Escher Cookies (with 3D-Printed Rollers)
Create awesome, sweet Escher cookies using 3D printed rollers with MC Escher art on them.
3D Printing & Imaging
If you’re a maker, 3d printing is an incredibly useful tool to have in your arsenal. Not only can it help bring your projects to life faster, but it can also offer unique results that would be difficult (or impossible!) to achieve with traditional methods. In these blog posts, we’ll provide you with some essential information and tips regarding 3D printing for makersโincluding the basics of how to get started, plus creative tutorials for spicing up your projects. Whether youโre already familiar with 3d printing or are just starting out, these resources will help take your game-making skills even further!
Busy Retiree’s Filament Extruder Wins Fabrication Competition
Last year, at Maker Faire in San Mateo, we launched a global competition to find ways to reduce the cost of producing parts on a 3D printer that uses plastic filament as its feedstock.
3D printing holds great promise for prototyping and small-volume production, but it has the potential for high volume production as well. Over time, the software interfaces that control these machines will improve, the number of files available for printing will increase exponentially, and the precision of the machines will be indistinguishable from parts made on an injection molding machine. However, to become competitive with conventional manufacturing processes, the unit cost of each part produced by 3D printers must be reduced.
Low-cost 3D printing, including Up! Plus, Makerbot’s Replicator II, Cubify, Printrbot, Solidoodle, and the Ultimaker, range in price from $399-$2200. These machines require extruded plastic filament that costs about $40-$54 per kg. This is between 5-10 times the cost of the raw resin pellets.
Making Digital Art Real
3D printing service provider Sculpteo and game developer Infinite Dreams today announced a partnership that will allow users to turn digitally rendered pots into the real thing.
Infinite Dreams’ popular “Let’s Create! Pottery” app lets users shape, fire, and paint a piece of pottery in a virtual environment. The new relationship with Sculpteo brings the experience into the physical world by allowing users to purchase full color, printed versions of their pottery directly from the app.
Soluble Support 3D Printing Experiments with HIPS
Check out Matt Stultz’ experiments with HIPS (High Impact Poly Styrene), which can be printed along with ABS and dissolved away with Limonene, letting you make complicated models and parts.
Interview with 3Doodler Co-creator Max Bogue
Peter Dilworth, the other cofounder, was watching one of our Up! 3D Printers do its thing when it made an error. He was kinda miffed about it; he just wanted to take the thing off the platform, fill up the gap, and put it back on. And then he had that “Oh! We can!” moment. That’s when the idea for the 3Doodler was born, and it’s been quite a ride since then.
Ping Fu Stands Her Ground
Last month I wrote about Bend Not Break, a memoir written by Ping Fu. Fu is the founder of Geomagic and now chief strategy officer at 3D Systems. In her book, Fu wrote about her life as a young girl in China and her experiences living under Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She described being forcibly removed from her family by the Red Guard at 8 years old and spending the next ten years living with her younger sister in a government dormitory under brutal conditions before ultimately emigrating to the U.S. For me, it was a harrowing, but ultimately uplifting story about overcoming adversity.
But that’s not how many people reacted to the book.
Tapigami, 3D Sculptures Made Entirely of Tape
Tapigami came to Maker Faire Bay Area last year with a gorgeous fantasy cityscape installation, made entirely of tape! (The wall behind it was wire coat hangers covered in fabric.) The Sacramento artist behind Tapigami, Danny Scheible, and his crew were also on-site (along with rolls and rolls of tape) to show Faire-goers how to make their own Tapigami sculptures. It was a huge hit. Buy your tickets for Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 today to get our special Early Bird discount prices!
