Tired of boring birth cards? Use 3D printing!
Roman Plaghki, a product developer at Materialise, had one hell of an idea to surprise his sister with the most original birthcards ever: a card with the face of her baby in 3D.
What do you do when your pregnant sister asks you to design a birthcard for her future baby? Roman Plaghki wanted to use all his skills so started thinking about combining 3D printing with regular printing. “After some hard thinking work I finally came up with an idea. I asked my sister to send me an ultrasound where you could see the face of the baby when it was 5 to 6 months old. I uploaded the design up in Mimics and after some designing I finally got the face right to send it to the printer.”
OVEN
He printed 5 faces in polyamide to use it as a mold for his birth cards. “I put the faces under a thin sheet of polystyrene in the (kitchen) oven and used the technique of vacuum forming to create the 3D design. After hours of work I finally got 120 faces for the birth cards.”
We must say: it looks gr
Featured Friday: Showing your 3D Printed designs
The weekend has almost landed! That means it’s ‘Featured Friday’ again, giving you some of the 3D printed highlights of the week.
Guido Mandorf from Tramspotters blew us away this week with some amazing painted prime gray models. Without any doubt, this material is becoming the number 1 choice for model trains/trams/…
Luke Milkovic turned the flag of the Kingdom of Croatia in a beautiful (sandblasted) sterling silver ring.
Ornamart took or newest metal, high detailed stainless steel, to the test and printed some custom made needle knit knobs.
And finally, Xerocraft made a 3D scan of a clay sculpture and went for bronze.
That’s all for this week. Don’t forget to share your printed models in the ‘Unbox it!‘ section of the forum or add them to the gallery. Have a great weekend!
Building A 3D Printing Jewelery Brand: We visited Monomer
What started as a coincidental meeting through shared friends, grew into a very strong German brand that’s synonymous with unique 3D printed jewellery design. We met up with Thomas Mrokon from monomer. (more…)
Guest blog Deepak Mehta: (123D)Catch it if you can!
Update: Autodesk has discontinued this app. It is no longer available for download.
Recently Autodesk released 123D Catch for the iPhone. But how useful is the app from a 3D printing perspective? Deepak Mehta, a technology evangelist for 3D printing, takes it to the test and tells about his experiences.
Let me start with a short introduction of the functionality of 123D Catch for the iPhone. This is basically a front-end interface to the cloud service by Autodesk, which is also used by the Windows and the iPad version. The idea is that, through a combination of a good camera and the data from the location and gyro sensors in the iPhone, you can easily locate the angle at which the photo of the object was taken. Based on this information the cloud service will stitch the images together and render a 3D model.
For good results you need to take care of several things:
1) Homogenous lighting: don’t turn on more lights during the shoot and avoid shadows darkening the shot… The
Sinterklaas Meetup: 7th of December
Did you always want to know more about 3D printing your designs? We’d love to welcome you to our next Meetup at i.materialise.
WHO
Every designer, independent 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 all te 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 7th of December 2012, 14.00-18.00 GMT +1 (Belgium time)
REGISTER
You can register on this website!
QUESTIONS
You can always contact tatiana.dewee@materialise
Featured Friday: the 3D Printshow special
Happy friday everyone! We hope you had a nice week, we certainly did. This weeks Featured Friday is dedicated to our designers who were present in any way at the 3D Printshow in London.
If their designs weren’t on display at our booth, you could find them in the Art Gallery, or admire them during the fashion show. A big thank you to – in no particular order – Michiel Cornelissen, Simon de Bakker, Jon Stam, Josh Henry, Monomer, Flavio Bellantuono, Kevin Wei, PeLiDesign, Samson Design Studio, Maddics, Vangelis et Dinos, Bert De Niel, Matthew Schneider, Mikko Kuitunen, Henrik Rydberg, and Mark Casson. The fashion show showed some amazing pieces from Mark Bloomfield, Dario Scapitta, Song Bowen, and Rob Elford.
And last but not least, a big thank you to Autodesk 123D and Tinkercad for making designing in 3D accessible and fun!
PS: Don’t forget our challenge ‘Christmas Ornaments’ is still go
Get creative with i.materialise and Tinkercad
At the 3D Printshow in London past weekend, i.materialise hosted a workshop together with Tinkercad, the easy to use 3D design web app. First, Tinkercad’s Technical Artist Pekka showed a packed workshop room how to design a saw shaped alligator wrench. Second, I showcased all possible 3D printing materials and finishes, and more importantly how to get your designs 3D printed through i.materialise.
For those of you who didn’t get their hands dirty during the hands-on workshop, we have some good news. Pekka has made the contents of the workshop available on Tinkercad as a ‘Lesson’. A lesson shows you step-by-step how to create your own handy little tool from scratch!
Or if you’re already in love with this cool gadget, you can just buy it in our gallery.
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3D printing in Titanium, still going strong
At little less than two years ago, i.materialise introduced 3D printing in Titanium. The high-end technology enabling this – DMLS (Direct Metal Laser Sintering) – is still one of the world’s most advanced manufacturing technologies. (more…)
The revolution begins here: 3D Printshow in London
What a great weekend we had in London! The 3D Printshow was overwhelming and crowded at times, but very interesting because of the people you meet and the stories you hear.
Was it the result of the hype around 3D printing? Or did the revolution really start past weekend? It’s hard to tell. But we can say we never saw more people attending a 3D printing event than this one. Not only designers and software companies appeared; also families, students, hobbyists and people who were just generally interested in this ‘new’ industry were very enthusiastic visitors.
What surprised me the most were the inventive designs people are now able to create. The (fashion) show on friday night gave some hints of what people could expect during the weekend, but when you could take a closer look in the galleries afterwards it abolutely blew me away. There were amazing pieces showcased of Niccolo Casas , Matthew Plummer- Fernandez, INNER | LEAF , Iris van Herpen, Michiel Cornelissen, Frans
Featured Friday: Showing your 3D Printed designs
Happy friday everyone! We hope you had a nice week, we certainly did. To end the week in beauty: check out the newest designs in our gallery.
The first design we want to show you is made by Rick Fichthorn. It’s based on the Egyptian winged scarab. This little creature was associated with the generative forces of the rising sun and with the concepts of eternal renewal and spontaneous creation. The scarab is flanked by the wings of a falcon representing earth and the power of the sun. It’s printed in silver and finished in high gloss.
Have you seen the second design? The LOVE cube is made by Ulrich Schwanitz in multicolor. This three-dimensional object was inspired by the world-famous sculpture from the American Pop-Artist Robert Indiana. The object is slightly more than 15x15x15 cm in size and seems to be hovering in free space. The actual model is only half a cube and mounted on a mirror.
Last but not least: a pendant made by SILBERNEUN. This navette is constructed of many
