Tag Archives: crowdfunding

IndieGoGo Campaign The Touch-Up Promises to Smooth 3D Printing

The Touch-Up 3D Printing

Crowdfunding Campaign to End Manual Polishing for 3D Printing

One of the less publicized aspects of 3D printing, specifically FDM, is the tedious work required after you press “print” with your MakerBot, Printrbot, Ultimaker, or any other 3D printer. Every 3D printer has a defined resolution, which is the thickness of each layer. Typical desktop 3D printers have a resolution of around 100 to 200 microns. The result looks like the image below, visible horizontal lines in the finished product.

IMG_2108

To smooth out these lines, advanced 3D printing enthusiasts typically use a sanding technique followed by polishing. Remember, with many desktop 3D printers, the material used is ABS plastic. It is soft enough to smooth out, but requires this manual effort.

Introducing The Touch-Up

3D Customization Co. has developed a product that employs a new technique for smoothing and finishing 3D prints without the manual effort. The product is called The Touch-Up, and 3D Customization Co. has launched an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to raise $5,000.

We interviewed CEO Westley Harrell about The Touch-Up.

On 3D Printing: What is The Touch-Up?

Westley Harrell: The Touch-Up is a product used to smooth and polish rough edges due to the 3D Printing process. Achieve amazing results using various print layers. Imagine a finish you can see yourself in! Literally! Stop wasting time hand sanding and hand polishing your 3D printed ABS models. Let The Touch-Up do it for you! This product allows you to get professional looking models faster by letting The Touch-Up smooth your print for you while another model prints. We found that when using MakerBot’s ABS filament, we were able to get faster polishing times with a great overall consistency with each model polished. (Same filament used in our video and pictures)

I used to spend a lot of time finishing my models after they were printed to get a really clean and smooth surface. I tried different techniques from spray enamel to dipping the part in different chemicals. It took months until I figured out the best method for polishing 3D printed ABS models. That was to submerse the ABS model in Acetone vapor. From that came the idea of vapor sanding and The Touch-Up was conceived.

Anyone who uses ABS to 3D Print will find The Touch-Up a great addition to their 3D Printing Arsenal. We made it easy to use and easy to clean so anyone who 3D Prints could use it.

On 3D Printing: Why are you turning to IndieGoGo for funding?

Westley Harrell: We chose IndieGoGo because we wanted to make The Touch-Up available to anyone, anywhere. This campaign also helps provide funding for upgrades and will help us move forward with this product. Also through this 30-day campaign we will be able to identify the need for this product, and determine how much time should be invested in bringing this product forward to consumers in the future. This is just the first project we are bringing to the public. We want to identify which product is in the highest demand.

Origins of Acetone Vapor Bath in the Maker Community

While The Touch-Up is the first commercialized product to use an acetone vapor bath, the origins of this technique look to be from the Maker community. In February 2013, Austin Wilson posted on his blog about a new technique that he and his friend Neil Underwood were developing to polish 3D printed objects using acetone vapor baths.

Neil also posted his results on the RepRap blog. Neil explained his inspiration:

Treating ABS parts with acetone is almost as old as RepRap itself, but usually this has involved either dipping the part into liquid acetone, which causes white streaks in the parts, or brushing the acetone onto the part with a slurry mix, which can work very well but tends to be a messy process.

I have seen several setups out there, one by the Solidoodle Folks that involved a deep fryer, ice, tubing, and a candy thermometer, or completely passive systems that just used unheated acetone like TBuser of Makerbot did.

Unlike the other experiments, Neil and Austin heated the acetone in a closed chamber. The results were impressive.

Neil Underwood 3D Printing Acetone Vapor Bath

In March, Wired magazine published a feature about Neil and Austin and their vapor bath technique. With the additional exposure of their approach came a new caveat:

Anyone interested in trying this should take care. Wilson says points out that acetone isn’t especially dangerous, but it has to be handled carefully since the vapor can catch fire if exposed to sparks or flames.

If you like this idea and want to help fund the first commercial product to use acetone vapor baths to polish 3D printed objects, go check out The Touch-Up at IndieGoGo.

Poppy Kickstarter Closes in on $150,000 to Turn Your iPhone into a 3D Camera

Poppy Kickstarter 3D iPhone Camera

Poppy Soon to Hit $150,000 Crowdfunding Milestone

A few weeks ago, we covered the Kickstarter campaign launch of Poppy, an innovative device that lets you capture, view and share images in 3D, using only your iPhone.

With an initial target of $40,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter, Poppy raced past that goal on day 1 and is now closing in on $150,000 with 11 days left in the campaign.

As is common with Kickstarter campaigns, Poppy has a set of stretch goals that only kick in if the funding campaign outperforms its target. The first stretch goal was $100,000 and the reward was the inclusion of a simple tripod screw mount for every Poppy. It was easily achieved.

