3d printing competition at Budapest 3D Printing Days 2014

Affordable 3D printing and domestic FDM machines are having a huge effect on the DIY community. While there will always be room for making stuff by hand, it’s so helpful to just 3d print out a part you need. In honor of this awesome tech Design Terminal has teamed up with Varinex Inc. and Freedee Printing Inc.  to launch their call within the Budapest 3D Printing Days 2014 for a design competition especially for 3d printing with entry-level and industrial-grade 3d printers.

photo by Design Terminal

If you haven’t already been following, 3D printing is predicted to be absolutely huge – not just the next cool thing in tech, but hopefully something that will transform and change the way we manufacture our things and live in the future. From construction to toys and even food, 3D printing has really the potential to dramatically alter many of the things we do, and, in the design world, it is one reason why sharp borderlines between designer and user may blurred.

photo from last year’s event © Design Terminal

The contest calls upon Hungarian designers/innovators/makers to create a product by using 3D printers. The goal is to demonstrate the potential of 3D printing technology. The call is available unfortunately only for Hungarians. You can apply by submitting this form.
The organizers will present the event with two different categories of submission. The two categories reflect important characteristics of the additive manufacturing processes while simultaneously looking for creative innovation through interpretation of different themes from 3d printed architectural models, industrial prototypes, decoration, 3d printed sculptures, toys, 3d printed jewelry, 3d printed lampshades etc.

designer 3d printed easter egg by parametric | art

The first category is for the designs which all can be made on an affordable desktop 3d printer using FDM technology. That means, a lot of design rules and technical boundaries of these plastic extrusion printers have to be looked before sending your design files, a minimum wall thickness of 2 mm is one of the conditions of a successful submission. Make sure your model doesn’t include too many overhangs, because there isn’t statement about soluble support material or dual extruder 3d printers. The height of the objects is maximized in 10 cm, so small sculptures, plain, minimalistic 3d printed jewelry pieces and simple, geometrical figures might fit the rules. The whole model has to fit in a 10 x 10 x 10 cm cube. By the way, there is an option to send physical 3d printed models as well, so what if I can make my design in triple scale with .8 mm wall thickness on a DIY open-source 3d printer using water-soluble PVA filament as support material in the secondary extruder?

generative 3d printed lampshade in dual color by parametric | art

Anyway, the more complex 3d printed models should go to the second category, which is separated for detailed geometries, which only can be manufactured on a professional, industrial grade 3d printer using SLS or DLP technology. These models are allowed to include some overhangs or fine details, but they ll should fit into a 20 x 20 x 20 cm cube, or they will be scaled before the production. Minimum wall thickness – just like in the first category – is about 2 mm, make sure your model doesn’t contain thinner structures.

 

my generative easter egg designs printed on a Perfactory machine

Competitors can submit several entries. By entering this competition, everybody has to warrant that the work is their original work. 
 The designers have to claim that their work – to the best of their knowledge – is not, and has not been in production or otherwise previously published or exhibited. 
Neither the work nor its use infringes the intellectual property rights (whether a patent, utility model, functional design right, aesthetic design right, trade mark, copyright or any other intellectual property right) of any other person. So keep it simple and fair, don’t steal others design or download something, create some unique stuff on your own!

The best designs (10 of them) will be 3d printed and exhibited to show the visitors how you can create stunning art with a free or open-source 3d modelling tool like Meshlab, Grasshopper or Blender and an affordable desktop 3d printer. And maybe a whole lot of talent, but honestly, I’m not sure where you can buy that:)

unique 3d printed jewellery by parametric | art

You have almost a week for submitting you designs, the deadline is on 20th May, so let’s get busy and send you best designs to win a tablet and get your design 3d printed and exhibited on the Budapest 3D Printing Days 2014!

my 3d printed generative lampshade design with dual extrusion

I also want to submit some of my designs, although I had to realise that most of them won’t fit the contest criteria. They are too big, include too thin structures, and I guess they couldn’t be 3d printed on a conventional cheap FDM printer with factory preset default setting. Although I’ve printed ’em on my Leapfrog Creatr pretty awesome, I have no idea what kind of 3D printer they want to use to print the projects of the competitors.

