1800s – Early Additive Manufacturing Concepts Begin

As far back as the 1800s, ideas surrounding 3D scanning were taking shape in their own way. In 1859, Francois Willeme developed a method called “photographic sculpture” in which he could capture 3D models of human subjects using 24 cameras placed at different angles. Joseph E. Blanther patented an apparatus that used layering to create three dimensional topographical maps in 1892.

1980s – The First 3D Printing Technologies are Born

It wasn’t until the early 1980s, however, that 3D printing technology really began to kick off. Dr. Hideo Kodama from the Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute was the first to invent a layer by layer photopolymer rapid prototyping process. His method was not commercialized, however, and Charles Hull instead became the first to successfully acquire a patent for his Stereolithography Apparatus and coined the term “stereolithography.” His method involved building three dimensional objects layer by layer with photopolymers, cured by a UV light beam. The first object Hull printed was a black eye-wash cup. Hull was also responsible for developing the STL file format, the file that 3D printers most commonly use today. Hull commercialized the process of rapid prototyping and went on to create 3D Systems.

The late 1980s then gave way to a couple more 3D printing technologies still used today: Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), a method which uses a laser beam to melt powder into a solid object, developed by Carl Deckard at the University of Texas in Austin who would later go on to form Stratasys. His early machine “Betsy” was able to print plastic molds for parts. Fused Deposition Modeling, developed by S. Scott Crump & Lisa Crump, was another technology born in the 1980s in which a material is heated and extruded through a nozzle to create an object layer by layer, inspired by the Crumps’ use of a hot glue gun in making their daughter a toy frog. As of 2020, it is the most commonly used 3D printing technology.

1990s – Technologies Develop and Innovations Grow

The 1990s saw the development of many new technologies including Direct Metal Laser Sintering and Binder Jetting. This is also when 3D printing began paving the way for innovations in the medical field with the development of Bioprinting, which involves precisely positioning layers of cells and their supportive structures to create functional tissue. In 1999, the first organ, a human bladder, was created by scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. They 3D printed a synthetic, biodegradable scaffold to create the bladder which was then coated with the patients’ own cells, thus ensuring the organ would not be rejected. This would allow 3D bioprinting and 3D printing in the medical field to really take shape.

By the 2000s the cost of machines was starting to decrease and 3D printing technology was on its way to becoming more accessible. In 2004, RepRap (short for replicating rapid prototyper), a desktop printer able to print its own components to build another version of itself, was invented by Adrian Bowyer as a way of making the technology more accessible and was the first of the lower-cost printers. The first version of the RepRap printer “Darwin” was released in 2007, and countless new iterations now exist.

2000s – Increase in Accessibility to 3D Printing

3D printing services like Shapeways became more prominent by providing individuals and businesses access to top-tier 3D printing equipment for their manufacturing needs. Our services here at Shapeways allow designers and businesses to upload their own 3D files and have access to a number of cutting-edge 3D printing technologies as well as 75+ materials.

The internet has continued to increase accessibility to 3D printing technology for anyone looking to leverage the power of additive manufacturing. Open source online libraries for 3D printable files are growing constantly and more businesses are transitioning to 3D printing and using Shapeways to produce professional, quality parts.

3D printing has also been incorporated in school curriculums even among young students. Knowledge of 3D printing concepts, technology and software has become a crucial element of STEM education and computer science.

Early Expectations vs. What is Possible Today

Charles Hull began developing his 3D printing technology in the early 80s because he was frustrated by how time consuming prototyping was back then. Almost 40 years later, 3D printing technology has indeed become the fastest and most cost-efficient way of producing prototypes and has evolved to play important roles in the manufacturing process for many industries. In the past decade, there have been countless innovative projects undertaken using additive manufacturing as the technology continues to develop. Equipment costs have decreased while print quality has increased and the printing process is much faster and more efficient.

It is now possible to create thicker layers and more accurate, complex shapes than ever before, which has facilitated a shift from prototyping alone to the production of end parts. Customization is more achievable and affordable with 3D printing than any other manufacturing process, so businesses can more easily offer personalization options to their customers. 3D scanning and printing technology have also allowed for major innovations in the medical field where patient-specific customizations have helped improve and even save lives.

