When i.Materialise introduced stainless steel printing earlier this year they used a very straightforward pricing scheme: price by volume. Now they’ve announced a new scheme in which you’re encouraged to print larger steel models because the price drops as you increase the size of your model. The new pricing scheme is slightly more complex: … Continue reading Variable Steel Print Pricing At i.Materialise
Service
It’s 20% Off At i.Materialise
3D Print service i.Materialise has a special deal on until the end of this school year: 20% off regular prices for printed objects for students doing school projects. Why are they doing this? Because they’ve observed a significant bump in student prints during the months of April-July. In other words, the work that students… Continue reading It’s 20% Off At i.Materialise
Sketch to 3D Makes Modeling Easy
It’s always been a challenge to get the right models for printing. You may get lucky and find what you want in a freebie repository; you might find it for sale in a 3D print service’s library, or you might have to resort to designing the object yourself with a 3D modelling tool – if… Continue reading Sketch to 3D Makes Modeling Easy
i.Materialise in 24 Hours
3D print service i.Materialise announced a new program to dramatically speed up delivery of printed items. You know the scene – you design a brilliant 3D model, send it to the service and then you wait for many days before the result is sitting in your hands. If you live in Europe you’ll actually… Continue reading i.Materialise in 24 Hours
Who Needs 3D Printing Rules?
After reading Shapeways’ recent post discussing their new design rules for stainless steel prints, we thought we should weigh in. Shapeways has gone as far as developing a dedicated “Design Rule Repository. What’s in it? According to their post: This is a subsection of the website dedicated to design rules. Going forward, the blog… Continue reading Who Needs 3D Printing Rules?
Order Your Own Mini-Me
3D Print service Sculpteo now offers the ability to print a figurine with your own head on it! The process is pretty straightforward: take two police-lineup style photos of your face and send them off to Sculpteo with your order. Their artists will cook up a colorful design that you must approve before it’s printed.… Continue reading Order Your Own Mini-Me
Shapeways Re-Silverizes
After an inexplicable absence, 3D Print service Shapeways has re-energized their silver printing capability. Originally introduced some time ago, their silver material disappeared for a short while but now is re-instated as an available material. According the Shapeways, the new silver has “a better price and the same amazing quality.” The cost of a… Continue reading Shapeways Re-Silverizes
3D Systems Acquires A Service. Again
Not long after purchasing Bits From Bytes, 3D Systems has now acquired industrial rapid prototyping service QuickParts. Quickparts is a significant service that provides a variety of 3D printing technologies, including: Stereolithography(SLA) Machined Plastic Prototypes(MPP) Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) Selective Laser Sintering(SLS) QuickParts also provides injection moulding services. We’re contemplating what… Continue reading 3D Systems Acquires A Service. Again
New Colors At Shapeways? Again?
Leading consumer 3D print service Shapeways has added Indigo and Dark Grey color options to their awkwardly named but highly descriptive “strong and flexible” plastic material. It seems not a month goes by without the inventive mandarins of Shapeways announcing new colors or material availability. Don’t get us wrong – we think this is the… Continue reading New Colors At Shapeways? Again?
Shapeways Gets Own 3D Printer
For some reason we thought Shapeways was a 3D print service. Well, it is – but now they *really* are because they now have their very own 3D printer on site. Previously all of their work was outsourced to a variety of partners. Outsourcing printing isn’t that surprising, given the massive selection of materials they… Continue reading Shapeways Gets Own 3D Printer
See It Before You Download It
Content is king once you have a 3D printer. You need things to print, after all! But one of the main repositories for free printable 3D models, Thingiverse, has prepared a wonderful upgrade to their service: 3D viewing of models – before you print them! While there are a ton of models at Thingiverse,… Continue reading See It Before You Download It
FigurePrints Revisited
Quite some time ago we reported on a unique service: FigurePrints. It’s a totally niche 3D print service, but what’s the niche? They print custom figurines of your World of Warcraft character. We thought we’d take another look at them. How does it work? It’s pretty simple, really. You specify your character’s name, Realm… Continue reading FigurePrints Revisited
Name Your Price at Model Labs
We’ve found another 3D print service that should be added to the list. Model Labs, a Laguna Beach, California-based operation provides rapid prototyping services: they’ll accept a STL format file and 3D print it for you on their equipment. They offer a variety of 3D print services, including FDM and SLA. There are many… Continue reading Name Your Price at Model Labs
Share That Model With OurBricks
You’ve cooked up an amazing 3D model and you’d like to show it off. . . to your mum who doesn’t have a 3D modelling tool install or have any hope of getting one. What do you do? You use OurBricks – a new beta service that lets you share your 3D models online.… Continue reading Share That Model With OurBricks
getitmade!