Until then, maybe you could help me to decide which designs of mine should be nominated, you can see some of them on the attached photos, please vote for your favourites in the comment section to let me know which forms and 3d models are the most popular. I usually try to explore the geometric laws behind natural forms to recreate them as parametric digital models, which all have been fabricated using affordable FDM 3D printers.

designer 3d printed easter egg by parametric | art

It’s a pleasure that I can get access to the 3D printer farm of GigamaX3D. They want to offer the best 3D printers that will be fast to assemble and will print high quality parts. They offer a wide range of 3D printers – from entry-level open-source machines to industrial-grade professional workstations – that would be useful to many people, helping them realize their dreams whether they be engineers, artists, students, entrepreneurs, architects or other maker. Their Leapfrog Creatr 3D printer is versatile and powerful, and I’m really excited to give a try to the Creatr XL, which can 3d print giant objects up to 60 cm height.

posing with the Leapfrog Creatr XL

Tell me, what would you 3d print if you would have such an amazing 3d printer giant like the Leapfrog Creatr XL 3d printer with dual extrusion features? There is no need to split your designs into several parts and assemble them, you can print life-scale objects in one piece using the newest prosumer 3d printer of the dutch company.

If you are around, take a visit to the brand new HQ of Leapfrog in the Netherlands or come and visit GigamaX3D’s new showroom and studio in Budapest to get some personal experiences with these amazing 3d printers. And of course, see you at the Budapest 3D Printing Days in June! peace;)

3D printed generative jewellery with affordable desktop FDM printers

I remember that it wasn’t a long time ago that 3D printing was a little-known term of the high-tech industry. And now, today it is a household name and an accepted technology entering its next major development phase. Right now, we can see 3D printing and all the hybrid additive manufacturing solutions for production taking off and we believe will fundamentally change the world of manufacturing.

http://gigamax3d.com

In the last couple of years, the global media has given 3d printers a fair amount of attention and the industry now has great expectations placed on it. Perhaps the greatest asset of 3D printing is that it is an enabler . for both corporations and individuals. In fact, 3D printers is being used in three types of manufacturing and fabrication processes: personal manufacturing, augmented manufacturing and alternative manufacturing.

http://parametric-art.com

The oversimplification of 3D printing in the media and in conversations does the job of grabbing attention and drawing focus to the highlights of this fabrication process’ capabilities. That big picture has involved more and more people and attracted more interest in 3D printing than ever before. But of course, for an average customer, the details are missing. Without them, you can make poor decisions and you may conclude that 3D printing isn’t quite right for you. But you might know that the devils is in the details, and as the idiom indicates, getting to them may be a challenge for you.

http://parametric-art.com

The jewelry industry already understood the importance of harnessing the power of 3D technologies and additive manufacturing for the benefit of the industry in general – and training the next generation of jewelry designers. Parametric design processes like computational algorithms and data based design are the new tools for young designers, and the digital design combined with fully digital fabrication allows them to create some really amazing pieces using a CAD software or only coding.

generative lampshade designed by parametric | art 3d printed by GigamaX3D on a Leapfrog Creatr Dual extruder 3D printer

There are some breathtaking projects around, you have to check out Nervous Systems Kinematics Home app to create custom generative jewellery pieces which can be downloaded and 3d printed on your personal 3d printer at home. Of course, you’ll need a desktop 3D printer with a resolution of 50-100 micron to be able to make high quality prints, nobody wants to wear something barbed. Post processing might be necessary, ABS prints can be smoothed in acetone vapour to get a shiny finish (fine details and contours often disappear during the smoothing process).