What started as a way of producing plastic prototypes has turned into a dynamic technology whose applications continue to grow. As of 2020 we are seeing more and more companies integrate additive manufacturing into their product development, design and production processes and seeing the scale of new projects and innovations expand. Ready to take advantage of the additive manufacturing for your business? Find out how Shapeways can help!

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In your shoes, in your car

It’s everywhere! Mass-manufactured 3D printed products are finally getting into customer hands… or onto their feet and into their garages. That’s because adidas’ long-anticipated Futurecraft 4D shoes with 3D printed midsoles finally dropped this week. And MINI announced that in 2018, customers can personalize their rides through the new MINI Yours Customized program. Hopefully, this will show everyone what we already know: that 3D printing CAN MAKE (almost) ANYTHING.

Carbon tech, adidas hype

The Greatest Show on Earth (but not the only show in town)

CES is paradise for geeks, futurists, audiophiles, 3D designers — basically, anyone who is really into any technologies available to consumers. That’s why it’s a good place to spot the kind of 3D technology that could one day (soonish) be in your house. There were a couple of standouts at this year’s CES, which ended last Friday: Ethereal Machines’ “5D printing,” a 5-axis 3D printer with a rotating build plate, and the HP Z 3D Camera, which turns an easily-mountable camera into a scanner and facial-recognition tool. Some very cool news also came from outside the consumersphere: Another rotating 3D printer part, this time the printhead, was demonstrated by Harvard researchers to increase the strength, stiffness, and resistance of 3D printed parts. And in another leap forward for really, really big 3D printers, a new printer from CEAD is already contracted to print ships. We’ll see that one in action at CES 2030.

The HP Z 3D Camera (source)

Breathe easy and break a leg

It might not solve all our problems, but I mean, 3D printing can now print structures that could regrow lung and brain tissue, plus titanium bone replacement meshes that are often better than bone grafts. It’s not a license to live dangerously, but it might just be there for us when we inevitably do.

3D Print Your Medical Needs

Learn how you can utilize 3D printing for medical use. Contact us today to let us know how we can help.

The post The Week in 3D Printing: Kicks and Cars, New Tech Alert, and Medical Miracles appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Software

Stratysys is debuting the J750 3D Printing Solution software, which allows users to design for printing in specific materials, while Sigma Labs is releasing web-based quality assurance software PrintRite3D INSPECT, and Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence is tackling improving print quality with a stable of software tools like Simufact Additive, a simulation tool for predicting and reducing distortion in powder-bed printing.

Machines and Manufacturing

EOS is going after mass additive manufacturing in plastics with its new EOS P 500 polymer printer, while Mimaki and Verashape are both bringing promising innovations to the show. Mimaki’s 3DUJ-553 will be the first full-color 3D printer that can print up to 10 million color combinations, and Verashape’s VSHAPER has a 5-axis kinematics system and a rotating working platform, allowing users to print in multiple materials and on top of what was previously printed. And EnvisionTEC will premiere a set of upsized printers, including the Perfactory 4 LED XXL, which features the largest build area on the market for DLP 3D printing.

Metal and Multi-Material Printing

Do four lasers equal 4x print speeds? That’s the promise of Renishaw’s RenAM 500Q metal 3D printing system. Meanwhile, XJet, Optomec, and ACEO are all releasing multi-material 3D printers at the conference. XJet’s Carmel printers rely on NanoParticle Jetting Technology that layers nanoparticles of either metal or ceramics, Optomec’s LENS 3D Hybrid Machine Tool can mix aluminum, titanium and other reactive metals, and ACEO’s “drop on demand” technology is a multi-material silicone 3D printing process.

There will be so much more to see and do at formnext, but these are the booths we’re starting with. If you’re at formnext this week, stop by and learn more about how Shapeways brings additive manufacturing to all at Hall 3.0 Booth H73. We’ll see you in Frankfurt!

