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A new phase for YouMagine

The short version:
We’re looking for people to help out, taking YouMagine into the next phase. To support its continued development, we’ll experiment with various revenue models, including advertising and our just launched Patreon page.

Longer version:
Back in 2013, together with a small team at Ultimaker, we launched YouMagine. The dream was to create a place for people to share and find digital designs for making real objects. Thanks to the amazing Ultimaker and broader 3D printing community, today there are close to 20 000 designs shared on YouMagine, and many more produced objects used by people across the world! This would’ve been impossible without so many amazing contributors!

One of the goals was to create a platform and community that was technology neutral, e.g. not exclusive to customers of Ultimaker. Everyone should feel welcome to use it and contribute to it. In 2017 this was taken a step further. There was no need for Ultimaker to “own” YouMagine, because it considered it a free service to the general public anyway. Ultimaker as the single “sponsor”, didn’t make sense. That’s why Martijn Elserman and I (co-founders of Ultimaker) decided to give YouMagine true independence. As of 2017 it is no longer affiliated with any manufacturer.

For the next 5 years YouMagine was run by me and sponsored by Martijn and myself. During COVID, we invested heavily in making the website more robust to handle the heavy traffic and we improved features for collaboration. For instance, we added file version numbers and better ways to attribute original designers. We got the support of Luis Cordoba, an amazing designer who’s helping to moderate the site. Luis was full of interesting ideas and we realized YouMagine wasn’t given the attention and funding that it deserves. We always figured YouMagine should evolve and stand on its own feet, also financially.

This is why we’re opening up YouMagine for more people and organizations to sponsor it. It should do more than cover the hosting and maintenance cost. We’d love to see experimentation and evolutions of the platform. If you or your organization would like to play a role in this, please reach out!

While I still deeply care about the fate of the platform, my passion for creating new concepts and businesses has taken me to new adventures and a new eco-startup: Stekker.app. Because it takes dedication, focus, perseverance and passion to turn ideas into something of value, I can no longer give YouMagine what it deserves. I will continue to be a sponsor of the platform for as long as needed, but I’m looking for a new “steward” with the passion to take YouMagine to the next level! If you’re that person, please reach out! YouMagine has remained the same for too long, even though there’s so much potential value left untapped.

As of today, we’re starting to experiment with advertising on YouMagine. We also launched a Patreon page, that you can find here. If we end up getting enough income, there’s no need for advertising, which is personally my preference. But it’s up to the next steward(s) to figure out something more appropriate that works well. Whether from advertising or another source, the plan is to let revenues (after costs) go to those who contribute to the platform.

Note: for now, if you’re signed in to the website, you won’t see any ads. So it should be easy to not see them if you’re an active user of the website.

We believe in an exciting future for YouMagine and we welcome you to be part of it!

Erik de Bruijn

Founder and current steward of YouMagine

Survey summary: Makers who improve 3D printers

Joris van Tubergen - designer, inventor and 3D printing innovator — Joris van Tubergen – designer, inventor and 3D printing innovator.

Prof. dr. Jeroen de Jong and Max Mulhuijzen surveyed YouMagine community members to learn about the motivations of makers and their reasons to share what they made.

Below is a summary of their findings:

An interesting trend is that Makers increasingly develop designs that benefit producer products. At YouMagine, we observe that users upload designs that serve as inspiration for the next generation of Ultimaker printers.
We aim to find out: what are the characteristics of Makers improving 3D printers?
With a response rate of 33% (N = 122), we find an engaging Maker community in the YouMagine platform.
Although 40% of the respondents are also occupied with 3D printing in a business environment, only a few report being driven by commercial motives.
Respondents are driven because they want to help others, learn, satisfy a personal need, or out of enjoyment.
On average, we find that the respondents spend 10 hours on 3D printing per week and have 7 years of experience working with 5 different printers.
Designs that are created to overcome a personal problem show higher scores of online adoption on YouMagine.
This is well-reflected by the designs ‘Yet Another Ultimaker 2 Feeder’ and ‘Ultimaker 2 Cable Chain’. These are uploaded by Makers who essentially created these designs to solve their personal problems.

Click to download the complete survey report:Download

How to get your design featured

I personally look at every single design that is posted on YouMagine. Occasionally I will feature something that stands out, but this is a small portion of the designs posted on YouMagine. So, if your design does gets featured, it might be considered quite an honour to be on the front page for a while. But, how do you get your design featured?

