Joris of Shapeways posted a video showing off several sample 3D prints using Shapeway’s new Alumide material. The semi-metallic material, while less strong than other build materials offered, seems to convey quite a different character to the printed objects. They no longer look and feel like “plain old plastic”. The video includes several truly… Continue reading Alumide Examples
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Full Color 3D Printing
Yes, that’s right – Shapeways now offers full color 3D printing. They’ve scored a ZCorp 650 3D printer, which provides the color capability. The “Full Color Sandstone” material is able to handle color texture maps. It’s obviously more work to prepare color models. You must create a texture map in your 3D modelling software… Continue reading Full Color 3D Printing
Shapeways Expands Materials
As they’ve done many times in the past, the Shapeways 3D printing service has expanded the materials available for builds. This time they’ve announced some very interesting options for makers: “Grey Robust” is a rigid material similar to their previous “Cream Robust”. But let’s face it: “Cream” just doesn’t sound very robust, does it? Accordingly,… Continue reading Shapeways Expands Materials
Virtual Becomes Real – Again
Shapeways provides an excellent post describing how to print a 3D version of your favorite Spore character. Spore? (It’s a 3D massively multiplayer online game in which you can design your own “creature”) What could be better than holding your virtual creation in your own hands? While this is a great service to Spore players,… Continue reading Virtual Becomes Real – Again
Prepping for 3D Printing
Shapeways published an excellent article describing several tips for preparing your Blender file for 3D printing, specifically for using the Shapeways printing service. The article explains how to fix non-manifold vertices, handling overlapping objects and output scaling, and are good tips even if you aren’t using Shapeways. Via Shapeways
The Metal Process – Revealed!
We found a great video from Shapeways that takes you through the entire process of producing a metal object. From initial printing in stainless steel powder (with organic binder), through curing and bronze infusion that leads to the final item, you’ll see it all. Missing: the finishing stage. Get out the brushes and start polishing!… Continue reading The Metal Process – Revealed!
Ooo! Smooth!
Shapeways has added a new material: White Glaze, or as we like to call it: Smooth! Evidently the white coats in Shapeways’ secret lab toiled for weeks trying various concoctions until they came up with White Glaze, which exhibits terrific reflective characteristics as you can see in the image above. By the way, White Glaze… Continue reading Ooo! Smooth!
Puzzling BitTorrent and 3D Printing
There’s a fascinating interview of Bram Cohen on the Shapeways Blog. That name sounds familiar? It should, because he’s the inventor of BitTorrent, that famous or infamous highly efficient network transfer protocol that swept the world and changed how big media companies operator forever. But what’s this got to do with 3D printing? Turns… Continue reading Puzzling BitTorrent and 3D Printing
Shapeways Bends Metal… and Thinking
Shapeways offers metal prints with their new stylus generator, and we think they are quite amazing. The level of detail present in the image above, combined with the metallic material evokes a feeling we don’t get too often when examining 3D printed objects: it’s not plastic! It’s metal, obviously, but it just *looks* so… Continue reading Shapeways Bends Metal… and Thinking
Busted!
In amongst last week’s torrent of posts from Shapeways, there was one describing a cool HP Lovecraft bust printed on their 3D print service. You can buy one yourself for USD$17 or USD$33 for the 12 or 15cm versions, respectively. However, this got us thinking again. Shapeways (and other 3D print services) often try… Continue reading Busted!
3D Parts On Demand
Shapeways has announced a great new feature for their 3D printing service that should benefit designers. It’s a 3D parts model database. The database currently has approximately thirty items in it, including a variety of nuts, sprockets, gears, bearings, coils and other fundamental parts. We suspect these components would be useful in many designs.… Continue reading 3D Parts On Demand
Stamp Your Website!
Recently we described Shapeways’ new rubber stamp service, where images are transformed by software and 3D printing into a custom rubber stamp. But now we find a truly innovative use of rubber stamps that brings that pre-20th century technology into the 21st. It all has to do with something called “QR Codes”. They are… Continue reading Stamp Your Website!
3D Rubber Stamps
In retrospect, this is totally obvious, but Shapeways now provides a way to produce your own rubber stamp from uploaded images. Here’s how it works, as shown above: Start with a desirable image Convert it to black and white Reduce the image’s colors to black or white – with as little gray as possible… Continue reading 3D Rubber Stamps
How Small Are Your Fingers?
Ours are not exactly small, and therefore we’ll probably not be able to handle what’s being called “the world’s smallest cube puzzle”. It’s available at ShapeWays right now. It’s a classic 3D puzzle with tetris-like 3D shapes. The only catch is that they are really tiny, with the maximum dimension being only 7.5mm! Fortunately,… Continue reading How Small Are Your Fingers?
