Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

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.

The City Game: The Rotterdam Edition

The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) is a museum, archive, library, and platform that wants to get people of all ages involved in architecture. One way of doing that is through educational programmes. One of those programmes is called ‘The City Game: The Rotterdam Edition’, a game aimed at pupils and students in primary, secondary and higher education. The purpose of the game is to build a city together and discover that the process is about more than construction alone. As every student has its own wishes and interest, the discussion sets off.

To introduce the game, a guide takes the students to the Treasury, where the most beautiful scale models from the NAi collection are displayed. The students can see how famous architects design cities and buildings.

At the top floor of the museum, the students play the city game. Working in small groups, each group selects a part of the floor map and uses scale models to plan a quarter.

Since the old wooden scale mode

The New Craftsmanship: Iris van Herpen and her Inspiration

27-year-old Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen creates stunning designs with a sculptural allure. She has already won numerous awards, her collections have been received with great enthusiasm by the international fashion press, and pop icon Lady Gaga is a huge fan. But when van Herpen revealed Capriole – her Fall/Winter 2011-2012 collection – on a Paris runway this summer, it didn’t take long before someone dared to call her “the next Alexander McQueen”.

It doesn’t stop there though. For the upcoming exhibition ‘Industrial Revolution 2.0: How the Material World will Newly Materialise’, curator Murray Moss selected two of her pieces to be on display in the world’s greatest museum of art and design: the V&A in London. You’d better be fast to visit the event because it opens the 17th of September and already closes on the 25th of September.

Or you can take a trip to the Centraal Museum in Utrecht who devoted a complete exhibition to one of today’s most talented Dutch fashion

3D printing in the world’s greatest museum of art and design

Renowned New York Gallery owner Murray Moss has collaborated with .MGX and Materialise in the creation of the first ever exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum to solely feature 3D printed pieces: ‘Industrial Revolution 2.0: How the Material World will Newly Materialise’.

Founded in 1857, the V&A is regarded by many to be the world’s greatest museum of art and design, with collections that span 3000 years of history and focus on teaching the principles of good design. They now consider 3D printing significant enough to be worthy of an exhibition, and significant enough that they have acquired the Fractal.MGX table and the One_Shot.MGX stool for their permanent collection.

The exhibition will form part of London Design Week and showcase works by Stephen Jones, Patrick Jouin, Iris van Herpen, and many others.  The pieces will be displayed in prominent positions throughout the museum, encouraging visitors to discover the futuristic creations in the context of thei

Master hat designer Elvis Pompilio goes 3D printing

For Design September 2011, .MGX by Materialise announces a new collaboration with Belgian hat designer Elvis Pompilio (born 1961). The master hat designer has already collaborated with big names in fashion such as Chanel, Dior, Valentino and Hugo Boss. Royalty worldwide and celebrities like Madonna, Joan Collins, Harrison Ford and Sharon Stone are part of his clientele. Over the years, Pompilio has been consistently praised for his work in the Belgian and international media. His creations are part of several permanent collections, including the Muséee Grévin and the Muséee des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

The Spirograph.MGX marks the start of a long term collaboration with .MGX in which Pompilio will design a series of hats and accessories via 3D printing.

To kick-off Design September in style, Elvis Pompilio will share his design knowledge and vision with a selection of 10 designers during a 2 day master class on the 8th and 9th of September in the .MGX flagship store in B

Columbia GSAPP Saturated Models 3D printed: Handrail

Alistair Gill and Veronika Schmid held a Saturated Models seminar at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. During the seminar the Master’s students explored 3D printing and created 3D printed objects. i.materialise made the resulting 3D prints. This is the sixth interview with a team of participating architecture students and their project: Handrail.

1. Who are you?

The Handrail Folk:

Brian Buckner – Advanced Architectural Design
Carolina Glas – Advanced Architectural Design
Damon Lau – Master of Architecture 1st yr.


