i.materialise buys a Makerbot!
Our software development team and most of our customer services team are in Kiev, Ukraine. Since we don”t have a production facility there they aren”t surrounded by 3D printers like the rest of us here in Belgium. To compensate the team bought and built a Makerbot. One of the main reasons for getting it was to show job applicants going through the interview process a 3D printer in action. Franky (our designer) took some pictures of the wonderful little device while he was over there. The team loves it and enjoyed building it very much.
The first thing the team 3D printed was the Materialise Ukraine logo.
Maksym, one of the builders reports that, “It took 3 evenings * 3 hours each * 5.5 people = 49.5 man hours to assemble the thing. The build went smoothly but they did have some issues,
- Initially it was difficult for plastic to stick to the platform:
- When the structure is flat and thick it starts to deform and peel off the platform
- Small details can cause plastic
Shapeways: Revenue, Profit, Competitors
In a Dutch interview Shapeways CEO Peter Weijmarshausen talks about some interesting Shapeways facts. The company generated 244,000 Euro in Revenue over 2009. During the same period Shapeways lost 1,400,000 Euro. He also mentions that the outsourced production companies Shapeways uses to make its 3D prints are 3D printing 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. Peter mentions that the Shapeways sells 10,000 objects a month and reiterates that Union Square Ventures & Index Ventures have put $5 million into the company.
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The Cutest 3D Printed Robot Ever
Robots are mostly portrayed as evil cold calculating creatures. Cylons, HAL, ASH have a cute deficit. Even Commander Data misses a certain degree of warmth. As you may know we’re doing a lot of work with customizing robots using 3D printing. We love the idea of “pimp your robot” and think that there is a lot of potential there.
But, in Japan..in Japan people are always light years ahead. Our Business Development guy in Japan Hiro shot a video of an extremely customized robot at Dekinnoka!7. She, wears a skirt, has glasses, is a competitor in robot wrestling and has had us all in stitches laughing all morning. Introducing, the world’s cutest robot… wanmi be sure to watch the video, we think its hilarious. She comes on stage at around 55 seconds.
5 Amazing full sized furniture pieces made with 3D printing
3D printing seems to be all over the media lately. I already mentioned it in my previous blog post ”FULL PRINT3D”, but everyone writing these articles seems to be showing only a glimpse of what the technology is capable of. So why not write a series of blog posts to show the versatility of 3D printing? That’s what I thought. I’d like to start with the subject of furniture because I believe 3D printing is taking furniture design to a whole other level. Just ask French designer Patrick Jouin, who actually created the first large scale scale furniture pieces through 3D printing technology together with. MGX. It’s no surprise Materialise’s big mammoth stereolithography 3D printers had something to do with it. Here are, in no particular order, 5 amazing furniture piece made with 3D printing.
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Maintenance on production servers this weekend Nov 12 and 14
We are planning a maintenance on our production servers this weekend from Friday November 12 at 18h00 CET till Sunday 14 at noon.
We will minimize the impact on the site but online prices will be unavailable from time to the time. It will stay possible to send us your offline price requests. We”re so sorry about this interruption to i.materialise but we”re working on making it better.
Eric van Straaten exhibition
i.materialise Community Member Eric van Straaten is part of a joint exhibition called Zilverlingen in Haarlem the Netherlands. Eric”s 3D printed work will be displayed until the 10th of December in the “provinciehuis” in Haarlem.
One of Eric”s works on display is pictured here and called Glaucoma. It is 3D printed with Zcorp and depicts Glaucus, a merman. The statue was inspired by the Greek myth whereby Glaucus, a fisherman, was transformed into a merman. He ate a magical herb that brought fish back to life and this transformed him. The unquenchable thirst it gave him caused him to have to live in the sea. Quite the reversal of fortune for our fisherman. He does go on to become a minor underwater god and fall in love with a beautiful nymph. The nymph then runs away because she feels more than a little stalked. He goes to another nymph called Circe to help him. Sadly, Circe falls in love with Glaucus and turns the rival nymph into a six headed sea monster. This monster is ca
Marloes ten Bhömer 3D prints individualised shoes
One thing I’ve always been interested in 3D printing shoes. To make custom made shoes that look exactly how people want them, that fit exactly and that are customized for my weight and walk is a dream of mine. So I was happy to read about designer Marloes ten Bhömer”s Rapidprototypedshoe.
The shoe is intended as a 3D printed couture shoe customized for the individual. The shoe is also designed to wear and break down in layers so it can be augmented and repaired. I really think that 3D printing individualised shoes is an industry waiting to happen. If you are a shoe designer and want to get involved with our efforts in 3D printing shoes, please email joris (at) i.materialise.com
Marloes has a lot of very creative and beautiful shoe designs on her site here.
via Core77.
Iris van Herpen wins Rado Young Designer Award
Dutch Fashion designer Iris van Herpen won a Rado Young Designer Award at Dutch Design Week. The Dutch Design Week is the Netherland”s largest design event and the accompanying awards are a a great win for her. This is her second Dutch Design Award, having received one last year also. One of Iris” most well known works is the “Crystallization” fashion collection she did with Daniel Widrig. The collection was 3D printed here at Materialise and made in conjunction with Materialise”s own design label MGX. Congrats (and sorry I didn”t post this earlier) to Ms. van Herpen!
3D Printing a Xeno-coRPus
Koen Boonen, who works in HR and prevention at Materialise made a wonderfully arty and geometric piece called Xeno-coRPus using i.materialise. The model cost 44 Euro to make using Zcorp 3D printing.
“This model is an adaptation of the Julia-fractal in a xenodream metamorph. I optimised the mesh in Cinema4D, created some renderings, and the result was so appealing that I simply had to have this object! The i.materialise result is stunning:Â it is heavier than expected and has the look and feel of a rough stone sculpture.
The object now fills the void in my living room like an alien artifact: wonderful and strange…
Koen”
Beautiful Modeler by Interactive Fabrication, Rocks! Multitouch design for 3D printing using your iPad!
Beautiful Modeler is a tool that combines the iPad with a Mac and turns it into a wonderful 3D modeling tool. I think its absolutely fantastic and a real portent of what is possible. The iPad acts as a controller and be moving and slanting the iPad you can change the orientation of your model on screen. Each model has a set of points and you can manipulate and change these points with your fingers. This is how easy a lot of 3D modeling tools have to be are we to get everyone started with 3D printing. And yes, the output from this nifty, and open source tool, can be exported to STL and 3D printed! I adore Beautiful Modeler by Interactive Fabrication!
Check out the video of it in action below:
