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
Featured Friday – Showing your 3D printed designs
Here are a few of your nice designs to kick off the weekend!
PEPITA Collection by Dario Scapitta
3D printed in sterling silver
Seyo 001 (graffiti art) by Simon Potter
3D printed in polyamide
Virtual Florist Vitrine by Mario Minale
3D printed in polyamide
Garada 7, a replica of one of the most mystical and rare toys from Japan by Mike de Coninck
3D printed in paintable resin
Non Singular Knot – Math Art by Dizingof
3D printed in stainless steel
A very full caterpillar by Steve Patterson, winner of the Digital Tutors challenge
3D printed in multicolor
3D Printing a Very Full Caterpillar
At the end of March we organized a 3D printing design challenge with the world famous online educative platform Digital Tutors. The objective was to create your interpretation of any children’s’ storybook character, that is, it had to be an original design and not based on an existing illustration.
The Very Full Caterpillar by Digital Tutors community member timeRemapper was one of these designs that had made it to the Top 3 and would eventually get 3D printed. Below you’ll find an image of the 3D render followed by pictures of the actual 3D print.
You can find the work-in-progress of the Very Hungry Catterpillar by timeRemapper on his website at this link. The model was 3D printed in multicolor. We are currently also still awaiting the files to 3D print the remaining two entries which you can see below. As soon as we receive these, we’ll make sure to post the results on our blog as well. For now you can enjoy the 3D renders.
Are design challenges your
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
Featured Friday – Showing your 3D printed designs
Because we’re continuously seeing more and more nice designs being printed, we just have to feature them on our blog. A warm welcome to ‘Featured Friday’ where we’ll post some of your designs that caught our attention. A great start to get noticed, is to begin uploading your design(s) to the gallery with some nice photos. Enjoy the following designs and have a wonderful weekend!
Biomimicry shoe by Marieka Ratsma, in cooperation with Kostika Spaho
Photography Thomas van Schaik
3D printed in polyamide by i.materialise
Beautiful Japanese tea ring by Flavio Bellantuono
3D printed in sterling silver
Reflection by Cynthia Aldershof
3D printed in polyamide
Ohio Electric interurban freight trailer by Volkmar Meier3D printed in prime gray
Pirate Mouse and Dragon Treasure Wedding Cake Topper by Marty Hon
3D printed in polyamide
Aislin by Yarrid Henrard
3D printed in prime gray
Fiona gift box set by Mark Bloomfield
3D printed in polyami
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
Introducing Brass 3D Printing
Looking for a high detailed metallic material that looks amazing and doesn’t cost you a fortune? Then Brass is the way to go for you. It’s a very shiny material due to its high-grade polished gold plated layer while offering a high level of detail giving it that 18-carat golden look. It’s a material that fits perfectly between 3D printed gold and gold plated stainless steel and here’s why…
- Gold Plated Stainless Steel: Cheapest option but less detailed
- Brass: Cheaper than Gold but same level of detail and beautifully shiny
- Gold: Highly detailed like brass but more valuable
Gold plated brass is a great way to go when designing things such as small jewelry or Steampunk based designs. It just looks phenomenal and expensive when it’s actually quite affordable compared to the real thing. Let’s have a look at what it would cost you to 3D print in this new material:
- 1cm3 will currently cost about 25 euros
- 5cm3 will currently cost about 95 euros
- 10cm3 will currently cos
3D print something in Bronze
Metal Month is in full gear now! We’ve got two metal based design challenges running, we’ve given you the ability to gold plate your stainless steel designs, and all of this at a 10% reduction through the month. Well guess what? We aren’t done yet. How about being able to 3D print in bronze as well? Does that sound cool to you guys? It sure as hell does to us, so without any further ado…
Starting today we’re giving you the possibility to 3D print in bronze.
To celebrate this new material, we’ve already taken our time to 3D print some nice designs by different designers for you. Below you can have a look at what bronze 3D printing looks like.
Okay great… so what about the print size? Well for now we are offering the ability to 3D print in bronze on a 5 x 5 x 5 cm bounding box. This will eventually change, but as we consider this a trial phase we want to start off small and work our way up as time goes by.
As for the pricing… well considering we’re trial
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
