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3D Printing Blog

The i.materialise blog keeps you updated about outstanding 3D designs, the newest 3D printing technologies and the best 3D modeling software tutorials.

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

Meet the designer: Eric van Straaten

Today we offer you an in-depth look into one of our favorite designers: Eric van Straaten. His multicolor magic has continuously pushed the technology to its limits and has attracted countless of enthusiastic crowds to admire it. Therefore it comes as no surprise that we were more than happy to receive such a deep look into the mind behind the artist. It is with great pleasure that we present you with Eric’s deepest thoughts, feelings and visions told in his own words.

I don’t really think you need much of an introduction anymore as you ‘ve made quite a name for yourself at i.materialise, but what we would like to know is a bit about your background. Tell us a bit about the boy that became the man…

I was born in 1969 in the Dutch city of Leiden and grew up in Haarlem. From the age of about 17 I have always wanted to be an ‘artist’, and after a career that we call in Dutch ’12 trades, 13 accidents’ (more or less successful photographer, musician, actor, journalist, entrepren

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

Materialising Minecraft Dreams

Today we would like to highlight the work of one of our dear colleagues at Materialise called Sander. He’s a fan of Minecraft and happens to work at a 3D printing company so the following was obviously going to happen someday… With help of a software solution called Mineways, Sander was able to create a bridge between his creations in Minecraft and our 3D printers. The results and Sander’s story can be seen below.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Who is Sander?

I’m a software engineer working for Materialise. In my free time I’m involved in several music activities and I spend quite some time behind my PC programming and playing games.

How did you discover 3D printing?

My current employment brought me into contact with 3D printing. I was not exposed to it before then.

What brought you to Minecraft and which realms do you command in there?

It is kind of strange but my cynicism brought me to Minecraft. When I heard about it first I didn’t believe such a simpl

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

Meet the Designer: Josh Azevedo

Meet Josh Azevedo, a man who’s driven by love and decided to use 3D printing to translate his deepest feelings for his wife to be, Heather. We met Josh last year when he came to use with the idea of 3D printing a lovely set of gnomes in multicolor. Ever since that moment, we kept on seeing more of his lovely work come to life through our printers. Today we would like to share Josh’s story with our community and highlight his magnificent 3D printed work that (we can safely say this) comes from deep down in his heart.

Here’s what Josh has to say…

Tell us a bit about yourself? Who is Josh Azevedo?

I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. After high school in 1996 I attended Clackamas Community College for some general education courses. On my own, I played with some 3d programs, just cause it looked cool and so I fell in love with 3d modeling. After a short break from the community college, I enrolled in the Art Institute of Portland were I graduated with a Bachelor of Sc

Makies: The doll you designed made real

Today is a big day for making-pioneers toy-lovers and 3D printing enthusiasts: MAKIES Alpha is live!

MakieLab founder Alice Taylor left her job at Channel 4 to pursue her start up dream. One or two years ago, she came to visit us, talked about her start up, and printed some prototypes. And now that dream has become reality!

MakieLab has been working hard to give you features like cloth customisation, achievements, hundreds of new items and outfits… It seems there are 100 Alpha Edition MAKIES up for grabs and the shop is now open. Start creating the first batch of 3D printed action dolls EVER to be made. A MAKIE of 10” high, 3D printed, big-eyed will cost you £99 inc VAT.

So get your asses off to http://makie.me and follow them on Twitter through @makielab. And of course, congratulations Alice for pulling this off!

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