Who is….(y)our Community Manager?
My dearest community
Today is the first day of a new episode in my life, starting as your (and yours only) Community Manager. My name is Tatiana De Wée , but you can just call me Tat or Tati. I’m 25 years young and try to make the most of everyday on this planet. I’ve always been passionate about designing, blogging and communication. To combine these three passions is a dream coming true.
Why I love design? It’s simple. I just love creating and see how material can transform from it’s rough structure into a whole new design. Whether it’s a product you can use in your everyday life or not. It doesn’t matter, it’s about the whole thinkingprocess. I believe as a designer you’re truly blessed. You have the possibility to make other lives easier with your designs or make the world a little bit more beautiful. You can move and touch people.
I started designing and experimenting as a little girl with lots of things like jewelry, clay, drawings or bigger constructions like
Got a $100.000 idea for the 3D4D Challenge?
Do you have a transformational idea that could leverage 3D printing technologies to deliver real social benefits in the developing world? Would you welcome the chance to work with great people to develop your idea further? Better still, could your idea steal the $100,000 prize in our international challenge? You think so? Well, then you have to enter the 3D4D challenge. We had a talk with Rosie Wilson, the Project Manager of the 3D4D Challenge, who’s researching and coordinating the challenge.
What is the aim of the 3D4D challenge?
Rosie Wilson: «The 3D4D Challenge aims to unearth new ground-breaking ideas that exploit developments in 3D printing, mobile phone based scanning technology and web based design applications to improve the incomes and livelihoods of people in developing countries. Techfortrade is funding a $100k prize to enable the winning entry to be implemented. »
Who’s behind the 3D4D challenge?
Rosie Wilson: «William Hoyle is the founding Chief Executive of techf
3D printing the top 3 of the bead design challenge
About 2 weeks ago we announced the winners of the Bead Design Challenge. The 3D printed results came in yesterday, looking all loveable, and shiny as hell! Congrats again to the winners: Eva Tucek, Francisco Galan Manzo and Luigi Vaghi. Your 3D printed designs are on their way!
Pocket Rockets & Love Bombs by Eva Tucek:
Hoss Bunny Bead by Francisco Galan Manzo:
OX8 by Luigi Vaghi:
p.s. Don’t forget that the metal accessories challenge is still running, so don’t hesitate to submit your design.
Making some room for the next community manager
As with everything in life, something has a beginning and an end. Today is the day where my chapter as community manager at i.materialise ends, and a new one starts elsewhere. For those of you that know me, you’ll know about my creative background as an artist and it is exactly this what I’ll be going back to. As much as I’ve enjoyed this wonderful community and my lovely colleagues, I’ve made the choice to move on as an independent artist. I will be like in the past, cooperating with creative companies from the gaming industry, film industry and advertisement industry.
To find out more about what I’ll be doing and who I’ll be working with, it’s best to visit my website: www.lucidussomnium.com in the near future as it will undergo lots of important changes and will be updated with brand new projects and artwork. From there you’ll also be able to follow my work on all sorts of social networks.
For now, I’ll wish all of you in this wonderful community all the best (keep putting yo
It’s a Sinter Summer
Remember when we did that laser sintering pricing trial back in April? We said it would be for a limited time only and we also said that we would evaluate it afterwards. Well now we can confirm that the evaluating part is over and we’re ready to offer you our official laser sintering prices here and now! In simple words… laser sintering will cost you 0.1 euro/cm3!
Let’s take a look at how it all works…
- All designs that fit within a bounding box of 125cm3 and have a maximum dimension of 200mm will from now on be sold at 12,5 euros a piece
- If your design fits within a bounding box of 27cm3 (for example 3x3x3cm) and has a maximum dimension of 100mm, you’ll only pay 5 euros per copy of that same design (for example you’ll pay 32,5 euros for 5 copies as 12,5+5+5+5 = 32,5)
- For copies of any other design that still fits within the 125cm3 and have a maximum dimension of 200mm, you will pay 10 euros per copy (for example you’ll pay 52,5 euros for 5 copies as 12,5+10+10+10+10 = 52
3DTin’s Challenge Designs brought to Life
At the beginning of May 3DTin launched a design challenge on their platform where we would end up 3D printing the top 3 designs. The challenge ran from the beginning of May until the end of that month and was followed by a voting process. After some debating and reviewing we (collectively with 3DTin) came up with our winning three.
