Author Archives: Joris Peels

About Joris Peels

Joris is the YouMagine community manager. He's obsessed with 3D printing and wants to do what he can to let anyone make anything. Joris writes for Inside3DP, Wohlers Report & TCTMagazine. He also does strategy consulting for 3D printing companies.

Digital Fabric

Vladimir’s Digital Fabric

Digital Fabric

YouMagine Community Member Vladimir Kuznetsov uploaded a wonderful design. His design “Digital Fabric” uses a really wonderful technique. He uses the Cura Pause at Height plug in to pause the print and then inserts a mesh like fabric which he fixes to the print. Then he continues the print. This lets you use regular PLA and then make flexible parts! His great idea coupled with his triangle design really makes a lot more possible. Vladimir has tried out a mosquito screen as well as nylon. Were curious to see what other materials would give great results. Many people are experimenting with fabrics and 3D printing. Usually people end up getting a result similar to chain mail that is rather limited. A lot of other 3D printed fashion is stiff and unwearable. We think that by mixing cloth and printed material Vladimir made a wonderful alternative.

Here you can see the Digital Fabric being 3D printed.

Vladimir’s instructions, is to pause “when half of the part will be completed (1 mm for a part of total height of 2 mm) and to lower the buildplate for 50 mm or so. When printer will pause the printing stretch a piece of mesh-like fabric (I played with my wife’s stockings, but best results achieved with mosquito screen) and fix it with scotch tape. Unpause the printer.”

Importantly he adds, “You could make a lot with that technique, just make sure that the fabric thickness is less than the layer height.” We asked him some questions via the email and here’s how he explains his project:

“First thing I made was a small purse. I made a sexy simple polygonal design, printed two same pieces and asked one of the girls in our lab (fablab77.ru) to sew them together. She did it, but she also said that the purse is just like some Issey Miyake bag design.. so, thanks to google, I learned about trendy Japanese designer))

I borrowed a pair of my wife stockings and have learned that as long as the hot end does not touch the fabric, they can be used. So, I would say, any screen-like, mesh-like, net-like material is suitable, as long as it thickens is less than the thickens of one printing layer (I even thought of metals, but did not have a chance to try). Having that in mind, I found large nozzles very useful for this kind of duties. With broader (0.6 or 0.8 mm) lines large flat patterns are filling much faster, plus, thick layers (0.25…0.3 mm) are not only speeding up the printing, but make you caring less about thickness of the fabric.

I also tried printing with flexible materials and it allows to create interesting results, but printing flexibles with bowden extruder and retraction enabled is.. you know.

Difficulties.. You have to be near the printer when half of the print is complete. Cura lets you pause the process at an exact height, but you can not leave the print overnight, to receive good results you have to unpause the printer in ten to thirty minutes, otherwise, in my experience telling the print is gonna be ruined.

It is also quite challenging to put the fabric and evenly stretch it and then fix to the build plate. Scotch tape is your number one friend. For the mosquito screen I glued pieces of velcro (the rigid half) to the perimeter of bottom side of the building plate.”

Donate to designers, messaging is back! and more updates.

We’ve been updating and improving the site. In two weeks you’ll be seeing a mayor update to our workflow & new functionality.

Print Settings

Some of you may have noticed that we had shown you the relevant 3D printing settings of many models. These settings came from data gathered from Cura on the average slicing settings used. We didn’t think this was useful enough information for users upon launching this feature. We therefore killed it. Soon we will be releasing a new print settings feature. Here the print settings will visible, but instead of an average we will show you a bar chart of the 4 most used settings.

Messages

We had built up a lot of legacy code with our messaging system. We decided to kill the messaging tool a few weeks ago. Community members missed the functionality so we implemented a new system. We now have a link on everyone’s profile page. Click on that and you can send them an email. A unique token is created and the person you send a message too will be able to see your email but theirs will not be revealed. Only after they reply will you be able to see it. We hope that you like the new messaging system!

Donate!

The YouMagine Thank you and Donate prompt

We now have a donate button. You can add PayPal.me or another payments tool to your profile under “Edit Profile.” Once people then download one of the models you’ve made they will be prompted by a “Thanks for downloading” button. They will then be given an option to donate to you. They can also opt to share the model on social media. We hope that the Donate button will be used to reward people for making and sharing awesome open source designs!

The YouMagine Donate option with PayPalMe

OpenROV an open hardware project to explore the ocean deep

OpenROV is one of the coolest open hardware projects out there. One of our Community Members, Andrew David Thaler is a contributor to the project so we reached out to him to explain what OpenROV is all about. Andrew is a deep sea biologist and a conservation geneticist, he is one of the contributors to a really cool site called Southern Fried Science. You can check out his YouMagine profile here or support his work on Patreon here. He makes cool things such as an open source water sampler and is also the maker behind the rugged Beagle Box computer.