The following recommendations you definitely increase the likelihood of getting your design featured:

Valuable: At least interesting or useful to some other users. The design doesn’t have to be for everyone. That’s the beauty of the internet: there can be MANY, MANY obscure items, each one having value to someone who comes across it. The beauty is that thing are 3D printed on demand, so every thing that gets made has value to someone.
Originality / innovation: The design should be your own or be a derivative or improvement over something someone has shared before. So: not a direct clone or files taken from another designer, it has to be developed at least a bit further.
Reproducible: It should be possible to reproduce what you have made (if you include rare items that you can’t find nor print, it is hard to reproduce for others)
Open source: As much as possible, allows for modification or improvements to be made. Set wiki-mode to enabled to allow registered members to contribute or update files and descriptions. Make sure you choose a license that allows derivatives. Also, include the native design files so people can build on top of your work. Parametric files are easily adjusted, so that’s also a plus, but definitely not required since it mostly applies to functional objects that have varying parameters.
Attribution: If the design builds on the work of someone else, give credit to that person (e.g. username, to the design that inspired you).
Ready to print files: even though source files are useful if someone wants to adjust something.
Images: A great photo makes your design stand out! Showcase it nicely with images of the printed thing and also the context in which it can or should be used. A video is often the best format to show the latter.
Documentation: Graphical assembly instructions (when assembly is required) are a big plus, so are instructions for use (unless that’s obvious)

Items that don’t become featured because they don’t meet these criteria still might be valued by other members. So don’t hesitate to share what you have! It’s also appreciated if you interact with people who provide feedback on your design, for instance by responding to “Issues” that people have opened and closing them when they’re resolved. You can also simply respond in the Comments section.

If you design many things and become followed by other YouMagine members, that will also increase the number of times your design is collected or voted “Favorite”. These stats also are factored in when deciding to feature a design.

Good luck and thank you for sharing!

Erik de Bruijn
Entrepreneur and software and hardware developer
(Co-)founder of Ultimaker, YouMagine and Stekker.app

3D Printing News – DUS Architects print micro home

Pasted Image 9 4 16 3 24 PM (Photograph by Ossip)

Pasted Image 9 4 16 3 50 PM DUS Architects in Amsterdam has created a tiny gabled urban cabin that is a mere 25 cubic metres (882.87 cubic feet) using FDM technology. They are allowing guests to spend the night to experience what life in a micro 3d printed home might be like. There is no toilet but you can take a bath outside au natural. Concrete set into the infill gives it strength and forms a seat on certain locations while pebbles in the infill outside form a path.
(Bathtub photo by Sophia van den Hoek)

A window punctures one end, while the other integrates both an entrance and a stepped porch seating area. Its walls are patterned with angular protrusions that create a three-dimensional surface, giving the building extra structural stability.

It really is further insight into the groups design sensibility that is part of major project that launched in 2013, to be complete next year, a four story 3D printed canal house. They use the KamerMaker (Dutch for “room maker”) and KamerMaker2, a “XXL 3D Printer” 3.5 meters high and housed in an up-ended shipping container to produce the large pieces. They use bio-plastics on all pieces and say it is a part of a future ecosystem that allows full recycling of the material.

This micro home isn’t the first time DUS has exposed their designs to the public, they also unveiled a beautifully printed facade for a European Union meeting building, as seen below.

Pasted Image 9 4 16 3 30 PM

(via de zeen magazine)

3D Printing News – Facebook Group Contest: Nerf!

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**********************DEADLINE EXTENDED*********************

VIEW THE CURRENT ENTRIES

A contest is running now until ~~September 23~~ October 21st on Facebook in the 3D Printing group, which currently has over 17,000 worldwide members! They are using the YouMagine platform to host the files.

The theme centers on your most creative way to launch a Nerf-compatible dart so the world in your oyster, keep it simple or make it crazy complicated!

You can read below the detailed rules and many opportunities to win something great from an amazing prize pool from some of the best 3d printing companies in the community.

So join the Facebook group and get designing!

Contest Theme:
Nerf Dart Compatible – Launchers & Guns
This means it can be handheld, robotic, rubber band powered, air powered. Anything! As long as it can launch a dart!

Contest Duration:
4 weeks! Starts 8/26/2016 and ends at 11:59pm (GMT -7hrs) on 9/23/2016

Contest Grading:

Feasibility to Print
How well the design functions
Percentage of the design that is 3D printed vs off the shelf parts.
Entries will be judged by David Gaylord from MatterHackers as well as the group’s Administrative Team!

How to enter:

Design & 3D Print a Nerf Dart Compatible Launcher or Gun
Upload design STL & Picture’s (or Video) to www.youmagine.com
Set Design Category to “Contest”
Tag Design with “#3dpgnerf4um2”
Choose your preferred license but make sure you check mark “Wiki Mode”
Post your design to 3D Printing Group on Facebook (optional but recommended)

Rules:

You MUST be a Member of 3D Printing Group on Facebook, so be sure to join if you have not already! If we are unable to verify your Facebook account is a Group Member, you will forfeit your prize.
Your entry MUST be on youmagine.com to qualify
Please do not enter existing designs (we will check)
You may enter more than one design, but you can’t win more than one prize
Design MUST include pictures or video of actual 3D Printed Design. Renderings do not count, entries lacking pictures or video of the 3D Printed Design will not be qualified.
Live on Planet Earth, This contest is World Wide!
Have fun!

