We are excited to announce Faberdashery filament is available to buy at the iMakr store in London. This is pretty big for us, as it is the first time we have put our filament into a physical retail space.

The store is located in central London and occupys 2,500 square feet across two floors making it the largest 3D print store in the world. Last night Faberdashery was at the grand opening. It was great to feel the buzz and excitement in the store as people took in the variety of printers, materials and accessories on offer.

We are excited by the chance to give greater accessibility to our filament. So come and see touch and smell Faberdashery at the store!

Kuma Crafts caught our eye recently with their gorgeous 3D printed jewellery. The husband and wife team specialize in jewellery, apparel and plushes inspired by Japanese culture. Until recently Kuma Crafts produced most of their jewellery using layered acrylic. However when they realised the potential of 3D printing they decided to incorporate it into their production techniques. A lot of work has gone into getting the jewelllery to the high standards Kuma Crafts have set for their products.

Stan Velijev of Kuma Crafts explained ‘After a lot of experimentation and tweaking, we finally have consistent high quality prints that we’re happy to sell. Faberdashery’s PLA is the only one we’ve found of high enough quality to be used for jewellery. The gold has just the right shine with a little sparkle, and the diameter is of extremely even consistency so we never have filament jams or irregularities in smooth surfaces. Faberdashery makes a premium product which yields premium results.’

Thanks Stan! We love what you have done with our filament and can’t wait to see what you do next.

Faberge eggs have been a source of delight and intrigue since the first one was created for Czar Alexander’s wife in 1815. Each of these spectacular Easter gifts housed hidden surprises ranging from bejewelled miniature replicas to a singing bird in a gilded cage.

Inspired by the Faberge legacy we are running a competition to find the most inspiring and surprising 3D printed Easter egg. Like Faberge, you have complete freedom in the design of your egg, with the only prerequisite being that there has to be surprise within each creation. You can design your egg from scratch or re-mix existing designs or simply hunt though Thingiverse for the most crazy/brilliant/lovely thing to put in an egg. We don’t mind.

Two prizes are up for grabs: (1) Best Technical Interpretation, and (2) Most Creative Interpretation. Each winner gets £50 to spend on Faberdashery filament and big love from us! To enter, simply upload your design to Thingiverse with the tags ‘Faberdashery’ and ‘Faberge’ by 12:00 GMT Tuesday 2nd April, so get your wiggle on! We will announce the winners on Friday 5th.

Legal stuff: The prize is non-transferable and cannot be redeemed for a cash sum. Vouchers will be provided which can be used to purchase Faberdashery filament through the Faberdashery website store to the sum of £50. Vouchers must be spent in a single transaction and cannot be redeemed across a series of separate purchases. Vouchers are valid for a year from the date of issue.

Credit: Design- Customizable Easter Artistic Eggs by Joe Stubbs.

MakieLab, the have just launched their iPad app. The pioneering London-based doll and games company, utilises 3D printing technology to offer customisable action dolls. Now their ‘Makies Doll Factory’ app allows you to create you own unique 3D printed figure from the comfort of your iPad. As you’d expect from MakieLab, it’s beautifully simple with great attention to detail plus a few quirky characteristics.

The launch of this app is another landmark in the trend towards accessible 3D content creation. As 3D printing technology becomes more pervasive, we’re seeing the emergence of tools that engage with people in a far more immersive way. The new genre of easy to use, low cost (/ free) 3D content creation tools opens 3D printing technology to a wider audience of enthusiastic non-specialists.

MakieLabs having been pushing other boundaries this month, adding three new flesh colours to the SLS Nylon dolls. Makies have also become the first ever 3D printed toys to be toy certified. That’s pretty big! It’s been a great start to the year for 3D printing

This weekend Team Faberdashery are at the 3D Printshow, London’s first expo dedicated to the world of digital manufacturing.

Day one highlights ~

Wow, what an awesome 1st day! There was a good mix of companies- covering everything from the arts, very high end industrial products, to the personal 3d printing market. There was a great buzz around Ultimaker’s stand, where finished prints were being ‘ejected’ out of machines towards the amazed onlookers. The charismatic Brook Drumm of printrbot showed their range of compact and foldable ‘Jr’ machines, that are super cute and desireable. When I approached Formlabs, the crowd was 4 people deep (!), so hope to get hands-on tomorrow.

What really excited me was the many smaller groups and individuals I chatted with. Peter Goodwin, director at Artbot, is looking to use 3D printing to enable new possibilities in Kinetic Art following BEAM principles. I can’t wait to see these creations! It was really inspiring to meet printcraft, who passionately demoed 3d prints being pulled from their custom Minecraft server. Watching how accessible this gaming environment makes content creation to young people, highlighted the key challenges and opportunities in the industry. Equally, the team from Black Country Atelier were brimming with enthusiasm, bringing this technology into education to empower the next generation of makers.

Two more days of fabbing fun ahead!…

Here’s a beautiful story.

Simon and Steph got married this summer. They wanted to make their wedding favours really personal to them. What better way to do this than by 3D printing them!

We’ll let them explain it in their own words:

We have been playing with the printers for around a year and were impressed with the capability and versatility of them. When we were looking into the cost of favour boxes they turned out to be pretty expensive and with the cost of everything else we decided to try and make our own. We found the design of the box on Thingiverse and sweets to go inside that we had personalised with our names and dates of the wedding to make them unique. Our past experiences with white had either come out slightly see-through or with a yellowy tinge. The Faberdashery Arctic White seemed like a perfect option. It was completely pure and exactly what we wanted-matching perfectly with the brilliant white decor. At the wedding lots of the guest said they were amazing and asked where we had got the boxes from – they were completely in awe when we said we had made them! We would just like to thank you for allowing us to have this extra wow factor on our special day!

