Tinkercad Father Day’s challenge winner
About 2 weeks ago we announced the winner of the Father’s Day Challenge hosted by Tinkercad. Sam McCulloch’s Vulcan Bomber was voted as the number 1 design. Not only was his Dad very happy with the 3D printed gift, he also did a nice job on painting the model.
But there’s more to it. Sam’s Dad, David McCulloch is a volunteer at the XM655 maintenance and preservation society. He’s been a lifelong fan of aircrafts, got his pilot license at the age of 17, and works closely with the Oxford 150 Squadron Air Cadets.
As Father’s day 2012 coincided perfectly with an annual event called “Wings and Wheels”, the real Vulcan Bomber did some taxi runs, engine blasts, and was available for the public to examine.
Being a volunteer, David McCulloch dedicates a lot of time to the restoration project. It also seems they’re actively looking to continue to raise funds of ongoing restoration costs. So, all you aviation enthusiasts out there get in touch!
Tinkercad is the easiest way to do and l
Announcing the Metal Accessories Challenge
A new Design Challenge in Stainless Steel
As was promised at the beginning of the month, we proudly introduce our second design challenge centered around metals. This time the weapon of choice is stainless steel and the theme is revolved around creating an accessory that makes your life easier. The challenge will be running from today (Friday the 15th of June) until the end of July (Tuesday 31st). So what are the typical kind of accessories that you could design or redesign in stainless steel? Below are some examples to get your brain stimulated…
Just some basic metallic accessories you could design or redesign
Of course there are other accessories as well, but this should give you a quick idea or reference to start with. So… the next obvious question would be “What’s the size we’re allowed to design in?” The answer to that question is: Anything that fits within a bounding box of 250cm3. So for example a bounding box of 10x5x5cm would be just fine. Your design has to be
FabLab visits i.materialise
Last week we had the honor of receiving some lovely members from Belgian and Dutch FabLabs. They came with their beautifully creative minds to get a glimpse of i.materialise and the facilities we have at our disposal while sharing grand ideas and concepts for the future.
FabLabs (short for Fabrication Laboratories) are a wonderful establishment around the world where creative minds can come together to try out new ideas and fabricate new things. This is also why you’ll find the use of 3D printing commonplace amongst the FabLabs. As we all know by now, not all 3D printers can be stored at a FabLab as it would need a tremendous space and a huge staff to keep it all running. This is where 3D printing services like i.materialise come in.
So to get a better understanding of i.materialise, we decided to give them an introductory presentation and a guided tour of the Materialise facilities where our guests got to meet our different 3D printers. Afterwards we shared some interesting
Winner of the Father’s Day Challenge Announced
On May 16th we announced a design challenge for Father’s Day where participants could design something fun for their father with the wonderful Tinkercad software package. The challenge got some fun and interesting entries on their Facebook challenge page but as always, there can only be one winner. After a public vote it was made clear that Tinkercad user Samuel McCulloch was the favorite who’ll end up giving his dad a 3D printed Vulcan Bomber.
The Vulcan Bomber made in Tinkercad by Samuel McCulloch
On behalf of i.materialise we congratulate Samuel for winning the challenge and we also congratulate all participants for being a wonderful bunch to their dads. Your fathers can be proud!
However… we’ll be the first ones to let you know to never give up and keep on trying and participating in more design challenges. There are constantly more of them being organized such as the Silver Bead Design Challenge that is currently running at i.materialise. For this design challenge you
Putting the Machine in the Spotlight
i.materialise and Design Platform Limburg have joined hands to bring the magic of 3D printing to an exhibition at the C-Mine in Genk called The Machine. Anyone that happens to be in the region can visit the exhibition that centers around designing a new industrial revolution. To celebrate this nice event, i.materialise has 3D printed a set of artistic tiles that are spread through the expo. Examples of these are shown below.
And to make sure that it’s not just about showcasing 3D printing but also being a part of it, Design Platform Limburg and i.materialise have decided to organize a 7-day summer workshop for a lucky 10 designers.
