What if a 3D printed world were ugly?
Companies such as i.materialise want to democratize manufacturing and design. We want to let people design their own things so that the products that surround them feel, fit and look better for them. Every person is unique with their own quirks, personality and feelings about beauty. Every body part is unique and everyone uses products differently. The current manner of making millions of copies of things and then convincing millions of people to buy them is flawed. Most of the money is spent on branding, on trying to convince people to buy something rather than making that product better. This is due to the limitations of mass production and because it’s simply easier to convince someone to like an inferior product than to make the best product for them. 3D printing is changing this, people can now make the perfect thing for themselves. You can make your world look exactly as you would like it to. Everything you touch could be as you dream it to be. A new artisan age is dawning and ev
Customized 3D printed FrisMe
The FrisMe is the world’s first 3D printed flying disk. The FrisMe is completely customizable. You can design it exactly according to your specifications. This unique design item uses cutting edge production techniques to bring you design freedom. Choose a texture, add letters, add your own design, add custom elements to it, with the FrisMe anything is possible.
If you desire your own FrisMe, send an email to joris (at) i.materialise.com and I will set up a phone appointment so we can discuss your FrisMe customization needs. A standard FrisMe would be $215. A customized FrisMe with your initials and your choice of texture would cost $230 including shipping. A FrisMe designed completely for you costs $310 and up. Extras such as silver, gold or chrome plating or custom hand painting are not included in this price. A Scan FrisMe which will be designed acording to a 3D scan of your hands costs $1300 (cost of visit to Leuven Belgium not included).
Video of us playing with the Fri
Longest running 3D printer in the world
Things that happened in 1990: first McDonalds opens in Russia, Nelson Mandela is freed, Hubble Space telescope is launched and West Germany wins the World Cup. And less notable, Materialise installs its first 3D printer. These images are of what I believe to be the longest running operational 3D printer in the world. This 3D Systems SLA 250 was installed here in Leuven in July of 1990 by our CEO Fried Vancraen.
It has been working diligently for Materialise since then. In the loving care of our maintenance team the machine has been working for 20 years, 3 months and 21 days. For 7418 consecutive days this stereolithography machine has been in service with us. And you know what amazes me most? It still works, we still use it to fulfill your orders. Its also not the only one from that era. We have several 3D Systems machines that still work that we obtained around the same time. There will be some older test machines out there and maybe some in a broom cupboard but I”m pre
3D Printing the TulipK Lamp
Ben Geebelen’s TulipK lamp is Laser Sintered in polyamide. The pattern of the lamp was designed in Excel and the file was prepared in 3-matic. The lamp opens and closes through an ingenious mechanism that acts as a 3D printed dimmer for the lamp. Ben tells us about the TulipK in his own words below.
TulipK is a lamp shade I designed as a present to my wife. Its shape is inspired by a picture of tulips we had on our wedding invitation. I designed it fully in 3-matic and Excel (yes, I consider that design software too).
The shade has 6 tulip petals surrounding the light bulb. It includes a mechanism to make the flower open up. The petals are attached with hinges to a ring that is suspended from the ring attached to the light socket. Each petal has a small rod that slides through a slot in the latter ring. If you rotate the first ring with respect to the other, the rods slide through the slots and are pushed outward, making the petals open up. The idea was to have some kind
3D Systems buys Bits from Bytes
3D Systems was built on Stereolithography technology. The technology was invented by 3D Systems CTO Chuck Hull in 1986. Right now 3D Systems still is the leading player on the Stereolithography field. But, 3D Systems did not just keep to Sterolithography but rather expanded into SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) machines also. Last year it was 3D Systems that bought the assets of the defunct Desktop Factory. I”m still unsure what 3D Systems wants to do with this technology but former Desktop Factory CEO Cathy Lewis is turning out to be quite an asset in making the company more accessible and well known.
3D Systems has spent the last year acquiring 3D printing service bureaus the world over from specialised ones that do investment casting such as Mqast to regular service bureaus. It is cobbling them together in order to develop a network with one web based 3D printing service called ProParts. With lower material costs than other service bureaus and nice deals on the machines I’
3D printing spare parts using Alumide
You might have heard the expression “eat your own dogfood” that refers to having companies consume their own products in some way. At i.materialise we have an expensive camera tripod. A lever that you use to adjust the height of the camera broke off. We were unable to obtain a replacement and so we asked a colleague Staf if he would be so kind enough as to 3D model a replacement lever. We 3D printed it using an EOS p700 machine 3D printing Alumide and were able to replace the part at very low cost without leaving the building. The lever is functional and although the Alumide material, a combination of aluminum and thermoplastic powder, can be brittle the part is strong enough to do service as a lever. You can see some wear but the lever thingy has now been functioning for two years.
3D Printing Foam
Have you seen this video clip yet? Yes, apparently it is possible to print foam now! Take a look at below’s video to see the world’s first foam 3D printer in action. Make sure to scroll down to learn more about other astonishing 3D printing materials such as gold or ceramics.
Want to learn more about other 3D printing materials?
- Check out this article about 3D printing gold!
- And take a look at this blog post about 3D printing ceramics.
- Want to get a HQ 3D Print? Upload it here and choose from 100+ materials & finishes!
Beastie Boys Time to get Ill 3D printed
Andy Berlin, an engineer at Zcorp wrote a software tool that transforms soundwaves into an 3D printable file. The file can then be 3D printed on a Zcorp machine and the resulting 3D print actually can be heard on a record player. I think this is a wonderfully literal way to turn music into an object and adore it. Andy says, “the program created a monochrome .STL file. The outer edge of each groove is smooth, to provide a surface for the tracking needle to ride along. The inner edge contains peaks and valleys which correspond to the audio data.” He also had to hack a turntable to get it to work, “A pin replaced the needle to provide mechanical tracking, and an LED and optical sensor, …, provided the playback signal.” Very amazing stuff. I love the combination of old and new technology. And I also love that the song he chose to make this way was Time to get Ill by the Beastie Boys! More images on the Zcorp blog.
3D printed moveable toy dog Oh Dog
Brazillian students Pedro Figueiredo and Bruna Milam needed to do a graduation project for their Industrial Design course at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. They opted to make a toy 3D print using i.materialise. The duo used functional mechanisms and customization possibilities on the toy to increase its effectiveness and value. The toy’s name is Oh Dog! and he is a sad dog with an absurd cone collar with a mechanical iris on his neck. Pedro and Bruna are now seeing if they can turn their whacky dog into a business. They also would like to thank Karen and Vlad of our customer servies team for all the help both gave them in repairing the file and helping them with the engineering of the Dog. We wish them a lot of luck and congratulate them on a great product! We would like to thank Chris Lefteri for including a reference to i.materialise in his book Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design, which is how Pedro and Bruna found us in the first place.
C
3D Printing Functional Robots
How futuristic do you need us to be, really? For months Hiro (our business development guy in Japan) has been working on an area that is very important to us here at i.materialise: using 3D printing to customize robots.
We think that in the coming years two technologies that are ripe for democratization are robots and 3D printing. To combine both of them into one service is irresistible to us. Because of this Hiro has been doing extensive research on what people that have robots at home need.
A few months ago robotics enthusiast news source Robots Dreams already posted a review of some of the parts we had made back then. Check it out below.
This gives you insight into one of the consumer robot areas that we are exploring. Our initial baby steps back then consisted of creating, together with a customer, some customized faceplates and other robot parts using SLS. This let the customer create a custom unique version of his Kondo robot. Last year I went on vacation to Japan an