You’ve designed something ultracool for your 3D printer and want to sell it. But how? One way you might consider is getitmade, a site kicking off new ideas: getitmade is a new kind of marketplace where anyone with a product idea can test the market and use social networking to generate pre-sales and get… Continue reading getitmade!
i.Materialise Metalises
“Clank” is a sound you’ll be hearing more often at i.Materialise in the future after this week’s announcement of their new Titanium 3D printing process. No kidding – you can now order a Titanium Whistle! This very advanced process seems unique to i.Materialise, and involves a powder based process. Powedered titanium metal is laid… Continue reading i.Materialise Metalises
What Can I Make For You?
There’s another option for makers to keep their fabbers running: What Can I Make For You? is a web service that links consumers to makers. The service solicits requests for, well, anything, from consumers. The service attempts to match the request against someone from their pool of makers. This small five person San Francisco-based… Continue reading What Can I Make For You?
MakerFactory.com
As often is the case, and experiment leads to a hobby, leads to a business and sometimes to a multinational corporation. In this case the experiment was Vernon Effalo’s effort to build a dome. He required a large number of dodecahedrons and simply outsourced it to other makers, which eventually enabled him to complete the… Continue reading MakerFactory.com
Ponoko Personal Factory is 3D
Personal fabrication is an amazing feat: being able to press a button and then hold a completed item in your hand a short while later. Typically Fabbaloo focuses on 3D printers as the device of choice to do that, but the reality is that such devices are limited to producing only certain types of objects.… Continue reading Ponoko Personal Factory is 3D
Shapeways Finances Exposed
Some detective work by Joris Peels of i.Materialise has revealed interesting facts regarding 3D print service Shapeways. Recognized as one of the industry leaders in print service, we (and others) have wondered about the success of their expanding business. Peels reports that in an interview with Netherlands website Sprout, Shapeways CEO Peter Weijmarshausen reveals some… Continue reading Shapeways Finances Exposed
3D Marvels
We ran across an unusual 3D model service: 3D Marvels. The site operates as a clearinghouse for 3D artist works. In other words, you can shop there for STL and COLLADA format 3D models that you can print on your 3D printer. 3DMarvels is a companion site to the very successful Wood Marvels site, which currently… Continue reading 3D Marvels
Make $80,000 With Just an Idea
Personal manufacturing doesn’t have to take place on your premises using your own equipment. It can be outsourced to Ponoko, the personal manufacturing company. Ponoko posted a very interesting story of one of their users who managed to bootstrap his way to a cool USD$80,000 – starting from nothing! It started with an idea,… Continue reading Make $80,000 With Just an Idea
Shapeways Stretches Their Envelope
Most low-cost 3D printers offer rather constrained build sizes, of less than 20-30cm per side, sometimes much smaller. Print services can be similar, unless they use SLS approaches, but Shapeways has broken through this barrier by now offering a gigantic build envelope of 70cm x 38cm x 58cm (27.6″ x 15″ x 22.9″). This is… Continue reading Shapeways Stretches Their Envelope
