Other 3D printing companies (besides Shapeways)

There are two other sites that I've been looking at the do 3D printing besides just shapeways. The first one is called Ponoko. About two years ago, the company Autodesk 123D, a community for users to design, create, and share 3D models, partnered with Ponoko, Techshop, and 3D Systems to allow users of 123D to create actual objects with their designs using the 3D modeling software. 3D Systems offers on-demand printing services and personal 3D printers and kits. As of right now, it is still free to use. Ponoko offers more than just 3D printing. It also offers laser cutting in a variety of materials including thin wood. Their webite can be found by clicking HERE. 

Another of the potential ways to get started 3D printing is using a place called Techshop, which have locations in various cities (mostly larger).  Their facilities includes laser cutters, plastics and electronics labs, a machine shop, a wood shop, a metal working shop, a textiles department, welding stations and a waterjet cutter. Members have open access to design software, featuring the entire Autodesk Design Suite. Huge project areas with large work tables are available for completing projects and collaborating with others. 

How It Works (according to their site)

It's simple. Anyone may attend classes. For a monthly or annual fee, members can reserve and use TechShop's tools upon successful completion of equipment-specific Safety and Basic Use (SBU) classes. 

And a fourth place that one might go to in order to get some of their designs created in a tangible form is i.Materialise.  Checking out these sites may provide better and more suitable for each individual. 

Article

This is just a cool article that I wanted to share about 3D printing. It has everything from printed Ears to Ramen Noodles. Totally digging on this article.

Artist Mika Aoki's blown glass sculptures.

Another artist that I've been looking into is Mika Aoki. Her sculptures emulate the shapes and patterns of micro-organisms as well. S

Mandelbulb 3D

So, I've been putting off this post about Mandelbulb 3D, but basically. Mandelbulb 3D is a program that generates fractals of various shapes and sizes that can then be slice and run through the Meshwarp to then be printed by a 3D printer. Developed by Jesse and a group of Fractal Forums contributors, based on Daniel White and Paul Nylander’s Mandelbulb work, MB3D formulates dozens of nonlinear equations into an amazing range of fractal objects. The 3D rendering environment includes lighting, color, specularity, depth-of-field, shadow- and glow- effects; allowing the user fine control over the imaging effects. The user is allowed to manipulate several of the mathematical data points to generate new fractals. It's a very touchy and sensitive program, and one needs to be delicate when adjusting the figures as one slight change and the whole shape can disappear completely from the computer. I have had success changing the figure in increments of about .10 degrees, but even that can cause it to go completely off the screen. The Mac download cost about 20 dollars, although the sites tell you it is free. In order to 3D print from this particular program, there are a lot of factors and 3 programs that need to be used in order to slice and then generate the obj file to send to the MakerBot, if that is the printer that you are using. There are a number of videos that are online that highlight this process. One place to look is on youtube. This guy Don Whitaker, has many tutorials about the application. He shows you how to zoom and explore the fractals and eventually in his series, he shows how to slice and print. Here is the introductory video. He has produced. Another resource that is good to check out is the Fractal Forum. This forum has lots of nerdy guys (and gals) that are into everything Fractal. It's not all that interesting to me, i just want to mildly look into the ideas and shapes that are based on fractals. Anyways, here is an overview of the program from the fabulous and witty Don Whitaker.

Fab Labs

I've become very interested in the Fab Labs that have been introducing a way for general public and institutions to fabricate with the use of computers and other machines.

Introduction to 123D make

We are using a program called 123d Make,

1.  Import your image
2. go to cut layout and then you can look under the left side window in Manufacturing settings, to a dropdown window to find different sizing... .make sure the univform scale is o, then you can change the height, etc. then you can select a number of sheets.  From there, you can check out the various slicing methods and come up with a way to put together your object either using metal, wood, posterboard, cardboard.

Pamela Sunday is a Brooklyn Based Artist/ceramicist that makes clay sculptures and tile works based on microscopic forms and other forms in Nature.  Hives, organisms, spiky beasts, atoms, and other forms serve as her inspiration.

Here are a few images.

Art forms in Nature

Generally, one of the things that I intend to do when doing research about a particular concept is consider not only the realities, in nature, but also other artists that might be working with a concept.    I have begun by looking into some of the shapes of nature and saved the ones that I was most fond of into a folder on my desktop.  Here are a few of those images that i am drawn to.

the following are grains of pollen viewed from under a microscope

And, other microscopic forms.

