Category Archives: 3D Printing Tools

Out-of-the-box upgrades: Z-Unlimited

Projects and 3D printing companies like Ultimaker and Printrbot who share their design files online (1, 2) allow anyone, without having to ask, to think of improvements and actually implement them. Whether it’s a little tweak or something that turns the whole printing experience upside-down is up to you.

Joris van Tubergen is someone who does exactly that, on a regular basis.

Printing bigger, faster, in a different way and with sweet new materials or new appearances has always been Joris’ trademark. He started experimenting with an existing Ultimaker allowing it to print huge objects, like this elephant:

Z-Unlimited – now on Kickstarter – allows you to print much bigger things than the 3D printer that makes it. How? Joris van Tubergen an out-of-the box thinker with a mentality that an Ultimaker is a device that can be changed to do exactly what you want it to do. He put the Ultimaker upside down, pointed the printhead outward again and let it lift itself up while printing.

You might ask, who is Joris, how does it work and how can I start printing like this? We will have to make it happen together, because Joris needs your support! You can back it through Kickstarter and get your own Z-Unlimited:

Print tall with Joris’ Z-Unlimited!

Want to know more about Joris? Did you know that he…

makes regular appearances on Dutch TV?
played a pivotal role in creating the Kamermaker with DUS Architects and Ultimaker,
prints challenging prints more easily because he’s not afraid to hack some GCode parsing scripts together with programming Blender, even though he’s not a programmer by education?
the 3D printed elephant actually had tiny names inscribed into the surface, part of the huge 3D model?
works for the legendary FabLab “Protospace” in Utrecht, as the first Lab manager on site. Joris helped make the first RepRap and Ultimaker workshops possible, even before Ultimaker existed.
made the Fairphone + 3DHubs Phone covers possible?
has published most of his 3D creations on YouMagine? Check out his profile here.
applied Augmented Reality with QR codes to his 3D printing (yes, lots of buzz words!)
embedded the source code of a 3D object into an RFID chip, physically embedded into the printed object. Source code inside!
And even more about Joris here…

It’s not secret: We’re big fans of Joris and all other makers that are redefining what 3D printing is! We’d love to see what he comes up with next!

Interview with CREAT3D from UK

Most organisations within the 3D print industry offer one product or service, for example 3D printers OR 3D scanners OR 3D print education. In the United Kingdom however, I found an organisation that provides all of these services and products under one roof: CREAT3D. Curious about the ‘people behind’ this organisation, I decided to talk to two staff members: Sabina Gonzalez-George and Simon Chandler.

YouMagine-member CREAT3D is independent specialist in the UK in desktop 3D printers and 3D scanners. CREAT3D offers high quality desktop 3D printers, handheld 3D scanners and associated consumables and technologies. Customers can explore the products on their website online or in the high street store. And because CREAT3D are independent advisors, it means they can provide informed and impartial buying advice, as well as expert training and aftercare support.

Ronald Scheer together with Sabina Gonzalez-George and Simon Chandler.

Why are your services and products a ‘must have’ for Education?

Whilst 3D printing and 3D scanning have developed, they are still new and complex technologies that require a different way of thinking and operating. As such, it is essential for Education customers to feel confident that they are in the right product, for the right purpose, have the full training and ongoing support. That’s what CREAT3D specialize in providing their clients.

How and where did the business start?

CREAT3D began in 2012 when fully assembled desktop 3D printing was just emerging and there were only a handful of manufacturers on the scene. Today the CREAT3D range spans over 20 different 3D printers from a wide range of manufacturers. CREAT3D was the first to open a 3D printing store outside of London in the UK.

CREAT3D developed from a fascination of the technology by its Founders, combined with a commercial awareness of the positive impact that the application of the desktop technology could have on businesses and in education.

What are your plans for the near future?

In the coming year, CREAT3D will continue to work with its educational clients, providing support and advice on how best to maximize 3D printing and scanning at this level. In addition, CREAT3D will be working with a number of suppliers in providing educationally focused literature, lesson plans and activities to develop students’ skills in the technologies.

