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Mixed Dimensions & Mimaki Partnering to Bring 3D Printed Gaming Collectibles to the Market

Integrated reality and 3D printing technology startup Mixed Dimensions (Mxd3D) has announced a global strategic partnership with Mimaki Engineering Co., Ltd, a top company in the digital printing sector and developer of high-resolution, full-color 3D printing systems. The partnership will be focused on 3D printing and modeling services, as well as 3D software.

Mxd3D was founded seven years ago by Muhannad “Mo” Taslaq and Baha Abunojaim in Jordan, but is now headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company, which is backed by several top-tier venture firms such as Silicon Badia and Susman Ventures, started out as web-based software for 3D designers to upload their work and verify that their designs would come out correctly, and eventually established the leading GamePrint software platform and MakePrintable cloud-based 3D CAD file repair software as its core technologies.

3D printed Gods from Assassin’s Creed Origins (Image: Mixed Dimensions)

Both of its platforms make it easy for developers of digital intellectual property (IP), and specifically gaming companies, to create and provide 3D printed full-color versions of their important assets. Once someone places a request, the products are 3D printed in San Mateo, and can then be shipped to customers all over the world.

Mimaki is a leader in the industrial products, sign graphics, and textiles & apparel markets, and has already committed a significant amount of resources to its new partner, including an equity investment and some of its breakthrough, high-quality 3D printing hardware.

“Our experience working with Mimaki Engineering has been extraordinary,” stated John Vifian, Mixed Dimensions’ President and COO, in a press release. “Working closely together, we have unlocked manufacturing capabilities that were heretofore simply impossible, and what we have already achieved is only the beginning.”

Mixed Dimensions’ CEO Taslaq said, “Mixed Dimensions is building the merchandising factory of the future, to meet the growing global demand for personalized collectible objects.”

Mo Taslaq, Co-founder and CEO of Mixed Dimensions (Image: Mixed Dimensions)

Mr. Ikeda of Mimaki will be joining the board of directors at Mixed Dimensions, along with Taslaq, Pascal Levensohn of Dolby Family Ventures, Gilman Louie of Alsop-Louie Partners, two of the other venture firms which back Mixed Dimensions.

“We are very excited to welcome Ikeda-san as an independent director,” Tom Kalinske, Executive Chairman of the Mixed Dimensions board, said in the release. “Mimaki is the clear leader in full-color 3D printing, and we are proud to have them as a strategic partner and investor.”

The newly announced collaboration between these two companies will likely speed up the expansion and growth of the worldwide market in full-color 3D custom game collectibles, which have been increasing in popularity over the last few years.

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3D Printing News Briefs: May 30, 2019

In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, euspen plans to hold a Special Interest Group meeting in September centered around additive manufacturing, and an adjunct professor completed a comparison between a small SLS 3D printer and a large one. Moving on to interesting 3D printing projects, an artist teamed up with Mimaki to use full-color 3D printing to make a stage prop, a reddit user created an anti-cat button for an Xbox system, and an imgur user created a modular 3D printed fashion system.

euspen to Hold Special Interest Group Meeting on AM

The European Society for Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology (euspen) will be addressing the factors which are influencing an uptake of the use of additive manufacturing as a production technology at a Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting in September. The meeting, which will be co-hosted by the American Society of Precision Engineering (ASPE), will analyze the barriers to, and the opportunities for, the adoption of AM in production. It will be held from September 16-18 at the École Centrale de Nantes in France.

At the AM SIG meeting, issues that are, as euspen put it, “critical to the viability of AM as a production technology,” will be addressed. The co-chairs of the meeting are Professor Richard Leach from the University of Nottingham and Dr. John Taylor from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Local hosts and the organizing committee include Professor Alain Bernard from Centrale Nantes, Dr. David Bue Pedersen from the Technical University of Denmark, Professor Leach, and Dr. Taylor.

