Lately on Thingiverse, thanks to Cymon and pp3dpNL, there have been a number of fun printed lithophanes projects appearing. Here is a post from Cymon’s blog about how to make them for yourself!
I have been having a blast figuring out lithophanes and working out how to best make them. I think I’m going to start offering custom lithophane services in the store, which technically means I shouldn’t give away how I’m making them… but that’s not the sort of guy I am.
First thing I discovered is the local dollar store sells nightlights that I can print a holder for that will illuminate the lithophanes really well.
Another things I discovered was about thickness. From left to right (1) the source picture (my daughter), (2) white at 3mm thick, (3) tan at 3mm thick, (4) tan at 2.5mm thick. I thought I needed to make it thicker so I could have more color depth. Since I print these laying down I only get as many shades as I have layers. And sure enough if I want more layers I have to print in white, the tan just doesn’t let enough light through. But after comparing them side by side I really prefer the sepia-tone look of the tan ones. The white looks better in the picture, but in real life the tan is just superior. And at 2.5mm thick I’m getting about 16 layers, so that’s enough color for anything.
If you would like to make your own just follow these steps:
Scale the picture to about 800×600 (the more pixels the more points in the final mesh the harder to process)
In BMPtoIGES load your picture
Set your edgecolor to black (so the holder has something to hold on to)
Enter the following settings:
File->Save and Process, choose STL and save your file
Import the STL in Blender or your favorite mesh editing program
Scale the STL by 50% in the Z only (I suppose you could change the 75 to 150 and just scale in all directions by 50%)
Slice and print (I like to lay mine down. That works pretty well in my experience)
The Z-scaling is because I don’t think BMPtoIGES likes decimals in its boxes.
I’m really surprised at how easy the process is… once I figured everything out. There was a lot of experimentation to get here, but in the end I’m fairly satisfied with the results. So don’t let my suffering be in vain and enjoy making your own Lithophanes.
Liz Neely, the Director of Digital Information and Access at the Art Institute of Chicago, has been doing a great job encouraging visitors to participate in capturing digital models of their collection, including the Saint John the Baptist sculpture above, captured by Christian Oiticica and posted just a few hours before I put together this post.
While several museums, including the Met Museum and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco have held special events for the purpose of exploring the possibilities of scanning and sharing replicas of work, Neely boldly pushes this curatorial practice into an ongoing collaboration between museum and those who love the museum.
Here is the message Neely shared on Thingiverse about this project:
Art Institutue of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago is a world-renowned art museum housing one of the largest permanent collections in the United States. With more than 260,000 art works and artifacts, the museum has particularly strong holdings in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, early 20th-century European painting and sculpture, contemporary art, Japanese prints, and photography. The museum also offers exceptional programming that informs and inspires, including lectures, workshops, performances, and guided tours.
Do you have a scan or derivative of an Art Institute artwork? Message us and we’ll add it to our Thingiverse collections.
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! 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!
Check out this article over at Huffington Post covering Jeffrey Lipton‘s talk at Inside 3D Printing on Tuesday: “Digital Cuisine: Bringing 3D Printing to the Cooking Realm.” This was one of my favorite sessions at the conference, and I enjoyed standing by after the talk while the article’s author followed up with Lipton to collect quotes and data for her article.
These days, restaurant dishes can’t be customized too far beyond requests to hold the dressing or to cook the meat medium-rare.
But thanks to 3D printing technology, along with the proliferation of sensors tracking our activities and tastes, future meals — even mass-produced ones — could be tailored specifically to suit an individual’s dietary needs. A dish someone is served might even be calibrated to the calories she burned that day.
Jeffrey Lipton, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University’s Creative Machines Lab and chief technology officer of Seraph Robotics, argues that the emerging category of data-driven food is destined to make up a much larger part of our diet in the years to come.
Lipton predicts that cloud computing, 3D printing and the explosion in digitized personal data will together allow for the mass customization of meals, letting chefs instantly produce dishes that offer the recommended quantities of sugar, fat or sodium when given diners’ health records.
Instead of eating a quarter of a donut to cut calories, you instead might be able to buy a whole pastry from the corner deli, then watch the donut 3D printed before your eyes — with one-fourth the calories and just the right amount of fiber to bring you up to your daily minimum.
“Once you have the automatic collection of what you’re eating and when, you can predict — based off your activity levels, your planned diet and your health records — exactly how much and what types of food you should be eating. That’s really ultimately the long-term potential of food printing,” explained Lipton during a lecture at the Inside 3D Printing conference in New York City on Tuesday. “It’s going to be about this automated production of food where you have the entire cloud of information helping to guide you forward.”
…
The model train company Flexiscale has adapted to the new 3D technologies available by inviting their customers to select subjects for them to then carefully 3D scan and 3D print — adding intricately precise scale model units with each new project. Via Fabbaloo.
