3D printing blood vessels
© Fraunhofer IGB
At TEDMED 2009, Dr. Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, showed a new type of technology to print a kidney-shaped mold. During his 18-minute talk, he explained how one day this technology might be used to print actual organs. Unfortunately at the time, most press and media didn’t completely get the point and started reporting about “the world”s first 3D printed kidney”. Although we are a long way from applying this to patients, the technology shows promise.
Also in 2009, 5 Fraunhofer-institutes in Germany joined forces to come up with bio-compatible artificial blood vessels. Two years later, the German scientists say they”re building a 3D printer that can print out artificial blood vessels. Through their BioRap project the Fraunhofer team says, they expect to be able to supply artificial tissue and possibly even complex organs. So far, a major stumbling block in tissue engineering, was the inability to supply art3D printing in the world’s greatest museum of art and design
Renowned New York Gallery owner Murray Moss has collaborated with .MGX and Materialise in the creation of the first ever exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum to solely feature 3D printed pieces: ‘Industrial Revolution 2.0: How the Material World will Newly Materialise’.
Founded in 1857, the V&A is regarded by many to be the world’s greatest museum of art and design, with collections that span 3000 years of history and focus on teaching the principles of good design. They now consider 3D printing significant enough to be worthy of an exhibition, and significant enough that they have acquired the Fractal.MGX table and the One_Shot.MGX stool for their permanent collection.
The exhibition will form part of London Design Week and showcase works by Stephen Jones, Patrick Jouin, Iris van Herpen, and many others. The pieces will be displayed in prominent positions throughout the museum, encouraging visitors to discover the futuristic creations in the context of thei
Master hat designer Elvis Pompilio goes 3D printing
For Design September 2011, .MGX by Materialise announces a new collaboration with Belgian hat designer Elvis Pompilio (born 1961). The master hat designer has already collaborated with big names in fashion such as Chanel, Dior, Valentino and Hugo Boss. Royalty worldwide and celebrities like Madonna, Joan Collins, Harrison Ford and Sharon Stone are part of his clientele. Over the years, Pompilio has been consistently praised for his work in the Belgian and international media. His creations are part of several permanent collections, including the Muséee Grévin and the Muséee des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
The Spirograph.MGX marks the start of a long term collaboration with .MGX in which Pompilio will design a series of hats and accessories via 3D printing.
To kick-off Design September in style, Elvis Pompilio will share his design knowledge and vision with a selection of 10 designers during a 2 day master class on the 8th and 9th of September in the .MGX flagship store in B
Columbia GSAPP Saturated Models 3D printed: Handrail
Alistair Gill and Veronika Schmid held a Saturated Models seminar at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. During the seminar the Master’s students explored 3D printing and created 3D printed objects. i.materialise made the resulting 3D prints. This is the sixth interview with a team of participating architecture students and their project: Handrail.
1. Who are you?
The Handrail Folk:
Brian Buckner – Advanced Architectural Design
Carolina Glas – Advanced Architectural Design
Damon Lau – Master of Architecture 1st yr.
2. What is Handrail?
A handrail is an object of vigorous interaction. It is solid, structural and for all intents and purposes supposedly a safe object which assists when an accident occurs. The safety of this banal object intensifies the irony it’s the devious intent potentially invigorating the relationship and creating a series of interactions that are predicated upon this unique scenario. The expectation of the object
A Moore’s Law for 3D printing
Moore’s Law (transistors per chip) and Hendy’s Law (pixels per dollar) have been useful predictors of where processing power and digital photography were going. Tech thinker and write Johnny Ryan believes something similar would be really useful for 3D printing. He already tried to plot a law for the quality of print per dollar of 3D printers for an article he has been working on for the McKinsey Quarterly, but he doesn’t have the data. So he needs your help to gather it. What he wants, is to plot something along these lines: quality (lower microns etc. + multi-materials) improves at the same cost every X months/years. Plotting this would help people plan for, and benefit from, the disruption of 3D printing.
