Tag Archives: design
3D Printing Brings Classic Patents Back to Life
Finding Inspiration at the U.S. PTO
If you are looking for novel designs that can be 3D printed, New York-based intellectual property lawyer Martin Galese has lots of ideas, and none of them are his own.
Mr. Galese instead has a very creative approach for sourcing his designs; he finds them in detailed drawings from expired patents from the U.S. PTO.
Here, for example, is a cutting edge watch stand concept from 1979, U.S. Pat. No. 4,293,953, which claims, ”an improved watch stand so that a wrist watch can serve as a night table clock when no being worn on a wrist.”
And here is a self-measuring bottle from U.S. Pat. No. 836,466, dated 1906. It’s incredible that the original designer developed this concept without the support of CAD software, and now it can be brought to life through 3D printing.
Mr. Galese maintains the designs on his blog “Patent-able” and as a collection on Thingiverse.
His work was recently featured in the New York Times blog, including a chopstick holder from the 1960s and a portable chess set from the 1940s. He told the New York Times, “If you look at the figures in older patents, the 19th century patents are really beautiful. They’re really works of art.”
World’s First Crowdsourced 3D Printed Sculpture to Debut in Calgary
Internationally Known Artist Partners with Award-Winning Startup for Crowdsourced Sculpture
PrintToPeer is a software startup company which aims to make 3D printing accessible through a web-based printer remote control and monitoring app. For their launch, PrintToPeer has partnered with artist Jeff de Boer to create “Linked,” the world’s first crowdsourced 3D printed sculpture. Unique medallions 3D printed across the world will be assembled into a hanging mesh, which will form a mosaic as the intersection of art and engineering.
“We’re able to take our artist’s vision and allow anyone in the world with this technology to be the sculptor. We’re excited to demonstrate the endless possibilities and limitless creativity of the community,” says PrintToPeer co-founder, Tom Bielecki.
3D printer owners from around the world are asked to personalize an interconnecting medallion design, and ship their contribution to Calgary. Contributors are encouraged to show off their logo, equipment, materials, and 3D modelling skill, and are invited to submit as many different designs as they like.
Here’s how to get involved: PrintToPeer has built a unique online platform at http://www.printtopeer.com/
The sculpture has been titled “Linked” to represent the connection of engineering and art, as well as the literal connecting links sent from around the world. de Boer has developed the concept from his experience with chainmail, and has designed a common linkage system to hold the pieces together. Guest artists will be invited to arrange the links into mosaics and different physical arrangements.
Printer owners are asked to ship their contributions by September 7th. Linked will be assembled during Beakerhead (September 11-15th), a city-wide festival in Calgary which celebrates the convergence of art, science, and engineering. The completed sculpture will be on display at the Calgary Maker Faire (September 14th), a festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement. This will take place at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) in Calgary.
Below is a photo gallery of the team and sculpture process.
About Jeff de Boer
Jeff de Boer is internationally known for his four distinct bodies of work: armour for cats and mice, armour for executives, exoforms, and space objects including rocket lamps. Jeff has continued to work and grow, developing new and fantastic ideas. He has also gone back to the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) where he studied Jewelry Design, this time as an instructor teaching a Jewellery Design and Presentation class. He currently has a studio in south-east Calgary, where he now works with his wife Debbie.
Here is what de Boer said about “Linked”
The distance between art and technology is beginning to not just close; it is beginning to merge. The emergence of the 3D printer has given individuals who would not normally consider themselves makers the power to create in three dimensions. Now that the masses can make anything, the big question will always be, “what is worth making?”
The 3D printer right now is a little bit like a television without content provided by a broadcast network. The truth is, it is no longer necessary to have a centralized network for content, as each individual can now create the content in an open source environment.
“Linked” will be the world’s first collaborative 3D sculpture ever produced. The idea is to demonstrate the collective power of individuals as links in an open source content generator.
I have designed a standardized linkage system on which individuals can apply their own content, print it out and send it to us so as to be linked to an ever-growing hanging sculpture. In the end, each link will be unique, creating a vast gallery of colors and images. The links’ wide range of colors will act like pixels and can be arranged by a guest artist to create an overall image.
This sculpture can be arranged over and over by different guest artists, each time generating a unique overall image. The sculpture comes together in an additive way, not unlike the process of 3D printing itself.