Simon and Steph

As you can see, the results were stunning. Thanks Simon and Steph for sharing your story with us.

London Design week is a fantastic spectacle of fashion, architecture, interiors and products; and it was only correct that 3D printing should feature in the mix. Last weekend marked the end of London Design Week. We headed over to Earl’s Court to catch the final day of 100% Design and help out with the RSA’s Great Recovery stand.

Jim with his Emaker Huxley at RSA’s stand for 100% Design

The Great Recovery is all about challenging the lifecycle of products and designing for a circular-economy model. In addition there were talks from Daniel Charny, the curator of the V&A’s Power of Making exhibition, and James Carrigan, co-Founder and Creative Director of Sugru. They were talking about Fixperts.org, a project looking at how using design thinking can help fix everyday problems. Of course these projects are a great fit with the 3D printing and maker movement.

Talks included James Carrigan and Daniel Charny introducing their Fixperts project

The RSA’s stand was a bold statement amongst the slick and minimalist displays. Shelves filled broken electrical items surrounded volunteers busily fixing things. Jim was there with his Emaker Huxley printing out spare parts and replacements in Faberdashery neon colours. The printer was a real crowd pleaser with reactions ranging from sage head nodding to pure open-mouthed amazement.

The printer drew a lot of interest

It was great to see the buzz and excitement generated by the printer. When you are so deeply immersed in the world of 3D printing it is easy to forget that feeling of amazement on seeing your first print. Despite the explosion of the home 3D printing market and the attention it gets in the press it is still only small (but fabulous) proportion of people with machines. It was inspiring just to experience the delight on people’s faces as they watched a product emerge before their eyes. As one amazed onlooker said: “It’s alchemy I tell you!” Alchemy, sorcery, magic, whatever you want to call it. It’s here. We call it fabbing. 

The KamerMaker is the world’s first movable 3D print pavillion. Capable of 3D printing entire rooms from PLA, this is one of the biggest printers around. It has an epic build size of 2x2x3.5m! The project is a collaboration between DUS architects and Ultimaker Ltd and is purposely open source. From 2013 onwards, the KamerMaker will travel to different locations in the Netherlands and beyond.

We were lucky enough to be at the launch party in Amsterdam last weekend. The event had a real block party feel with great community interaction. We got a fantastic view from inside of the machine. Yes, that’s right, you can climb inside it! Printing this big is no easy task. Although the machine is driven essentially by standard Ultimaker electronics with the beating heart of an Arduino (plus some industrial stepper drivers) feeding the plastic in requires some innovative solutions. A mini-extruder (from xtrution.com) feeds the KamerMaker with molten plastic. Thermoplastic granules are fed in the top, melted and extruded along a monstrous ‘bowden’ tube to the print head. The tube is heated PTFE with steel braiding. It is an elegant solution with pretty awesome results. The design of the machine is really beautiful, with mirrored, chameleon stainless steel finish, fitting inside a standard shipping container.

It was really inspiring to see a concept put into action. Big dreams are great. Making them a reality is even better. Already we are seeing huge potential for the KamerMaker. We would love to know your thoughts. If you could print this big, what would you print?

To see more images of the mighty KamerMaker take a look at our Flickr stream.

Something we love about PLA for 3d printing, is its translucency. PLA pure and natural is semi-transparent, with a gorgeous crystalline effect. It produces stunning 3d prints that other materials can’t achieve. Here are some shining examples!

Sim City Capitol Ambient Light model by TopperDEL

A project that came onto our radar recently is the Sim City Capitol Ambient Light model by TopperDEL which takes the Capitol Building on Thingiverse from Skimbal’s Sim City 2000 Tabletop Play Set and turns it into a stunning colour-shifting tabletop lamp. TopperDEL used colour changing LEDs to create ambient light change effects and printed the model in Faberdashery Crystal Clear PLA. The outcome is a real design centrepiece. He’s included detailed instructions on how he printed his Capitol Building, focussing especially on the challenge of hollow printing. TopperDEL says he has plans to make more LED lamps. We’ll be watching out with excitement for his next cool idea.

Grayscale Dualstrusion Poster by tbuser

The other fantastic project that plays with transparent qualities is the Grayscale Dualstrusion Poster by Thingiverse superstar tbuser. His design experiments with the variation in transparency according to print thickness. He created this iconic poster through simple layering. Genius!

3D printing Surface Treatments – PLA iPhone Case by norcalbarney

Of course we couldn’t blog about PLA translucency experiments without mentioning norcalbarney‘s magnificent iphone cases. What can we say? Exceptional use of the Hilbert Curve!

At Faberdashery we’ve just launched our new and improved Jade Green. This completes our current collection of translucent PLA colours. So whether you’re thinking light-up bunnies, awesome self-portraits, mojioto green shot glasses or just some simple jewellery then reach for the translucents.

It’s Friday, and we wanted to share a little inspiration with you. Here’s some of the cool stuff people have been doing with Faberdashery filament this week ~

Angry Birds by MotoBarsteward.

Parametric Rings by Yuleblinker.

Blockbot by Richard Gain and a great little video to go with it.

Happy Friday all!