Tagged: RepRap
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.
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.
Our Thingsmith interviews spotlight the designer/makers that are playing an important role in the 3D printing revolution. In this series we hope to explore what motivates and inspires some of our favorite Thingsmiths.
Richard Horne (RichRap) has established himself as a stalwart of the RepRap community. He is well-known on Thingiverse for his fantastic experimental prints and willingness to take on big printing challenges. An expert in the art of multi-coloured printing, Richard has produced some iconic pieces including the fantastic striped Stegosaurus – sliced. Richard continues to push the boundaries of 3D printing with his most recent experiments into edible prints and ceramics.
1. Tell us about the creation you are most proud of and what inspired it?
My simple filament joiner and layer selective coloured printing. I was clearing out some old things from my childhood and found my old scraperfoils. I really loved these, you carve away the black surface guidelines to expose a chalk image giving you a picture and a somewhat rudimentary textured 3D effect. I then used pen inks on the chalk to make my birds, lions etc. come to life with colour. When I found these old images, I made a link with the plain coloured 3D prints I had seen and thought about adding colour using layers to make them more interesting, I then had to spend 6 months building my RepStrap before I could try it out.
2. When you embark on a new project, what’s your approach and what are your favorite tools?
I tend to evolve ideas and designs as I work on them; I’m not a fan of planning and designing everything before starting something practical, I like to see what influences me and experiment. I’m also a big fan of simple paper pads – I make so many notes and sketches and have lots of them for all sorts of jobs and projects, from home DIY to 3D printing, and more recently my love of blogging continues to compliment my note pads that I use every day. And of course my very favorite tool is now my 3D printer!
3. There’s an amazing community of makers out there; who’s work has recently impressed you?
MendelMax caught my eye recently as a great machine evolution and I’m always impressed by sculpture and organic models, but what really impresses me the most, is the many wonderfully talented people out there doing amazing designs and projects together. One person I really want to thank is Chris Palmer (AKA - Nophead) if it was not for his blog and his ongoing amazing journey I may not have taken the plunge into RepRap. From the very first entry on his blog I was hooked and also felt exactly the same way as I imagine he must have - “ My friend Wes pointed me to www.reprap.org and I immediately decided it was what I was going to do with part two of my life”.
I’m always delighted to see so many new people every day on the forum and Thingiverse doing amazing things and getting involved, improving and building on this technology so everyone can benefit.
4. Gazing into the future, what’s the next amazing project we should look out for?
Other than a real life star trek replicator I’m fascinated with both the extremely small and very large-scale 3D printing fabrication – from the ultra-fine microscopic layers and extreme high resolution to the really massive, complex impossible looking printed sculptures, houses, bridges etc. it’s going to be amazing watching all this unfold. I would love to be even more involved. I’m looking into food printing at the moment and it will need some community help to make it amazing, it’s much harder than I thought!
5. At Faberdashery Towers we are fuelled by Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. What’s your tinkering tipple of choice?
Normally Vanilla Green Tea and maybe a festive Gingerbread latte or two.
6. Just one last question. As an expert in multicoloured printing we thought it only right to ask what would be your ‘limited edition’ filament colour?
Oh that’s really easy – a complete set of chocolate coloured filaments from creamy white chocolate to 100% Cocoa, it’s my one weakness.
Mmm… That gives us an idea…
Photo credit: RichRap.
Being part of the 3d printing revolution means we are constantly having our minds blown by the crazy cool stuff people out there are doing. The ‘beatjazz’ project by Onyx Ashanti is one of them.
Last year musician and performer Onyx Ashanti created a new type of musical performance “prosthesis” called a beatjazz controller. This is a 3 way wireless sensor network used to make beatjazz, an improvisational music form. Think of it as a saxophone for cyborgs. Onyx uses this one-of-a-kind musical instrument to deliver live, improvised electronic musical performances.
The first prototype for the controller was cardboard and Onyx’s demo perfomance with it at TED was featured on MAKE last year. Now Onyx has moved it into the next level of awesome by 3d printing the hand units in Faberdashery Robot Silver. The results look fantastic!
Onyx says: ‘I discovered 3d printing a while back but only just purchased an eMAKER Huxley in November and spent January teaching myself CAD.’
‘One of the goals of the project is to make it open source (which it is already) and downloadable. In the vein of the reprap, approximately 80% of the system is printable, making it downloadable as well. This goal feeds the ultimate goal of the system whixch is to re-engineer music performance.’
We can’t wait to see the new units in action and are sure this will inspire a whole new wave of future-looking cyber-awesome musical creations! To keep up to date with the project check out Onyx’s blog.
