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
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
Meet the Designer: Ulrich Schwanitz
Today I’d like to introduce you to our beloved friend and designer Ulrich Schwanitz. A man that continued a vision of his son through 3D printing and managed to bring adorable stainless steel characters to life in the name of love. He also just started an interesting funding campaign on Indiegogo (see video below) where you too can play a part in the realization of 3D printed love.
So for this lovely occasion we thought it would be interesting for our readers to get to know Dr. Ulrich Schwanitz a bit more ans the ideas and thoughts behind his latest project, The Scrappies. Here’s his story…
Tell us a bit about yourself… Who is Ulrich Schwanitz?
I am everything but a typical designer. I grew up as a scientist in the 1970’s and 80’s, and I still remember the times when computers were controlled by punch cards, typewriters and without undo buttons. I have worked in the IT departments of multinational manufacturing companies in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. During that
Meet the Designer: Josh Henry
Not too long ago, we received an order at i.materialise to 3D print some pretty big transparent pieces. Our curiosity kicked in and we decided to contact the designer to find out what these transparent parts were for. To our surprise, Josh revealed to us that it was for his magnificent Ula Miami Concept Car that he was developing at the University of Cincinnati. As soon as knew that, we didn’t hesitate a second and contacted him for an interview.
Here’s what our friend Josh had to say…
Tell us a bit about yourself… Who is Josh Henry?
I am currently a Junior at The University of Cincinnati, in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Car design has been a passion of mine and is what I have wanted to do for as long as I can remember. Car design for me is really about creating a product with emotion. Creating a life, or a character if you will. Thinking about the interaction between a person and a vehicle and that emotional attachment that one has with the vehicle. These are things that fas
The Month of March in 3D Printing
As we reach towards the end of the month, we look back at the awesome events that took place in the world of 3D printing. In this sense, the month of March was quite an interesting month with successful Kickstarter projects, a superb Free Universal Construction Kit, a cool guide on how to build a 3D printer yourself and much, much more. Let’s have a look at with this month had in store for us so far…
On the Kickstarter forefront we’ve found two wonderful projects that have successfully been funded. These two projects are The Stelliform Owl (A Sculpture project in Tracy, CA by Grant Miller) and The Sparklab: the educational build-mobile (An Open Hardware project in Stanford, CA by SparkLab). Both projects seem like great contributions to the 3D printing community.
In New Zealand Weta mastermind Sir Richard Taylor opened a new $15 million block at his son’s private school on the 2nd of March. The interesting little detail here is that among the features of the new building were c
Announcing a very colorful month
It’s time to bring some color into your life! Colors are known to awaken our feelings and drive our emotions. They can turn something that is boring and dull into a colorful feast filled with life and joy. Colors tend to tell a story and colors are always a sign of feeling alive. So why wouldn’t you shower yourself in colors? Better yet… why not shower your 3D printed designs in colors?
At i.materialise we have a lovely material for that called multicolor. It’s a material that has wowed many people through its amazing capabilities and we have plenty of easy to use tools to help you achieve the same results.
An architectural model done in Google SketchUp by Lisa Kraft
Easy to use software packages such as Google SketchUp, Tinkercad and 3DTin all have an i.materialise solution for bringing your colorful designs to life in our multicolor material. We have seen detailed characters in this material as well as amazing architectural models. And recently we have even printed some ama
Our impressions of the Brand New Tinkercad
Tinkercad is an impressive browser based 3D printing modeling tool that has brought happiness and joy to many creative minds. Its intuitive interface and its powerful tools have made it possible for countless 3D print hungry individuals to bring their creations to life. Today they have just made that experience a whole lot better.
With a major new version on their website, designers around the world can now create better 3D prints with an even better interface and, with much more ease. The new release looks stunning and feels just the way you’d want it to feel.
Considering I was lucky enough to get my hands on the Beta version of this new release, I spent some of my time having a look at it. My first reaction was “Wow! The new version looks smooth.” It was like opening Google SketchUp for the first time, it just felt right. With the short amount of time that I had at my disposal, I managed to create the following items without too much hassle. And I am not a Tinkercad speci
The Year of 2011 in 3D Printing: An Overview
As the year comes to an end, we often tend to reflect on the events that occurred within it and boy… was there lot to reflect on in 2011. If there is one thing that became obvious to us, it’s that 3D printing has come a long way since our reflections of last year. This year the 3D printing world was dominated by an impressive amount of 3D Systems acquisitions, a tremendous growth of new desktop 3D printers and a much larger media coverage than it had ever received before.
We went through hundreds of articles and news items on 3D printing and found it quite a challenge to scale down the amount of information. A very difficult and tight selection process was made which became our year in 3D printing of 2011. As we made this selection, we quickly realized that we couldn’t sum up this year’s 3D printing events without a much more detailed Dipity Timeline.
Click on the image to view the timeline
With that said, we hope that you enjoy having a look back in time as you take in the a
When Dreams are Materialised
Meet Ritik, an 11 year old young man with a creative heart and dreams of a 3D printed world. Our first encounter with Ritik was at TEDxKids in Brussels a year ago. It was on that day that Ritik made his first contact with 3D printing and it became quite clear that it was like love at first sight. After receiving an introduction, Ritik’s creative mind began to work overtime. “Could I print an iPod? Or what about a car?” he thought to himself. The answer to his question was eventually found in creating a pair of 3D printable glasses. With a fixed idea in mind, Ritik now started the design process in an easy to use software application called 3DTin.
Little did he know that his design would eventually make its way to the Antwerp based M HKA Museum where it would be exhibited to demonstrate what an 11 year old kid could do with this innovative technology.
But Ritik’s story doesn’t end there. After his first contact with his new passion, Ritik received the great news of his fat
Columbia GSAPP Saturated Models 3D printed: Velcro Panel System
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 seventh interview with a team of participating architecture students and their project: Velcro Panel System by John Hooper & Julie Jira.
What is the Velcro Panel System? And does it work like Velcro?
The Velcro Panel System is intended to generate varying degrees of tension within an environment. The tension is facilitated through a hook and loop system, which is conceptually similar to the way Velcro performs. This Velcro panel system works well in tension, especially when hung. The panels are able to adhere to each other and morph into their own set of physical characteristics through interaction with other objects.
Why did you make it?
The intention was to create objects, which woul
