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Saturday

Jul032010

High Glossing Shapeways

Saturday, July 3, 2010 |

Another development from always-inventive Shapeways 3D print service this week: you can now print in High Gloss Glass material.

The material is indeed glass, made by depositing crushed glass powder with a binding medium. The resulting (and at that moment very fragile) object is then fired in an oven to remove the binder and fuse the glass. Finally, Shapeways enamels the result to gain the glossy view.

However, it's not entirely peachy:

As you can clearly see in the Angel picture there is a fair amount of "definition" from the 3D printing process in the form of bumps and the like. The enamel smooths the 3D prints out considerably and these prints are closed so not porous as the Milky White Glass material is. The models are however far from completely smooth. A lot of the objects made with this process look really good and very arty. But, significant warping may occur and the overall dimensional accuracy of this process is still limited. 3D printing glass is amazing but also very new and a very experimental process.

This is similar to the experience of the glass/ceramic experimenters at the University of Washington, who recently were exploring the idea of shrinkage. Nevertheless, this is another significant development from Shapeways, who continue to innovate by adding another material to their now vast selection.

Via Shapeways

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Wednesday

Jun302010

From Solidworks to Shapeways

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 |

Popular 3D print service Shapeways has announced the availability of a new add-in for SolidWorks, the well-known commercial 3D modelling system. The add-in was developed by Design Solutions in a joint project with Shapeways, but is currently considered a "beta", so expect frequent updates. Both 32 and 64 bit versions are available for download. If you test the add-in, remember to provide feedback.

This is a logical step for Shapeways, who have been doing their best to integrate with the 3D world more directly. We're not sure if it's their goal, but to have a "Shapeways button" placed in every 3D modelling tool would certainly help their business. But if they pursue that course, how will other 3D print services react? Perhaps we'll see a wide variety of 3D print service plug-ins appear, or even a meta-service that selects and routes between a large number of possible services?

Via Shapeways and DesignSolutions

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Sunday

Jun202010

Shapeways Summer Colors

Sunday, June 20, 2010 |

Who thought 3D printing would have seasons? Turns out that Shapeways does - they've just announced a special set of what they call "Summer Colors", available for inclusion in your Shapeways 3D prints until September.

The set of colors was chosen by popular vote, and include:

Summer Blue
Summer Green
Summer Magenta

These colors, while very attractive, do have a cost: it will be USD$4 plus almost USD$2 per cubic centimetre after that. Is the price worth it? We think so, who could argue with the cute bunnies?

Via Shapeways

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Monday

May242010

Poor Man's 3D Printing: The Print

Monday, May 24, 2010 |

In our previous article we provided ideas on how to prepare your 3D model at the lowest cost possible. But once you have the model ready to print, how do you get it done at low cost?

There are three basic approaches:

You Know Someone. That's right - you just might happen to know someone who has access to a 3D printer, perhaps at work, at a school or less likely at a residence. A few kind words, a simple request and perhaps a bottle of a favorite fluid might do the trick. This is, by far, the least expensive approach. Erm, depending on the fluid.
Use a Service. You don't have a printer or access to one. Pricing is typically done by volume and choice of material(s). There are many services available to accept your .STL file and print it out, but the most popular services are Shapeways and Ponoko. They'll print your model on high-quality commercial machinery and ship it to you overnight at a reasonable cost.
Get a Printer. You realize you want to print a great many items, or the same item many times and believe using a service would be awkward and possibly expensive. You can avoid the USD$10,000's required for commercial printers and their subsequent operational cost by instead choosing a hobby 3D printer kit. The most popular choices today are from MakerBot, Fab@Home and BitsFromBytes, each of which offer kits or plans for usable 3D printers for a few thousand US dollars or less.

This article is part of a short series on Poor Man's 3D Printing. You might also want to read The Design.

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Tuesday

May042010

Enter The Shapeways Student Contest

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 |

Shapeways 3D print service announced a brand new contest, this one for students only. Named the "2010 Shapeways Full Color 3D Print Student Contest", it would appear this is an annual affair. It's called a "Color" contest because the idea is to print your model with Shapeways new color material, "Full Color Sandstone". One major limitation: Shapeways is only accepting designs whose print cost (at their service) is between USD$25-50.

No, you cannot enter this contest unless you are actually a full time student, so don't get any ideas, graduates! Just create your unique and intricate design, zip it up as a VRML97 or X3D file and upload to Shapeways. If you win the contest (as decided by the Shapeways Mandarins), you'll be awarded USD$100 worth of Shapeways printing services. The top five will all receive a free printout of their design. As for the winner, we suspect they might print a few more copies with their USD$100 credit.

The contest is accepting entries now, and closes on 31 May, with the winner being chosen by 7 June. Good luck!

Via Shapeways

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Friday

Mar192010

WYSIWYG 3D Printing

Friday, March 19, 2010 |

Shapeways has taken a step to ease the design process by using Blender to render images of 3D models. This addition to their service permits users to have a reasonably close peek at what their printed object might look like after emerging from Shapeways fleet of 3D printers. The problem up till now has been that objects being designed convey a sense of color and feel based on their screen appearance, and when actually 3D printed in a typical material, the physical object doesn't match your visual expectations.

With this new feature, Shapeways is doing "expectation management" in that you can see a reasonable facsimile of your object before it's actually printed. Could this be the first instance of WYSIWYG 3D printing services?

Via Shapeways

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Tuesday

Mar162010

The Doctor is In at Shapeways

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 |

That's him in the image, Doctor Shapeways! Well, not exactly. Always an innovator, Shapeways has released another terrific feature for those submitting 3D models to their printing service: MeshMedic.

MeshMedic automatically corrects very common mistakes made in 3D models that render the model unprintable. While the model might look tremendously beautiful on your 24 inch LCD monitor, it may also have unseen holes or other modelling difficulties preventing 3D printing. The new tool handles .STL, X3D or Collada files - but not color VRML files. A useful side effect is a significant reduction in workflow time for Rhino users.

We think this is a great benefit to Shapeways users, since it simplifies their efforts. Not everyone is a brilliant 3D modeller, and MeshMedic takes the barriers to 3D printing down a little bit more.

Via Shapeways

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