On 3D Printing

Category Archives: News

Fashion Week and 3D Printing: Stratasys and Shapeways Hit the Runway

January 27, 2013 News

3D printing has been used to develop some new interesting fashion designs. At the 3D Print Show in London last October, there was a live catwalk featuring 3D printed wearables.

With Paris and New York Fashion Week in season, 3D printing is again on display.

In Paris, a Dutch designer exhibited 3D printed collections made on a Stratasys 3D printer:

Dutch designer van Herpen’s eleven-piece collection featured two 3D printed ensembles, including an elaborate skirt and cape created in collaboration with artist, architect, designer and professor Neri Oxman from MIT’s* Media Lab, and 3D printed by Stratasys. An intricate dress was also designed in collaboration with Austrian architect Julia Koerner, currently lecturer at UCLA Los Angeles, and 3D printed by Materialise, marking the second piece created together with Koerner and the ninth with Materialise.

The 3D printed skirt and cape were produced using Stratasys’ unique Objet Connex multi-material 3D printing technology, which allows a variety of material properties to be printed in a single build. This allowed both hard and soft materials to be incorporated within the design, crucial to the movement and texture of the piece. “The ability to vary softness and elasticity inspired us to design a “second skin” for the body acting as armor-in-motion; in this way we were able to design not only the garment’s form but also its motion,” explains Oxman. “The incredible possibilities afforded by these new technologies allowed us to reinterpret the tradition of couture as “tech-couture” where delicate hand-made embroidery and needlework is replaced by code.”

Van Herpen adds, “I feel it’s important that fashion can be about much more than consumerism, but also about new beginnings and self-expression, so my work very much comes from abstract ideas and using new techniques, not the re-invention of old ideas. I find the process of 3D printing fascinating because I believe it will only be a matter of time before we see the clothing we wear today produced with this technology, and it’s because it’s such a different way of manufacturing, adding layer-by-layer, it will be a great source of inspiration for new ideas.”

Learn more about Objet 3D printers at the company’s website.

In New York, designers will be sitting down with Shapeways to discuss Fashion in 3D.

Shapeways, a 3D printing design studio and marketplace that spoke at our Startup Showcase last fall, will host an interactive design experience and lectures on the future of fabrication at Manhattan’s Ace Hotel to explore how digital technology can revolutionize fashion.

Designers Michael Schmidt (famous for Lady Gaga’s bubble dress), Anna Sheffield, and Chris Habana will work with computer-aided design modelers to help guests create custom products using 3D printing on Feb. 9, in the hotel lobby. The all-day event will culminate with the unveiling of a 3D printed dress designed by Schmidt and Francis Bitonti.

At the Decoded Fashion Forum at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Shapeways’ Director of Marketing Carine Carmy will chat with designer Kimberly Ovitz about 3D printing on the runway. Ovitz will debut her first 3D printed collection for AW13, one of the few times a designer collection has incorporated 3D printing.

3D Printing Advances Dentistry in London at Daewood & Tanner Practice

January 26, 2013 News

The field of Dentistry is being redefined by 3D printing. As we reported last April, dental labs are increasingly using 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies to provide personalized care.

Daewood & Tanner is a specialist dental practice in London that is pioneering the use of this technology. Andrew Daewood was recently interviewed by the Financial Times.

“3D printing has recently captured the public imagination, but most 3D printers are churning out plastic junk,” says Andrew Dawood. “Dentists have been using 3D printing for 10 years, to make things that really can’t be made in any other way.”

Daewood’s firm creates dental implants using digital scans and 3D printing.

Although conventional manufacturing still produces most implants, an increasing number are being printed, often using a very durable plastic called Peek that can be implanted into the jaw to replace lost bone. “Our experience with the use of technology to assist ‘extreme cases’ enables us to make straightforward treatment even more straightforward, and for many patients, to make possible what was once considered to be impossible,” says Dawood.

Patients for whom implant treatment used not to be feasible, because they did not have enough bone left in their jaw, can now be treated. New technology allows dentists to identify islands of bone into which implants can be placed, using minimally invasive techniques. “People who once might have been told they were untreatable or needed 18 months of carefully staged, arduous reconstructive surgery, are now being treated in hours or even minutes, usually receiving fixed replacement teeth on the day of treatment,” says Dawood.

Read the full interview at the Financial Times.

Here’s a video interview with a Daewood & Tanner patient after an implant.

Nature’s 3D Printing: Using E. Coli Bacteria to Grow Objects

January 23, 2013 News

The field of synthetic biology offers us state-of-the-art results like biofuel, but researchers are looking to push the envelope and develop a technique that could be Nature’s version of 3D printing.

Designers at IDEO have teamed up with scientists at the Lim Lab at the University of California, San Francisco to envision a “provocation” (that’s designer-ese for thought experiment) in which they explore the possibilities of exploiting known properties of microorganisms to literally “grow” the products we use every day.

In layman’s terms, researchers are exploring ways to train bacteria to grow into shapes when exposed to light. Perhaps one training could result in a coffee cup while another results in a functional motor gear.

In their first visual exploration of this possibility, they decided to expand on an already-demonstrated property of certain E. coli bacteria. These bugs were genetically engineered to be responsive to light, creating so-called “bacterial photographs.”

From there, Will Carey and Adam Reineck of IDEO teamed up with Reid Williams, a Ph.D. candidate at UCSF, to imagine a photo-sensitive microorganism that would have its light-sensitive switch linked to a different property–say, the production of a hard shell.

The result could be a tough and durable everyday object made out of cells encased in cellulose–the stuff in plants–or chitin, which is the major component of lobster shells.

It’s important to note that at this stage, this process is still entirely conceptual. But it is based on real science, and that’s the whole point: design provocations like these help people think outside the mental boxes we’ve all been put in by our limited knowledge of what’s happening at the frontiers of science.

Via Fast Company.

Biologist photo by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used under Creative Commons license.

3D Printing Company ExOne to Raise $75 Million in IPO on NASDAQ

January 22, 2013 News

3D printing firm ExOne has filed to go public. Based in North Huntingdon, PA, ExOne plans to raise up to $75 million in an IPO and list on the NASDAQ with the symbol XONE. The company’s latest annual revenue figure was $19 million.

Founded in 2003, ExOne develops 3D printing and additive manufacturing technology. As described on their website:

Our process solutions give manufacturers the freedom to produce objects that have virtually unlimited design complexity. We collaborate with our clients through the entire development and production process so that they are able to “materialize” new concepts — designs, prototypes, and production parts — precisely when needed. Production scale is irrelevant and lot quantities of one are just as efficient as lot quantities of one thousand. We offer both the services and the equipment to enable point-of-use manufacturing using additive manufacturing processes.

We support the use of traditional industrial strength materials ranging from metals to ceramics to glass, all used in revolutionary ways. Our full range of offerings also includes services and equipment for fabricating on a “micro” scale, which enables machining of small features with precision and speed. ExOne is the optimal partner for any industrial manufacturer who is transitioning their manufacturing business to the digital age.

Below is a video showing ExOne’s digital part materialization (3D printing) process for printing sand casting molds and cores, beginning with a digital file, going through solidification analysis, printing and finally casting a finished industrial part.