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DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
With every new material and technology we offer, we work closely with our community and technology partners to improve and develop it. Our testing and evaluation of this new technology started back in 2016 when Shapeways partnered with HP and received the very first prototype printer in the field. Our 3D printing engineers spent months user-testing this machine and providing expert feedback to the HP team to help drive development of this revolutionary technology.

The HP Jet Fusion Printer in action

Once we received the first production machines, we invited community members to our Eindhoven factory to get feedback on the material in their designs and to get an in-depth look at our process.

A designer from our community tests out HP Nylon Plastic

In April, we opened Early Access to HP’s Multi-Jet Fusion technology. Since then, together, we have been rigorously testing the capabilities with thousands of different applications and geometries, thanks to our diverse community’s endlessly varied, one-of-a-kind products. This has enabled us to have an extraordinary and unique understanding of the material and process.

DETAILS
You have helped us prove that prints developed with HP have excellent mechanical properties, a smooth surface, and a more finished look. Both the quality and strength of HP have not yet been matched by other materials, showing the ingenuity of this new technology. Over the course of developing the material, your insights have also helped us drop our lead time to 6 days.

Because of the increased strength, durability, and smoothness, this new material will be introduced at a higher price than our Strong & Flexible family of plastics.

Along with our community, we hope that in the future the HP printers will help us to lower costs for our users. It is HP’s mission to create the fastest and least expensive nylon printer on the market, and we are grateful to continue working with them to help make this happen.

As roll out HP to all of our makers, we are renaming the material from HP Strong & Flexible to HP Nylon Plastic to distinguish it from our Strong & Flexible family. We have also made updates to the design guidelines, pricing, and lead time.

Testing bracelets printed in HP Nylon Plastic

USES
Due to its superior mechanical properties, we recommend HP Nylon Plastic for functional products that require high strength, stiffness, elongation, and isotropic properties, such as RC cars, mechanical, and casing parts. If you’re not sure if HP Nylon Plastic is the right material for your project, see the comparison chart of functional plastics below.

WHAT’S NEXT
In the near future, we plan to make HP Nylon Plastic available for Shop Owners to offer as well. But first, we’ll need your feedback on the material. What has worked for your own models? What are things to watch out for, or unexpected uses for the material? With your help, we’ll soon be able to offer HP Nylon Plastic to all marketplace shoppers.

We’re grateful for your feedback and ingenuity as we continue to develop new technologies together. We can’t wait to see what you make with HP Nylon Plastic! Upload your design here.

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We’ve featured biologists who 3D print, and we’ve seen the artists who 3D print. But do you know about the 3D printing BioArtists who combine the best of both worlds?

The term ‘BioArt’ was coined by Eduardo Kac, who is known for the genetically modified Alba, a rabbit implanted with a Green Fluorescent Protein gene that is normally found in jellyfish. As the name would suggest, this would have caused Alba to glow green when exposed to blue light. While it is not confirmed if the photos that exist are real or modified to show the green glow, the significance of Alba is the idea behind it.

You may have inferred from just this one example that BioArt is often seen as controversial for the involvement of living things. While that debate will no doubt rage on, what is certain is that this art practice raises important questions about identity, sustainability, and ethics. It then takes these questions from the lab to the public, allowing scientists to benefit from unique perspectives and outside-of-the-box advances in research.

Today we will introduce you to three BioArtists who take advantage of 3D printing to maximize their practices. They all share their research and processes online, so should you feel inclined, you too can try your hand at these interdisciplinary practices.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg

Probably Chelsea, courtesy of Heather Dewey-Hagborg

Consider cigarette butts and chewed gum wads on the streets of NYC. They might be trash in the eyes of passersby, but in Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s eyes, they are genetic material. By analyzing these items, she is able to extract DNA and generate 3D portraits. As frightening as this sounds, the accuracy of it for identification is actually still highly unreliable. This is a result of not only the technology itself, but also personal subjectivity and stereotypes. What happens when these data get into the hands of policy makers, police, and other powerful actors? Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning set out to examine all these ideas in their collaborative installation “Probably Chelsea”.