The second stretch goal is $150,000, and the reward will be the release of a white Poppy, available to those who pledged $59 or more.

3D Printing Inspiration

We chatted with the Poppy founders about how 3D printing played a role in Poppy’s development. It enabled them to iterate fast and create a working prototoype that they could use in customer development.

Poppy founder Joe Heitzeberg explained, “3D printing helped us make Poppy stylish and easy to use by allowing us to iterate the design and get actual usage feedback from real users before committing to the more costly work of tooling for injection molds.”

MakerBot Founder Poppy 3D Printed Prototype

As we reported previously, if you pledge $1,200 or more on Kickstarter, you can receive one of the original 3D printed functional prototypes.

Below is a video showing how Poppy works.

Canadian Actress Ellen Page Tweets “No F ing way” About 3D Printing – Our Response

Ellen Page 3D Printing

Ellen Page Tweets about 3D Printing – Our Response

Canadian Actress Ellen Page, known for her roles in in JunoInceptionX-Men: The Last Stand and other films, tweeted yesterday about the 3Doodler 3D printing pen:

Ellen, it is real. A pen that makes things. In fact, 3Doodler raised $2.3 million on crowdfunding site Kickstarter!

Did you know you can also 3D print bone, chocolate, and even houses?

Innovative and Strange 3D Printing

Here are some quick guides to things you can make with a 3D printer.

Practical 3D Printing: 10 Things to Make With a 3D Printer

10 practical things you can 3D print.

Practical Things to 3D Print

Wow: 3D Printing a Lunar Base with Material Already on the Moon

How would you go about constructing livable habitats on the moon? Foster + Partners proposes to use 3D printing with material already on the moon.

Lunar Base 3D Printing

 

CC image by Josh Jensen

Bukito 3D Printer: Portable 3D Printer on Kickstarter

Bukito 3D Printer Kickstarter

Bukito 3D Printer is Portable, Affordable and Fast

Last year, Diego Porqueras from Deezmaker launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Bukobot 3D printer and raised $167,410 from 290 backers, or an average of $577 per backer. With that successful track record, Diego’s team has launched a new campaign for the portable and affordable Bukito 3D printer.

What is the “Bukito”?

Industrial 3D printers are massive machines. While desktop 3D printers like the MakerBot Replicator 2 are much smaller, they are still far from portable.

The Bukito is a sturdy, fast and portable 3D printer. It has 100 micron resolution, speeds up to 150 mm per second, and can be taken anywhere. Think about taking your 3D printer to school for projects, the local coffee shop, a friend’s house, on a family roadtrip, or even library (yes, it’s quiet enough).

Kickstarter Campaign

Deezmaker is looking to raise $54,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter. With 32 days to go, they have already raised $38,094 from 84 backers, or $454 per backer. To get the Bukito 3D printer kit, the minimum pledge is $549.

Watch the video below to learn more about the new Bukito portable 3D printer.

 

Hat tip to Hack Things who also covered this story.

Buccaneer 3D Printer Closes Epic Kickstarter Campaign Raising $1.4 Million

Buccaneer 3D Printer

Buccaneer 3D Printer Raises $1.4 Million on Kickstarter

When Pirate3D launched their Kickstarter campaign about a month ago, they probably had no idea that they would end up raising enough money for a legitimate startup seed round. With a goal of $100,000, the company raised 14 times that amount for the Buccaneer 3D printer.

Their mission was simple but bold.

We at Pirate3D are creating a full 3D printing solution for home consumers. We want this technology to be freely available to everyone (at great and affordable prices!) and also easy to use (great user experience!). Our long term mission is to be innovative at every level of 3D printing, from object design all the way to printing.

The Buccaneer 3D printer was designed to be intuitive, relevant, and affordable at $347.

Buccaneer 3D Printer Profile

Beyond the Buccaneer 3D printer, Pirate3D also promised an ecosystem to support consumer 3D printing, including:

  • Easy and Intuitive set up, The Buccaneer is built to be as easily set up as possible. You do not need to mess around with raw spools of plastic lying around on your table because it is now integrated into the machine via cartridges. There are no unnecessary wires or parts that get in the way and every Buccaneer is fully set up and ready to go in minutes.
  • Cloud Printing like pulling information directly from our store (Treasure Island) into your Buccaneer. You can choose whether you want to hook your Buccaneer into a PC or whether you want to work from a mobile device to make your prints!
  • Smart Objects allow everyday users to easily customize 3D objects without having to learn how to use 3D Design Software. Just drag/click a few buttons and you will be able to edit and create basic objects in any way you want. Once its done, you can share your image with your friends or send it directly to The Buccaneer to have it made!

Congratulations to the Pirate3D team on raising $1.4 million on Kickstarter! Watch their video below to learn more from Chief Executive Pirate Roger Chang and Chief Operating Pirate Brendan Goh.