Hello. We’re trying something new in model kits. The way we design them is different, the way they’re made is different and the way we choose which kits to make is different.
We’re using modern surveying methods on real life objects to make precise three dimensional plans. We split up the plans into kits that we feel are simple, yet fun to make, detail and paint. We’re producing the kits on demand using 3D printing.
Now we’ve worked out how to do it, what we want to do is to make the kits you want. So we’ve made a system for you to propose kits to us.
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! 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!
Exciting new developments from Zach Hoeken Smith’s BotQueue.com project: “Webcams, Pausing, and More!”
Coming quickly on the heels of the last release, the latest v0.3 release of BotQueue adds some really exciting new features that make it much nicer to use. I hope you enjoy this new version as much as I do. Be careful though, the new webcam feature is addictive – you can watch your machine from anywhere you have an internet connection and a display.
If you want to take advantages of the new BotQueue, you’ll need to upgrade the BotQueue client, bumblebee. See instructions at the end of the article for how to do that.
Webcam Support
This is the biggest new feature for BotQueue, and the one that I’m most excited about. The BotQueue client, Bumblebee, can now grab webcam images and upload them to the BotQueue site. This allows you to be able to see whats happening on your bot through the BotQueue.com website. That’s right, you can see how your bot is printing from any device (computer, phone, tablet, etc) from anywhere in the world.
I’ve also modified the dashboard and various pages throughout the website to support showing the webcams. The default dashboard view is now large thumbnail images, although you can switch to medium, small, and the old list-style view of your bots. BotQueue will also save the final image of each job so you can have a historical view of how each print turned out. In the future, we’ll even be able to automatically create timelapse videos of each job.
In order to add webcam support, please see the help page with information on how to configure bumblebee to start capturing and uploading webcam images….
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present Nano-Nonobjective-Oriented Ontographs and Qubit-Built Quilts,our third solo exhibition by New York artist Shane Hope.Featuring two series of new work, the exhibition runs March 29 through May 4, 2013. In the gallery project space, we will also present a selection of Hope’s “Folk-Computronium Laptops.”
Accelerating progress in nanometer-scale science and technology continues to expand the toolkit with which we can eventually assemble things from the atom up. This will potentially give rise to nearly costless systems for controlling the structure of matter itself. In the interim, the 3D printing revolution is said to have already arrived, promising content-to-print solutions and on-demand means of increasingly customizable production. But molecular manufacturing and 3D printing won’t merely make for an end to material scarcity as we know it. These so-called “abundance” technologies will make for objecthoods the likes of which we’ve not known and maybe can’t know this side of some sort of technological singularity (i.e, the theoretical emergence of superintelligence through technological means beyond which events cannot be predicted). It’s in anticipation of that reality race that Shane Hope’s work starts.
When we started in 2007, very few people had even heard of 3D printing outside of the engineering and design communities. It was mainly used for prototyping. Today, 3D printing has taken the manufacturing industry by storm and everyone is talking about this groundbreaking technology. President Obama even recently called out 3D printing as one of the important technologies that can bring manufacturing back to the USA.
We believe that 3D printing is fundamentally changing the manufacturing ecosystem in its entirety – how and where products are made and by whom. For the last century, big companies were in charge: they determined what consumers wanted and made those products in large quantities using mass manufacturing. Now, thanks to 3D printing, those days are over. This technology enables everyone to create unique products on demand, putting the customer in control and localizing the manufacturing process.
Peter Weijmarshausen
CEO and Co-Founder, Shapeways
Peter Weijmarshausen is the Chief Executive Officer for Shapeways, the online marketplace and community for personalized production where anyone can make, buy and sell their own products. Custom-made products are created one-of-a-kind and on-demand in a variety of materials using the latest 3D printing technologies. Prior to Shapeways, Peter was the CTO of Sangine, where he and his team designed and developed satellite broadband modems and Director of Engineering at Aramiska, where he was responsible for delivering a business broadband service via Satellite. Earlier in his career, Peter worked as ICT manager for Not a Number where he facilitated the adoption of the widely successful open source 3D software Blender. His global expertise is in the fields of Entrepreneurship, Internet marketing and business development, 3D printing, designing and implementing scalable Internet services.
The Inside 3D Printing keynote this morning was a state-of-the-industry address from Terry Wohlers of Wohlers Associates. The Wohlers Report is the definitive independent resource for gauging the state of business and technology in the 3D printing field, so having a chance to hear the latest observations from Wohlers — without purchasing the $500 guide — was an excellent opportunity for all of us in the room with any background or focus.
A few observations that I’d love to share include thoughts on how the media has been responding to the subject. The mainstream media prefers the term “3d printing” over the technical term “additive manufacturing,” so as a result the industry now uses the two terms interchangeably. