Motorola Mobility, a Google company, is building a 3D printed modular phone, and has partnered with 3D Systems for commercial fulfillment. More »
The Captured Dimensions pop-up studio was located in the Smithsonian Castle and featured approximately 80 digital cameras all connected to 3D software. More »
Microsoft expanded their support for 3D printing by launching a Windows 8 app called 3D Builder. It includes a library of objects you can edit and 3D print. More »
3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) announced the availability of the Sense 3D scanner, the first 3D scanner designed for the consumer and optimized for 3D printing. More »
With rumors circling that 3D Systems will be purchased by IBM, the stock soars. We look at why IBM might be interested in the 3D printing giant. More »
Shapeways Feed is a Pinterest for 3D Printing Designs
3D printing marketplace and community Shapeways has launched a new website featured called Shapeways Feed. Simply put, it’s a real-time Pinterest for 3D printable designs. Or as Shapeways puts it: “Our newly launched Feed is the best way to discover all the cool stuff people are making!”
Beautiful feature, and very effective at showcasing how many new high-quality designs are being published every day.
I immediately found two designs that I thought were amazing.
This “I miss you!” bracelet has a jigsaw puzzle design with a piece missing, created by badulaques.
And this Nocturnal timepiece is a very old instrument for telling time at night by measuring the stars. While concept is ancient, this design is all original. It is fully functional (all dials move properly) and meant to be worn as a pendant. Created by Whystler.
Great addition Shapeways! Our only request is that you enable 3rd party sites like ours to embed your feed. When will that be possible?
Inspiring High School Students to be Tomorrow’s Designers: 3D Printing [Video]
High School teacher Lesa Childers is inspiring her students to be tomorrow’s designers and engineers, thanks to technologies like 3D printing. In the video below, students from Notre Dame de Sion School of Kansas City showcase their project: a 3D printed fantasy castle with custom-designed furniture and decorations.
For this particular 3D printing project, Childers 3D printed a Castle she found on Thingiverse, and then assigned her students the task of 3D modeling small items of furniture they could then print on the Mosaic and then set into the castle. She gave various criteria as to the size, and watching out for material overhangs. She also create several video tutorials for getting up to speed on using SketchUp (first one here).
Castle photo from MakerBotShop on Thingiverse.
Via 3dprinter.net
3D Printing the Rosetta Stone for Kids Toys: Nerd Dad Triumph
Carnegie Mellon Professor Golan Levin has built the Rosetta Stone for kids toys. His Free Universal Construction Kit is a design for parts that enable interoperability between Legos, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs and several more popular toy brands. The catch? If you want these parts, you have to 3D print them yourself!
In what Forbes calls the “ultimate nerd dad triumph”, Levin and his former student Shawn Sims made sure these parts will fit:
Levin and Sims didn’t just make near replicas of the commercial toys, they used a measurement tool called an optical comparator to copy the toys’ dimensions to within 3 microns. And then they published those models on the Web. “Our lawyers were a bit concerned,” admits Levin, so much so that the pair initially planned to release the project anonymously.
Back in April, we highlighted the potential disruptive impact 3D printing could have on the toy industry.
With the price of toys so marked up, it’s within reason to think that kids will turn to generics or pirated designs to fill out their toy chest after parents tap out the budget at retail.
Look back at the music industry. The only way to buy music in the late 90s was to purchase the full album at retail. Then Napster and other P2P sharing software came along and allowed consumers to download individual mp3 songs, albeit pirated. When iTunes launched with individual song pricing and a more reliable service than the P2P networks, consumers flocked to the legal alternative. The retail music industry died but the digital music industry was born.
Perhaps in the next 5 years we’ll see the retail toy industry collapse and be replaced by a digital successor. The question is whether we will see a digital toy black market in the interim. In our view, that will be up to the toymakers and their willingness to disrupt their current model.
Has Levin truly liberated construction toys from working only with their own kind? Will this type of innovation improve or hurt sales and prices of popular toy brands?
See the full poster of toy compatibility at Slideshare.
The video below shows how the Free Universal Construction Kit works. Notice how the voiceover makes it feel like a proper 1980s advertisement.
Read the full story about Levin’s project at Forbes.
Futuristic Medicine: 3D Printed Jaw Implant Rescues 83-Year-Old Woman
In a groundbreaking first in the medical field, a team from the University of Hasselt has created a method for using 3D printing to fabricate a functioning lower jaw implant that rescued their patient from a massive infection.
“The introduction of printed implants can be compared to man’s first venture on the moon: a cautious, but firm step,” said Professor Jules Poukens of BIOMED.
The patient was an 83-year-old woman who was suffering from a major infection in her mandible. Traditional treatments, such as removing the lower jaw, would result in greatly decreased quality of life. Luckily, this medical team of doctors from the University of Hasselt, Belgium, partnered with engineers from Xios University College, SIRRIS, Xilloc Medical BV in Belgium, and the department of Cranio-, Maxillo-Facial surgery of Orbis Medical Center Sittard-Geleen in The Netherlands to develop an innovative treatment using 3D printing.
“Computer technology will cause a veritable revolution in the medical world. We just need to learn to work with it,” added Professor Jules Poukens. “Doctors and engineers together around the design computer and the operation table: that’s what we call being truly innovative.”
Pictured above and below, Dr. Ivo Lambrichts holds the 3D printed mandible. It was fabricated using a titanium powder in only a few hours. Typical methods to create implants usually take days.
Within 1 day after surgery, the patient had normal functioning speech, swallowing and movement.
Congratulations to this team for their major achievement!
Via UHasselt.
Top 10 Countdown: Most Popular 3D Printing Stories in April
Here are the top 10 most popular stories On 3D Printing brought you in April 2012.
10. We explored innovative and strange 3D printing concepts, from chocolate to stone to candy to organs!
9. Former MakerBot COO is launching a new 3D printer called Solidoodle, with a $500 price tag.
8. The Forbidden City is cloned with 3D printing (photo above).
7. Hollywood’s storytellers turn to 3D printing, including Iron Man.
6. The lucrative toy industry is challenged by 3D printed generics.
5. The Economist publishes a special report on 3D printing, called “The Third Industrial Revolution“.
4. Google sold 3D modeling software SketchUp to Trimble.
3. We analyzed the market size of 3D printing creators and consumers.
2. Stratasys merged with Objet, and we captured the key deal points.
1. Leapfrog launches a new 3D printer line in Europe.
Thanks for reading in April!
