why 3D printing will never go mainstream
A question I get asked several times a week is, “when will 3D printing go mainstream?” I have a new answer for that, never. 3D printing will never go mainstream. Why? Because if 3D printing goes mainstream, there will be no mainstream.
Carl visualizes his daughter”s heart problems
My daughter has a heart problem, the images of the heart and my research into her condition has been helped greatly by being able to visualise this file. It also helps her understand the problem. As a natural structure I also think the heart is quite beautiful.
— Carl Hitchens
Carl Hitchens is Materialise”s Software Manager for the UK and Ireland. His daughter Megan was 6 in 2008 when she was diagnosed with two congenital heart defects, a PDA Patent Ductus Arteriosus and a VSD ventricular septal defect. Initially Megan”s parents “explained with books and she knew the problems and what symptoms she should be aware of.” Carl though works with Materialise software that is used to scan and render parts of the human body. MRI scans of a patient for example are used as a basis for surgical planning using Materialise Mimics. He decided to show his daughter her heart problem by 3D printing a scan of the heart using i.materialise. Megan liked the model and it helped her und
Happy new year to everyone in 3D printing land!
Dear people in 3D printing land, we”ve had a fantastic year and hope you have too. We”ve grown incredibly rapidly, especially these last few months. This has brought us into contact with some incredibly sophisticated and beautiful designs. We”ve also been introduced to some incredibly talented designers and inventors and can”t wait to see what they will make with us in the new year. We would like to thank you, our supporters for this year. To the thousands of people that have used i.materialise, blogged about us, tweeted about us and told your friends about us, thank you. This means a lot to us.  We”ve got some very exciting things we”re working on right now and hope to welcome many more people to i.materialise in the year to come. We”re looking forward to 2011 and think it will be the most exciting year in 3D printing”s history.  We want to wish you all a happy new year!
3D Printed Flute!
Amit Zoran 3D printed a completely working flute on an Objet Connex 500. Look and more importantly listen to this amazing 3D printed thing!
Via Bruce Sterling
i.materialised a Christmas Leaf
Last year Steve Swisher made a lovely Christmas Leaf for his wife. We wanted to share this design and also wish you a Merry Christmas!
My wife loves leaves so I thought it would be nice to surprise her with a Christmas ornament leaf I designed myself. To give it a personal touch I put some custom words on the bottom. Voila!
— Steve Swisher
The Christmas Leaf is 3D printed using Stereolithography. The material used is a translucent epoxy and this is then hand painted with a translucent coat of green paint.
Rolls Royce is going to 3D print aircraft engines
The Merlin Project is a €7,120,000 EU research project that will be conducted by Rolls Royce in conjunction with other aircraft engine manufacturers. The aim of the project is to over the course of three years explore the use of 3D printing to make aircraft engines in order to reduce their enviornmental impact. The project aims to use 3D printing “to allow environmental benefits including near 100% material utilisation, current buy to fly ratios result in massive amounts of waste, no toxic chemical usage and no tooling costs, to impact the manufacture of future aero engine components. All of these factors will drastically reduce emissions across the life-cycle of the parts. …. Light-weighting, and the performance improvement of parts will result in reduced fuel consumption and reduced emissions….Impacts will include the development of high value, disruptive AM technologies capable of step changes in performance which will safeguard EU companies in the high value aero engin
Hella Jongerius” 300 unique ceramic vases
Celebrated Dutch designer Hella Jongerius has an obsession with imperfection. She developed 300 unique vases to acompany special editions of her new book, Hella Jongerius:Misfit. The video below runs you through the entire production process of the vases.
We often think of 3D printing as the de facto technology for developing unique objects. Hella”s vases however are caramic and made by the venerable Royal Tichelaar Makkum (the Netherlands oldest company, founded in 1572). I think it is interesting to watch designers experiment with unique, with designing something that will be result in many different items that somehow stay well within the designer”s intent. Mr. Tichelaar hits the nail on the head in the video, “its not designing, its creating. Its exploring, its experimenting. Sometimes its very nice and somethimes you think its a bit strange, but its always beautiful. It always has a value, which you would like to cherish.” This is the best explanation I”ve heard yet of
i.materialise will be offline on the 27th
We”re sorry to have to inform you that the i.materialise website will be offline on the 27th of December. We will be offline from 6:30 CET in the morning until 16:00 CET in the afternoon. During that period there will be major electricity works going on inside the Materialise HQ. We know this is a very long time to be offline and apologize for any inconvenience.
Image by Wonderlane, Creative Commons, Attribution
The Year of 2010 in 3D Printing: An Overview
To my abject horror there was no “year in review” for 3D printing. I decided to right this wrong and produce this one. I’ve tried to be as unbiased and inclusive as possible. If I’ve missed something, feel free to point it out in the comments and I’ll add it. 2010 was a miraculous year in 3D printing. Thousands of people have bought and made RepRaps and Makerbots en tens of thousands use 3D printing services such as i.materialise to 3D print their own creations. (more…)
Portal inspired Bookends on Thingiverse
We were thinking of some fun things to do with our Design Your Own Bookend. Because some of us are obsessed by Portal & Reddit, we had seen this awesome Portal Bookend on Reddit. So we asked Nicolas de Jaegre to make a Portal (and Reddit) inspired bookend fit for 3D printing. We put the 3D printing files on Thingiverse so you can download them and play with the files should you want to. Now everyone with a 3D printer can 3D print their own Portal inspired book ends. Enjoy!
