There’s a robust community of Shapies here in Ireland and last night I had the pleasure of meeting up with six Irish 3D modelers! Much of this crew understood the importance of prototyping, printing their models in WSF before opting for one of our nice metals. Two of them even had at home printers that they iterate on before uploading to Shapeways.
Here are some examples of their work:
Stephen Best, a designer here in Galway, printed this seal from a commercial printer he did work on for a company in Australia.
Stephen prints at home on his Ultimaker 2 before he sends it to Shapeways. Resolution on home printers is fine, but seldom fantastic. As he made the jump to Shapeways, trying the model first in our WSF, he realized the translation from animation to physical product requires more polygons. He adjusted and then printed in FCS. The results are awesome! Side note for inspiration: the seal’s mouth is the escape hole!
Tycho Schenkeveld, a dutchman living in Galway (also interesting to note, only one attendee was born in Ireland, the rest had found their way to this glorious place through love and work). He modeled this dog for his “mum” as a present.
Tycho was smart and got user feedback even before printing, adjusting the model to have bigger ears after talking to
his aunt. After one reassuring pricing in WSF, he was ready to go for the gold plated steel. The results were awesome!
Paul Dunne, our true Irishman, is a product design student at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He’s a design thinker at heart, and is currently working on finding ways to use 3D Printing to enable the visually impaired, especially those affected later in life. His aspirations and work are incredible! I elected him to be our education and crew ambassador for Dublin last night, and I look forward to seeing the other designs he comes up with in solidworks. He had great insights and requests for tutorials on Shapeways side as well. We always love people pushing us to be better! Here’s a ball he did in both steel and elasto plastic (the bounce of the elasto was awesome!)
A very big thank you to everyone who came out in Galway last night, I can’t wait to see what else you all create; and come back for more Guinness!
Time to hit the road again this morning, next stop: London!
Cheers!
Savannah, your Shapeways vagabond.