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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.

Win your 15 minutes of fame!

We challenge you to get inspired by the Pop art movement and design a 3D printable piece which will blow everyone’s mind.  A piece so cool it will win you your 15 minutes of fame.

From June 10-12, 2013, Materialise will participate in RAPID 2013 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Produced by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the RAPID Additive Manufacturing Solutions Conference and Exposition is the largest prototyping fair in the United States, hosting more than 1800 participants.

On the opening night of RAPID, Materialise, in conjunction with SME, will host an event at the Andy Warhol Museum unlike anything you’ve seen before. A special 3D printed installation, curated by renowned gallery owner Murray Moss, will be on display at the Warhol Museum, combining Pop art with 3D Printing. And you too could earn a spot at this event as a winner of the i.materialise Challenge!

THE CHALLENGE

Let the big artists from Pop Art, the movement that started in the mid 1950’s i

Join our Spring Meetup 29th of March!

Get ready for the next i.materialise meetup! We’d love to welcome you to our Spring Meetup 29th of March.

WHO
Every designer, independant business owner, working professional,…. that’s interested in 3D printing. Journalists are welcome as well to meet our designers and follow  a tour through one of the biggest 3D printing facilities in the world. 

WHY
It’s a great opportunity to meet fellow designers and share your experiences, so don’t forget to bring your 3D printed design. You’ll get to know more about the services we offer, you can see the widest rang of materials you can print in and ask all your questions concerning 3D printing to our support engineers.

PROGRAM

  • Welcome
  • Presentation and see materials
  • Tour
  • Drink & Talk

WHERE
Materialise
Technologielaan 15
3001 Leuven

WHEN
Friday 29th of March 2013, 14.00-18.00 GMT +1 (Belgium time)

REGISTER
You can register on this website!

QUESTIONS
You can always contact tatiana.dewee@materialise.be, I’ll

Featured Friday: Showing your 3D printed designs!

Happy Friday everyone! Check out our latest entries.

Andreas Damhofer designed a framed painting-like sculpture in natural white polyamide.

Jason Goodman designed a vase in gloss black ceramics, but you can 3D print it in 8 other colors as well. Goodman: “the vase consists of eight perfect ellipses that form an open basketwork. Fill with fresh flowers (if you put a small glass container inside), art supplies or kitchen tools.”

Last but not least Prevue Medical 3D printed multicolor. This model shows the correlation between resting-state BOLD MRI time courses in one hemisphere of the human brain. Areas that are brighter red are more highly correlated with activity in the rest of the brain. Areas in blue tend to have more local and less global connectivity. Colors are visible inside folds and undercuts as well, giving a hint of just how complex the brain’s structure really is.
Have a nice weekend!

Check out our 16 materials: starting from 0.55 euro per cm3

‘Cause we are living in a material world: Choose from the widest range, 16 materials, we have on offer. Can’t decide what to choose? Then check out our sample kit!

Discovering materials at i.materialise is pretty easy. If you want to know more about the pricing, you can just go to our 3D print lab, it’s an online instant pricing system where you can upload your model and check out the prices for your design in different materials.

With our 16 materials on offer, you really have a lot to choose from. Together with our finishes, we have 70 different combinations. The cheapest material, multicolor, only costs 0.55/cm³ (start up cost of 3€, not included). Another cheaper material is for exampe ceramics, our only food safe material; the price of ceramics is not based on the volume, but on the surface area of your model which costs -for every color-: 0.18 cm². Prime gray will cost you 1.55 euro cm³ and for polyamide; all polyamide designs that fit within a bounding box of 125 cm3 a

Tutorial Thursday: Making professional pictures

Every last thursday of the month we will help you to put yourself in the picture and to optimize your sales. This month: the importance of making professional pictures.

A picture says more than words. That’s why it’s so important to have descent, professional looking and creative pictures of your design. Do you need a professional photographer for that? No, not at all. If you follow these guidelines, you will have professional pictures in no time.

1. What camera?
A professional camera is nice to have, but it also costs a lot. At i.materialise we make most pictures with a compact camera which makes very good pictures if you master some basics.

2. Make place for your own professional photo studio
To make good pictures, good lighting is very important. The best way to shoot small 3D printed objects is in a light box. Of course you can buy one, but it’s so much cheaper and fun to make it yourself. On this blog, Kateryn explains you step by step how to make your own light box

Students: Come and get your 10% discount at i.materialise

UPDATE: This post is from 2013. Click here for the latest promo code for students!

It can be hard for students to finance their final school projects. That’s why i.materialise wants to help: every master student gets a 10% discount on her or his thesis project.

Worldwide, students 3D print concept cars, architectural models, functional models, prototypes, and all sorts of other things with us. We really love working on those projects. So, if you’re a student at a College or University and want to use 3D printing for a thesis project, we’re giving you a 20% discount. We’re especially interested in Design Academy students, engineering students, product design graduates, and fashion students. Nevertheless, feel free to surprise us with your work from any other discipline.

However, there are some rules and remarks to get the 10% STUDENT DISCOUNT.

    • You have to be enrolled at a College, University or Technical school.
      • You must contact us using an .edu or other universit

      Nokia Lumia 820 GRAND FINALE: Make it personal, make it you!

      We were happy to show you a 3D printed Nokia Lumia 820 file that’s functional. But now  it’s time for some fun; Enjoy our big customization show!

      A man once said: “Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are.” At i.materialise we have an other saying: “Show me your 3D prints and we will show you who you are.” 3D printing is all about personalizing and customization. We just launched our basic file on Thingiverse as you can read in our previous blog. But that doesn’t suffice for us. So the past days and hours we let our product designer Bert go wild with the Nokia shell.

      Enjoy the results; we hope you’ll be inspired.

      3D printed in polyamide, dyed in black.

      What does a man need more than his phone his (credit) card to go out? So here you go, all in one:

      3D printed in polyamide and dyed in red.

      A Nokia shell with wings, it doesn’t fly, but hey; we gave it a try!

      3D printed in resin, finished with white paint.

      Do you want a softer look? Go for velvet, it f

      Episode 5: Enjoy our sneak preview for the grand Nokia Lumia 820 finale

      Our mission is almost over. Have a peek and warm up for our big finale!

      During the weekend we printed our last test: the polyamide version! It’s a functional, smooth and cheap material to 3D print in!

      Now we finalized this Nokia project, we are proud to present you the one and only 3D printable, functial file tomorrow. You will find our file on our i.materialise Thingiverse account to print your own shell through i.materialise or your home printer. One of our engineers will provide you with information to get the best print quality!

      But of course in the consumer world of 3D printing it’s all about customization! So here’s a little sneak preview:

      So hang on there! We can’t wait to show you our special designs tomorrow. 

      Episode 4: Nokia Lumia 820 shell: functional and smooth!

      We promised yesterday to show you an upgraded Nokia Lumia 820 shell, so here we are again with the newest shell: harder, better, stronger, faster!


      FULL POWER

      After episode 1, 2 and 3, fasten your seatbelts for episode 4! Our engineering team worked on full power again with the 3-matic and Magics software to fine-tune the shell even more. The version you see here is 3D printed in ABS, a very accurate material. Unfortunately it’s not the cheapest material to 3D print in, but wait until our next blog to see the perfect alternative.


      So what did they do? The engineers created what they call a ‘fillet‘: they smoothened and flattened the edges of the camera whole. Maybe it’s not that visible on the picture, but wait till you feel it in your hands…


      The shell was printed like this, to get the best results:

      And, because of the support structure, it’s very important to take the print out very carefully so you don’t damage the buttons.

      It’s been four days now since our ve