Could Ponoko have a 3D Printing beta twin?

Shapeways has been mentioned on the Ponoko blog a few times before, from the recent interview with Frank Pillar to Duann’s report on the company back in August. But I thought I would take a closer look at the Netherlands based start-up since they recently announced a competition to have one winning design 3D printed in Titanium. (Details at the end.)

Have you ever wanted to turn your 3D designs into reality? Enter Shapeways! Just upload your design, we print it and ship it to you - it’s easy. Within ten working days you’ll hold your own design in your hands.

But that’s not all - we’re offering you everything you need to meet fellow Shapeways users, share your work and find inspiration.

We’re using a technique called ‘3D Printing’ which has proven itself as a high-quality production technique, but up to now has always been very expensive. By creating a large community we are able to produce much cheaper, meaning better prices for you.

That’s from the Shapeways about section. Sounds familiar… The drawback is– you’ve got to know how to work a 3D software. There’s a forum, tutorials and support pages to help you out. But if, like me, you like to keep your distance from Maya and SolidWorks, there’s Creator. While you can’t make your own design like you could with Ponoko’s Photomake, the Creator program from Shapeways does let you customize pre-existing designs.

There are currently three designs you can customize with Creator: ring poem, light poem and fruit confessions. I wasn’t able to play with Creator myself because registration with the site is activated manually… and I didn’t have the patience to wait. But my guess is that you type in your own message, and the program turns the letters in your message into the napkin ring, the light or inscribes it on the outer ridge of the fruit bowl.

For those of you that are blessed with 3D software skills, you can make a whole lot more than poems. Check out some of the designs that have been executed with the Shapeways service. By the way, you can also sell your 3D printed designs through the Shapeways gallery.

Pretty incredible.

And from now until 15 January, Shapeways is holding a contest to have one winning design 3D metal printed in Titanium. Titanium! Visit their blog for more info on the contest and frequent updates on the service.

Chris Connors over at Make has posted a great piece that those of us without a formal design education may well appreciate, and even those with. Chris was writing in response to PBS’ Design Squad program, from which the image opposite comes, and references the Android G1 phone and iPod iterations as examples of contemporary designs that blur the traditional deadline of ‘product shipping’ into simply another phase of testing and development:

“When your product is sufficiently complete, and you have resolved the most pressing problems determined in the process, it is time to deliver. This does not mean that the project is done forever, instead, it means that it is ready for more testing in a real world environment. As you (and your team, as may be the case) see the product in the world, you will hopefully be looking at it for examples of where it can be changed and improved. As you find aspects of the project that need refinement, you make a plan for revision and implement it. Hopefully these flaws you find at this point are not tragic enough to seriously stall or ruin the project.”

Chris also recently posted a hugely inspiring 10 minute chat with Mitch Altman, recorded at the Austin Maker Faire. I’ve gushed about Altman before, and this clip does nothing but reinforce my view of him as an inspiration amongst open designers!

via Make

DAVID-Laserscanner 2.1 is an Incredibly Low-Cost (or free) 3D Scanner. All you need is A camera (e.g. web cam), A hand-held line laser (around U$25), Two plain boards in the background, A Windows PC and the ‘DAVID-Laserscanner‘ software.

You will need to use their fusing software if you want to rotate a model and get a fully textured 3D scan, which could then be printed in a 3D printer.

What is really exciting here is that it puts some relatively advanced reverse engineering capabilities into the hands of the consumer. Let’s say that the housing for your mobile phone has cracked, theoretically you could scan the object, repair the crack, and print out a new shell. Or perhaps it could be used to scan and modify an existing product allowing you to 3D print your customized design, or maybe you could make a clay/whatever model to scan and then print??

The site has simple instructions on how to make your scanning booth, along with other forums and a wiki.

This really is an amazing free software, I would love to see images of any experiments produced.

via my new friends monogocoro

In an excellently titled post, “How to make money with free software”, Dutch designer Stani Michiels describes the design process behind his winning entry in a competition to design a new five euro coin for the Dutch Ministry of Finance.