3D printing will create massive opportunities. But it will also disrupt many businesses. According to Dr. Ryan, we need to be able to plan properly for it to get the best out of this transition. A Google spreadsheet has been set up where anybody can contribute data points to
Columbia GSAPP Saturated Models 3D printed: Liquid Joint
Alistair Gill and Veronika Schmid held a Saturated Models seminar at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. During the seminar the Master’s students explored 3D printing and created 3D printed objects. i.materialise made the resulting 3D prints. This is the fifth interview with a team of participating architecture students, Molly Calvani and Michi Ushio, and their project: Liquid Joint.
1. Who are you?
Molly Calvani + Michi Ushio, classmates at Columbia University. Master of Architecture 2011.
2. What is Liquid Joint?
… Good question. Originally it was the goal to create a multi-directional, rolling joint that when assembled as a whole, could make up a system that seemed fluid, or liquid. Through different iterations and ultimately trying to realize a solid version of ”liquid” we arrived at something that perhaps begins to describe a model of an architectural discourse on the fluid and organic verses rigid and mechanic.
3. Why did
3D printing from Tinkercad
We’re delighted to announce that Tinkercad, a very easy-to-use CAD tool that runs in a browser (via WebGL), now offers a one-click support to our i.materialise 3D printing service. Thanks to this feature, getting an idea designed, printed, and in your hands is truly a piece of cake.
Tinkercad is very user-friendly: with only three tools, a wide variety of designs can easily be made in Tinkercad in 5 minutes, or less. And remember, you can do all of this  in your browser with no installation required.
Once your project is ready, simply click on the “Print 3D” button in the upper right-hand corner of the editor.
Your design will be sent to the i.materialise 3D print lab, where you can choose from a variety of materials and colors.
Add the design to your cart, place the order, and within a couple of days you will be showing off your design to everyone you know.
Designing and 3D printing your own designs, like the connection piece pictured below has never been easier.
Columbia GSAPP Saturated Models 3D printed: Postcard
Alistair Gill and Veronika Schmid held a Saturated Models seminar at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. During the seminar the Master’s students explored 3D printing and created 3D printed objects. i.materialise made the resulting 3D prints. This is the fourth interview with a team of participating architecture students, Sarah Carpenter and Dalia Hamati and their project, ‘Postcard’.
1. Who are you?
We are a pair of architects hailing from Lebanon and the United States. We met at GSAPP and we have a weekly TV watching date. Our future plans may or may not include designing a truck that sells Lebanese street food.
2. What is Postcard?
Postcard is an inquiry into the developing process of 3D printing, and more specifically, into investigating the role of the designer in this process. At the outset the infinite possibilities of 3D printing technology left us scrambling for constraints. Where the designer would have previously used the na
Google 3D Warehouse + silver at i.materialise + 3D printing = one incredible retro ring
Armed with a simple 3D model of a ring and with access to a wealth of objects through Google SketchUp’s 3D warehouse, Materialise’s own Bert De Niel started playing around on the computer one day. The result was a entire range of ring designs with everything from a little buddha, to an aligator, to the great retro cassette you see below, and all ready to be 3D printed if desired. Some of the rings I would be happy to wear as they were and others I would want to change a bit first.
Although not all the designs were exactly to my liking, that is the beauty of 3D printing…the person wearing the ring can have exactly what they want, perfectly adapted to their own personal style. Moreover, thanks to the extensive range of objects already available through the 3D warehouse, not that much effort is needed to come up with something great. You just have to choose the design you like, adapt as needed, and voila, you have the ring (or bracelet, or pendant, etc) that you want!
Knowing Bert a
3D printing from 3DTin
For those of you who haven’t heard of 3DTin (yet), let me quickly explain what it is. 3DTin is the world’s first 3D modeling tool that runs in a browser. The man behind 3DTin is Jayesh Salvi, a software engineer currently based in Mumbai, India. 3DTin lets anyone make anything simply because it’s easy and intuitive to use. To try it out, type in 3Dtin.com in Firefox or Chrome and start 3D modeling… that”s all there is to it! Also, show it to your kids, let them play around with 3DTin. Just don”t be hurt when they catch on to it faster than you do.
…and here”s a robot I made a while ago
During the TEDxKids workshops we experienced firsthand that 10 year olds were creating 3D models within minutes. Jayesh made sure 3DTin worked like a charm during the workshops and he also implemented a great feature: One that exports your 3DTin models straight to i.materialise. From our side, we made sure the color information was saved during the STL export because almost all 3DTin users