Shapeways in COLOR
Shapeways takes another step forward in capability. Their most popular material, the eponymously-named “White, Strong and Flexible” is now available in colors! Three, actually: Limestone, Blue Jeans and Terracotta, or as we might say: grey, blue and orange. But they are a really good grey, blue and orange! The selected color is dyed into the… Continue reading Shapeways in COLOR
Two Routes to Low Cost
Fluid Forms poses an interesting question: how to obtain an inexpensive 3D printer. They correctly point out the two possible courses of action for obtaining inexpensive 3D printing solutions: Commercial units, such as the Desktop Factory and MCOR printers. Open Source hardware solutions such as RepRap, Fab@Home and the recently announced MakerBot The problem,… Continue reading Two Routes to Low Cost
Shapeways Enters the Bronze Age
An interesting announcement from Shapeways this week says they are offering bronze prints of their popular Ringpoem model for the first time ever. The catch? It’s an experiment that concludes on 31 March 2009 (today, sorry!), so you may have missed out. They say that if there is demand and if they can work out… Continue reading Shapeways Enters the Bronze Age
Shapeways on Rails
No, they’re not producing a magical 3D development framework with a ton of plugins. At least not that we know of. No, they’ve just joined up with Beneluxspoor.net, a community of European model railroad enthusiasts. We’ve written about the application of 3D printing to model railways before, and it seems to be a natural fit.… Continue reading Shapeways on Rails
Make No Mistakes
One of the wonderful aspects of online services is the communities that form around them. These communities can not only share ideas, but sometimes they create very useful tools and add-ons that make the original service even better. That’s just what happened when Shapeway user Virtox created a special script for 3DS Max that computes… Continue reading Make No Mistakes
The Photoshaper
Shapeways continues to innovate, and this time it’s The Photoshaper. What is it? It’s a cross between 3D and 2D mediums in which you submit a standard 2D photograph and Shapeway’s unique software will interpret the colors and shading to produce a semi-3D model of the photograph. The object can then be illuminated from… Continue reading The Photoshaper
MAKE Makes a Character
Shapeways provides a wonderful and simple way to create many types of objects. Their software does have restrictions, but don’t fret – you can always use your own 3D design software to produce, well, what ever you desire. And that’s precisely what John Park did at MAKE magazine. Using MAYA 3D software and a cute… Continue reading MAKE Makes a Character
Shapeways Winners Announced
You might recall that Shapeways held a design contest, with the winner having the privilege of a titanium 3D print of their model! The grand prize winner was Product Design student Huang Yanying from Singapore, with her amazing Spiral Cage, pictured above. While not the winner, second place finisher Whystler had a rather interesting design:… Continue reading Shapeways Winners Announced
Shapeways Bumps into Ponoko
Shapeways, the European-based 3D print service that is working very hard to make it easy for laymen to produce 3D objects, is stepping into Ponoko’s territory. Ponoko is a repository of 3D models and designs that you can manufacture on demand. Ponoko also allows you to sell prints made from your plans to anyone perusing… Continue reading Shapeways Bumps into Ponoko
Shapeways Bends Metal
Not for everyone, however. The metal is bent only for the winner of their “metal 3D printing contest”, which closes on the 15th of January. Apparently the alloy metal is quite expensive and is being done only for the contest winner: The material that is used is also more expensive, because it is a Titanium… Continue reading Shapeways Bends Metal
Shapeways Goes Brown!
The consumer-oriented 3D print service Shapeways has improved their shipping capability by teaming up with UPS. UPS is well-known for their ability to efficiently organize shipping operations in an end-to-end fashion, and it looks like Shapeways has taken up their offer. This means they will be able to ship printed objects anywhere in the world… Continue reading Shapeways Goes Brown!
Shapeways Repackages!
Those model railway fans we wrote about the other week are pressing hard on Shapeways. They’re attempting to print a model of a Dutch steam heater car, and have had some difficulties. Some parts were not printed correctly, and the standard Shapeways packaging actually distorted the shape of the parts while in transit. Not Good!… Continue reading Shapeways Repackages!
Take the Train from Shapeways
Shapeways, that upstart 3D print service that seems to be everywhere these days has another set of fans: model railway builders. A recent blog post on the Shapeways blog tells the tale of how they were contacted by Dutch specialist train builders who wanted to “test whether 3d printing could be a feasible option for… Continue reading Take the Train from Shapeways
Shapeways Goes Dark
No, they’re not shutting down; rather they are expanding by now offering a new hi-res black color for your 3D prints. The busy 3D print service has added this new color just in time for the Halloween object printing season. (Side note: is there a “halloween printing season”? Hmm.) According to the press release: Black… Continue reading Shapeways Goes Dark
Shapeways Gets Wired
Wired Magazine’s GeekDad blog reviewed the Shapeways 3D printing service. We’ve covered them before, and found Shapeways to have very interesting characteristics, ranging from their business model to their extremely easy-to-use friendly interface. By and large Wired agrees, but they did identify three key disadvantages of Shapeways (or similar services): It’s expensive. The cost per… Continue reading Shapeways Gets Wired
Shapeways Creator Launched
Last week Shapeways, one of the newest and most interesting consumer-oriented 3D print services, launched a new beta of their user-friendly “Shapeways Creator” software. It is their answer to the difficult question of enabling laymen to design their own 3D objects without having to learn complex 3D software (which Shapeways also accepts, if you… Continue reading Shapeways Creator Launched
Shapeways Gets Bent
Shapeways, the latest consumer-oriented 3D printing service that’s making a huge splash across the internet, slipped in an announcement last month about a new print media: “White Strong & Flexible”. This unusual material enables designers to make objects that bend! The example shown above illustrates the possibilities. While most printing services do not… Continue reading Shapeways Gets Bent
An Invitation to Shapeways
Shapeways is a 3D printing service we’ve talked about before. We’ve covered many print services in the past, and the reality is that they are all operations focused around a fleet of 3D printers that must be kept busy. So what’s the difference between them? We think it’s the choice of audience and… Continue reading An Invitation to Shapeways