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Take 15% off your own model starting tomorrow, November 22, through Monday, November 26. The discount is applicable to all models that you upload to shapeways.com, including those made with our Creator Apps and on Spring & Wonder.
We will reveal the discount code at 8AM GMT / 3Am EST tomorrow. Get a head start by uploading your model today!
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The holidays are fast approaching and with them, the annual extended panic attack over finding exclamation-worthy gifts for all of your family and friends. But this year, instead of rushing through packed stores and standing on seemingly endless lines just to end up with something that doesn’t fully capture the uniqueness of your loved one, why not design the perfect present yourself? Shapeways makes it easy to create and customize a whole array of products so each one feels singular and made specifically for its recipient. Below we’ve assembled some of our favorite creator apps that can help you nail the holidays this year from the comfort of your own home.
The new destination for customizable jewelry, Spring & Wonder lets you select the shape, size, message, and material of a whole range of high-quality pieces, from necklaces to rings and earrings.
This app creates a ring with a sentimental surprise – built into the physical form of each ring is an encoded number of your choosing, which is only revealed when you shine light or look through it at the right angle.
Twine interlocks two names of your choosing into a chic necklace pendant, connecting loved ones forever.
Buying a present for the baker in your life? Make standard cookies a thing of the past with Cookie Caster, the app that allows you to draw and 3D print your own unique cookie cutter.
Our creators apps are for everyone, helping new as well as experienced 3D designers create their own perfect piece in a breeze. So skip the holiday rush this year and use Shapeways to create timeless gifts that show your loved ones exactly how well you know them.
The post Design and Customize the Perfect Presents with Our Creator Apps appeared first on Shapeways Magazine.
At Shapeways, it is our genuine belief that anyone can be a creator. We are passionate about helping all of our users, no matter their experience, tap into their creative potential and design their own perfect product. But we understand that 3D printing can seem more than a bit intimidating to first-time users. Or you just might not have the time to develop a model from the design stages all the way to when it’s ready to print. If you’re hesitant to try 3D printing because of your skill-level or any other constraint, there is now a simple, foolproof way to dive in.
The newly improved Design with Shapeways service connects users directly with our first-rate team of 3D designers and modelers. Experts are available to help from the very initial stages, providing advice when all you have is an inkling of an idea. Even if you’re not sure where to start, our team can walk you through the ins-and-outs of 3D modeling, helping to define project goals, offering design guidance, and answering all of your questions.
Stage 1: Consultation with our team of experts to discuss project goals.
If you already have a 3D model, Design with Shapeways also offers web-based design review, matching you with a dedicated 3D modeler who’ll help your product come to life. From simple file fixes to prevent fragile walls and muddied details or products that need to adhere to precise measurements, we have you covered. Our 3D modelers are experts in designing projects that involve precision, accessories, and architecture, just to name a few, and can guide even the most novice user towards printing success.
Stage 2: Work with a 3d modeler, provide feedback, and see your project come to life.
Design with Shapeways will get you ready to manufacture in record time. After working with our design team, you’ll receive a 3D file that can be used instantly to start printing with Shapeways. With experience in designing for over 30 different materials, our experts can help you move seamlessly from prototype to full-scale production.
Step 3: Receive a 3D file to instantly start manufacturing with Shapeways.
The cost of working with a Design with Shapeways expert is based on multiple factors that the design team works with each customer to define. Typically most projects fall within the $299 to $1,599 range. On average, projects are completed within two to six weeks. And don’t worry about whether your project is even possible — your initial consultation will help you determine whether your project is a good match. In the event that we aren’t a good fit, we’ll refund your package total minus a $100 consulting fee. We may even suggest how to amend your project to work with 3D technology or recommend other options.
If you bring the idea, Design with Shapeways will provide the expertise. So stop delaying creation – jump into your project now with the help of our expert team.
The post Unlock Your 3D Printing Potential and Design With Shapeways! appeared first on Shapeways Magazine.
From cookie cutters, vases, and gardening collections to clothing hangers, lamps, and kitchenware, it seems that 3D printed homeware is all the rage these days. New York designer Joe Doucet, referred to as “the Living Blueprint for the 21st Century Designer” by Forbes, recently used the technology to create a new collection of 3D printed homeware for a brand new exhibition at the city’s Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
Doucet designed the 3D printed set of knobby, greyscale cookware, cutlery, serving, and storage capsules specifically for the museum’s Tablescapes: Designs for Dining Showcase. The understated yet attractive collection, according to a statement from Doucet, was “designed with limited resources in mind” in order “to represent dining in the 21st century.
In addition to co-founding the OTHR design brand in 2016 and being named the only ever AvantGuardian for Design by Surface Magazine, Doucet also received an honor in his field last year: he was named the 2017 winner of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award as Product Designer.
“We are an award-winning multidisciplinary practice who believe that design is a tool to create opportunities,” Doucet’s website reads. “We believe that creative vision can transform an object into an obsession, a product into a paragon and a business into a brand. We believe that by partnering with the world’s most exciting brands, we can create innovative ways for product design, packaging, architecture, retail design, furniture and technology to shape tomorrow.”