How to contact Creat3D?

1: Go online to:
Desktop3dprinter.com

2; Send a tweet @CREAT3D

3: Or visit their ‘brick-and-morter shop’ shop at:
38C Church Street,
Caversham
Reading,
West Berkshire
RG4 8AU
United Kingdom

Winners Create a New 3D Printing Technology Challenge

After long deliberation and discussion we’ve finally been able to decide on the winner of our “Develop a New 3D Printing Technology Challenge.” We looked closely at the level of innovation, feasibility & achievability of the technology. We also looked at to what extent the entries would revolutionize 3D printing and be a step change in 3D printing for the desktop 3D printing user. We tried to determine which technologies were not already being worked on within the open source 3D printing community. We also looked at which technology would let designers & makers explore new design directions in 3D printing and make new things possible. Our final conclusion was to award two Ultimaker Originals to two winners.

The First Winner is Laird Popkin with his “High Speed Large Format 3D Printing with Detail Finish” Idea. Laird wanted to solve the issue that 3D printing is too slow by creating a dual nozzle 3D printer. And “build a printer with two extruder nozzles, one very large (e.g. 1.2mm) and one much smaller (e.g. 0.4mm), and to configure/modify the slicer software so that it can use a single perimeter layer that is fine resolution (small nozzle, 0.1mm to 0.2mm layer height) and then interior perimeter and infill using much thicker lines of filament (large nozzle, 0.5-1mm layer height).” He wanted to, “make the modifications to the open source slicer software and configurations to optimize print speed and quality for such as configuration.” His goal was to, “Once the software and configuration are validated on standard hardware, my ultimate goal is to “hack” the Ultimaker to support 2x dimensions, for 8x the print volume, in order to be able to extremely rapidly print prosthetics for entire adult limbs in a single print.” He wanted to start with the Gigimaker design for a large format machine and go from there. We loved the ambition but also thought that he had considered the issues and problems well. We thought that this would greatly help the open source 3D printing community and that he had thought well about the issues and challenges at stake. We hope that Laird enjoys getting an Ultimaker Original and can’t wait to see what he shares with the YouMagine community.

Our second winner is XYZAidan‘s Silicone 3D Printing Process. Aidan made a video describing his process, you can check out above. We liked his ambition and by introducing new materials and a completely new way of 3D printing we could see that his idea could radically transform 3D printing for the home user. His idea to 3D print a silicone mix could be difficult to implement. If he is successful however it would be a significant advance for desktop 3D printing.

In addition to silicone his 3D printing technology would open up 3D printing to many more 2 component materials and this would greatly add to the home user’s 3D printing arsenal. Aidan wants to increase the resolution of 3D printing with his technology and also bring about higher print stability. He hopes to be able to extrude the silicone while having it cure inside the 3D printer’s nozzle. We love this idea and can’t wait to see him implement it! Congratulations to both Aidan and Laird on winning their Ultimaker Original’s. We hope they share their innovations with the YouMagine community and that their work lets others create more technology at home!

YouMagine Useful 3D Prints Contest

Win a ColorFabb value pack with 16 rolls of ColorFabb 3D printing filament in it!
Add the tag “Useful 3D prints Contest” to your uploads to participate.
Enter before the 31st of December.

We really want YouMagine to be a place where people work together to build the future of things. Due to this we want to stimulate you to work with other people and help each other. Especially where some people have skills that others do not. Any way we can stimulate this would be great. And any ideas on this that you have would be very much appreciated! In order to show how useful 3D printing can be we will be holding Useful 3D printing contest from now until the 31st of December. Just add the tag “Useful 3D prints Contest” to your uploads to participate. The winner will receive a ColorFabb value pack with 16 rolls of ColorFabb 3D printing filament in it! This usually sells for €484 ($604). Thank you ColorFabb for providing this prize!

