Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

3D Printing Blog

The i.materialise blog keeps you updated about outstanding 3D designs, the newest 3D printing technologies and the best 3D modeling software tutorials.

Peter Jansen”s Motionless Motion

Peter Jansen is an artist inspired by human motion. He, studied  “Physics and Philosophy at the university. For a number of years he worked as a guide, accompanying groups on survival and canoe trips, after which he dedicated his live entirely to the arts.” He makes many designs including the wonderful items you can see in the .MGX store in Brussels. “In his recent sculptures he captures sequences of human movements in space and time, in a single frame.” He made the sculpture Motionless Motion with us in Alumide. You can see more of his work on his website here.

The 3D printed V House by Gino Lomeli

I designed this house especially for the i.materialise ”World of Houses – SketchUp Challenge”. The V stands for view house.

This house would be primarily situated in Spain, in a place where the home would blend in with its environment, but at the same time be something man made. The site is a mountain top with views of a lake to the front of the home and views to the wilderness to the rear.

A cantilevered pool would extrude toward the lake side of the home reinforcing the connection with it”s surrounding, giving the sense of being inside the lake but at a higher level. The home is a breeze house which means most of all the windows are sliding “nana wall” type glazing.

Giving the home an energy efficient way of keeping it cool, while the green roof also aids in keeping the home cool. The web design around the home helps maintain privacy to a home that is entirely shielded by glass.

— Gino Lomeli

Gino”s dream house was designed using Google Sketchup and the

This week in 3D printing: February 12th to 18th

February 13th. Ten year old Schuyler st. Leger makes an amazing 3D printing presentation at Ingite Phoenix.  Opinons are divided if young Schuyler St. Leger will opt for Nobel prize winner or billionaire as a chosen profession. I”ve set up a Google news alert to track him so I can be the first to tell you.

February 16th. Makerbot comes up with a new stepper motor extruder. That is reported on SF Gate because that”s how we roll nowadays. Â

February 17th. Kodak continues to be confusing.

February 18th. A toplogocial riddle turns into a DMCA takedown notice for 3D printing.

Image Creative Commons, Attribution Ignite Phoenix.

A 3D printed world needs a Birth Certificate for Ideas

On the eve of the first DMCA takedown notice in 3D printing, my post has become quite topical.

In a 3D printed world we will be able to make and reverse engineer anything. Any form can be copied, either through 3D modeling or scanning. It will take us a while to reach a time where “everything” can be copied but this time will come. Upheaval has already occurred in the movie and music industry but this will only expand as books and then all things are dragged kicking and screaming into the digital domain. If we look around the intellectual property landscape we can at a glance instantly comprehend that we are, legally, entirely unprepared for such a world. In this (yes, entirely too lengthy) article I’ll try to give an overview of the issues plaguing intellectual property today, then discuss some solutions and subsequently discuss some relevant examples of modern forms of IP  protection that seem to point to answers for us all. This is not some obscure lawyerly discussion. I might no

Who invented the Penrose triangle?

A few days ago Ulrich Schwanitz claimed to have 3D printed a Penrose triangle, hereto thought to be impossible. The news appeared on FastCoDesign. Ulrich did not want to disclose his secret and wanted to let people guess. Designer Artur Tchoukanov saw the post and managed to come up with a solution. He explained this through renderings and shared the solution on Thingiverse. Then Boing Boing posted about the solution. So who invented the 3D printed Penrose triangle? Was it Artur or Ulrich?

Ulrich was first, of this there can be no doubt. But, he did not disclose his solution. Artur did. If we make a paralell to Intellectual Property law and Ulrich claimed to have invented something but Artur disclosed it in a patent application, then Artur would be the inventor. Even if Ulrich could claim that there was prior art. This might lead to Artur not getting a patent but it would not lead to Ulrich getting it. Ulrich decided to keep his invention a trade secret. The risk you run when yo

Naim Josefi”s Melonia shoe nominated for a Brit Insurance Design Award

Naim Josefi”s 3D printed Melonia shoe has been nominated for a Brit Insurance Design Award. This is one of the most prestigious awards in design and we are proud that this shoe was made by our company. We interviewed designer Naim Josefi to discover how the Melonia was made.