And of course I had to look at some images of Diatoms

Diatoms are delicate unicellular organisms that have a yellow-brown chloroplast that enables them to photosynthesize.

Where can you find diatoms?

At the end of the winter they are most numerous in fresh water.

The cells of diatoms are ideal subjects for study under the microscope. They show complex patterns of very fine punctures and they often have all kinds of ornaments.

Pediastrum

are forms that can be found on the tops of ponds

They also tend to have a fractal type shape, which is perfect for me to try and emulate, but in a 3D printed format.  So, I will keep these in mind when coming up with my shapes. 

Fractal Proposal (continued)

Artists working with Fractals

There are a number of artist’s that are already using fractal geometry to base their artwork in the 3D printing technology.

Here are some images of some of the work based on fractal geometry that is  being made by 3D printers. 

And here are some links to blogs, images, and interviews with artists that have been working in this manner

From Deviant Art

An interview with Artist Janelle Wilson

Shapeways Fractal Designs

and here are instructions on creating a 3D fractal for a 3D printer

Creating a 3D print based on Fractals

I will be posting more about these specific articles, and information about other artists using fractals as well in the up and coming future. 

MIDTERM PROPOSAL: WORKING WITH FRACTALS.

For Midterm,  I was asked to create a proposal on the work that I"d be doing for the rest of the semester, and I chose to work with Fractals to create 3D print shapes.  Fractals are the actual mathematical composition of things in nature.  There are many of other 3d Print artists that are working with fractals and fractal geometry to create interesting designs using this new technology.

Here was my proposal

For the second half of the Spring 2014 semester of 3D printing, I am proposing I will work on creating a series of organic, yet mathematical, forms that emulate nature but are based on fractal geometry.  Examples of this in tangible form could be loosely represented by the fractal.

My personal work is based on investigations into microscopic photography.   I create paintings, sculptures, and video installations that fluctuate between artful and scientific.  The work is exhibitive of science, yet organic and flowing. From equations, fractal geometry will produce an object that is cumulatively comprised of its self over and over again.   The mathematical fractal seems very scientific and is visually awkward (Figure 1-1), however there are many forms in nature that are exhibitive of the fractal, yet do not have the awkwardness of computer-generated fractals—such as the snowflake or Romanesque Broccoli.(figure 1-2, 1-3)  Even though it was only discovered in the late 20^th century,  the fractal has actually been used in art for ages and ages.  The Roman’s used the fractal they called “the golden ratio” to create the Parthenon.  The balance between nature and mathematics is what I will seek in drafting objects that I wish to pursue in the drawing/cad/and sculpting software available to us.  

In addition, I would like to pursue the drafting of housing pieces and manifests, which will be geometrically based to produce these forms with the additions of other materials—including small plastic dowel rods.  Here are a couple of images that I shared on the fractals

Project update. Exquisite Corpse

It's been a while since I've been on here to blog about my progress and all the things we are doing with 3D printing.   After we drew our self portraits using the free version of Sculptris, we moved on to drawing a bunch of body parts for what was called: Exquisite Corpse.   After everyone had drawn a couple corpse body parts, which they drew from a hat,  we uploaded all the parts into a folder, and were able to pick and choose parts to make our corpses.  We used a program called meshlab.  Meshlab will convert files from stl to obj. etc.

MESHLAB
According to their site: MeshLab is an open source, portable, and extensible system for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes. 
The system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models arising in 3D scanning, providing a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes. 
The system is heavily based on the VCG library developed at the Visual Computing Lab of ISTI - CNR, for all the core mesh processing tasks and it is available for Windows, MacOSX, and Linux.. The MeshLab system started in late 2005 as a part of the FGT course of the Computer Science department of University of Pisa and most of the code (~15k lines) of the first versions was written by a handful of willing students. The following years FGT students have continued to work to this project implementing more and more features.   

After a lot of struggle with the meshlab and getting sculptris to upload images that were originally produced in tinkercad, I had to print this, which is not one of my best designs, but was the only thing that I could get into the makerware software and ready in time.   One of the lessons I am learning about 3D printing is:

THERE ARE MANY MANY PROBLEMS THAT NEED TO BE ANTICIPATED.  THIS IS A NEW TECHNOLOGY.  EXPECT TO BE SHOCKED AND EXPECT TO BE FRUSTRATED!