The Cooper Hewitt, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is a big fan of Doucet’s work, and commissioned the 3D printed prototypes in the collection for the Tablescapes showcase, which will be available to view at the museum until April 14, 2019.
The 3D printed vessels can actually be used to perform several different functions for food service and preparation; for instance, the lids are used as normal to seal the bowls in order to keep their contents fresh inside, but they can also be used as trivets and plates as well.
Doucet explained, “By creating hybrid vessels, which act as cooking, serving and storage for food, we eliminate the need to use separate items for each step and avoid wasting potable water to clean each item between uses.”
The full 3D printed collection was made out of two different polymers by New York-based Shapeways. Shapeways also lent the museum its 3D printing equipment in order to demonstrate the process during the exhibit.
Doucet told Dezeen about the 3D printed prototype vessels, “They are envisioned to be in 3D-printed steel and 3D-printed glass in the near future, but the prototypes were made with current commercial technology.”
Doucet created some of his own pieces for the 3D printed product range, such as way-finding running gloves, and asked others, such as Yonoh, Phillippe Malouin, and Claesson Koivisto Rune to help add to the homeware collection as week.
The knobbly bumps that cover the entirety of the 3D printed vessels help provide grip, and are also meant to evenly spread heat during cooking, and then dissipate the warmth quickly during serving.
The 3D printed homeware collection also promotes cross-cultural dining, as it also includes a set of chopsticks in addition to the more typical Western utensils.
This is not Doucet’s first experience with 3D printing. The designer has used the technology in the past, such as when he created a capsule collection of 3D knitted ties with Thursday Finest. 3D printing makes it possible for items, such as utensils and dishes, to be customized specifically for the user, in terms of both scale and the hand they use to eat.
Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.
[Images: Donatello Arm]
It’s that time of year again. Colorful leaves and pumpkin-spiced drinks can only mean one thing – the holiday season is just around the corner. To be more specific, we are only 36 days away from Black Friday!
If you plan to or are already selling 3D products, it’s time to prepare your business for holiday shoppers. We highly recommend using our new integration with Shopify, the Shapeways Fulfillment app (see step-by-step setup instructions here). Not sure whether this is something you need? We’re here to help you make that decision.
This integration directly connects a Shopify store to Shapeways’ 3D printing manufacturing and fulfillment network, giving your business seamless access to 3D printing technology in over 40 materials and finishes. When your customer makes a purchase from your Shopify store, the order will flow through to Shapeways and can be fulfilled manually or automatically, depending on your business needs.
It’s for anyone who wishes to sell 3D models and have the orders fulfilled by Shapeways. The two accounts you need to set up are:
Our early app adopters are enjoying the benefits of keeping customers on their own storefronts, and being able to go on vacation knowing that orders will take care of themselves in reaching the customers. If that sounds appealing to you, give the integration a try. And if you need assistance, we’re here to help you at storefronts@shapeways.com.
The post Make Order Management a Breeze with Shopify Integration appeared first on Shapeways Magazine.
People and organizations all around the globe use Shapeways, the largest 3D printing service and marketplace in the world, to build up business by creating 3D printed products. The company, which has 3D printed more than 10 million products, offers over 40 materials and finishes. Its latest customer is Biologic Models, a company that turns x-ray crystallography data into detailed, 3D printed protein models millions of times larger than the actual protein.
Today at the 2018 TCT Show in Birmingham, Shapeways announced a new agreement with global 3D printing leader Stratasys – the two are partnering up to make full-color, multi-material 3D printing more accessible to creators, designers, and companies like Biologic Models, which will be one of the first Shapeways customers to enjoy unprecedented access to the Stratasys J750 3D printer. One of the only full-color, multi-material 3D printers in the world, the Stratasys J750 is what the new manufacturing services are based around.
“Since its introduction, the Stratasys J750 has driven transformation across a number of industries. With Shapeways, the unmatched capabilities of the J750 will now be made available to an entirely new community of designers and creators,” said Pat Carey, Senior Vice President of Sales North America for Stratasys.
Shapeways and Stratasys are working together to bring the potential that the J750 3D printer offers to a much wider market. Now, customers that wouldn’t ordinarily have access to the full-color, multi-material capabilities of the J750 due to economics, lack of expertise, or barriers-to-access will be able to take advantage of the system, and use it make realistic prototypes with more streamlined design-to-prototype workflows.
Not only will using the PolyJet-driven Stratasys J750 allow customers to lower their time to revenue, but it will also help decrease time-to-market as well. The 3D printer provides over 500,000 color combinations, with transparent to opaque color gradients, accurate color-matching, and advanced, textured clear material that can create extremely fine and delicate details.