A ColorFabb Value Pack!

The contest will be judged by the YouMagine team.

Criteria

We will look at the originality and quality of the photographs but most of all the utility of the 3D printed object.

The contest will be judged by the YouMagine team.
We will look at how the photo illustrates the scale of the 3D printed object in an interesting way. This is important in order to get viewers to understand how large the objects on the site are.
We will look at how the photo illustrates the utility and purpose of the YouMagine file or project to other community members.
We will look at if you’ve made the 3D printed thing look beautiful.
We will look at if you’ve shown how a person is using or uses the 3D printed thing.
Above all we will look at how useful is the object? How does it add value to people’s lives?
How well is it made, designed and printed?

By using these criteria we hope to get a lot of you guys to start thinking about ways through which we can make the photography on the site more useful to the community. As well as thinking about more practical applications for 3D printing. Compared to other sites we do have much better photography, more complex items and higher quality 3D prints. But we think we can as a community improve even more by finding out how to convey more information to the community through each photograph. That way people browsing the site can much quicker find what they want or need. So how can photos be used to convey more information and make the 3D printed designs on YouMagine look nice at the same time? We want to convey scale, utility & beauty in a simple way. We can’t as a team figure out how to do this. Is every model going to be a shot of someone holding it in her hand? Does there always have to be a Coke can in the picture? How to get a good photo of something using an Iphone? How to quickly take a great picture that gives the rest of the Community an instant idea of what this thing is? Since we couldn’t come up with an answer to these questions, we have turned to our extended team, the YouMagine community for answers. Additionally many people now make tchotchkes, small fun things that have no real value. What we think is different about YouMagine is that we are seeing you make things that are useful, interesting and do add value to people’s lives. We hope to encourage more of this and this is why we’re having the contest. Happy 3D printing!

Introducing Joe Larson Community Blogger at YouMagine

Joe Larson’s recorder

Cymon aka Joe Larson is a helpful and inspiring YouMagine Community Member who makes lots of cool & useful designs ranging from a MetaChess board, peg board hangers, abstract games, a guy Fawkes ring & a musical instrument. Joe has won awards with his 3D modeling and has written tutorials and guides on Blender and the book 3D Printing Blueprints. I’m not sure how he has the time because he has a wife and 5 kids and a full time job writing software for a BioTech company. He also has a great blog called Joe’s 3D Workbench where he talks about his explorations in 3D printing. We asked him if he’d love for us to syndicate his work, so we publish the first paragraph or a few lines of a post on his blog and then link to him for further reading. He liked the idea of sharing his work with the YouMagine community. If there are other bloggers who would like to be featured in a similar way please email joris (at) youmagine.com.. so…without further ado…

“Modeling for 3D Printing Tip 4 – Separating a Multi Part-Mesh

What happens when you download a STL that’s actually many pieces, and you only want one or two of them?“

YouMagine ToS online

Today we’ve put our Terms of Service online. This is part of our Share3D project to create infrastructure for the 3D Printing community as a whole. We want to let people share more things online. We want to help them work together on creating technology & improving it. We think that the future will be one of networked decentralized innovation and as YouMagine we are building the plumbing for this future. We want to connect all the ideas to all the people who want things made from those ideas. We know that there is a community of companies and individuals working on parts of this same goal. We want to help them be they fellow travelers or competitors. So Share3D aims to give them resources for free that they can use to accelerate their development. We are sharing this ToS with the world under a Creative Commons BY SA license. Please note that we are not a law firm, this does not constitute in any way legal advice and we make no warranty in connection with this ToS. You can download or peruse our ToS here. Conceptually our ToS is very much pro user and made with a general interest in sharing.

The human readable version:

We do not expect you to transfer your rights in your contribution to us
Please respect that the platform itself remains our property
We reserve the right to remove your contribution, if we believe that is necessary
You should keep your username and password to access the platform confidential to avoid unauthorised access
We only collect and share your personal data where necessary and will not sell, rent or share it with third parties for commercial reasons
Our control over contributions is very limited so we cannot accept any liability for the uploading, sharing, adapting, validity, legitimacy, 3D printing etc. of these contributions
Please use our notice-and-takedown procedure if you believe a user of our platform infringes your rights.

We hope you enjoy our ToS. Unhappy with a portion of it? Contact joris (at) youmagine.com or comment below and we’ll change it if we can.

Fareham College on 3D printing in Education

Ted Turnbull of Fareham College

YouMagine has a passion for education. To see what is exactly happening in 3D printing in education we sat down with Phil Savage and Ted Turnbull of Fareham College in Fareham, in the UK. The college has 4 Ultimaker 2’s & 6 Ultimaker Originals as well as a Replicator x2. The College is committed to getting students of all ages to use the printers. They want to increase the quality and learning of their technology lessons. Most schools that are looking into 3D printing are only getting one machine, for one class. Fareham’s 3D printing implementation is much more extensive. Actually it is one of the most extensive ones I’ve seen so far. I took the time to catch up with them at the TCT Show in order to see if they had any lessons that other schools looking at 3D printing could learn from.

Fareham College students assembling Ultimaker Originals

What does your 3D printing implementation look like?

“The plan with the 3D printing hub is initially geared towards enabling and enthusing teachers learn how to use 3D printers in their education practice.

Student course work and teaching materials are financed by the college, with personal and private work for staff and students produced at cost. Education Budgets in the UK have become increasingly stretched in recent years, so acquiring teaching materials aimed at kinaesthetic learning is financially challenging. The VAK (Visual, Audio, kinaesthetic) model suggests that some students learn by being told things, some learn by being shown something but others learn by experiential physical (kinaesthetic) learning. For this last group of students with the budgets the way they are it is hard to find the teaching tools to enable this. However, 3D printers coupled with a growing range of resources, such as YouMagine, give us the tools we need in to enable this learning experience.”

Kids making 3D printers!

Who operates the machines?

“Its a combination of options. Many students and teachers have received enrichment training or continuous professional development training covering using the 3D printers. In terms maintenance and optimization we have people trained to do that as well. The 3D printers are racked in the back of our largest classroom and someone is always present. When we move to a new facility in the next academic year the printers will be in HVAC controlled space.”

A student placing an axis rod on an Ultimaker one.

What have been the major issues you’ve encountered?

“The biggest issue for us has been funding – Ultimaker’s Create program has been an enabler in this regard. We also had to take into account a range of health and safety issues. In the UK we have to comply with legislation known as COSHH, and we’ve had to perform a detailed health and safety assessment process which took quite a long time. One particular area being issues around the properties of materials such as PLA and Nylon, which were hard to certify because of the comparative ‘newness’ of their use in education for 3d printing.”

What are some of the biggest advantages?

“We’ve an ongoing project with our Child Care and Early Years program for people who want to work in nurseries and in the wider child care sector. We are enabling them, in-house, to design and manufacture bespoke board games, toys and other learning resources, with a professional finish, to use with the context of child care provision. This can be achieved at a fraction of the cost and time, by utilizing 3d printing technology, when compared to almost any ‘traditional’ manufacturing process available in education.

Our sports science department is providing its students with 3D Printed knee joints to help them better visualise, understand and learn about skeletal mechanics. For chemistry, students can be provided with molecular modelling kits, at a tiny proportion of the cost of similar commercial alternatives. In total we have 16 ongoing projects at the college at the moment. Amongst other goals for the year we hope to gather a lot of usage data and evaluate how people use the facility. This information can then inform an iterative development process for our use of the technology just as the wider 3D printing industry does.”

e-NABLE the future conference & Hand-O-Matic 3D printed prosthetics tool

Last week at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, there was an amazing community event, the Prosthetists meet 3D Printers conference. Currently at 1600 volunteers and rapidly expanding, this community is “Enabling The Future.” E-Nable is collaboratively designing, printing and assembling 3D printed prosthetics for children and other underserved populations.