Its a fascinating bit of software/graphic/product design, using amongst other things, a live internet ranking system of the Netherlands’ great architects, an arrangement of books on a virtual shelf and the country’s regional birds to depict standard design elements such as Queen Beatrix and the map of the Netherlands. Michiels doesn’t say how ‘live’ that list is - whether each coin is generated on-the-fly to reflect the state of the internet at that time. Presumably not, unless the coins are rapidly manufactured! Those days are yet to come, although, as Michiels points out, the idea of open source coins can present some curious problems:

“I would have loved to release the coin under the GPL, which could maybe solve the financial crisis. However for obvious reasons I was not allowed to do that.“

Fact: for anyone not feeling the financial pinch at the moment, the gold edition of this coin can be purchased for merely 39 of the regular version.

via Core77

Just when you thought it was exciting enough having a desktop 3D printer about to be released for under $5000, along comes The Mcor Matrix, which Prints 3D using standard 80gsm A4 paper, at a fraction of the total cost of ownership of current 3D printing technology (no actual numbers), but with operating costs of up to 50 times less.

Basically the unit uses Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM), or layer by layer of paper is cut then glued together to make a 3D object, you can use recycled paper, and the waste paper, can itself be recycled.

Models straight out of the Mcor Matrix have the appearance of a wood-carving and are “tough, durable and eco-friendly”. The final models can be treated with a cyanoacrylate which gives them a smooth, shiny finish and increases the life of the part, making it even more durable, according to Mcor Technologies. In terms of surface finish, the Mcor Matrix has a 2.54 times finer resolution than the market leader. Results from research conducted in Trinity College Dublin earlier this year which compares three rapid prototyping machines would reinforce this; “If these models were being used for fit form the Matrix would come out on top due to higher dimensional accuracy”.

The cost of the unit is not yet released, but according to the manufacturer “Regardless of the initial capital price point of the various machines, the maximum build (9.4litres or 316.33oz) of the Mcor Matrix costs under €94.00 ($135.00) to build, while a competitor having a cost per cc of €0.4 ($0.58) would be €3760 ($5,416.00). Any differential that might have been saved on the capital price of the machine is quickly lost.”

I can just imagine this producing the funkiest designs if you used say, a colour magazine as the raw paper to start with, giving you a wild multicolored model, revealing a kind of material truth.. Kinda like Australian designer Brodie Neill’s new furniture pieces Remix chaise longue carved from laminated plastic, plywood, chipboard and fibreboard.

Looking forward to seeing this one on the market..

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is a practical self-copying 3D printer, a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the parts up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about U$40,000. And it isn’t even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about U$650). That way it’s accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world.

Following the principles of the Free Software Movement RepRap are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence.

The RepRap blog have just linked to instructions on their Wiki of how to assemble their Ponoko RepRap Extruder, too cool. In an upcoming post we will be interviewing the RepRap crew to get their take on personal manufacturing and alike….

In the meantime check out their designs in the Ponoko showroom or the RepRap Site..

An conceptual leap that we took with Ponoko was to say that current manufacturing systems were economically unsustainable. It turns out that we might’ve been more correct than we suspected. The LA Times has an interesting article on factories closing or being abandoned in China:

First, Tao Shoulong burned his company’s financial books. He then sold his private golf club memberships and disposed of his Mercedes S-600 sedan.

And then he was gone.

And just like that, China’s biggest textile dye operation — with four factories, a campus the size of 31 football fields, 4,000 workers and debts of at least $200 million — was history.

…

[Federation of Hong Kong Industries] has estimated that as many as 15% of the 70,000 factories run by Hong Kong businesspeople in the mainland will close this year. He says many more are likely to shut after Chinese New Year in February, when millions of migrant laborers will return home for several days.

Hat tip: Tim O’Reilly