Kaetemi

So, last week I received a package that's dated next week. It contained a sample part from Stratasys printed on a Fortus machine. Looks pretty good and feels very strong as well.

Another thing I'm working on at the moment. This is a figurine stand designed specifically for prototype figures. It basically allows you to place pretty much any figure on it, by having pins that can be moved to different positions of the surface. The purpose of this is, obviously, to save money, as I won't need to print any stands for prototypes of unfinished figures.

As this is still a work in progress, it still has some issues. More specifically, with the printing of the pins. It seems my idea of having flexible pins didn't turn out that well, for two reasons. The first issue being that it seems 1mm pins have a fairly high printing failure rate. Interestingly Shapeways included the failed prints together with some extra ones that are properly printed. In the picture are supposed to be eight pins. The second issue, is that the pins are too flexible this way, and therefore don't hold on to the figure properly.

So, what I'll do next, is try to print a set of solid pins in the range of 1 to 4mm with difference of 0.1mm between each (making a nice total of about 30 pins), and see how that turns out.

Coloring test on Shapeways' White Strong & Flexible 3D printing material, using Winsor & Newton watercolors and Letraset ProMarkers. With watercolors it is possible to make soft gradients between colors, as well as sharp edges. Markers blend slightly, giving softer edges, and can be used to make gradients as well, similar to how they react on paper. Watercolors can be washed out of the printed object almost entirely using water, marker colors don't change at all under water.

Alright, time for some more useful blog posts again. I went to the exhibition at IF a few days ago, and to some readings they did there this week.

On the first floor of the Budascoop, timelab was demonstrating some of the open hardware projects in 3D printing, including the MakerBot and a RepRap modified by Unfold to print in clay. Here's some HD footage.

Unfold's modified RepRap and some of the object's printed by it:

A picture of one of the MakerBots:

Some parts printed on the MakerBot in different colors of ABS, which you can buy from the MakerBot website.

The open source miniCNC developed by timelab.

Oh yes, and this is what the MakerBot was printing in the video, about 24 minutes were spent by the machine on making this thing.

Later this week, I'll also visit Interieur 2010 here in Kortrijk, so expect more pictures from that expo as well.