“The vivid colors of the Stratasys J750 3D Printer will enable the Shapeways community of designers, businesses, students, and artists to realize their brightest ideas and boldest ambitions in true physical form with full-color, texture mapping and color gradients,” said Shapeways CEO Greg Kess. “It’s exactly what our customers have been asking for.”
The Stratasys J750 can consistently and reliably fabricate parts that feel, look, and operate just like fully finished products, and gets rid of any lengthy assembly, painting, or post-processing requirements, which helps decrease production cycles. It’s perfect for Shapeways and its workflow – the platform can help design 3D printable objects that take full advantage of the 3D printer’s capabilities, along with running the systems at scale and providing ready-to-sell products.
This is perfect for Biologic Models, which uses its multi-colored protein data models to explain the subtle interactions of proteins and molecules. The company, founded by award-winning medical animator and 3D designer Casey Steffen in 2008, visualizes the unique properties of the molecules with 3D printed models that are millions of times larger than their actual size, which are then used by educators and scientists as helpful visual aids to explain the various properties of specific proteins, and their subtle interactions with molecules.
The 3D printed, multi-colored models, which the company pairs with augmented reality apps and 3D medical animations, also help in explaining the nature of disease and health that occurs on the molecular landscape.
“J750 is the best of both manufacturing worlds, full-color 3D printing combined with high-quality transparent plastics,” said Steffen, who is also the Director of Operations at Biologic Models. “This is exactly what my customers want. Transparency and color coding are necessary features to create the highest quality and most durable models. The J750 tackles these design and manufacturing challenges head on.”
Beta customers for the new agreement between Stratasys and Shapeways will be able to access this service before the year is out. A full launch should occur sometime in 2019. To learn more, visit Shapeways & Stratasys at the TCT Show this week in Hall 3, Stand H36.
Discuss this new agreement and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.
[Image: National Geographic]
According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2016 roughly 445,000 people around the world died of malaria, a serious disease caused by a parasite that often infects a certain type of mosquito, which in turn feeds on humans. 91% of these deaths were estimated to have taken place in the WHO African region, and most of these deaths were of young children, who are among the most vulnerable in areas of high transmission as they have not developed an immunity to the disease yet.
Malaria is one of the world’s most severe public health problems, and a lot of work has gone into using 3D printing to help diagnose and even cure the disease.
A group of researchers from Imperial College London is studying how malaria is transmitted, which requires mosquito test subjects to be infected with Plasmodium gametocytes – the blood stage parasites that actually cause malaria. In a Standard Membrane Feeding Assay (SMFA) test, an artificial membrane feeding apparatus, which simulates the host’s skin and body temperature, is used to get the mosquitoes to eat reconstituted blood containing the gametocytes. These feeders warm infected blood using glass chambers or electric heating elements, both of which are hard to acquire and expensive to boot.
The team recently published a paper, titled “An inexpensive open source 3D-printed membrane feeder for human malaria transmission studies,” that presents their creation and testing of an inexpensive, 3D printed membrane feeder.
“Presented here is a simple two-piece water-jacketed membrane feeder designed to hold a volume of 500 µl,” the paper reads. “Using the files presented here, the feeder can be 3D-printed directly and inexpensively by stereolithography by any equipped lab or commercial 3D-printing provider. Alternatively, by using a CAD package the size of the feeder can be up- or downscaled to hold more or less volume respectively.”
a) The membrane feeder was designed in two parts, a top chamber that connects to a circulating water bath and a bottom chamber holding a water reservoir and the RBC/gametocyte/serum sample on the underside. b) Both pieces are glued together into a single, watertight unit.
The researchers created the two-part membrane feeder design using the free, open source CAD modeling program Art of Illusion, then had Shapeways 3D print the parts out USP VI medical-grade “Fine Detail Plastic” acrylic resin (VisiJet M3 Crystal). Then, they conducted three independent SMFAs, using the Plasmodium falciparum laboratory strain NF54, in order to compare the performance of their 3D printed membrane feeder to that of a commercial glass feeder.
Comparative P. falciparum SMFAs with a commercial glass feeder and 3D-printed feeder.
According to the study, “Exflagellation rates as well as oocyst counts indicate that there is no significant difference between the two, within the statistical power given by triplicate SMFAs used as standard by the research community.”
The researchers believe that by making the design files for their 3D printed membrane feeder open source, more laboratories will be able to perform these SMFAs, and can even customize the design if necessary.
“The 3D-printed feeder design enables researchers to inexpensively produce their own SMFA feeders as an alternative to expensive and fragile glass feeders that require specialist manufacturing,” the study concludes. “This new 3D-printed feeder can be used in a wide range of applications in addition to standard SMFAs, as it is not limited to the species used here. Application might include the assessment of vector competence for malaria, the epidemiological assessment of the infectious reservoir for malaria, clinical drug trials, and transmission-blocking studies.”
Co-authors of the paper include Kathrin Witmer, Ellie Sherrard-Smith, Ursula Straschil, Mark Tunnicliff, Jake Baum, and Michael Delves. The design files for the 3D printable membrane feeder can be found in the paper.
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