Father’s Day 3D Challenge
With Mother’s Day just around the corner, we’re already preparing for Father’s Day. So, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Tinkercad for the “Thanks, Dad 3D Challenge!”
From now until Friday, June 1st at 12 midnight P.T., create a design on Tinkercad for Father’s Day, take a screenshot of it and upload it on their Facebook challenge page along with a link to your design posted in the caption.
One winner will be selected from the top 5 designs with the most votes. The winner will receive a 3D print of their design in time for Father’s Day on June 17th AND a voucher for 100€ in 3D printing.
And because every dad is special, we’ve decided to give each person who enters the challenge a promo code good for a 15% discount on a 3D printout. Oh yeah!
Here are a few rules to get you started:
- Only one entry per person, please.
- Your design must be your own creation and not a re-tinker.
- Something about dad should be included in your design. “Best Dad!” “My Hero!” “I
Using i.materialise to 3D print a metal object
Christopher Barnatt (www.explainingthefuture.com) is a futurist, author, videographer, and Associate Professor of Computing and Future Studies in Nottingham University Business School. We recently stumbled upon one of his videos where he talked about using i.materialise to 3D print a metal object.
In the video you’ll see how Christopher models a carbon nanotube in Lightwave 3D and uploads it on i.materialise. He shows the ordering process and the unboxing of the model when it arrives. Whether you’re new at all of this or not, we think it’s a great video that shows how easy an online 3D printing service can be. Christopher Barnatt definitely knows how to explain the future!
After finishing the video, he discovered how easy it was to create a designer page and offer the carbon nanotube for sale in our gallery.
3DTin design challenge
Okay, we’re running a design challenge with 3DTin during the following 4 weeks. Before we get started and to get everyone up to speed, here’s a small recap on 3DTin:
3DTin lets anyone make anything simply because it’s easy and intuitive to use. It simply runs in the browser (though it has to be up to date, as it uses something called Web GL), is free to use and requires no experience in 3D design. All you need is the will and imagination to explore the 3D world. 3DTin lets you save and share the designs (which are called ‘sketches’) you make. The tool also lets you export your files for 3D printing.
“We are running out of excuses to not build something.” – Jayesh Salvi (Founder 3DTin)
So, how does the challenge work? Easy, design as many awesome models on 3DTin as possible during the month of May. Everyone who makes sketches during this time automatically enters the challenge. Both 3DTin and i.materialise will rate your sketches. The total ratings of all your sketches
The Month of April in 3D printing
Without a doubt it was a busy month in the world of 3D printing. Big companies started spending their money again. This continues to enforce the trend that we’re on a road towards a future of a handful of big 3D printing players.
We also saw the continued rise of crowd funding projects in the world of 3D printing and as often happens… more new 3D printers for us to get our hands on. Let’s have a look at the news items in detail…
First, the business news… It seems that 3D Systems got back into its spending habit of last year by acquiring My Robot Nation and Paramount Industries. Could it be the beginning of another spending spree this year? Only time will tell… On the other hand, they also got to present the new Z Printer 850. It promises higher print volume, greater productivity and vibrant full color that empowers designers, engineers, and architects to create more and larger parts faster.
At the same time we can’t really say that the other 3D Printing giant calle
3D print your mom something special
Mother’s Day is just around the corner in a great numbers of countries. How cool would it be to get your mom a customizable 3D printed Lamp or some nice 3D printed jewelry? We’ve made a list of polyamide based 3D printed gifts that you might want to look at as a starting point. Alternatively you might want to tell your mother a special something through our Appear Lamp? I’d say, have a browse through our options and make sure to select that perfect gift for that special mother of yours. Below you’ll find two examples from our Mother’s Day Selection.
The Top 20 from the Hats off to 3D Printing in all their glory
Last week we brought you our pictures, stories and a wonderful interview with Mark Bloomfield from the Materialise World Conference. Today, we proudly bring you the video of the actual Top 20 Designs on the runway. Enjoy!
Of course you can also view the video in 720p on our Vimeo account.
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
TIME Magazine names Iris van Herpen’s 3D printed dress one of the 50 Best Inventions of the 2011
THE 3-D-PRINTED DRESS
92 CENTIMETERS | Combining design with technology, Dutch couturier Iris Van Herpen’s fantastical dresses are initially planned in Photoshop. She then works with an architect to develop a 3-D model, which is printed onto a polymer over the course of a week, resulting in a ready-to-wear dress that is an exact replica of the original sketched version. Van Herpen — who recently designed the dress Bjrk wears on the cover of her new album, Biophilia — presented her printed dresses during Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week this January.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2099708,00.html#ixzz1odicWIYc By TIME Magazine
2011 was a lovely year for 3D printing, especially when TIME Magazine decided to add Iris van Herpen‘s escapism dress to their list of 50 best inventions of the year. This lovely work of art was revealed during the haute couture week in Paris Spring Summer 2011 as part of her 3D printed Escapism couture collection. It rapidly
Announcing the Top 20 of the Hats off to 3D Printing Challenge
After a very successful design challenge with loads of very talented participants, the jury that’s chaired by Elvis Pompilio has come to a collective decision on who has made it to the top 20. This was quite a tough call as there were so many great entries, but at the end of the day we had to make a decision. (more…)
The Week in 3D Printing – Feb 11th to Feb 17th
Although not an awful lot happened this week in 3D printing, we did wanted to share a few things with you. There’s an acquisition, an exhibition, an amazing documentary, and General Fabb considers the 10 major barriers to 3D printing in your home. Do let us know in the comments if we missed something major. So, enjoy and have a wonderful weekend.
3D Systems adds Advanced Design Concepts to its ever growing network
I have no idea why but last week, we missed the first acquisition of the year: 3D Systems taking over Advanced Design Concepts, ADC, a leader in full service engineering design services, and an authorized re-seller.
The Man Who Prints Houses
The Man Who Prints Houses is a documentary about Enrico Dini, an Italian robotics expert who build the world’s largest 3D printer. The D-Shape, as the 3D printer is called, is capable of outputting houses. Enrico’s dream is, to one day see houses of any shape and size printed robotically in solid stone.
The 10 Barriers
