Tag Archives: design
Last Night to Trim the Christmas Tree with 3D Printed Ornaments
It’s Christmas Eve: the last night to decorate your Christmas tree before the big day. Here are some 3D printed ornaments to add to your holiday cheer.
Above, you’ll see Christmas ornaments by pmoews (available on Thingiverse)
From the designer: Here is a simple Christmas tree ornament consisting of a sphere pierced with 198 holes. It is related to the holed container in Two Spherical Containers, thing:32840. The holes are hypocycloids with 5 cusps and are meant to resemble stars.
Next, we have 3D Printed Christmas Balls by cunicode (available on Shapeways)
And finally, a cool design called Cube Ball Illusion by Ablapo (available on Thingiverse)
The sculpture is showing a cube or a ball depending on the view angle.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
hat tip to 3dprinter.net for finding these designs.
Review: Mixee Me Lets You Design and 3D Print Your Own Mini-Me
In November, 3D printing startup Mixee Me launched their public beta. As one of Mixee Me’s first customers, here is our review. Our 3D printed model appears in the photo above standing next to an iPad.
What They Offer
Mixee Me offers a free, online design tool to create your own avatar-like character. There are a range of hair styles, clothing, and expressions to choose from. Once you are finished with your design, it is uploaded to the Shapeways marketplace where you can purchase a 3D printed model for $25 + shipping.
Design
Pros: Designing the avatar was easy and quick. No 3D modeling experience was necessary. Plus it was free!
Cons: The options for hair styles and expressions were relatively limited. You could upload your own design but that requires some graphic design knowledge. This can easily be addressed as they add more styles.
Checkout
Pros: The model was automatically uploaded to Shapeways and available for checkout. We received an email to notify us that it was ready.
Cons: The model was placed in the MixeeMe account rather than a personalized account.
Price
$25 seems fair given where 3D printing technology is today, but expensive compared to a similar toy one could purchase at retail.
Quality
From a distance, the quality is great. It is a cute little character that can be placed on any shelf or mantle. Our character is posing on a piano keyboard in the photo below.
Close up, the 3D printing lines are apparent in the sandstone material which suggests that the resolution is not very fine. We don’t know if this is a design flaw or a limitation of Shapeways.
All in all, it’s a fun keepsake.
Overall
In summary, Mixee Me is a fun new service where you can make little characters to adorn your office or house. We hope to see more options and flexibility in the future, as well as natural price declines to make the purchase more appetizing to consumers.
You can design your own at mixeeme.com.
Phantom Geometry Technique Wins Gehry Prize for 3D Printing Innovation
This is ‘Phantom Geometry’, a masters thesis in architecture by Kyle von Hasseln and Liz von Hasseln, developed in the Robot House at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI_Arc). It was awarded the inaugural Gehry Prize at the SCI-Arc commencement ceremony on September 9.
This work is centered on the development of a system for generating material volume from streaming information. The system uses UV light from a modified DLP projector to continuously and selectively cure photo initiated resin within a shallow vat system we developed for the project. The cured part is simultaneously and continually pulled away from the vat, allowing un-cured resin to flood in beneath it to be subsequently cured. The result is the material reification of streaming data that emerges along the motion path of the Staubli robot maneuvering the vat/projector apparatus.
This system of fabrication relies upon native real-time feed-back and feed-forward mechanisms, and is therefore interruptible and corruptible at any time. The streaming data input may be transformed or modified at any time, and such interventions impact emerging downstream geometry.
Watch the video below to see this technique in action.
Top 3D Printing Headlines Last Week: Design, Photo Booth, Students
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from November 5 to November 11.
Monday, November 5
Thursday, November 8
Friday, November 9
Saturday, November 10
Sunday, November 11
Incredible 3D Printing Design: Blending Real Objects with Lego
In the video below made for the “Make it real” challenge on Instructables, Greg Petchkovsky demonstrates incredible design skills and vision. He blends real world objects with 3D printing for amazing, seamless results.
In one of his designs, Petchkovsky patches a hole in a stone step with a digitally designed set of Lego blocks.