Vormgevers РStefan Sch̦ning
Belgian designer Stefan Schöning is probably best known for his redisgn of the corporate identity for the Belgian Railways and the resulting iF product design award & the red dot product design award. He also does a lot of product design for his Stefan Schöning Studio & design label polyline. Recently Stefan was featured on the Belgian TV show Vormgevers. The Belgian channel Canvas let us put the resulting clip on YouTube. The TV show is in Dutch and has no sub titles. But, if you do happen to speak Dutch the segment shows you how Stefan uses 3D printing to make prototypes for his cutlery collection. You can see him interact with his client and it is a great look inside the entire process from start to finish. It is also a good detailed example of how designers use 3D printing in their design process to itterate and communicate with clients. They discuss the forms, the design and lots of disparate elements of the process.  If you don”t speak Dutch at 4.14 there is some
i.materialise buys a Makerbot!
Our software development team and most of our customer services team are in Kiev, Ukraine. Since we don”t have a production facility there they aren”t surrounded by 3D printers like the rest of us here in Belgium. To compensate the team bought and built a Makerbot. One of the main reasons for getting it was to show job applicants going through the interview process a 3D printer in action. Franky (our designer) took some pictures of the wonderful little device while he was over there. The team loves it and enjoyed building it very much.
The first thing the team 3D printed was the Materialise Ukraine logo.
Maksym, one of the builders reports that, “It took 3 evenings * 3 hours each * 5.5 people = 49.5 man hours to assemble the thing. The build went smoothly but they did have some issues,
- Initially it was difficult for plastic to stick to the platform:
- When the structure is flat and thick it starts to deform and peel off the platform
- Small details can cause plastic
Shapeways: Revenue, Profit, Competitors
In a Dutch interview Shapeways CEO Peter Weijmarshausen talks about some interesting Shapeways facts. The company generated 244,000 Euro in Revenue over 2009. During the same period Shapeways lost 1,400,000 Euro. He also mentions that the outsourced production companies Shapeways uses to make its 3D prints are 3D printing 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. Peter mentions that the Shapeways sells 10,000 objects a month and reiterates that Union Square Ventures & Index Ventures have put $5 million into the company.
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Eric van Straaten exhibition
i.materialise Community Member Eric van Straaten is part of a joint exhibition called Zilverlingen in Haarlem the Netherlands. Eric”s 3D printed work will be displayed until the 10th of December in the “provinciehuis” in Haarlem.
One of Eric”s works on display is pictured here and called Glaucoma. It is 3D printed with Zcorp and depicts Glaucus, a merman. The statue was inspired by the Greek myth whereby Glaucus, a fisherman, was transformed into a merman. He ate a magical herb that brought fish back to life and this transformed him. The unquenchable thirst it gave him caused him to have to live in the sea. Quite the reversal of fortune for our fisherman. He does go on to become a minor underwater god and fall in love with a beautiful nymph. The nymph then runs away because she feels more than a little stalked. He goes to another nymph called Circe to help him. Sadly, Circe falls in love with Glaucus and turns the rival nymph into a six headed sea monster. This monster is ca
Iris van Herpen wins Rado Young Designer Award
Dutch Fashion designer Iris van Herpen won a Rado Young Designer Award at Dutch Design Week. The Dutch Design Week is the Netherland”s largest design event and the accompanying awards are a a great win for her. This is her second Dutch Design Award, having received one last year also. One of Iris” most well known works is the “Crystallization” fashion collection she did with Daniel Widrig. The collection was 3D printed here at Materialise and made in conjunction with Materialise”s own design label MGX. Congrats (and sorry I didn”t post this earlier) to Ms. van Herpen!
i.materialise a bicycle GPS holder
Wannes had a GPS in his car and also goes on a lot of bike trips so he used 3D printing to make a holder for his GPS system. His story in his own words is below.
I decided to make a functional object: a bicycle mounting for my GPS. I have a TomTom XL GPS in my car, but I also enjoy recreative cycling and I thought it would be great to have my car’s GPS mounted on my bicycle.
I started with a scan of my GPS. Once I’ve got an STL file I imported it into Blender to adjust the design. I used Blender because I”m most familiar with it for modelling, and I”ve been using it for years. First I created a ring that fits the scan, where the GPS can click on. The back side is open. With a nurb surface forms a horn shape to deflect sound to front. I was thinking that on a bike, where there is no window to deflect the sound, it would be difficult to understand the GPS voice. I created some arms and a stand for on the bicycle steer.
After creating the basic shapes in Blender, I i
i.materialised the Skiwi lamp
3D printed Skiwi lampshade
About
i.materialise is a 3D printing service for consumers. We want to use our unparalleled depth and breadth of knowledge with 3D printers and 3D printing software to give you a dependable scalable manufacturing solution. We want to do the manufacturing so you can focus on creation. We exist to cater to demanding designers and inventors but, and offer additional tools so that more people can become designers and inventors.
Meet your new community manager
Dear i.materialisers,
I would like to thank Alex for his hard work in initiating the i.materialise community and wish him well in the new studies he will be pursuing. I’m very proud and happy to take the baton from his hands and become your new Community Manager.
As your Community Manager, I hope to make your lives easier by helping you take your ideas and turn them into products. The next few months I will focus on making i.materialise an easier and more lively place to get things made. I will also be in charge of getting the word out and telling everyone about the great designs and products you make. At the same time I want to listen. I will call as many of you as I can to try to understand what it is that you need for us to be.
I thrive on feedback, and hope to get lots of it from you. If you have any questions, complaints or ideas please email me. I want you to consider me your employee. I work for you, our community, and I am tasked with making you as happy as possible.
Your new i.materialise Community Manager
As of today you will be hearing from Joris Peels quite often on this blog.
You might have heard of him before, as he is a well-known conversation partner in the on-line 3D printing community. We are happy to hear that he wanted to join us just a few weeks ago.
We are very glad he now wants to combine his knowledge of community & 3D printing with i.materialise & you.
Joris will be here to make your lives easier, keep you happy and grow our community significantly.
He will be in charge of improving: our content, our marketing, PR, social media and most importantly in seeing to it that i.materialise is the best place for designers to get their products made.
If you have any suggestions & ideas you can email him at joris@i.materialise.com
Welcome to our team, welcome to our community.