Awesome new hands!

The e-nable conference was an amazing combination of children, parents, physicians, prosthetist, 3D modelers, software developers and many amazing volunteers. Ultimaker has been a big supporter of this event through a donation of $10.000 worth of printers and YouMagine is supporting it by providing infrastructure for sharing and collaborating 3D designs for prosthetics. Everybody is dedicated to make this work and the mix of people all “joining hands” towards a common goal.

272 hands were created by the community and made into kits by 3DUniverse, ready to be built at the event!

Within the community so much progress was made. Many people met in real life for the first time, because e-NABLE operates globally and online. Contributions come from across the globe and are available for use, study, modification and production anywhere. While global, 3D production can be as localised as the home of a prosthetic user on the family’s 3D printer or a relative or someone neighborhood who has one.

Click here for more photo’s that were taken at the event.

The 3D models for the latest design called the “Raptor Hand” were released just before the event. Yuo can find the official files hosted here on YouMagine. It contains the best design elements from several designs that had been made up to that point. Literally, the designers “joined hands” and made it better! Anyone can contribute and anyone can benefit.

The great thing about 3D printing is that it puts no premium on printing something different every time or making something completely customized. The exact measurements of the body can be used to create a perfectly fitting hand, taking into account the amount of padding material to make it comfortable. YouMagine works with the e-NABLE community to deliver a next generation of model customisation tools, starting with the Hand-O-Matic, which is available at e-nable.youmagine.com. This makes generating a tailored prosthetic hand radically easier, because you only need to provide your measurements. We’re proud to be able to support the e-NABLE community.

Hand-o-Matic: Easily create customized 3D printable prosthetics

I also gave a talk at the event. I explored the question of what defines us as humans. Since we differentiated from the apes, our hands have allowed us to create powerful tools which have become a major part of our society. We shape our own tools and our tools are in turn shaping us. Which tools we use and how we evolve them is what defines us. Our perception of the world changes as soon as we realize that we can be a creator of the physical objects around us. This is not new, we’ve just lost touch with the process of making physical things. We can awaken our maker DNA, but now with more powerful tools. The fact that you can collaborate with people around the world to create real objects that matter, that’s a game changer.

Now we’re using collaborative online tools and desktop 3D to provide hands to people who need them. e-NABLE is about community, sharing, giving, collaboration, making, open source and 3D printing. It’s the ultimate example of humanity enabled by powerful tools.

Sharing a ToS and License for 3D printed things. Google Hangout & feedback on ToS

We mentioned that in order to support the sharing of 3D printed things we were working on a ToS and license for 3D printed things. We are not making these for ourselves but rather for the broader 3D printing and IoT communities. We hope that people will give feedback, contribute, help shape and use our ToS and License. We will let you use both for your own platform or service. We’re doing this because we believe that in order to make more things malleable the next logical step is for people to work collaboratively on group projects. We are also seeing many functional objects emerging in the 3D printing space. But, the requisite legal protections and guidelines are not emerging at an equal pace. Please comment, join the discussion and give any feedback especially if something makes you unhappy or is confusing.

We have posted our concept ToS to Medium. Here you can give comments next to the pertinent section.

On the 10th of September at 19:00 CET we will be hosting a Meetings IO. My apologies, we had an early scheduled Google Hangout but it did not work and did not let me log in again.

On the call we will be joined by Louwers IP Technology Advocaten our lawyers and Michael Weinberg of Public Knowledge who will be joining the discussion.

One Handed Bottle Opener Video

One handed bottle opener

Kart5a is 17 and from Finland. He makes lots of fun 3D printed things, such as the one handed bottle opener. He also makes videos about these things. They explain the printer settings, design changes and show how the product is made. I think this is a great way for community members to share their work and show others how to make things. The videos are in Finish but he’s added subtitles for us so we can all learn about his process. I’d love to see more videos like these!

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