Prizes! 9 Chances to win!

Grand Prize:

Grand Prize winners design will be featured on YouMagine and Ultimaker websites!
Ultimaker 2+, AND a Surprise bundle of 7 Ultimaker filaments
Ciclop 3D Scanner Kit from CowTech Engineering

Second Prize:

FilaBase kit
Micro v6 Hotend
ApolloX ASA Filament and bioFila Filament from FilaFarm

Third Prize:

PrintItIndustries – Caldum Series Heated Bed & E3D Lite6 Hotend
3DPrintNerd.com – 4 Spools of PLA/ABS filaments
All Professional 3D – 3 Spools of PETG filaments

There will also be runner-up category prizes!

Most Over Engineered Design:

1x Spool each of the following filaments.
(FiberForce Nylon, PolyMaker PolyCarbonate PC Plus, Proto-Pasta Silver Smoke HTPLA From Hawk3D Proto)

Best Theme Design (This can be from a Movie or Game!):

Two (2) Lucky winners will get 2x 1kg Spools of filaments (each winner) from MakerSome!

Most Difficult to Print and/or Assemble:

2x Spools of Pro Series Filament from MatterHackers

Most Creative Design:

Sample of every filament made by Proto-Pasta (even some unreleased ones!)
A Plated Nozzle From Proto-Pasta!
A Afinibot3D Printing Pen & Modified3D Finishing Tool from NWA3D!

Most Minimalistic Design:
5x .5kg Spools of PLA or ABS from 3Dprinteruniverse.com

Contest Sponsors List

Grand Prize
Ultimaker
CowTech Engineering

Second Prize
FilaFarm

Third Prize
PrintIt Industries
3DPrintNerd
All Professional 3D

Category Sponsors
Hawk3D Proto
MakerSome
MatterHackers
NWA3D
3DPrinter Universe
Proto-Pasta

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.

YouMagine updates, scrum & agile.

We’ve learned a lot about what our community needs and would like to see changed at YouMagine. We have gotten direct feedback from you and reached out to you in our YouMagine 3D Printing community survey. Based on that we’ve expanded our team and already done some significant changes to the design of the home page. We’re going to be doing a lot more and I’d like to give you an update on the most recent changes.

Scrum

We’ve adopted Scrum which is a process whereby you continually improve websites or applications. This lets us plan Sprints, two week development periods, whereby we can home in on your needs and build what you wish for us to build. We didn’t adopt scrum because it was hip but rather because it lets us act more directly based on your feedback and ideas. We’ve also switched to doing continuos deployments which means that we release bugfixes and updates several times each day. We also wrote a lot of unit tests that should trigger if we break something important. We do test before releasing and we have a continuous integration server where we deploy to first.

Demos

We also internally do demos where we show the team and people like Joris our Community Manager and Ronald who does our educational outreach what the development team has built. They can then give feedback and be your voice in the demo. We’ve found that this method eases issues that arrive when there is a disconnect between expectations and reality.

First Demo

I’m going to share with you our first demo.

We fixed a bug whereby the dropdown menu in the “I’ve created this design” view. It now shows designs you’ve created. So you can now add your design as a solution to a challenge. You cannot just add any design, which used to be possible. This means that the drop down will be smaller and load a lot faster.

We’ve created a dashboard so we can monitor and visualize our own development work and the site.

We added an updated Notice and Takedown policy to the footer of the site.

We’ve altered the main navigation and improved its performance & design for mobile devices.

We’ve been trying to improve our search significantly based on your suggestions that it needs to be improved. At the same time, we realize search is a core function that should never break. We found a solution to enable fast development without breaking search. If there is a bug or issue with the search it automatically runs a Google query (with YouMagine as a site filter), this means that we have the time to fix our search without you really waiting for it to be fixed.

A lot of people like our messaging system but we had a bug whereby you were not able to search for users, we fixed this.

We’ve added a functionality whereby you get an email notification as soon as someone adds your model to their collection. You can turn this off in your profile if you find it annoying.

We’ve also added an automatic email should you get a new follower. Both these suggestions are in response for people requesting greater interaction on the site.

An email also is generated if someone prints your design and uploads a contribution to it in the site.

We’ve deployed Mixpanel in order to better analyze what you are doing on the site and what could be broken or needs to be improved.

Your photograph is now visible on the link to your profile and we made the message notifications much more obvious.

Youmagine Blog