Manning, a transgender artist, advocate, and columnist for The Guardian, was imprisoned for leaking top secret documents from her time at the American military. Paper Magazine commissioned Dewey-Hagborg to create a 3D portrait of Manning for their profile of her, since there was only one photo of Manning pre-transition on the Internet. The two clicked, and began collaborating on projects including “Radical Love,” “Suppressed Images,” and “Probably Chelsea.”

“Probably Chelsea” portrays 30 very different faces, all generated from Manning’s DNA. The artist aims to demonstrate the role of that racial and gender stereotypes play in the creation of portraits. By highlighting the different potential identities of DNA-based portraits of one person, Dewey-Hagborg refutes the “outmoded notions of biologically inscribed identity” to expose “a molecular solidarity that is clearly present even at the cellular level.”

For this exhibit, Dewey-Hagborg entrusted the 3D printing to Shapeways. She tells us that the faces are “generated algorithmically and printed out in full color and full detail by the Project 660 powder printer.” The precision and realistic rendering supplied by 3D printing creates a certain physical presence that allows for a “kind of encounter with another, looking them in the eye, seeing and viscerally feeling this face which is imaginary and yet real.”

Despite Dewey-Hagborg telling us that her work is positioned “more as a warning than as something I would encourage other people to do,” she has made her self-developed system of DNA phenotyping public on her blog with multiple available resources, and gives detailed interviews about her process. Hear from Heather directly in last year’s National Geographic film profile of the artist:

Amy Karle

If you’ve ever thought about redesigning your skeleton, you’re going to love Amy Karle’s biohacking project “Regenerative Reliquary”.

Courtesy of Amy Karle

Karle was driven to explore medical and artistic innovations by two influences: people with limb differences, and her childhood friend who is in need of a double lung implant as well as bone marrow therapy. Her friend continues to be scarred by the medicine that is sustaining her life. This moved Karle to find ways to generate bones and body parts with a person’s own cells.

She started looking into stem cells, which allow a patient to regenerate body parts rather than risking the complications of foreign implantation.

Using the Ember 3D printer, Karle prints her design of a hand skeleton in PEGDA hydrogel, which basically serves as a template for cell growth. Human stem cells are embedded into the hydrogel, and over time it will grow into tissue, and mineralize into bone. The hydrogel itself will disintegrate over time.

If Karle wasn’t going to use the pre-existing human skeleton, how did she go about the extraordinary task of designing a new bone structure? In the artist’s own words, “on the microscopic level, the scaffold mimics the trabecular structure of bone, the shape that triggers stem cells to become bone cells.”

Since this is a project designed for 3D printing, Karle wishes to take advantage of its digital nature and make the files open source in hopes that other researchers and artists may build on her research. The artist explained to Fast Company that the “benefit of making this as art is that I can test some of these theories and technologies, develop materials and processes, and experiment outside of the scope of protocols that would have to be followed if this was to be developed as an implant”.

Jennifer Berry

Think back to when you saw your first 3D printer. This wouldn’t have been in a robotics lab or a makerspace, but rather outside, under the sunshine. Because, according to Jennifer Berry, the OG 3D printers are bees.

As the artist explains, bees “work in a material made from their own bodies, formed at body temperature… a material that is safe to eat and is biodegradable and even recyclable.” The way Berry sees it, the honeycomb-building process is organic additive manufacturing in action. As an ecologist-consultant-designer-bee keeper, it was only natural that she became curious about the possibilities of a 3D printer modeled after these busy bees.

The goal of Berry’s invention, the B-Code Biopolymer 3D Printer, is to encourage sustainable, environmentally-considerate manufacturing. It collaborates with bees to 3D print a biodegradable, edible, and sustainable biopolymer as an alternative to existing materials that require wasteful processes.

So yes, it functions both as a temporary beehive and as a 3D printer. Berry made all material and design decisions to create the best environment for the bees by mimicking their hives as close as possible. Afterwards, Berry uses the honeycombs in her artwork.

