3D Printed Logos

Sander Spolspoel created a 3d model of his logo and was curious how it would look like in real life. The logo looks like a fresh green plant that has just germinated with tiny roots at the bottom. In the video you see Sander holding his logo, printed by i.materialise.

Sander asked for his logo in alumide material. However, the roots at the bottom where very tiny, less than 1 mm and where very important to Sander. So we plugged in our special printer that is able to print details starting from 0.4-0.5 millimeter. This printer only prints models in Polyamide, not alumide. The difference between the 2 materials is not that big. Alumide is in fact polyamide filled with microsized alumide grains, making the model more stress-resistent. Alumide was choosen by Sander, just for the look, not for the stiffness,so we gave the polyamide model the alumide look by painting it. The difference between a painted polyamide and alumide model is hardly noticable.

We were pretty pleased with the result, although personally I would have preferred to print the logo a lot smaller to car key holder -size. But since the roots were important to Sander, this was the minimal size to print. I’m also curious how the model would have looked like in multicolor material.