Sculpteo Sails Across the Sea
The 3D Print Service market just got a bit more interesting. France-based Sculpteo, whom we reported on some time ago, announced they now ship to the USA, joining major players Shapeways, i.Materialise and Ponoko. Previously, they shipped only to Europe. Thus it’s time to check out Sculpteo in a bit more detail. Sculpteo operates… Continue reading Sculpteo Sails Across the Sea
An Olympic Finish at Shapeways
As we predicted in July, Shapeways 3D print service now offers Sterling Silver as a build material for 3D prints. At this point it’s only an experiment until November 7th, apparently for the tall foreheads at Shapeways to determine if it really works. Interestingly, the Sterling Silver is not actually 3D printed. Instead, they… Continue reading An Olympic Finish at Shapeways
Bespoke Makes Legs – Beautiful Legs
We’ve been waiting for something just like this: a startup company that takes full advantage of 3D printing technology to mass personalize an item for everyone. In the case of Bespoke Innovations, they supply one-of-a-kind prosthetics for individuals by leveraging 3D print technology from 3D Systems with an artistic flair: The Bespoke process is… Continue reading Bespoke Makes Legs – Beautiful Legs
Ponoko’s Electronics
Distributed manufacturing service Ponoko has added some new materials to their shelf. Actually a *lot* of new items, and they are electronic! No, you’re not printing or extruding electronics, but instead they are selectable components that can become part of your creations. The list of components is astonishingly long, ranging from fourteen different styles of… Continue reading Ponoko’s Electronics
Ponoko Arriva in Italia
Distributed manufacturing hub Ponoko continues its invasion of Europe by opening an Italian front. They’ve partnered with a local fabrication shop, Vectorealism, to produce your items locally in Milan. The Italian operation joins the Ponoko club, which now boasts manufacturing hubs in San Francisco, London, Berlin and the 10,000 Garages of 100KGarages.com. Oh,… Continue reading Ponoko Arriva in Italia
Add a Floor for only $129
There are tens of thousands of new web-based services that do practically everything, from counting kids’ allowances to photo editing to managing your sales process. One of them is FloorPlanner, “the easiest way to create floor plans”. They provide a simple web interface with drag and drop capability for true ease of use. The… Continue reading Add a Floor for only $129
Shapeways Goes For Gold. And Bronze.
It’s not exactly the Olympics, but Shapeways can now print in Gold and Bronze finishes thanks to their most recent announcement. They’ve added more finishings one can select for stainless steel prints. In addition to the existing Gold Plate Matte finish, you can now choose from: Gold Plated Glossy (on the left above) Antique… Continue reading Shapeways Goes For Gold. And Bronze.
Controversy Over Shapeways Gold Plating Formula?
A while back the Shapeways 3D Print service toyed with Gold Plating on stainless steel printed models. Evidently this trial was successful, as they have now announced a new, permanently available material: Gold Plated Stainless Steel. This sounds great, as we previously postulated that a ton (well, maybe not an *actual* ton, but lots… Continue reading Controversy Over Shapeways Gold Plating Formula?
