3D Printing For Everyone

mmacx writes "Technology Review has up an article about Shapeways, a new online rapid-prototyping service that allows users to upload digital designs which are then printed on 3-D printers and shipped back. A spinoff from Philips Research, the service gives small businesses, designers, artists, and hobbyists access to prototyping tools that were once available only to the largest corporations. The fee for a typical printed object is $50-$150. Their video shows the steps behind the process." We've been talking about 3D printing for years.

Comments

Re:yawn

[fractic]

You mean like this one ?

Re:What else do folks use?

[ironwill96]

Not sure on the open source software front but i've always been fond of Rhinoceros 3D for doing modeling since it is relatively in-expensive to buy a commercial copy ($900).

You can send your 3-D file to lots of companies, i'm not sure why ShapeWays is getting all the press when there are thousands of RP companies called "service bureaus" that will take 3-D models you upload and print them using some RP machine then ship them to you, usually with a 1-2 day turn-around time.

I used to get some parts done with http://www.rjmrp.com/ but they focus mainly on high-resolution small parts (such as jewelry pieces). So, if you're designing jewelry i'd recommend them otherwise look for some other companies using Stratasys type machines (there are lots). The costs they quote sound about normal, typical jewelry prototypes were around $100 or so for a ring in .001" resolution.

Images courtesy of Blender...

[LetterRip]

It isn't mentioned in the article, but it is clear from the images that they used Blender for the demo items and screenshots, indeed the two images from the article are rather well known among Blender users, one is from 'man in man' a short by Sacha, and the other is Petunia by macuonu which was used for a collaborative animation for the Blender art festival. Also some of individuals involved in Shapeways are major Blenderheads.

I thought Shapeways was being supported by Phillips but was under the impression that it started externally and hence would not be a spinoff.

LetterRip

Re:direct link

[Mithrandir]

FWIW, I'm the lead dev on all the 3D portions of the site. I had no idea these guys were going to get it posted to /. today! I wake up late to find my inbox filled with emails about it....

Anyway, on to answer your questions. Two ways:

1. there's some simple editors built in for specific object types (and more on the way)

2. Upload from your favourite modelling tool. Right now support is for X3D, Collada and STL files. More formats are on the way, but are not, as yet, fully tested.

There is also some restrictions on the basic structure of the models. The system tries to correct a lot of problems, but it is by no means perfect as it is all automated.

Costs are like the article summary states - $50-$150 per piece. However, that is dropping very, very rapidly as volume increases. Only this time last year, costs were an order of magnitude higher for exactly the same pieces. We're expecting a similar sort of drop in prices over the next 12-18 months as bulk manufacturing really starts to drive prices down.

Turn around time is usually a couple of weeks. The actual printing process is still relatively slow and manually managed. We'd love t automate it, but the printer hardware companies are not giving us that capability yet.

Re:direct link

[Mithrandir]

Hmmm... don't know much about SE and what formats it can export. If you can get STL, then you should be fine. There's very few CAD apps that can't do at least STL. Many have Collada support already. Between those two you should be OK. If not, have a dig for software called PolyTrans (Okino Graphics). That's a huge file format conversion tool that supports almost every known 3D file format. I believe they have a free demo download.

Bounds constraints vary wildly and also vary by material type. A material may only be available on a specific printer (manufacturer and model), that will then limit what size model can be printed. For example, selecting an ABS material can be printed on all the machines, but 720 Fullcure is only available on one. Each machine has a limited production size. However, as an absolute max, no machine is capable of printing something greater than 1m cube - at least right now.