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Discover 3D printing process

Although its roots lie industrial prototyping from the mid-80s onwards, it's fair to say that 3D printing has get along a whole quite a little cooler late. Whether you herald information technology as an impending revolution in consumer convenience, or are just keen to explore the inventive opportunities of sculpting any conceivable objective at the bear on of a button, the technology is evolving fast (if you're inspired, see how you fanny make 3D prints using your own photos gratis.

Brendan Dawes has printed egg cups, let alone his "weird, impractical Duplo-founded" business cards and a camera mount to fit on the handlebars of a bike

"The ability to create something digitally, then moments later hold that matter in your hands, is pretty magical," enthuses Brendan William Dawes, founder of innovative intersection design start-up Too Industries. "Sketches are great, merely they're only declarations of intent. 3D printing makes those intentions real, and that's pretty probatory."

Dawes points out that although the engineering has been around for years, being able to have a machine connected your desk changes things considerably. "The context is different," he explains. "Want an egg cup? Don't live to the shops, or even order information technology online to be shipped to you. Download and print it in your own home."

He invested in his own Makerbot Thing-O-Matic 3D printing machine in December 2010. "When a box of nuts, bolts, electronics and laser-cut parts arrived it was beautiful resistless," He recalls, "but I love new challenges. You just need patience. And a spanner."

Dawes occupies the fertile shared ground betwixt passionate hobbyist and occupational group room decorator, and loves to feed his experiments with radical technologies into his commercial work wherever helium force out, although he's an equally strong advocate of innovation in and of itself.

Rebel Kelly, an animation music director at Nexus Productions, shares this enthusiasm: "As someone who's been working on a computer every day for the live 12 or so years, it's really nice to be able to get something stake that isn't just a printed sheet of paper," declares the victory RCA alumnus, who has directed spots for Adobe, the United Nations, BMW, Bacardi and Google. "The possibility of translating a virtual object into a physiological form still makes me flavour a trifle gooey wrong," atomic number 2 continues. "When you 3D publish and tailor-make an objective, at that place's something lovely about the resulting fusion of high-conclusion technology and traditional craft."

Cao Studio apartment used 3ds Max and ZBrush to design Kelly Tunstall's grapheme, and it was printed with a ZCorp printer. "One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that the scale of your 3D print testament work, and not be tractable to breakage," explains Rob Melville, who minimised material use by hollowing verboten the good example as far As likely, while retaining its integrity

A self-confessed "100 per centime wonk", Kelly first started experimenting with the serve along a man for Adobe a few geezerhood ago, and has used it for individual animation projects since. "I had forever presumed it would exist out of my price range, until our head of studio at Nexus, Ben Cowell, sent a link to the on-postulate 3D printing website Shapeways."

On the site, Kelly adds, the cost of each exemplary is supported alone on how much material you practice. When 3D-printed apples were obligatory to produce his motion ident for Dutch TV show Het Klokhuis, e.g., his initial designs proved extremely valuable: "I didn't realise that the apples could be shell-spare, rather than made of solid material," he admits. "We wanted to keep the prices down, soh used a 1mm thickness for most of our models – we were upset about how sturdy the resulting apples would embody, but fortunately there were no breakages."

San Francisco-based Kelly Tunstall is an artist and illustrator WHO counts Nike, Adidas and Papyrus amongst her clients. She's no alien to 3D printers: she had one in her office ended a ten ago. "There was a technician who came through almost every time you wanted to habituate it," she smiles. "The prints can still be delicate, depending on the summons that you use, but they were really delicate then. I've had arms of statues break off, but we've been having that job since the Greeks made marble statues. Information technology's nothing new."

A 2D artist away trade, Tunstall found IT a challenge making the transition to three dimensions: "You have to mean out every angle," she reveals. "I complete that there are a great deal of cheats I do to make my paintings work, and you can't pay off departed thereupon in 3D." Accordingly, she worked closely with Rob Melville at Cao Studio to render her models using 3ds Max. "I roughed the concept in Illustrator, and provided hand-drawn sketches and example paintings, simply it was truly a collaborative piece with Rob," she says. "I piece of advice: use bright colors, as they do get more hushed in the march. And use as little material as you can without compromising the structure: information technology's big-ticket."

Each of the apples used in this stop-motion ident for Dutch people kids' TV program Het Klokhuis was 3D-printed in impressionable by Shapeways, using lasers. "If I had my way, then everything would be made using lasers," smiles Johnny Kelly, who collaborated with sculptor Jethro Haynes on the creation of the models. The show is dedicated to science and technology, and its mention means 'apple core' – hence the link

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