Comparison of Small and Large SLS 3D Printers

3D printers are often used in educational settings these days. Piotr Dudek, an adjunct professor at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Poland, runs a 3D printing lab at the school that both students and researchers frequent. While many technologies are used in the lab, SLS is the one that most interests Dudek, who decided to compare a big SLS system from EOS with the smaller Sinterit Lisa.

“We are using the big EOS SLS 3D printer for a long time and we wanted to compare it with Sinterit Lisa, check the possibilities of it. In SLS technology every detail matters. The temperature of the printing chamber, powder distribution system, heating or laser moving mechanism are very precise and important features. We wanted to test if Sinterit’s device is the valuable solution,” Dudek stated.

Larger 3D printers obviously have higher print volumes, but the down sides include difficult calibration, specialized training, and higher costs. In addition, it’s easy to mess up the calibration of a large 3D printer during transport. The Lisa 3D printer uses a gantry system, which comes pre-calibrated to save time, and it also uses less material, which means less money. The desktop printer is also much more student-friendly, making it the better choice for 3D printing labs like the one Professor Dudek runs.

Full-Color 3D Printed Stage Prop

A few months ago, 3DPrint.com heard from 3D printing specialist and Post Digital Artist Taketo Kobayashi, from the Ultra Modelers community, about an art exhibit in Japan that he helped organize which featured colorful, 3D printed works created on the Mimaki 3DUJ-553 full-color 3D printer. Recently, he reached out to us again with news of his latest Mimaki Engineering collaboration – a stage prop for the Japanese artist Saori Kanda, who performed with techno/trance band Shpongle at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.

“It is a artwork,” Kobayashi told 3DPrint.com, “but also a utilization of full color 3D printing to entertainment field.”

The “Shpongle Mask,” which took 28 hours to print and mixed in Asian details, was worn onstage by Kanda as she performed her painting live with the band.

3D Printed Anti-Cat Xbox Button

reddit user Mbiggz was getting sick of their cat turning off the touch-sensitive button on the Xbox console while it was in use, which I can understand, having two cats of my own. So Mbiggz came up with the perfect solution – a 3D printed cover for the button. The design can be found on the maker’s Tinkercad account, as Mbiggz originally made the design for a Digital 3D class.

“Adhesive goes on the back part (it is labeled in the print). I’m a newcomer in terms of this so it’s not perfect,” Mbiggz wrote on Tinkercad. “Also, the door doesn’t open all the way, so you can fix it so that it does if you want to (even though it doesn’t really matter, there’s not really a need for it to open it all the way).”

3D Printed Modular Fashion System

hunter62610, a young imgur user, designed and 3D printed a Lego-like modular fabric system, which was featured in his school’s fashion show. He made two dresses that are made with a 3D printed prototype fabric pattern called Escher, which was designed to be “put together and taken apart” hundreds of times. It took him just two weeks to make the material, which the two young ladies who modeled the dresses said was fairly comfortable.

“The idea of the system is that theoretically, one could buy a fashion catalog filled with designs, and say 5000 links. Once could make every clothing item in the catalog, based on there needs. Perhaps that’s a pipe dream, but it’s a fun idea,” hunters62610 wrote.

“The Escher system is quite versatile. Each link acts like a free flowing Equilateral triangle, and has a male and female ball joint on each side. Every individual link is theoretically compatible with every other link. Special links are stored in the middle of this pouch that are really 3 merged links with a screw hole. If needed, these links can be used as elastic tie down points or buttons, if you screw in the buttons i made.”

A Makerbot Replicator Plus was used to print the fabric links in unique, small panels.

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Artists Exhibiting 3D Printed Works Fabricated on Mimaki’s Full Color 3DUJ-553 System

In 2015, Japanese company Mimaki Engineering announced its venture into the 3D printing world and began developing its own full-color system, which entered the commercialization phase in 2017. A little over a year ago, Mimaki USA, an operating entity that manufactures digital printing and cutting products around the world, installed its first full-color 3DUJ-553 3D printer in the Americas.