Ponoko Hubs the UK
Distributed manufacturing platform Ponoko has announced they’ve got a new manufacturing hub: London, UK-based RazorLAB. This adds to their already established empire of hubs including New Zealand, San Francisco, Milan and Berlin. What does it mean? Greatly decreased shipping costs for makers using Ponoko’s services. In fact, Ponoko has actually been subsidizing shipments to the… Continue reading Ponoko Hubs the UK
High Glossing Shapeways
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… Continue reading High Glossing Shapeways
From Solidworks to Shapeways
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… Continue reading From Solidworks to Shapeways
Shapeways Summer Colors
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 … Continue reading Shapeways Summer Colors
A Simple Scanning Service
3D Scanner manufacturer GKS Global Services has introduced a really simple method of obtaining complex 3D scans. They’re addressing the scenario where you need a 3D model of an existing physical object, but you can’t afford to buy your own scanner and/or don’t happen to have the skills to convert the data into a usable… Continue reading A Simple Scanning Service
Visiting a FabLab
There’s a great photojourney of a visit through Aachen’s FabLab at lekernel’s scrapbook, including images of their 3D printer, laser cutter and milling machine. What exactly is a “FabLab”? Here’s the Wikipedia definition: A Fab Lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop with an array of computer controlled tools that cover several different length… Continue reading Visiting a FabLab
Rapido3D 3D Services Get Personal
UK-based 3D “Laser Scanning and 3D Mesh Bureau” provides the standard 3D services such as 3D printing, scanning, engraving, CNC machining, etc. But they also offer two unusual 3D services: “Head and Facial Scanning” and the more ominous “Body Scanning”. The results are startling, as you can see in this video. According to their… Continue reading Rapido3D 3D Services Get Personal
Poor Man’s 3D Printing: The Print
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… Continue reading Poor Man’s 3D Printing: The Print
Golden 3D Prints with Shapeways’ Midas Touch
Shapeways is experimenting with another print material, one you’ve always wanted to have: Gold! They’ve managed to develop a process where a gold-plating step is added to normal stainless steel 3D printing. The results, as you can see in the image above, are terrific. The major concern with Gold Printing, is of course… Continue reading Golden 3D Prints with Shapeways’ Midas Touch
DeviceKnit Discovers Good Uses
We were approached by John Ganotis, developer of DeviceKnit, a unique way to think about gadgets. Here’s how it works, according to John: We’ve been describing it as a “cookbook for gadgets.” In its first, simplest form its all about sharing applications for different electronics and gadgets people have. Users submit “implementations” as responses… Continue reading DeviceKnit Discovers Good Uses
A Little World Idea
We’re checking out the new iPhone app from “Little World Gifts”, which is a rather cool idea. You browse a series of 3D “gifts” via your iPhone – and browsing means viewing in 3D using rotations, zoom, etc. Once you’ve selected something, you can pick one of your contacts and purchase the item to be… Continue reading A Little World Idea
Glass Objects from Shapeways
The big news this week was clearly Shapeways surprise announcement: they now provide glass as print material! Glass printing has been the subject of much investigation and experimentation this year, and now it appears that Shapeways has made enough progress to offer commercial 3D printing using it. Even better, the glass used is recycled… Continue reading Glass Objects from Shapeways
TurboSquid
Model makers and consumers might head over to TurboSquid to find and market 3D models. Fabbaloo readers are both makers and consumers, so we felt it was time to point out the benefits of TurboSquid’s amazing service. What is TurboSquid? It’s perhaps the largest commercial online marketplace for 3D models today. Operating like eBay,… Continue reading TurboSquid
New Google Sketchup 3D Plugin from i.materialise
There’s already a few plugins for Google’s popular Sketchup 3D modelling program that permit export to formats suitable for 3D printing, but we learned that i.materialise has now released their own version. The plugin is easily installed into Sketchup by using the instructions linked below. In the image above you can see how it… Continue reading New Google Sketchup 3D Plugin from i.materialise
The 3D Printer Virus, Really?
Detectives at 3D print service Shapeways have uncovered a first: an actual 3D “virus”! The so-called virus turned out to be insertion of alien 3D model information in front of the desired model code within the .STL file, such that when sent to a 3D printer, the alien object (in this case a very… Continue reading The 3D Printer Virus, Really?
Ponoko Makes MakerBots!
What does a personal manufacturing service from New Zealand have to do with a 3D printer kit manufacturer from New York City? A lot more now, apparently. The two organizations have teamed up to leverage each other’s strengths. MakerBot has opened a Showroom on Ponoko, where you can purchase and customize not only your… Continue reading Ponoko Makes MakerBots!