The artist outlines her process on Instructables, for those interested in creating their own B-Code.

Are you a BioArtist, or inspired to start a BioArt project? Let us know in the comments about your printing ideas! And don’t miss out on the incredible selection of biology-inspired designs in our Marketplace.

The post BioArt Draws on Bees, Cigarette Butts, and DNA to Change the Way We Think appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Since 2014, we’ve been working with Hewlett Packard to test and refine their revolutionary Multi Jet Fusion 3D 4200 printer. After months of rigorous trials, we’re proud to announce that, starting today, you can sign up for early access to its unprecedented capabilities.

The HP MJF printer’s nylon plastic material is incredibly strong, smooth and dense. This could lead to lower-cost functional parts and leaner, stronger prints of everything from jewelry to complex miniatures. But we need your help to find its limits.

Bracelets by Shapeways designer mulderendevries

Thanks to your always-expanding variety of designs, we’ve been able to work with HP to drive the evolution of the MJF printer. We’ve tested a huge array of geometries and print orientations, and we’re excited to invite you to further test the MJF printer and refine how we use it. So, give us your most complex, innovative, mind-bending 3D models. Push your imagination (and this material) to the limit. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

The printer itself is an incredible breakthrough, allowing greater precision at faster build speeds, and unmatched 80% post-printing material reusability. It also lays the groundwork for next-generation features like full-color plastic, conductive pathways, improved product quality, next-day delivery, and lower costs. Today, it’s already one of the coolest machines — and strongest nylon materials — that we’ve seen.

Starry D20 Balanced Gaming Die by Shapeways designer Tiny Tokens

So sign up today for early access to the HP printer’s unprecedented new nylon plastic material, available in fresh-from-the-printer speckled grey or dyed matte black. We’ll soon be making the printer accessible to everyone, but at this point we’ll be sending out invitations to a selection of those who sign up for early access.

We look forward to seeing your designs and hearing your feedback. After all, you are the most important part of this latest leap forward for Shapeways and HP.

SIGN UP HERE

Homepage image: Mega Flora Ring by Nervous System, printed by Shapeways

You can find out more about the partnership and HP’s Multi Jet Fusion technology in this exclusive first look from Make.

The post It’s Here! The HP MJF Printer Is Open for Early Access Signups appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

We are thrilled to work with Hasbro to be the very first entertainment brand to open up their intellectual property to their dedicated fans to legally create tangible, 3D printed products. This partnership is perfectly aligned with our mission to enable the Shapeways creative community to make exactly what they want, for themselves, to share and sell to others.

For the initial launch at Comic-Con 2014, we will start with the incredibly popular My Little Pony series, to allow fans around the world to create and sell unique, 3D printed My Little Pony figurines. This will dramatically expand the range of products available from the few currently being mass produced by Hasbro, to potentially include the over 900 ponies identified and named by the fans. Many of these designs have been created by a passionate group of fans from the Brony community (for the uninitiated, a Brony is a Bro who likes Ponies so Bro + Pony – P = Brony (welcome to the herd)).  Once we have filled our 3D printers with community designed ponies, we will continue to work with Hasbro and the Shapeways community to enable more Hasbro branded content to be created, 3D printed and sold.

This is a major step forward in realizing the creative potential of 3D printing, to make products on demand that might otherwise never make it into people’s hands. Hasbro has been incredibly forward thinking and open minded, to realize that the existing unmet demand within their fan base can be satisfied with the help of those very same fans. We expect to see many more partnerships like this, to enable user generated content to be 3D printed based on existing intellectual property, with fair attribution and compensation for all parties involved. We’ve seen this model work successfully in the digital realm, and we’re thrilled to be leading the charge in the physical.

Take a look at the SuperFanArt site to learn more, and meet some of the Shapeways community members who are promoting their designs in partnership with Hasbro and Shapeways. Also check out the New York Times article for insight into why the Hasbro team approached Shapeways to be a partner to help them enter the world of 3D printing, thanks mainly to the Bronies in the Shapeways community.

A solid brohoof to all the bronies who helped make this happen.

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