne001 by student of de Kunsthumaniora Senne Roekens
And for those of you who will be in the region of Antwerp during the holidays, don’t hesitate to visit the M HKA museum to see the works in person. They always look better up close!
Of course if you like participating in design challenges and just missed this one, no worries because we still have th
Last week of 2011: Our printers need a break, our people keep on going
As mentioned in our previous blog post about the year in 3D printing, we can say with total confidence that 2011 was a big year. Not only was it a big year for the entire 3D printing industry, but also for us at i.materialise. We have seen our monthly orders increase with almost 300% and our turnover has more than quadrupled. For this we want to thank you, our dear customers and creative designers.
Of course, such wonderful labor has taxed all of our hard working machines and so we’ve decided to give them a well-deserved holiday break between the 23rd of December and the 2nd of January of 2012. After all, we don’t want them to turn against us and start a whole Terminator revolt. To be honest with you, we are already taking the necessary steps to avoid this by giving them some extra space in our new (still under construction) building.
Another important date is the 27th of December. On that day there won’t be any access to our website, our blog and any of our online services a
The Year of 2011 in 3D Printing: An Overview
As the year comes to an end, we often tend to reflect on the events that occurred within it and boy… was there lot to reflect on in 2011. If there is one thing that became obvious to us, it’s that 3D printing has come a long way since our reflections of last year. This year the 3D printing world was dominated by an impressive amount of 3D Systems acquisitions, a tremendous growth of new desktop 3D printers and a much larger media coverage than it had ever received before.
We went through hundreds of articles and news items on 3D printing and found it quite a challenge to scale down the amount of information. A very difficult and tight selection process was made which became our year in 3D printing of 2011. As we made this selection, we quickly realized that we couldn’t sum up this year’s 3D printing events without a much more detailed Dipity Timeline.
Click on the image to view the timeline
With that said, we hope that you enjoy having a look back in time as you take in the a
When Dreams are Materialised
Meet Ritik, an 11 year old young man with a creative heart and dreams of a 3D printed world. Our first encounter with Ritik was at TEDxKids in Brussels a year ago. It was on that day that Ritik made his first contact with 3D printing and it became quite clear that it was like love at first sight. After receiving an introduction, Ritik’s creative mind began to work overtime. “Could I print an iPod? Or what about a car?” he thought to himself. The answer to his question was eventually found in creating a pair of 3D printable glasses. With a fixed idea in mind, Ritik now started the design process in an easy to use software application called 3DTin.
Little did he know that his design would eventually make its way to the Antwerp based M HKA Museum where it would be exhibited to demonstrate what an 11 year old kid could do with this innovative technology.
But Ritik’s story doesn’t end there. After his first contact with his new passion, Ritik received the great news of his fat
How to Win the Spotlight in a Museum
In September we organized a unique design challenge with the Antwerp based museum of M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp). You could participate as a youngster or beginner, as an illustrative artist or as a 3D designer. With that said and the information out in the open, our brave challengers got their gloves on and got to it. After long hours of working on their designs, we received the entries from our participants ready for judging time! And so, together with a judging panel of the M HKA museum we came to a unified decision on the winners of this challenge.
With well-deserved congratulations, we present to you their works of art that will be on display at the M HKA from the 19th until the 29th of December.
For the category of Designers
For the category of Youngster & Beginners
For the category of Illustrative Artists
So there you have it ladies and gentlemen and as usual we’d like to thank all of the participants for their lovely entr