Photo credit: Onyx Ashanti
Our Thingsmith interviews spotlight the designer/makers that are playing an important role in the 3D printing revolution. In this series we hope to explore what motivates and inspires some of our favorite Thingsmiths.
Dr Adrian Bowyer needs little introduction. As the creator of the RepRap project he is considered the ‘Godfather’ of fabbing. His academic research at the intersection of biology and engineering led him to the idea of an open-source, self-replicating, 3D printer. Since its advent in 2005, the RepRap project has had phenomenal growth, gained international recognition and been heralded as the invention that will start the second industrial revolution. Adrian is currently a senior lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Bath and a director of RepRap Ltd.
1. Tell us about the creation you are most proud of and what inspired it?
It’s going to have to be RepRap. It was inspired by the mutualist symbiosis between the flowers and insects. To see me rabbiting on about this nonsense look at this video for example.
2. When you embark on a new project, what’s your approach and what are your favorite tools?
My approach is to sit and stare at the ceiling, and my favourite tools are a pencil and piece of paper.
3. There’s an amazing community of makers out there; who’s work has recently impressed you?
I would not say, as I make it a principle not to comment publically on what other makers do. Because I created RepRap my comments would carry far more weight than they are worth. (Though I was very proud when my daughter Sally finished building her first RepRap machine the other day.)
4. Gazing into the future, what’s the next amazing project we should look out for?
I think the widespread uptake of home genetic engineering. Incredibly powerful, incredibly interesting, and maybe incredibly dangerous. [ed. Checkout BioCurious and this Economist article for starters].
5. Finally, at Faberdashery Towers we are fuelled by Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. What’s your tinkering tipple of choice?
From the first shot glass we made using the very first RepRap machine (currently on display in the V&A) I had a dram of Laphroaig, of which I am rather fond.
Cheers!
Photo credit: Adrian Bowyer.
Wow! What a first couple of months it’s been! We’ve shipped filament across the world- from Sydney to Sweden, from New York to the Netherlands, our PLA has travelled to almost every continent. Our materials have been spotted in some awesome places like the Brighton Maker Faire; at the V&A Museum’s new show ‘The Power of Making‘; The DML at Bath’s Innovation Centre and various RepRap meet-ups.
We’ve been amazed by the response from the community and would like to say a massive Thanks! We love the fantastic stuff that you’ve been printing with Faberdashery PLA. Check out the Cups from NYC Designer, RichRap’s Traditional Fan and Heart Box, Smartroad’s fab Dyson hack and Pia Tubert’s elegant pliers. Many thanks to the blogs that also featured us, including Fabbaloo, SolidSmack, Ponoko and others.
Finally, we have had a new addition to the Faberdashery family – Baby Rose. She is bringing a lot of joy to the Faberdashery household – as well as some sleepless nights 
.
So thanks all for your support and fabbing love! We’re currently working on extending our range. Watch this space for more news.
Photo credit: RichRap.
Imagine the scenario – you and your RepRap / Makerbot are washed up on a desert island. Luckily you salvaged a laptop, car battery and a good supply of filament alongside your 3D printer. What do you print to survive? We trawled Thingiverse, for the ultimate .stl files for desert island living.
Shelter from the blazing sun? No problem! Print out the fantastic Dome Connectors by c60 grab some bamboo, and make yourself a geodesic dome. Next get hydrated with a Bottle by aubenc to collect your water, then swig it in style with Joris’ beautifully faceted low res hi quality cup. You may be stuck on a desert island but there’s no need to eat with fingers. Print yourself the essential Sporknife by freakinhuge and chow down on that mango. Finally, attract the attention of passing boats with Zaggo’s classic Whistle.
Of course, some of us would be happily stuck on a desert island with just a 3D printer . So you could always just while away the time with the awesome Chess set I by cbiffle.
What design files would you 3D print to survive?
Featured image by HeyDanielle (Flickr)
Hello and welcome to our new site! It is a great feeling to be opening the doors to Faberdashery for the very first time. Here at Faberdashery we are selling a fabulous range of PLA filament for desktop 3D printing. Our filament comes in both 1.75mm and 3mm diameter, in a glorious rainbow range of colours. It has taken some testing and tweaking to get our filament just the way we wanted it – superb roundness, vibrant colouring and of course, great printability. So we are super excited to be releasing it to all you Thingsmiths out there, and even more excited to see what you will do with it!
What’s more, we are selling print filament by the meter! Buy as much – or as little – as you want. Gone are the days of reams of print material left languishing by your printer because you were itching to try the latest filament. Gone are the times when you had to buy an enormous ream of one colour just for a single object. Now you can buy a rainbow selection of print filament safe in the knowledge you only have as much as you need and that you won’t be breaking the bank. Go and try it out now folks and let us know what you think in the comments.