http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/kinematicsHome/

When it comes to getting the best out of 3D software and a desktop 3D printer, we can keep in mind that this technology is still a complementary tool, it supports and enhances traditional techniques (like lost-wax casting for example), not replacing them.  It’s a technology that gives the jeweler a new set of tools (both for design and fabrication), but it’s not a replacement for traditional skills. When we are talking to a designer and they want to design a conventional wedding ring, they would not need to take advantage of the things 3D printing offers because on many cases, traditional manufacturing techniques are better placed to do so. According to this, we can say that a 3D printer won’t put a traditional jeweler out of his job. The whole new process of 3D printing only saves designers from having to model the initial part of the design from scratch.

designed with Nervous System’s Kinematics Home App 3D Printed with pink and black PLA by parametric | art

designed with Nervous System’s Kinematics Home App 3D Printed with Laybrick (sandstone) by parametric | art

It is a really nice idea for students of for those trying out the technology, to push the technical boundaries of jewelry design and manufacturing with new digital tools as a pattern language. Fashion design, industrial design, architecture and jewelry already adopted the parametric design language which allows the designer to generate a huge amount of variations and iterations for a defined situation depending on fitness values and genetic algorithms. There are some open-source tools for generative design, which makes this game much more fun!

gyroid pendant by parametric | art

A dear friend of mine has designed the generative 3d printed jewelry pieces shown in the pictures I’ve inserted, I think they all look really unique, and they all came out from an affordable desktop FDM 3D printer. Most of them are 3D printed on a Leapfrog Creatr Dual extrusion 3D printer, some of them have been printed on a RepRap Huxley or the Velleman K8200 3D printer. In some cases, he has made some test prints on a Makerbot Replicator2 as well. I bet you’ll like all the stuff of the parametric | art 3d printed generative jewelry collection, for some design, there are already uploaded design files (.stl) on Thingiverse, so you only have to download and scale it, and then 3D print it!

‘chiselled’ bracelet by parametric | art

‘gyroid’ bracelet by parametric | art (rendering)

‘gyroid’ bracelet by parametric | art (3dprinted)

The illustrated 3d printed jewelry pieces are great examples for the quality which can be reached with a well-calibrated 3D printer and using premium quality 3D printer filaments. For the chiseled details and overhangs, you’d better print these kind of objects with high resolution (100 micron or finer) and use water-soluble PVA 3D print support material to avoid the trouble while removing supports manually.

‘vorocuff’ bracelet by parametric | art

If you want to design and 3d print your own generative 3d printed jewelry (for example like the voronoi bracelets on the picture above), you don’t need to buy any expensive stuff. You don’t need a professional CAD software which are really expensive, there are plenty of open-source and free tools which you can use as well. Just like I described in a former blog post about 3d modeling for 3d printing, you can use Meshlab, Grasshopper for Rhino and Meshmixer for the modeling work and Netfabb or similar software for optimizing and repairing you meshes before generating the g-code. If you want to learn this stuff, there are some really nice workshops offered by Gigamax 3D printing technology.

DIY 3D printer workshop
GigamaX3D x parametric | art

Actually a dear friend of mine runs gigamax3d.com and GigamaX3D facebook page.
They are the official european distributors of ESUN filaments and Velleman 3D printers. They sell nice quality ABS/PLA/HIPS/PVA 3d printing filaments with 1.75 and 3 mm diameters in 1 kg spools in 16 vibrant colors, which I’ve already tested on my Replicator2 and they are all good (I’ve had some serious troubles with 3d printer filament diameter issues before).

3d printed with purple PLA filament
http://goo.gl/eHuKrM

They also carry consumer and prosumer desktop 3D printers like the Leapfrog Creatr or the Tricolor Mendel RepRap model and also offer print on demand services and training/education workshops. A lot of RepRap parts and electronics are available on stock as well. Gigamax 3D printing workshops offer an impressive scope of standalone desktop 3D printing technology, the Leapfrog Creatr dual extruder model, tricolor Mendel, K8200, Reprap Huxley to name just some of the best ticket items being put to use and build by this busy little center.

GigamaX 3D Printing
http://gigamax3d.com