Protos Eyewear Creates 3D Printed Glasses, Turns to Crowdfunding
Protos Turns to Crowdfunding for Next Evolution in Eyewear 3D Printing
Protos is an eyewear company based in San Francisco that combines computer-aided personalized design with 3D printing to create the perfect pair of frames. We featured Protos last fall and recently caught up again with founder and CFO Richart Ruddie.
Protos is turning to crowdfunding to take the company to the next level. With 24 new designs and advancements in its 3D printing process, the company hopes to raise $25,000 in pre-orders for its custom frames.
Go check out the Protos campaign and pledge if you like their project.
Below is our interview with founder and CFO Richart Ruddie.
On 3D Printing: What’s new at Protos since we last spoke? How have you further developed your 3D printed eyewear?
Richart Ruddie: We have designed 24 new frames. We have taken on a new partner who is an expert in the eyewear industry. We have refined our material and finish to be smooth, comfortable, and strong. We are able to custom fit glasses to an individual user’s face in a semi-automated fashion.
On 3D Printing: Why are you turning to crowdfunding now?
Richart Ruddie: We have reached a point where we want to offer our custom fit service, but don’t have the funds to develop it into a web application to be put on our site. We have the back-end programming worked out for it; all we need to do is integrate it into an attractive and easy-to-use interface. To do that takes a lot of development time and a mild barrier to entry in terms of funds that need to be spent.
On 3D Printing: Any plans to expand beyond eyewear in the future?
Richart Ruddie: Yes. We hope to leverage the properties of this new manufacturing for many other products. Eyewear is just the beginning.
Below is a gallery of the design process at Protos.
Mixee Labs Launches 3D Printed Slim Wallet Creator
Mixee Labs, a 3D printing startup that lets you create customized 3D printed figurines, cufflinks, and jewelry, has launched a new product, the Slim Wallet.
Slim Wallet is a thin and customizable 3d printed wallet. The wallet is under 1cm thin, and can be used it to hold 3 credit cards, driver’s license, a metro card, and some cash and keys.
What makes this product unique is that it is fully functional straight from the 3D printer. The clasps that holds everything in the wallet cleverly takes advantage of the flexibility and strength of 3d printed nylon plastic. Simply lift up the clasp, slide in your cards in, and everything snaps into place.
This wallet is designed by nxt3d with artwork by Bona Kim.
On Mixee Labs, people can choose from a variety of patterns and embellishments, and even upload their own images or text. More pictures and information on the product page: https://www.mixeelabs.com/creator/slim-wallet.
Arcology Now! Launches Competition for Large-Scale 3D Printed Habitats
Design Competition Invites Futuristic Habitat Concepts to Use New Large-Scale Structure 3D Printing Technology
“We are practical futurists” — Brian Korsedal, CEO of Arcology Now!
Arcology Now! Inc. is opening it’s revolutionary structure printing technology to the public, and hosting a design competition so that anyone can experience and contribute to the future of building.
The company is looking for submissions in the form of 3D models that will be compiled into structures. The winning model will be built full scale in the front yard of their office, with approximate dimensions of 30 ft by 30 ft by 15 ft tall. This is the first chance for the public to have access to any technology which can digitally design objects of this size and complexity.
Details on the design challenge are located at: http://www.arcologynow.com/#!design-competition/c1fhk
What is Arcology?
Arcology is a set of architectural design principles for enormous habitats (hyperstructures) of extremely high human population density. These largely hypothetical structures would contain a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities and minimize individual human environmental impact. They are often portrayed as self-contained or economically self-sufficient.
The stated mission of Arcology Now! is to give people their freedom back. The productivity of the global workforce has gone up exponentially while free time and overall feeling of well-being has steadily declined. Arcology Now! wants to develop ways to apply our society’s amazing technologies to giving people back their freedom.
For example, how would a low cost automated greenhouse which produces fresh vegetables in a wide range of climates affect health, happiness and wealth? How about a low cost, energy efficient home? A car-less city focused on walk-ability, bicycle locomotion and public transit?
It’s a big vision, and so we sat down with the CEO to learn more.
