Mataerial is developed by Petr Novikov and Saša Jokić at IAAC and Joris Laarman Studio. It claims to be a radical new way to 3D print, the technique allows you to print on any surface and without support material.
Neil Gershenfeld on the digital revolution of fabrication in Wired magazine where he says that it really is about “bringing programmability to the physical world”.
A nice overview of the potential and concerns of 3D printing. How does it affect mass consumption, logistics, marketing and what does it mean to copyright?
Anna Valtonen talks at TEDxUmeå on creativity and society.
This project, a 3D printing pen, aims to develop a 3D pen which lets you draw with plastic in the air. It is basically a glue gun which cools the material as soon as it comes out, therefore you can draw 3D sculptures.
Nokia released the back shell and back panel of the Lumia 820 smart phone so that anyone can design his own version and 3D print it. See the article on Dezeen. Teenage Engineering released files earlier so you can print spare parts for their OP-1 synthesizer, but as far as I know Nokia is the first large company to really address 3D printing in this way.
An successful attempt to make a 3D printed vinyl record. You can find the whole story at Instructables and a download of The White Stripes at 123app.
At the University of Warwick they have developed conductive composite that can be used in a desktop 3D printer. The open-access paper describes how to make it and gives examples of applications.
LittleBits is an electronics kit for children consisting of magnetic blocks that snap together. LittleBits want to make learning about electronics fun and easy and if you watch the video below, it looks like they have a good change at it.
Disney Research has develop Printed Optics, interactive objects built by 3D printing that enable display, sensing or illumination. You can find the paper here.
A new article published by ForeignAffairs.com where Neil Gershenfeld once more explains How To Make Almost Anything in FabLabs around the world.
Desktop 3D printers typically use FDM (fused deposition modeling), Formlabs is developing a stereolithography printer. Read more on Wired. These guys have been working on that for a while too.
Exciting news from Teenage Engineering about their OP-1 synthesizer. They started to offer the CAD files for replacement parts so you can 3D print them yourself. There has been a lot of talk about how companies will do this, but this is the first one (as far as I know) that actually does it! Available at Shapeways.
“Made in Germany, Laywood as a filament is made from 40% recycled wood that is combined with polymer binders allowing it to be melted and extruded like all of the other commercially available 3D filaments on the market today. In addition to smelling and feeling like wood, the new filament also has the ability to change its color shade depending on the temperature of your extrusion head. By varying how hot the head becomes, you can create interesting gradient effects from dark to light to give your final product that natural glow.” (Geek.com) The printable wood filament is available from German RepRap.
Stone Spray Project: 3D Printer with sand or soil and glue
Solar sintering
Endless: Printing a chair with a robot arm
World’s Smallest 3D Printer by TU Wien
I am presenting ‘Products As Creative Experiences’ at the exhibition What if… of Umea Institute of Design at the new Bildmuseet in Umea.
Materialise World Conference 2012
18-20 April, Leuven, Belgium
Last week Materialise, the Belgium additive manufacturing giant, organized the World Conference 2012 about additive manufacturing. (…)
There are many so called mass customization services to find on the web. Recenlty, Dominik Walcher and Frank Piller released a benchmark study of 500 mass customization companies.
Furthermore, two online databases, Milk or Sugar and Configurator Database, give you a good overview of websites where you can design your own.
The Free Universal Construction Kit, a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys.
Stop Talking. Start Making. Check out their videos with David Kelley (IDEO), Bre Pettis (Makerbot) and more.
3D Printing materials with variable densities, such as a concrete cylinder shown in the video below.
Autodesk released a sleek looking book Imagine Design Create where they show the impact of design in different fields. Nice chapter about democratizing of fabrication, 3D printing, DIY and DIT culture. Download the book in PDF format at their website.
The Igloo project is a great project that aims to develop open source tools for designers that let them create parametric designs. These designs can be customized by users, in the browser, like for instance this bowl shown here. Soon to be released, keep an eye on their site.
Customization
There have been some great apps around which allow you to customize your sneakers on the way. Reebok as well as NikeID are both available for your smart phone. And then there is this app for customizing your clothing.
3D Scanning, Modeling & Printing
Trimensional lets you scan your face or a small object and you can export the scan to .STL and send it directly to your MakerBot, Ultimaker or RepRap. iSculptor is a 3D polygon modeling app, more info on the developers website. Finally, there are several .STL viewers 1, 2 and 3.
A selection of interesting TED talks.
Joseph Pine on authentic experiences.
Barry Schwartz about (too much) choice and the consequences of that.
Neil Gershenfeld about FabLabs and open manufacturing.