Andrew with the OpenROV

“I’m an ecologist that has been working closely with OpenROV for the last several years to get the robots into more marine research programs. Part of that involves designing sampling tools and instruments that can integrate seamlessly with the robots, for example.

3D Printed tether floats for the OpenROV

The OpenROV itself is not 3d printed, though some parts were printed for prototyping. 3D printing is primarily used to develop auxiliary tools, like the water sampler above, a bait box for baited camera surveys, or tether floats. OpenROV is a huge open-source community with hundreds of people contributing code and design to the project.

For me, my challenge is getting field scientists to see these small, inexpensive robots as serious tools for scientific research. To that end, I’ve been working closely with serveral research teams to get formal studies conducted and published using the OpenROV. The first scientific paper based of OpenROV work was published earlier this year.

I think most of the people who work at OpenROV will acknowledge that the company is really about empowering explorers. For some, underwater robotics is part of their business, but there are plenty of others who are just curious about what’s beneath their local waterways and want tools to explore. Having a low-cost, open-source machine capable of fulfilling both those roles is a huge asset to the ocean-loving community.

OpenROV dives to 100 meters, carries a high def camera with a live feed back to the surface, and can be outfitted with a payload of sensors, cameras, sample collectors, or anything else you can imagine. I’ve used OpenROV to survey coral reefs, sharks, and garbage in Papua New Guinea, I’ve taken it out recreationally to play in my local lake, I’ve taken student groups out to learn about their local underwater ecosystems, and I’ve used it to inspect flood damage around my (unfortunately very coastal) farm, while the flood was happening. It’s an incredibly versatile tool.

The community is open and welcoming, anyone who wants to explore their local waterways can join in!”

Woof Woof get a BeagleBone case on YouMagine & 3Dhubs

BeagleBone is a low-power open-source hardware computer that you can use for projects and prototyping. You can get one over at Beagle Board. The board case is around $60 and has an ARM Cortex processor on it. The guys at 3DHubs want to let anyone 3D print a case for this board so they can use it for their projects. Helder Santos made a tutorial showing you how to design your case. We asked him to answer some questions on how he made his design. You can download and play with the wonderful case design here on YouMagine.

What is the most inspiring thing you’ve seen someone make with a Beagle Bone?

For me that would be the http://beagleboard.org/project/openrov which is EPIC!

How did you make your case?
The Case was model with McNeel Rhino 5.0, a NURBS based CAD program, very versatile and perfect for digital fabrication. The idea started with the need of creating a protective case with an integrated breadboard. This way users could easily take with them a sort of minilab and prototype there circuits wherever they wanted. The concept is very simple. The case has to half that open like a book . Once opened, you will have the Beaglebone Black and the Breadboard side-by-side and ready to use. Another interesting feature is the small compartment inside the case designed to transport small components.

Are there specific printer settings or design considerations that people should take into account?
The case design was optimized for the best printing quality on FDM printers and it is support free. This way, it will be easy to print in most of the printers available on the market today.
I recommend this printing settings:
Layer Height: 150 Micron
Shell Thickness: 0.8 mm
Printing Speed: 30-40 mm/s
Infill: 100%
Supports: No
Heated Bed: Yes

Support Cannybots on Kickstarter

Cannybots 3D printed fun!

Cannybots is an incredibly cool project on YouMagine and Kickstarter. Cannybots is a series of super fun 3D printed car robots meant to get kids involved with technology. They’ve raised $163,000 so far on Kickstarter. For $89 you can get a Cannybot kit on Kickstarter.

Kids playing with Cannybots

The video below shows you the Cannybots in action!

Cannybots running on black tape from Cannybots on Vimeo.

The complete Cannybots kit.

Test Prints on YouMagine

Dialing in your 3D Printer to get the settings right can be a long an arduous process. 3D printers have a lot of variables including: the material, temperature, ambient temperature, humidity, airflow, settings affecting all directions, backlash on parts, the way parts are fitted, electronics, firmware, flow rate and many more. Learning how they interact with each other and how changes over time can affect your performance can take time. Happily we’re a lot of people learning together! Many have uploaded test files and protocols to YouMagine in order to ensure that others can quickly improve the quality and repeatability of their prints.

Test Pieces

I made a collection of the most relevant test pieces on YouMagine here. You can see other awesome collections here.

Laura Thapthimkuna’s 3D printed dress on Kickstarter

Designer Laura Thapthimkuna made a beautiful 3D printed dress that she is now trying to get funded on Kickstarter. Her Vortex dress has at the time of writing raised $2000 and you can check out how that’s going here.

The Vortex Dress

Why did you turn to 3D printing to make this dress?

In my designs I have always tried to create structure and have been drawn to abstract geometry and silhouettes. I like the idea of design “beyond the body” and creating shapes and structures from negative space. When I discovered 3D printing through a friend, I found a way to execute theses designs I have had in head.