Interview with Arcology Now! CEO Brian Korsedal
We spoke with CEO Brian Korsedal, also known as “microchip” to his team. He has a degree in physics and used to design computer chips. He’s always been fascinated with architecture, off-grid living, robotics, manufacturing, 3D printing and art. He calls himself fluent in English and Binary and has been working on this technology on and off for about six years.
On 3D Printing: What is Arcology Now! and what is your involvement with 3D printing?
Brian Korsedal: The goal of Arcology Now! is to start printing arcologies, NOW! Seriously. We’re tired of seeing all these fantastic visions for the future. All these pretty pictures with futuristic technologies and absolutely no idea how to actually make them happen. We firmly believe we have the technology to achieve the essence of these visions of the future using today’s technology and a little bit of ingenuity. We are practical futurists.
On 3D Printing: Why are you hosting this design competition?
Brian Korsedal: We really want to show the world our technology works. It’s been a struggle, but we successfully invented a technology which can manufacture warehouse sized objects and larger. We’re limited by height due to the physical properties of the materials we are using but we can build unlimited in the X and Y directions. We can compile objects 200ft by 200ft by 40ft right now. We can probably compile things a mile by a mile by 40ft when we switch to C/C++ or a faster programming language. Right now we are limited by how fast the designs can compile. So imagine huge, monolithic pancake arcologies crisscrossed with bike paths and public transit at a fraction of the cost of modern buildings.
Unfortunately, we’re a bit poor. Seriously, we live in the ghetto in Phoenix. We don’t have the cash to really show people what this technology can do. :( It’s a bit sad. So we hope showing the world that this technology works on the small scale will lead to bigger and bigger projects.
We are also really curious what people will make. The great thing about 3D printers is the democratization of design. It enables people to bypass all the roadblocks to manufacturing and levels the playing field. Poor but talented people can compete. Those people are near and dear to our heart. It enables millions and even billions of people to become designers. I’m sure there will be quite a few revolutionary designs that submitted to the competition.
We hope to run design challenges for most of our projects. We love the interaction with the public and we love seeing what people can do. So hopefully this leads to bigger and bigger design challenges. We also need to test out the steps in printing actual houses. We have a roadmap of challenges which will test out every stage in printing actual houses.
On 3D Printing: What do you hope to see in the competition?
Brian Korsedal: Ha ha, good question. We hope to be surprised. We hope to see things that we never thought about. This is the first public test of our system so I’m sure there will be a lot of new discoveries in design techniques. We’ve built 6 structures so far and we’ve developed a lot of techniques on how to design interesting structures, but we’re just two designers. We want to see what the world thinks up.
On 3D Printing: How will you 3D print the winning submission, considering it will be quite large?
Brian Korsedal: Our printing process is a bit unconventional. We’re practical futurists and we have to design within the limits of today’s technology. So we start with the best building material, steel. Steel is way better than concrete. It’s has an great strength to weight ratio. It’s recyclable. It’s cheap. Most other people are working with concrete and that kinda freaks us out. It’s just an accident waiting to happen. Imagine an unreinforced concrete structure in an earthquake? It’s very dangerous. Our structures are strong enough we can roll them around our yard and they retain their shape. The strength to weight ratio of our structures is phenomenal and they are low cost.
We manufacture our structures from steel tubes. We’ve invented a brand new process unlike anything else out there. We built software which auto-designs steel space frames which conform to a surface. Whatever surface you put into the software, it generates a frame to match that surface. Most people are confused why we call it 3D printing, but we firmly believe we’ve captured the essence of what a 3D printer is. To most people a 3D printer is a device you can put a digital design into and it just makes it. We satisfy that definition with today’s technology.
The assembly is very interesting too. We took an approach that works kinda like computer programming of humans. Our software generates stickers with all the assembly instructions embedded in the stickers using a code. We put these stickers on the bars and the bars become the instructions. It’s designed so structures can be built in parallel by large groups of people. Imagine the people are an old punch card computer and the bars are the punch cards. The punch cards contain the program specifying the assembly and the humans run that program to put things together. We can teach people the code in about 10 minutes and it’s so easy kids can assemble it. We have build parties. It’s like a techno version of a barn raising!
We’ve done things this way because we want it to be affordable. We will be half the price of regular housing or less. It’s a revolutionary breakthrough in design and manufacturing of structures. A democratization of building and we can do it NOW!
Here is a photo gallery of some of the work by Arcology Now!
