London calling: visit i.materialise at the 3D Printshow
Only ten more days to go and the 3D Printshow in London will start off for the first time. We, the i.materialise-team will be present so come and check us out at our booth or join one of our workshops.
The Brewery in London is getting ready for their first 3D Printing event ever. From the 19th until the 21st of October the days will be filled with workshops, seminars and live 3D printing shows.
Come check out our booth (K21): we will show you a selection of designs made by designers of our community such as the 3D printed retro Bioscope, designed by Jon Stam & Simon de Bakker and of course Josh Henry’s amphibious ‘Ula Miami Concept Car’ will be making its European debut at our booth! Also, be sure to check out Iris van Herpen’s dress from the Escapism collection- 3D printed at Materialise.
WORKSHOPS
Need a workout? No problem. We have two on offer on Saturday 20th of October:
- Workshop with Tinkercad (15:00-16:00) to introduce you to their easy to use 3D web application. W
Unfinished building finally ready after more than 200 years
When we found these pictures on our forum we couldn’t help but wonder: Where does this mysterious building come from?
The designer himself wants to stay anonymous, but we can call him Rob. “This is my first 3D printed project and I’m pretty proud of it, I must say.” It’s not his first design. For years he is a designing now, mostly in landscape design, software and architectural reconstruction.
“I heard about this building before and it caught my attention. I’ve been told that the big financier of the American Revolution, Robert Morris, wanted a grant city house.” In 1794 he hired Peter L’enfant, the designer of Washington DC, to draw up plans. This French born architect was often impatient with clients, including the US Government, his employer who dismissed him in 1792.
TALENT
Despite his great talent, L’Enfant never had a successful career. He was lucky to find Robert Morris as an employer, so he begun to build the town house in Philadelphia. Unfortunately L’Enfant his
3D Print with us through Autodesk’s 123D
Today we’re proud to announce that Autodesk added i.materialise as a 3D printing production partner. This means that you can from now on also use this great piece of software to 3D print your designs with us. Autodesk is the world’s leading 3D software developer with a long list of successful software packages such as Maya, 3Ds Max, AutoCAD, and many more. So it comes as no surprise that their free 123D software package is filled with tons of awesome features.
123D looks fantastic and is easy to use. For a first time user of this software, I could immediately see the link between the object on the screen and the user interface. It all just worked in such a smooth and intuitive way. Within a couple of minutes I was already creating complex shapes simply by extruding and transforming the surfaces of my model. Yes, I will admit that it does help to have a background in some of the Autodesk solutions, but it is absolutely not a requirement to get started! There are plenty of tutorials a
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
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
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
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