We congratulate 3DTin community members Germán, Stealth the third and Akin and would like to thank all 3DTin participants for their entries.
All designs were 3D printed in multicolor and made in 3DTin. If you like 3D printing challenges, we currently still have the Metal Accessories Challenge running at i.materialise that runs until the end of July. You can of course also make use of 3DTin’s easy-to-use software package to participate in this challenge. Just export your file as an STL and submit it to our challenge page.
You can also use 3DTin to create awesome designs that you can 3D print and showcase or even sell in our gallery. F
Presenting the Top 3 of the Bead Design Challenge
When we announced Metal Month at the beginning of June, we also included a wonderful design challenge where you had to design your own personalized bead in silver. It was the Bead Design Challenge. It became quite a popular challenge with a total of 27 entries from different designers around the world. As the challenge concluded on the 30th of June, our team got together to go through all the entries and choose our top 3 that will be 3D printed.
After some debating and vote counting the following three made it to the top.
Pocket Rockets & Love Bombs by Eva Tucek
Hoss Bunny Head by Francisco Galan Manzo
OX8 by Luigi Vaghi
We congratulate our winning three and thank everyone for participating. The top 3 will get their design 3D printed and send to them by the end of this month. And because we know all participants love their designs, they’ll all receive a discount of 15% (to be used on their design entry) sent to their email addresses shortly. This gives you the opportu
A look back at yesterday’s meetup
Yesterday we held our summer meetup at the Materialise headquarters. As with the previous meetup, we saw an international community visiting our facilities filled with curiosity about 3D printing and about what happens behind the walls of this company. We also combined this event with the announcement of the winner of the wires challenge we organized with Mookum. To present this award we had Gert Gijbels from Mookum attend our meetup where he also gave an interesting view behind the creative platfom that is Mookum. And of course, as the final cherry on top we provided our attendees with a quick look into the customizable capabilities of our friends at Digital Forming.
The group got an introduction to 3D printing and i.materialise in the form of a presentation. This was then followed by the traditional guided tour of our facilities and of course a get to know each other moment at the end of the event. But before we got to the great socializing bit, there was the presentation of M
Introducing Brass 3D Printing
Looking for a high detailed metallic material that looks amazing and doesn’t cost you a fortune? Then Brass is the way to go for you. It’s a very shiny material due to its high-grade polished gold plated layer while offering a high level of detail giving it that 18-carat golden look. It’s a material that fits perfectly between 3D printed gold and gold plated stainless steel and here’s why…
- Gold Plated Stainless Steel: Cheapest option but less detailed
- Brass: Cheaper than Gold but same level of detail and beautifully shiny
- Gold: Highly detailed like brass but more valuable
Gold plated brass is a great way to go when designing things such as small jewelry or Steampunk based designs. It just looks phenomenal and expensive when it’s actually quite affordable compared to the real thing. Let’s have a look at what it would cost you to 3D print in this new material:
- 1cm3 will currently cost about 25 euros
- 5cm3 will currently cost about 95 euros
- 10cm3 will currently cos
Finish it!
The surface of a 3D printed model is determined by the material and the technology. It will define the look and feel of your printed design.
Most technologies print your model layer by layer. The goal of post-finishing is to reduce evidence of these layers as much as possible, without damaging the geometry of your model. However, the difference in surfaces can be seen when the natural surface option is chosen – for example, a powder based model will be rougher than a resin based model.
So what can you do with your model after it’s printed? Well, we already have a wide range of post-finishing options available but a lot of times, our designers create their own magic. Welcome in the world of polishing, dyeing, painting, and so much more. Don’t consider these pages to be omniscient but will add more and more information as time goes by.
Check them out here:
http://i.materialise.com/materials/finishing