2. What is Handrail?

A handrail is an object of vigorous interaction. It is solid, structural and for all intents and purposes supposedly a safe object which assists when an accident occurs. The safety of this banal object intensifies the irony it’s the devious intent potentially invigorating the relationship and creating a series of interactions that are predicated upon this unique scenario. The expectation of the object

A Moore’s Law for 3D printing

Moore’s Law (transistors per chip) and Hendy’s Law (pixels per dollar) have been useful predictors of where processing power and digital photography were going. Tech thinker and write Johnny Ryan believes something similar would be really useful for 3D printing. He already tried to plot a law for the quality of print per dollar of 3D printers for an article he has been working on for the McKinsey Quarterly, but he doesn’t have the data. So he needs your help to gather it. What he wants, is to plot something along these lines: quality (lower microns etc. + multi-materials) improves at the same cost every X months/years. Plotting this would help people plan for, and benefit from, the disruption of 3D printing.

3D printing will create massive opportunities. But it will also disrupt many businesses. According to Dr. Ryan, we need to be able to plan properly for it to get the best out of this transition. A Google spreadsheet has been set up where anybody can contribute data points to

Columbia GSAPP Saturated Models 3D printed: Liquid Joint

Alistair Gill and Veronika Schmid held a Saturated Models seminar at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. During the seminar the Master’s students explored 3D printing and created 3D printed objects. i.materialise made the resulting 3D prints. This is the fifth interview with a team of participating architecture students, Molly Calvani and Michi Ushio, and their project: Liquid Joint.

1. Who are you?

Molly Calvani + Michi Ushio, classmates at Columbia University. Master of Architecture 2011.

2. What is Liquid Joint?

… Good question. Originally it was the goal to create a multi-directional, rolling joint that when assembled as a whole, could make up a system that seemed fluid, or liquid. Through different iterations and ultimately trying to realize a solid version of ”liquid” we arrived at something that perhaps begins to describe a model of an architectural discourse on the fluid and organic verses rigid and mechanic.

3. Why did

3D printing from Tinkercad

We’re delighted to announce that Tinkercad, a very easy-to-use CAD tool that runs in a browser (via WebGL), now offers a one-click support to our i.materialise 3D printing service. Thanks to this feature, getting an idea designed, printed, and in your hands is truly a piece of cake.

Tinkercad is very user-friendly: with only three tools, a wide variety of designs can easily be made in Tinkercad in 5 minutes, or less. And remember, you can do all of this  in your browser with no installation required.

Once your project is ready, simply click on the “Print 3D” button in the upper right-hand corner of the editor.

Your design will be sent to the i.materialise 3D print lab, where you can choose from a variety of materials and colors.

Add the design to your cart, place the order, and within a couple of days you will be showing off your design to everyone you know.

Designing and 3D printing your own designs, like the connection piece pictured below has never been easier.

Trial for Prime Gray ending

Mid June we introduced a new 3D printing material on i.materialise, Prime Gray, as a trial for 1 month. Because we received a lot of positive feedback on the material, we extended the trial period with one extra month.

This means that next Tuesday the 16th of August, Prime Gray will be removed from the material options in the 3D print lab. We will then evaluate the past 2 months the material was offered and decide whether or not to introduce it as a definitive material. We will take our time to do so, which means somewhere between 2 or 4 weeks. So, if you really like it a lot, you can still place Prime Gray orders before next Tuesday.

Just to refresh your memory: Prime Gray is a highly detailed stereolithography material, shiny and classy looking for design and art pieces and as well as for characters. More information about the material will still be available here . Have you ordered Prime Gray models? What did and what didn’t you like about it? Let us know, we highly appreciat

Columbia GSAPP Saturated Models 3D printed: Postcard

Alistair Gill and Veronika Schmid held a Saturated Models seminar at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. During the seminar the Master’s students explored 3D printing and created 3D printed objects. i.materialise made the resulting 3D prints. This is the fourth interview with a team of participating architecture students, Sarah Carpenter and Dalia Hamati and their project, ‘Postcard’.

1. Who are you?

We are a pair of architects hailing from Lebanon and the United States. We met at GSAPP and we have a weekly TV watching date. Our future plans may or may not include designing a truck that sells Lebanese street food.

2. What is Postcard?

Postcard is an inquiry into the developing process of 3D printing, and more specifically, into investigating the role of the designer in this process. At the outset the infinite possibilities of 3D printing technology left us scrambling for constraints. Where the designer would have previously used the na