The Google SketchUp lamp Challenge winners 3D printed
We wanted to share the winning designs of the Lamp Challenge we conducted together with Google SketchUp. We think that the four lamps we chose look incredible 3D printed. What do you think? Which one is your favorite?
If you”re a designer you can go here to learn how to 3D print your own lamp. Not a designer? No problem. You can individualise your own Appear lamp here.
Congratulations to the winners and thank you for everyone that participated. We enjoyed all 55 of your designs and are really very happy with the results of the competition.
Special Jury Award for the Amazelight by Oscar Rottink.
Third place for HD Studio Lamp by Zach Hines & Oliver Dibrova.
In second place: Parasite by Paradox.
In first place, the 3D Maze by Corre.
3D Printing the Individualized Appear Lamp
Introducing the individualized Appear Lamp.
The Appear Lamp holds a secret. Your secret. Once you turn it on, it reveals itself.
You can individualize your own appear lamp with your very own hidden message. You can play with the different fonts and see how your lamp will look online here.
The lamp costs $99 ($19 including shipping to the States) and comes complete with light, fitting and stand. The lamp comes in both a European and US version. The Appear Lamp is 3D printed in polyamide and manufactured with care in Belgium.
What will you reveal? Will it be a message for a loved one? A joke? A surprise? Explore your creativity with the Appear.
We would like to thank the team at .MGX for all their help with the engineering of the Appear and for letting us build on their ten years of expertise in 3D printed lighting. You can find more images of the Appear Lamp on Flickr.
3D Printed .MGX art added to the Smithsonian
The Mylight.MGX lamp by Lars Spuybroek and the Future Systems Bowl by Amanda Levete now form part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York! Already on display in the Cooper Hewitt are the One Shot and the C2 chair by Patrick Jouin.
Congratulations are in order for our designers & colleagues at .MGX on this amazing form of recognition for their 3D printed work! Below you can see all the .MGX models that are in the Cooper-Hewitt.
Mylight.MGX by Lars Spuybroek
Future Systems Bowl by Amanda Levete
One Shot by Patrick Jouin
C2 chair by Patrick Jouin
Genetic Robots made with 3D printing without a human designer
The German high tech research Fraunhofer-Institut has just unveiled its Genetic Robots. The robots are made by using genetic algorithms that come up with the optimal robot shape and form without the involvement of any human designer. The optimal form is decided based on a physics engine that takes into account the tasks and terrain and then designs the robot accordingly. The robots are made of ball and socket joints and connecting tubes and can change shape depending on the required tasks. The resulting robot is then 3D printed.
This is nothing short of the future of design. By looking at the fitness of a design before the robot is made and by individually designing and 3D printing only the best suited designs, more optimal designs can be produced. No longer do designs have to be “for all terrains” or for all uses but they can suffice for a single task. In effect you have disposable highly specialized robots. With Moore’s law and other technology accelerators in effect this comm
3D Printing Architectural Models
Karel Honigs made a 3D print of a house he was constructing together with his twin brother. They made it in polyamide and designed it so you could see both the exterior and interior.
To view our house in 3D before we actually started constructing it, we decided to design it in Google SketchUp. We, that”s my twin brother and I. Therefore, we called the project ”The Brothers”.
This 3D model is the symbol of our hard work and fine cooperation. We spent many hours working on the model since we started out with the 2D files we got from our architect.
What”s nice about our 3D printed model, is that it can be disassembled and viewed from the inside. We are really happy with the produced result. In the end the effort was well worth it.
— Karel Honings
Fiction vs. Reality: What 3D Printing Is and How Pop Culture Sees It
How Pop Culture Sees New Technologies
I love CSI and its legion of lab coat wearing copies. One of the reasons I like those shows is that science is one of the heroes of these series. I enjoy hearing about new technologies such as tricorder-like scanners, new ways to lift fingerprints and minute trace evidence that can be tracked back to its source.
My only worry is that every time one of these shows deals with a subject that I understand they screw it up. Probably the most famous example is the CSI New York episode where one cast member says she will “create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to see if I can track an IP address.” Believe it, there is a clip right here.
It’s as if someone got the 1997 edition of ‘The Information Superhighway for Dummies’ and randomly strung glossary entries together to form a sentence. This error could have been averted by one phone call placed to most of the people I know.
A 3D Printer in the TV Show ‘Bones’
Recently I watched a Bones epi
New SketchUp 3D Printing Plugin & Cheap 3D Printing Tip
Make 3D printing your SketchUp models easier: here is the i.materialise 3D printing plugin you’ve been waiting for. As the for the cheapest 3D printing in the world? I’ll qualify and explain that statement below. The process of going from SketchUp model to 3D print can be a complex one. Architects, students and people renovating there homes are using this tool to make it easier for them to 3D print their architectural designs. We’d love to get feedback from you on what you like (or dislike) about our newest plug in so we can make it better. We think this is the easiest way to take a SketchUp design and get it 3D printed, but we want to improve it even more. (more…)
3D printing in contemporary art: Nick Ervinck
3D printing is becoming more and more the technology of choice for artists nowadays. Artists’ models often employ a variety of different materials involving small and intricately detailed pieces with various shapes and curves, and special kinds of finishes that accentuate artistic elements. 3D printing allows artists to manufacture forms and shapes that cannot be fabricated in any other way. A lot of them are collaborating with Materialise because sometimes the unthinkable becomes a tangible reality. Meet Nick Ervinck.
“I make sculptures that are on the edge of the physical and digital realm in terms of sculpture and architecture. The art of sculpting has evolved through history with the help of technology. Because architects design mainly with computers now, a new type of language is created. In light of this, I see this new world of architecture as a precursor for what will happen in the world of art and sculpture. It’s great that high-tech companies like Materialise are help
The Cutest 3D Printed Robot Ever
Robots are mostly portrayed as evil cold calculating creatures. Cylons, HAL, ASH have a cute deficit. Even Commander Data misses a certain degree of warmth. As you may know we’re doing a lot of work with customizing robots using 3D printing. We love the idea of “pimp your robot” and think that there is a lot of potential there.
But, in Japan..in Japan people are always light years ahead. Our Business Development guy in Japan Hiro shot a video of an extremely customized robot at Dekinnoka!7. She, wears a skirt, has glasses, is a competitor in robot wrestling and has had us all in stitches laughing all morning. Introducing, the world’s cutest robot… wanmi be sure to watch the video, we think its hilarious. She comes on stage at around 55 seconds.
5 Amazing full sized furniture pieces made with 3D printing
3D printing seems to be all over the media lately. I already mentioned it in my previous blog post ”FULL PRINT3D”, but everyone writing these articles seems to be showing only a glimpse of what the technology is capable of. So why not write a series of blog posts to show the versatility of 3D printing? That’s what I thought. I’d like to start with the subject of furniture because I believe 3D printing is taking furniture design to a whole other level. Just ask French designer Patrick Jouin, who actually created the first large scale scale furniture pieces through 3D printing technology together with. MGX. It’s no surprise Materialise’s big mammoth stereolithography 3D printers had something to do with it. Here are, in no particular order, 5 amazing furniture piece made with 3D printing.
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