3D Printing a Very Full Caterpillar
At the end of March we organized a 3D printing design challenge with the world famous online educative platform Digital Tutors. The objective was to create your interpretation of any children’s’ storybook character, that is, it had to be an original design and not based on an existing illustration.
The Very Full Caterpillar by Digital Tutors community member timeRemapper was one of these designs that had made it to the Top 3 and would eventually get 3D printed. Below you’ll find an image of the 3D render followed by pictures of the actual 3D print.
You can find the work-in-progress of the Very Hungry Catterpillar by timeRemapper on his website at this link. The model was 3D printed in multicolor. We are currently also still awaiting the files to 3D print the remaining two entries which you can see below. As soon as we receive these, we’ll make sure to post the results on our blog as well. For now you can enjoy the 3D renders.
Are design challenges your
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
3D Printing Toys & Figurines: Recreating Lost Action Figures
Today we have an intriguing blog post by special guest writer Mike de Coninck, a Belgian visual effects supervisor. He’s with us today to share the story of his long journey that ended up bringing his lifetime dream toy to life with the use of 3D printing. It’s a story that shows true dedication and an unquestionable passion for realizing a lifelong dream. (more…)
The Month of June in 3D Printing
As tradition has it, we bring you the month of June in 3D printing. It’s has been a very interesting month that brought us some more crowdfunding projects, a wonderful Metal Month at i.materialise and a 3D printer that helps you make your own burrito! Yes, you’ve read it correctly… So let’s dive straight into the juicy details.
Let’s start this month off with a well deserved unlocked achievement by Materialise CEO Wilfried Vancraen: Get Chosen as the Most Influential Figure in Additive Manufacturing by industry professionals around the world. Read all about it here.
And of course there was the Metal Month at i.materialise. It brought two design challenges that are currently still ongoing, new metallic materials and finishing processes with a nice increase in the items available at our gallery. During this period our community could also enjoy a nice 10% discount promo code called metalmonth2012 on all metallic orders (still valid till June 30th!)
At the same time we saw
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
3D print something in Bronze
Metal Month is in full gear now! We’ve got two metal based design challenges running, we’ve given you the ability to gold plate your stainless steel designs, and all of this at a 10% reduction through the month. Well guess what? We aren’t done yet. How about being able to 3D print in bronze as well? Does that sound cool to you guys? It sure as hell does to us, so without any further ado…
Starting today we’re giving you the possibility to 3D print in bronze.
To celebrate this new material, we’ve already taken our time to 3D print some nice designs by different designers for you. Below you can have a look at what bronze 3D printing looks like.
Okay great… so what about the print size? Well for now we are offering the ability to 3D print in bronze on a 5 x 5 x 5 cm bounding box. This will eventually change, but as we consider this a trial phase we want to start off small and work our way up as time goes by.
As for the pricing… well considering we’re trial
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
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
Sources of inspiration pt.2
According to the Oxford dictionary, inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative. A few months ago I was wondering where (product) designers, artists and inventors get their inspiration. And now I thought it would be nice to see if I could find some more examples. As for now, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.
