We invited a handful of members of the 3D printing community that we have been featuring for #3DThursday or on our weekly 3D Hangouts live show to share with us their thoughts about the past year, what they each shared, and what they are looking forward to for 2015.
Jenny Cheng’s a software engineer, 3D printing enthusiast, and erstwhile synthetic biologist. She’s contributed code to Blender and Graphviz and doodles for her blog Caret Dash Caret.
Here are a few recent projects:
- Creating sewing patterns from 3D models
- 3D scanning the virtual world
- 3D print protein models from the Protein Data Bank
Q: TOP THREE PRINTING MOMENTS FROM 2014?
- Hasbro allows fans to sell 3D printed fanart of some of its franchises. It’s a big change in how companies view their IPs.
- NIH 3D Print Exchange.: I hope this takes off and becomes *the platform* for which scientists share their lab apparatus designs with each other.
- NASA printing tools in space.: What a neat application!
Q: WHAT’S A 3D PROJECT YOU SHARED THIS YEAR?
I shared a Blender script to take an SVG pattern and turn it into a 3D printable stereographic lampshade.
I was inspired by Jason Cole who was inspired by Henry Segerman and Saul Schleimer.
Make It Stand from the Interactive Geometry Lab at ETH Zurich
Q: WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO FOR 3D PRINTING IN 2015?
- New research from the Interactive Geometry Lab at ETH Zurich. They always publish awesome things like Make It Stand and Spin-It.
- New projects by Andreas Bastian. He’s worked on OpenSLS and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!