The UV-cure inkjet Mimaki 3DUJ-553 3D printer, based on patented technology with a maximum build size of 508 x 508 x 305 mm, is a fully ICC-compliant, color-managed device that offers high-quality, precise 3D printing, and has numerous enhancements so it can produce full color, realistic objects up to 20″ x 12″ with fine detail and high definition. The system offers over 10 million color combinations for photorealistic output, and can also achieve 90% of SWOP colors.

The 3DUJ-553 is able to produce color-accurate prototypes and objects without using manual coloring by hand, which allows users to majorly decrease finishing times. Because it offers so many colors, Mimaki’s 600 kg 3D printer is perfect for applications such as sign-making, prototyping, architectural elevations, modeling, short run fulfillment, and stunning, detailed artwork.

3DPrint.com recently heard from 3D printing specialist and Post Digital Artist Taketo Kobayashi, from the Ultra Modelers community, about an art exhibit he’s helping to organize that will soon be held in Japan and features colorful, 3D printed works created on Mimaki’s 3DUJ-553 by other members of the Ultra Modelers community.

“This is not just a art exhibit but also showing the future of entertainment field such as figure merchandise with using 3D printer,” Kobayashi told us.

“It is a great opportunity to actually experience the possibilities of full color 3D printing…”

According to Kobayashi, Ultra Modelers is made up of people who are actively participating “in CG art, design, entertainment and additive manufacturing.” The creative community’s purpose, in addition to exhibiting their collective pieces of art, is to be a “communication hub of artists, students who are learning CG, schools and corporations.”

“Ultra Modelers will create “connections” between those CG artist,” Kobayashi told 3DPrint.com. “Connecting dots will create synergy which energize CG and additive manufacturing industries, and will create opportunity of learning from each other.”

Ultra Modelers held its first exhibit in Osaka in November of 2018, and due to its “favorable reception,” the community, which currently consists of a dozen members, will be hosting a second exhibition. Tomorrow, March 15th, Ultra Modelers is holding a one day limited exhibit of its members’ colorful, 3D printed pieces at Mimaki Engineering’s showroom in Gotanda, Tokyo.

“There’s so many diverse way to output digital artworks now. Art, digital molding, animation,” Kobayashi told us. “11 top creators from different field of CG gathered for this exhibit and they will create original brand new artworks. 12 artworks schedule to be exhibited.”

All of the 3D printed pieces of art in this week’s exhibit were fabricated on Mimaki’s 3DUJ-553 3D printer. In addition to the exhibition, three seminars will also be taking place at Mimaki’s showroom, two of which will be focused on 3D modeling using ZBrush.

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[Images provided by Taketo Kobayashi]

3D Printing News Briefs: November 3, 2018

In this month’s first edition of 3D Printing News Briefs, we’re starting again with news about formnext, before moving on to other business news, a medical story, and a case study. Mimaki will be bringing over 10 million colors to formnext, and M. Holland has signed a distribution agreement with 3DXTECH. Some exciting medical news out of South Korea – the country’s first chest transplant using 3D printing has been successfully completed. Finally, LulzBot published a case study about its work to help produce a haunting stop-motion animation short film.

Mimaki Showcasing Over 10 Million Colors at formnext

At formnext in Frankfurt later this month, Mimaki will be bringing its advanced, full-color 3D printing technology, under the theme of ‘Shape the Future in Colour.’ Its 3DUJ-553 3D printer, which offers consistent results in over 10 million colors, will be running live during the event so visitors can see the super fine, photorealistic detail it offers. In addition, through a collaborative project with Materialise, Mimaki’s 3D printed models are currently available under the name Multicolor+ through i.materialise. These models, 3D printed in UV-cured photopolymer resins with inkjet printing heads, have a strength that’s higher than other color 3D printing technologies and can be handled directly off the 500 x 500 x 300 mm build plate of the 3DUJ-553.

