Category Archives: News
Vote for the Best Designs in MyMiniFactory 3D Printing Christmas Contest
MyMiniFactory.com, a platform for free 3D printable designs, is hosting its second design contest. The winner will receive a Ultimaker 1 3D printer worth £1,690.
Looking to tap into this talented base, My Mini Factory has launched a Christmas Design Contest, calling on the worldwide community of 3D designers to upload their designs.
Now that contest is open to voting! Click here to go see the designs and make your vote.
3D Printing Week: Structure Sensor, Twin Tags, Black Friday
3D Printing Week
Here is a roundup of the top 3D printing news from last week.
The competition for 3D scanners continued to heat up as Structure Sensor closed a $1.3 million Kickstarter campaign for an iPad add-on.
Pet lovers unite! and match your dogs with 3D printed Twin Tags.
We published the top 3D printer deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
And much more!
All News
Tuesday, November 26
Thursday, November 28
Friday, November 29
Top 2013 3D Printer and 3D Printing Black Friday Cyber Monday Deals
Happy Black Friday!
Here’s a roundup of the top deals for 3D printers and 3D printing from around the web.
3D Printers
MakerBot is offering the Replicator 2 3D printer for $1,999 ($598 off) at MakerBot retail stores, located in New York City, Boston, and Greenwich, CT.
Microsoft also had a deal running for the MakerBot Replicator 2 but is now sold out.
The Isis One desktop 3D printer is on sale for $1,999 through the weekend.
The Solidoodle 2nd and 3rd generation 3D printers are both discounted, each is under $700.
LulzBot is running a big sale on Cyber Monday for the LulzBot TAZ 2, reducing to $1,995 from $2,395, along with other discounts on filament and supplies.
Octave is selling discounted bundles for the Afinia 3D printer. And you can save $200 on the 3D printer from Afinia itself.
And you can always check out the 3D printer category at Amazon for deals on the UP! and FlashForge desktop 3D printers.
Other 3D Printing Sales
Besides 3D printers, there are discounts on other 3D printing shopping.
3D-filaments.com has discounted its stock of 3D printer filament.
Mixee Labs, a site that lets you design your own jewelry and figurines, is offering 10% off orders with the code BLACKFRIDAYMIXEE2013 during checkout.
3D printing service bureau Sculpteo is offering 20% off all prints with the code “black-friday”.
Shapeways is offering tiered discounts depending on how much you spend. Use the codes ”save10″, “save25″, or “save50″ at checkout.
Do you know of another discount? Add it in the comments or tweet it!
Happy shopping!
For Dog Lovers: Match Your Pet With 3D Printed Twin Tags
Dog Lovers Can Now Match Their Pets
Cole Lehman loves dogs, and now 3D printing too.
Lehman’s team participated in Startup Weekend Ogden with a goal of creating a Kickstarter project in a weekend. They turned to 3D printing through a partnership with Utah-based 3D printing service bureau WhiteClouds.
“We decided on something simple that people would want for their pets, 3D dog ID tags,” said Lehman. “We started with two ideas. One was a set of 6 seasonal tags that could be switched out throughout the year and the other was a tag that had a half for the owner’s keychain.”
Lehman validated the idea using a social polling platform, Wedgies, and Twitter messages, ultimately deciding on the matching half. They received $360 in advanced backing for the project that has a goal of $5,000.
Watch the Twin Tags Kickstarter video below.
Go check out their Kickstarter campaign to learn more.
Structure Sensor Closes $1.3M Kickstarter for 3D Scanner iPad Add-On
Last month, San Francisco-based hardware startup Occipital launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to turn your iPad into a powerful 3D scanner.
Their product is called the Structure Sensor, and the company pulled in $1.3 million from Kickstarter, wildly beating their goal of $100,000.
The Structure Sensor is the world’s first 3D sensor for mobile devices. It gives mobile devices a new sense – the ability to not just capture the world as two-dimensional images, but to actually understand it in three dimensions.
This enables a completely new set of mobile applications, including:
- 3D mapping of indoor spaces for instant measurements and virtual redecoration.
- Augmented reality (AR) games where virtual objects interact precisely with the geometry of the physical world, including occlusions.
- 3D object scanning for 3D content creation with no knowledge of CAD required.
- Body scanning for fitness tracking and virtual clothes fitting.
- Virtual reality games using 3D environments imported from the real world.
Occipital sells the Structure Sensor kits (retail or the hackable version) for $349. You can still pre-order for shipment in April 2014.
The 3D printing community is getting excited about it too
Many of the uses for Structure are related to augmented reality and entertainment, but it also can be used as an object 3D scanner. In the 3D printing world, 3D scanners have had a surge in popularity over the last 6 months, between the launch of the MakerBot Digitizer desktop 3D scanner, a handful of Kickstarter campaigns, and the 3D Systems Sense 3D scanner.
Structure is the newest entrant in the 3D scanning world, and some of the key folks in the industry are sharing their excitement.
“We can’t wait to play with one of these around the MakerBot office,” said Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot.
Josh Levine, VP of Engineering for Shapeways is also excited about the opportunities with the technology. “For me the challenge has been in creating 3D objects. This completely obliterates that challenge,” he said.
Learn more at structure.io.
