Sit On Objet's 3D Printed Chair

It's always totally amazing to pull a new item out of a 3D printer, but it's even more amazing when it has moving parts and startling when it's a complete item that's ready for immediate use. 3D Printer manufacturer Objet has just produced such an item using a new material on a new printer. The object in question is rather nice folding chair, able to support a person, as you can see in the image above (click for higher detail). 

 

The chair was printed on a Objet Connex printer, which is capable of printing in multiple materials simultaneously. The chair is apparently able to support in excess of 100Kg (220 pounds), and is made from Objet's curiously named "ABS-like Digital Material". As you might expect, this material has great physical characteristics that permit the guy in the image to sit without the chair collapsing.

 

Via Objet

The Endless Chair

Another surprise item seen at London's Design Museum was the "Endless Chair". Why is it called "endless"? Because it's made from recycled refrigerators, where plastic is ground up and extruded in 3D printing fashion into the correct chair shape. 

 

Another reason for the name is that the production equipment, in this case a leftover Chinese production assembly robot was itself repurposed. Designer Dirk vander Kooij took possession of the robot and converted it into a rapid prototyping machine capable of making the Endless chair. 

 

Each chair is different and its production requires the designer to work with the robotic equipment. This allows the designer to iterate through concepts until the perfect chair is achieved. 

Natural 3D Printing

Ponoko posted of a wonderful story about Sydney-based lighting company SandFlora's experience designing a beautiful lamp. The interesting part was the inspiration: nature. In fact, this line of lamp was inspired by the intricate Waratah flower, native to Australia. 

  

The lamp was of course 3D printed and looks amazing. 

 

Our interest, as was Ponoko's, is in the inspiration: nature. While we may find many 3D designs, it seems most of them derive their origin from man-made items such as buildings, parts, jewelry or popular icons. Why isn't there large numbers of beautiful nature models available? 

 

Could it be that natural objects are harder to design? Probably - it's a lot harder to model a delicate leaf than a hockey puck. Perhaps advances in 3D scanning and 3D modelling software may lead to new explorations in natural 3D design. 

 

We think that nature has much to provide us design-wise. There are countless beautiful shapes in existence, evolved over millennia that can inspire new 3D models. 

 

Via Ponoko

3D Printed Chairs

Freedom of Creation has produced another set of amazing furniture, this time by Dutch designer Bram Geenen. The design of the Gaudi stool (pictured) and a matching chair was done mathematically, where the curves and internal structure were determined by the distribution of various forces. From design, the furniture was produced by laser sintering. These wonderful items are available now in FOC's online shop, but they are a tad pricey: € 5854.62 (USD$7700+) for the stool alone. 

 

Via FOC

Fractal Tree Table

If the size of your 3D printer's build chamber is too small, the answer is obvious: break your object into a series of smaller parts, print and assemble them. That or buying a bigger printer. 

 

But let's turn this around: what if you don't know how big your object is, and you just print the parts? That's what Gernot Oberfell and Jan Wertel did when they took their successful Fractal.MGX design and spun it into the new Module.MGX design. It's a modular table system, based on standard interlocking units that can be assembled in an infinite number of ways. 

 

The base component design:

 

draws inspiration from research into geometries with self-similarity e.g. fractals, patterns that occur in nature and proportional systems like the golden section. With its steep angled walls and hollow structure, the Module.MGX minimizes waste, saves energy during the production process and makes production more cost effecctive. Due to its size and shape, the table can be used alone or with an infinte number placed seamlessly next to each other.

 

The modular approach is very interesting, and certainly could be attempted on home 3D printers. Who knows what kind of large-scale modular designs may appear?   

 

Via MGXbyMaterialise, WertelOberFell and Core77

Images From DHUB

There's a fascinating exhibition taking place at the Disseny Hub in Barcelona, also known as "DHUB". From the exhibition's description:

 

FABRICATION LABORATORY consists of not one but a series of activities (exhibitions, real-time fabrication laboratories, workshops, lectures, etc.) that offer a comprehensive overview of 3D digital manufacturing technologies.

 

Flickr user LaN_Luis has published a series of images of some very fascinating objects. Here's our favourites from this exhibition that runs until September (click for larger images):

 

A strange landscape.

 

Segment of a networked material.

 

Rather pourous vases. 

 

An unusual chair. How long could you sit comfortably in this? 

 

An unborn child. 

 

The message we're seeing with these amazing exhibits is simple: anything, be it from a scanned digital source, a mathematical algorithm or pure imagination can be made real. 

 

Long live creativity!

 

Via Flickr

SMArchitecture

We ran across a very interesting operation: SMArchitecture, a "Kuwait and London based architectural & design R&D practice". Their blog, written by Dr. Thomas Modeen describes their design experiments, which are often highly unusual and seem to have evolved from fabrication techniques. Some examples:

 

The 'Comet' vase, which consists of a bundle of hollow, extruded tear-drop shaped, funnels vertically staggered so that only three of the pointed base-tips touch the ground (forming thus a tripod stand). 

 

The Alice Cup: The core cup was designed in Rhino (software), made roughly the size of a 1.5 decilitre teacup, which was saved as a STL file, and consequently manipulated to befit a number of defined functions, such as an espresso cup (shrunk), café latte cup (stretched vertically) and a cream pitcher (stretched horizontally). It was also made into a saucer (horizontally flattened and stretched), as well as a pitcher (scaled up, stretched vertically and slightly flattened). 

 

The Fragrant Time Clock, which: uses smell as the medium through which time can be told. The core premise is straightforward - take an incense-stick that burns at a regular speed, test and measure out the correlation between the length and speed at which it burns (i.e. how long a stretch of the stick is needed for, say, a ten minute burn?) and segment a select number of such incense fragrances into consecutive sequences and lengths according to preference.

 

These ideas are truly fascinating explorations of life-fabrication mashups that you can't miss. 

 

Via SMArchitecture 

Chairs You Can Sit On

Some may say that 3D printed items are not robust, but not this time. Design firm Freedom of Creation's Janne Kyttanen has made an amazing set of swivel chairs exclusively for a yacht and residence.

FOC used Selective Laser Sintering to produce the unique chairs, which are based on a previous tray design. The chair shells were produced in one piece to aid strength and appearance - and the size of this item is larger than pretty much all of the additive 3D printers' build chambers.

As this work was a private commission, it's not likely these chairs will be available for public purchase, and we don't know the commission value, either. Nevertheless, these fabulous chairs were only made possible by the existence of 3D print technology.

We're thinking this is another example of the "manufacturing for one" paradigm that is slowly growing. However, the costs are still too high for the majority to participate.

Via Freedom of Creation