Included in the workshop are the following things:
- An introduction to Solid Works software by Itay Ohaly with personal guidance and supervision for the creation of your design
- A Save as Design Challenge by Maya Ben David and Jon Stam centered around designing a personal souvenir of the past from the mines
- A set of open workshops that h
Entering Metal Month
It’s the beginning of a new month and with it comes the beginning of a new time… a time to dive into the wonderful metallic materials that we offer here at i.materialise. Yes… this is our METAL MONTH where you get to enjoy our Stainless Steel, Titanium, Silver & Gold while witnessing the launch of even more metallic materials throughout the month. There are two wonderful design challenges with one of them starting today! And as cherry on top, we are offering a 10% discount on all metal orders with the use of a promo code. Do you like where this is going? Great! Let’s dive into the details…
The Metal Awesomeness you will find in our gallery
To give our community a better overview of what Metal Month is all about, we have put together a theme page in our gallery where you can browse what our designers have come up with in our metal materials. Below you’ll find some examples up close, and don’t forget to have a look around in the gallery for further inspiration!
Evaluating our lasers and their cost slicing capabilties
Last month we introduced the temporary pricing formula for our laser sintered polyamide & alumide designs that would fit within a bounding box of 125cm3. The community’s response was quite positive and this was definitely reflected in our numbers. As promised, we said that this would be a temporary trial and that we would evaluate its results afterwards. The month of May is over and so that’s exactly what we’ve started doing now.
In the meantime we have decided to still offer this nice pricing formula for polyamide & alumide designs that fit within a bounding box of 50cm3. This offer will continue to exist during our evaluation period and might change as time goes by. So to quickly recap…
- For any design that fits within a bounding box of 50cm3, you will always pay a standard price of 12 euros
- If you decide to 3D print multiples of that same design, you simply add 4 euros per copy on top of the start-up price of 12 euros (this means that if you want your design 3D printed
The Month of May in 3D Printing
Another month is coming to a close so as tradition has it, we provide you with our monthly 3D printing news. It was an interesting month with some fun new 3D printer announcements, the usual amount of Kickstarter projects and loads of fun design challenges. Let’s take a dive into the details…
First, let’s have a look at the new 3D printers that were announced this month. First up was the new FDM (Fused Deposed Modeling) 3D printer by Stratasys called Mojo. It’s one of the 3D printers that looks and acts most like a traditional 2D printer due to its ease of use. Stratasys has vastly simplified several key user interaction points, both in hardware and software and is offering the printer at a cost price of $9,900. Still a bit steep for the individual home user, but an interesting price for small business owners and creatives.
The other noteworthy 3D printer that got announced this month was the Objet30 Pro by Objet. At first glance it really reminded me of its bigger brother
A creative journey by the students of Sint Lucas Antwerp
Back in February we received a visit from some students of the Sint Lucas Art School in Antwerp as part of their creative design week. The students formed part of first and second bachelor year jewelry design courses and got introduced to the possibilities of 3D printing. They were then given an external 3-day workshop by guest-teacher Fabien Franzen to teach and guide them with Moi 3D: an easy to use CAD design package. With their new-found knowledge the students could now start transforming their traditional works of art into 3D designs that would eventually be 3D printed at i.materialise.
Their objective was to evolve their traditional designs from a previous assignment into a 3D printed version of it. The end result was a collection of miniature kitchen and table appliances that was brought forth as a unified collection.
All the above pictures were taken by photographers Bart Vermaercke and Roger Laute.
As for those of you who like to work with poly
Father’s Day 3D Challenge
With Mother’s Day just around the corner, we’re already preparing for Father’s Day. So, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Tinkercad for the “Thanks, Dad 3D Challenge!”
From now until Friday, June 1st at 12 midnight P.T., create a design on Tinkercad for Father’s Day, take a screenshot of it and upload it on their Facebook challenge page along with a link to your design posted in the caption.
One winner will be selected from the top 5 designs with the most votes. The winner will receive a 3D print of their design in time for Father’s Day on June 17th AND a voucher for 100€ in 3D printing.
And because every dad is special, we’ve decided to give each person who enters the challenge a promo code good for a 15% discount on a 3D printout. Oh yeah!
Here are a few rules to get you started:
- Only one entry per person, please.
- Your design must be your own creation and not a re-tinker.
- Something about dad should be included in your design. “Best Dad!” “My Hero!” “I
