Shapeways recently worked with Autodesk and Dazed Digital to produce a series of 3D Print Creations using 123D Catch. Ana Rajcevic pushed the limits of what is possible to 3D printing (and the skills of our AMAZING post production team at Shapeways).
Starting with a sketch then a hand made model, Ana then 3D scanned the plaster model with 123D Catch which was then taken into Maya where 800 hair thin spikes were patterned around the form then 3D printed in Nylon in our factory in NYC.
Check out the video below.
Ana Rajcevic is an award winning fashion artist whose work spans sculpture and fashion design. Previous pieces have existed both as studio creations and as objects of contemplation within exhibition contexts, in Rajcevic’s pursuit of objects that exist as “’fashion artefacts’ in the truest sense”. This duality was brought to the fore explicitly with “Animal: The Other Side of Evolution”, a set of resin headwear that resemble hyperevolved extensions of human skeletal structures
It’s beautiful, but I bet it also breaks a bunch of design rules. I wish Shapeways would show the same kind of leniency for models designed by average users. The rigid enforcement of design rules did more harm than good in my opinion…
If you want to release the full power of 3D printing, you got to remove the shackles first…
Perhaps one day we will make it possible for designers to order their items even though they are broken, and learn from their mistakes.
This is how we pushed it through, after much back and forth with the model modified to improve printability.
Would you be willing to pay full price for your broken prints too?
Is this something you would like to see?
Print anyway?
How about showing the same level of commitment to average customers as Shapeways has shown to Victoria Secret and Ana Rajcevic?
If you don’t want your customers to venture beyond the cage formed by the design rules, why bother championing cool projects like this that break every single rule? What are you trying to achieve? Wooing people into 3D printing?
The team in the factory take the same care with every print to ensure it makes it to every customer in the best possible condition.
The question again is whether you would be willing to pay for a design that ‘breaks the rules’ to be shipped to you as is. That is how this project evolved, is that something you are interested in having as a Shapie?
A ‘send me my object no matter what’ option, no refunds, no reprints’?
By championing cool projects such as this we hope to inspire more artists and designers to consider 3D printing to realize their ideas.
Duann, to answer your question: Yes, an option to bypass the ineffective design rules would be useful provided Shapeways genuinely attempted to print it. Unfortunately that option is not available to the best of my knowledge.
But keep in mind this option merely provides a way to walk around the true problem: the design rules are ineffective and unnecessarily limiting.
The design rules are there so that your print does not come broken. You are being unnecessarily obtuse. What are you trying to achieve with a broken print?
3D printing is expensive. For every person that wants to “push the boundaries” there’s 25 people like me that want to know my design is not going to bust into pieces during the manufacturing process. I’ve had nothing but pretty amazing help from Shapeways in their forums.
Here’s an idea. Maybe YOU can go out and buy a 3D printer. Then you can test the boundaries of 3D printing till your heart’s content.
I apologize for being so obtuse, but I think my complaint is shared by many other Shapeways customers.
What I am trying to achieve is to 3D print something cool like what Ana Rajcevic has done here (or like any 3D printing project Shapeways has championed), and I cannot do it because of the design rules. I think it is a very reasonable request to either fix the design rules or allow anyone to bypass it (or stop showing off projects like this since Shapeways would not even attempt to print my model with 800 spikes sticking out).
p.s. I agree that Shapeways customer service is super great (Duann answering blog comment during weekend is a great example of their dedication), but my complaint has nothing to do with them.
IF you would like to email me Duann at Shapeways dot com I would be interested in hearing about your experience not being able to print fine components.
I would like to se a “print regardless” option, but then there would be little point. Even if it printed fine for the maker when a customer goes to order it there would be a good chance it would get rejected. It happens now.
We are working to ensure that previously printed models are always printed again I know this can be very frustrating.
Ehhh. That’s not terribly impressive. Doesn’t really look like much thought or effort went into it. I want to see more artists using Shapeways to create actual artwork, ya know….. things that look nice or inspire emotion or provoke a reaction.
If a hair is 100 um, and the min wall width is 0.7mm, than those (wall?) features would be 7 times less than minimum in WSF. I can’t see the video (unavailable?) or any detail in the photos so I can’t comment on the results.
Sadly, log out to see video or check out the link.
Ah, I saw it using the link to video. Those are definitely not walls, or detail in the normal sense.
Yeah. Nightmare prints.
Oh yeah. Hair thin is descriptive, not an exact measurement. Apologies for any confusion.
It’s not descriptive. It’s deceptive. Getting people excited about 3D printing is one thing. Getting them excited about things they can’t print is quite another.
I second all that has been said here.
I have spent hours trying to correct models that are just barely beyond print rules to get them to print and find it very frustrating to see something that I know if I was to submit something as delicate would be denied. Also, since when do pics of renders only serve as a good promotion for what you can actually “print” on shapeways? Where is the actual print?
“The question again is whether you would be willing to pay for a design that ‘breaks the rules’ to be shipped to you as is.” And yes, I would considering all that I would be doing is making my FLAT design a hair thinner.