Why did you make your Melonia shoes? I designed the melonia shoe to show my view of the future, a better,made to measure, easier and more sustainable design with a touch of love. 

With whom did you collaborate with on the project? I worked with Souzan Yusouf, studying at Konstfack University of art and craft , to become an Industrial designer.

How did you make them? I left my design sketch of the melonia shoe to Souzan, which she formed in the 3-d modelling software Rhino. 

Are they currently for sale? Yes they are for sale, but I will when time is given produce the melonia shoe for stores. 

Are they comfortable? They are relatively comfortable, but they are not made for a stroll in t

Impossible 3D printed Penrose Triangle: solved?

Artur Tchoukanov, the dsigner of the new 3D printed paperclip the Infinite Clip, loves topology and design. This is why he became intrigued by yesterday’s blog post about Ulrich Schwanitz’s impossible penrose triangle on FastCoDesign. Mr. Schwanitz would have seemed to 3D print a triangle that would seem to be mathematically impossible to make. Artur thinks he”s solved Mr. Schwanitz’s riddle on how the Penrose Triangle was made. He has put his solution on Thingiverse here to share it with others. As to how Artur came up with his solution? “The first clue was that the top face was in shadow (darker)… that let me to believe that it was a concave surface. Then I figured that they all need to be connected.” Artur then designed his solution using Rhino. So we’re curious to see if Artur did solve it? Or is there another solution?

P.s, this is not some 3D printing service pissing contest. Its rather more of a topology/geek riddle thing. Fun game though.

Free Shipping trial

 

Over the past months we’ve been actively looking for your feedback. We’ve used the information to improve our site and to come up with new ideas for the future. One of the suggestions we received several times was that we would have more orders if we offered free shipping. Currently we have a “perfect” pricing system. With this system we calculate the correct price for every part. We do this want to be fair and exact. With free shipping, in the final analysis everyone will be subsiding the New Zealanders. So intuitively this has felt “off” to us. But, if customers and community members continue to tell you that this would lead to more orders we’d be stupid not to try it.

So for the next four weeks we are offering free shipping on all orders, anywhere. After the four weeks we will analyze the costs and look at if this increases our orders and makes you happier. We will also then revisit this test with our community and ask you what you thought about it. If the numbers add up

Cloning the RepRap Prusa in under 30 minutes

The grounbreaking research/hacking team at The University of Washington’s Solheim lab have begun cloning RepRaps. The RepRap project is a project that aims to make an open source self-replicating 3D printer. If sucessful this would make 3D printers available for the cost of the materials alone. At the Solheim Lab the Open3DP project is undertaking lots of research to support open 3D printing innitiatives. They have just now annouced that they can produce all the plastic parts for the Prusa Mendel in 30 minutes using molding. They call the resulting Prusa clones Clonedels. They represents a significant cost and time saving for producing the Prusa and should help put 3D printers into the hands of more people.

The Prusa Mendel  is the simlpest 3D printer in RepRap’s line up. Open3DP’s RepRap breeding program set itself a goal of producing ten Mendels in ten weeks. The team redesigned the parts to they could be used for silicon RTV molding. They then 3D printed the parts and pr

3D printing Rodin’s Thinker

Rodin’s Thinker is quite possibly the world”s most famous sculptures. In 2007 the Singer Laren museum was burgalarized and 7 statues were stolen. One of them was a Rodin’s Thinker. The men did not want to sell the statues but rather wanted to destroy them and sell them for scrap metal. 6 statues were destroyed but a badly damaged Thinker was recovered. The statue, with an estimated value of between 3 and $10,000,000 had been hacked in to by the men as the tried to take it apart so they could melt it down. Over these past years the team at Singer Laren have repaired the statue.

Two images below are of the broken Thinker.

The Thinker has a headache.

3D scans were taken of the damaged Thinker and of the original mold kept by the Musee Rodin in Paris and they were compared. Then Materialise was asked to 3D print the Thinker. We 3D printed the statue on one of our Materialise Mammoth machines, the largest 3D printers in the world. A mold was made of the 3D prin