Digging Through eBay for 3D
Following up on our earlier article in which we sought out used 3D printers on eBay, we noticed that printers are not the only relevant 3D item you can find on eBay. We’ve located several instances of individuals selling print services via eBay, but we’d use them only if their price was less than… Continue reading Digging Through eBay for 3D
Print 3D in 2D
A new 3D print service has launched, SnapilyPro, but it’s not what you think: they print 3D models in 2D. The service accepts 3D photoshop PSD files and uses lenticular printing to produce a flat surface image that appears to move when you rotate the image. Why would you use a 2D print… Continue reading Print 3D in 2D
Put Your 3D Printer To Work Today!
3D Printing “connecter” CloudFab has come out of private beta and is now accepted registrations from the general public. We wrote of CloudFab earlier when they were in the testing phase. What’s CloudFab? We term it a “connecter” because that’s precisely what it does: those who require 3D printing are connected to those who… Continue reading Put Your 3D Printer To Work Today!
WYSIWYG 3D Printing
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… Continue reading WYSIWYG 3D Printing
The Doctor is In at Shapeways
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… Continue reading The Doctor is In at Shapeways
OpenStructures
As the world slowly fills with advanced personal and commercial manufacturing equipment, we’re starting to see the emergence of systems to make the resulting manufactured objects fit together in organized ways. Projects such as SKDB and MakerBeam hope to help us locate and assemble independently designed objects. Another project in this area is OpenStructures: … Continue reading OpenStructures
Purple Platypus
As the 3D printer market grows, the sales model changes, too. At first we see manufacturers selling directly, but once established they expand their coverage by partnering with hardware resellers. Resellers are a very effective way to market products within a fixed geographical area because they can be much more attuned to local conditions and… Continue reading Purple Platypus
The Sculpteo 3D Printing Service
A new European 3D print service has emerged: Sculpteo. This friendly service appears to compete with Shapeways, as it offers not only a straightforward method of uploading your designs, but also has a “community gallery” from which you may choose pre-made designs. Once your design is set: You choose the material, the monochrome… Continue reading The Sculpteo 3D Printing Service
The .MGX Collection
Earlier this week we encountered iMaterialise’s .MGX collection at the Parallellepipeda Exhibition, and we wanted to learn more. iMaterialise, as we’ve written before, is one of the notable and larger 3D print services today. Like most 3D print services, they allow you to upload your own 3D design (and even help you do it successfully)… Continue reading The .MGX Collection
EuroPonoko!
As we suspected a short while ago, Ponoko has announced a new build location in Europe. The new hub will be located in Berlin, and joins the existing build hubs in San Francisco and New Zealand. This development means European makers or consumers will have significantly less shipping costs when using Ponoko: For example the… Continue reading EuroPonoko!
Inventables – The Material and Technology Marketplace
Tipster Zach points us at a new service: Inventables. Here’s the premise: Inventables exists to make it easy for vendors of materials and technologies to get an initial introduction to potential buyers. These buyers (engineers, designers, marketers) browse our online marketplace with the hope to find and work with vendors that manufacture materials and technologies… Continue reading Inventables – The Material and Technology Marketplace
Welcome to The Product Bay
The Pirate Bay may be fading away, eaten slowly by corporate legal teams, but their inspiration carries on – and not only for bigtime entertainment media. We’ve just bumped into “The Product Bay”, whose intention seems similar to the Pirates. They “want to take all of this to the next level … for real life… Continue reading Welcome to The Product Bay
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
The Blueprints
The Blueprints is: a website dedicated to collecting 3/4/5-view drawings, templates and blueprints for as many objects as possible. Ranging from humans to tanks and cars to mobile phones, the goal is to provide reference material for 3D modelers, scale modelers, replica builders etc. That’s right – a very large repository (37,000+) of… Continue reading The Blueprints
Prototek Manufacturing
CNBC and Fox Business News recently aired a segment of “21st Century Business” in which Prototek Sales Manager Dennis Rocheford explained a bit about his company. Originally in the sheet metal rapid prototyping prototyping business, they’ve been expanding their capability and now include stereolithography and 3D printing with ZCorp machinery. Prototek is a large rapid… Continue reading Prototek Manufacturing