What were some of the issues with getting it made?

I wouldn’t call it an issue, but one of the challenges with this design and any is that I have to go from a 3D idea in my head and try to put it down on paper two-dimensionally. Then I have to give that two dimensional sketch to my 3D modeler to then translate back into 3D, these transitions can be tricky and challenging at times, but I’m really fortunate to work with very talented peoplel with extensive knowledge of 3D. The most obvious issue is being able to fund the actual fabrication of a design of this scale, I’m hoping to broaden the audience that finds my work compelling and achieve funding for printing this design through this Kickstarter campaign.

What kind of materials do you need as a fashion designer to make more functional 3D printed clothing? Is there a dream material?

Light weight material is a very important element when considering putting something on the body. With my current design I’m exploring shapes that need to be created in a pretty solid/rigid material to keep the shape. For me personally the goal isn’t to create something 3D printed clothing that acts exactly like fabric. I want to explore 3D printing as a meduim with its own properties and materials and come up with ideas that are impossible to create with fabric and by hand.

What is the concept behind the dress?

The inspiration behind the Vortex Dress was space and blackholes. I became very inspired by artistic interpretations of theories regarding time and space being twisted and distorted in the universe. I wanted to create a design that didn’t have a specific ending or beginning, something organic but with mathematical elements with swooping lines and spiraling textures.

Why crowdfund it?

This is my first time ever attempting to crowd fund a design-which is a little nerve racking! But I really hope in doing that I’m able to share my work with more people and get others engaged with in the possibilities of 3D printing as well as raise funds to create this design in real life.

Do you hope that people will add to or remix your design?

I haven’t really given any thought to that, but maybe in the future with another design this could be an option. I think it might be enjoyable in the future to create a design that is open to other’s in such a way.

Improved search, 3DHubs for all files and bug quashing

We’ve integrated 3D Hubs into YouMagine. If you don’t have a 3D printer you can now print any file on YouMagine. We’re interested to see how many people will use this feature and are interested in the designs on the site but don’t own a printer.

The 3D Hubs button can be found to the right of all design images.

We’ve switched our search to Apache Solr, redesigned the search results page and improved the search results themselves. The results can now be sorted by relevancy, recency and popularity. We’ve added more synonyms as well. Search has been one of our biggest issues and we hope to have made significant steps forward with this.

Search results page

There was a bug saving the email notification preferences, this has been quashed with extreme vengeance. Another bug appeared whereby a community member got multiple notifications for the same event, this has also been solved. We hope you’re happy with the improvements and please do email joris (at) youmagine with ideas, feedback and bugs.

3D Printed Musical Instruments on YouMagine

People make a wide range of things with 3D printing and share them on YouMagine. A category that is perhaps a bit unexpected is 3D printed musical instruments. Below are some fun things to be found on the site that you can print.

This 3D printed mouth harp is a modern take on a very ancient musical instrument. Also called a Gogona, Dan Moi or a Kouxian.

Jeff Hertzberg who is a violinist made this violin mute that can also be used for other stringed instruments. His mute design comes complete with an OpenSCAD file so you can adapt it easily for other instruments.

Stringed instrument mute.

Cymon has made a number of playable recorders, including a tree recorder.

Michael Bourque made a 3D Printed Güiro, which is a Mexican percussion instrument.

Ed made a base drum pedal stopper showing us that you can repair musical instruments as well using 3D printing. He also made holders for drumsticks.

I really love Caitlin‘s Trumpet adaptive device that lets kids with a missing hand play the trumpet.

Prosthetic hand to let one play the trumpet.

David Perry at OpenFabPDX made the F F F Fiddle an electric playable fiddle.

Shapespear made a really nice looking playable electric guitar.

3Dhubs integration with YouMagine

3D Hubs

As of today we’ve added a “Print on 3DHubs” button to the site. This will let people who don’t have a 3D printer order the wonderful objects we have at YouMagine. They can use 3DHubs to print out lamps, vases, boxes, covers, toys and other lovely things. We hope that this lets people who do not have a 3D printer touch and use their first 3D printed objects. We are curious to see how many people will use this opportunity to get a 3D print in their hands.

If this feature is used often then we may look at adding margin to the 3DHubs order so that the designer can make money on the 3D prints of the objects. At this time, neither we nor the designer makes money off of the 3D print. We believe in keeping the files on YouMagine free to promote remixing and sharing. But, we think that people will not mind paying the designer a fee per print. People are used to paying for physical objects whereas to many the digital is most often free. We will be watching the 3DHubs button closely to see what is being printed and what people are interested in. We’ve known the 3Dhubs people for a years now and its wonderful to see them grow and do so well. Due to this we’re very happy to work with them!