“Materialise is currently trialling Mimaki’s full-colour 3D printing technology. The material, Multicolor+, allows us to create smooth surfaces with vibrant colours that enhance the value of a finished object. Multicolor+ offers more vivid and intense colours and enables stronger, sturdier materials with a minimum wall thickness of 1mm. It also allows for printing interlocking parts. As a result, Multicolor+ is ideal for printing decorative parts such as figurines, avatars and architectural models,” said Miranda Bastijns, Materialise Director Manufacturing Online.

Come see Mimaki’s full-color 3D printing capabilities for yourself at booth D26 in Hall 3.1 at formnext, November 13-16.

M. Holland Signs New Distribution Agreement

This spring, international thermoplastic resins distributor M. Holland signed its first 3D printing product distribution agreement with Owens Corning to sell the company’s XSTRAND product line. Now, the company has announced that it signed its second distribution agreement, this time with Michigan-based manufacturer and supplier of high-performance 3D printing materials and parts 3DXTECH. This agreement will provide M. Holland’s industrial manufacturing clients with access to a larger team of commercial and technical support resources, in addition to adding over 24 materials, like carbon fiber and fire-retardant materials, to the company’s current 3D printing product portfolio.

“At M. Holland, our mission is to give our industrial clients agnostic advice about how to integrate 3D printing into their operations to create value. The 3DXTECH product line gives us a full portfolio of high quality, engineering-grade materials, which we can marry with objective recommendations about methods and machinery to deliver the optimal solutions to our clients,” said Haleyanne Freedman, M. Holland’s global 3D printing and additive manufacturing engineering specialist.

South Korea Completes First Local Chest Transplant Using 3D Printing

3D printed sternum model

A 55-year-old man, who chooses to remain anonymous, has just received the first chest transplant using 3D printing in the country of South Korea. Following Spain, Italy, the US, Britain, and China, this makes it the sixth nation in the world to complete this amazing medical innovation. The patient had a malignant tumor in his thorax, and while he’d had four other surgeries and anti-cancer drugs in the past, these conventional methods did not ultimately work, and the cancer returned to his body.

“All of a sudden, the patient once again was feeling pain, and the lump on his chest became clearly visible. This meant the cancer had grown resistant,” explained Professor Park Byung-Joon with Chung-Ang University Hospital. ” We felt the new treatment was necessary and so we had to perform surgery urgently.”

He knew that 3D printing could help customize treatments for patients. Together with the rest of his team, Professor Park created a 3D printed breastbone for the patient that would have been nearly impossible to create with other methods of manufacturing. The hope is that this 3D printed chest transplant will help spur additional innovation in South Korea.

To learn more, watch the video below:

LulzBot Helps Produce Stop-Motion Animation

Dale Hayward and Sylvie Trouvé of Montreal-based See Creature Animation, together with the National Film Board of Canada, have been working together for the past three years to produce the short film Bone Mother, a stop-motion animation version of the Slavic folklore tale of the witch Baba Yaga. For the first time, See Creature decided to use 3D printing, and chose the LulzBot Mini as the affordable, reliable machine they needed to create nearly the entire film with 3D printing. Then, the team decided to add three more to the studio, due to how much 3D printing was required – over 1,500 unique faces were needed, and See Creature used woodfill PLA by colorFabb, with a light infill, to make them. Adjustments were also made to reduce print precision, as one character needed plenty of wrinkles.

“Our main character, Baba Yaga is an ancient witch and naturally she should have wrinkles. So instead of sculpting them into the computer model, we found that if we print the face lying down, the layers look like a topographical map and the print naturally accentuated the curves of her face, creating a lot of the wrinkles for us,” Hayward explained. “We loved the look and it fit her character so much that we actually lowered the resolution to get even more stepping.”

“Where technology has forced traditional hand-drawn animation to adapt or fade away, stop-motion has always ridden the tech wave, so much so that there has become a renaissance of stop-motion films over the last decade. This is attributed to technologies like 3D printing…. they have opened the doors to greater creative possibilities at a lower budget.”

Bone Mother, which clocks in at less than nine minutes, recently premiered in Toronto. See it for yourself below:

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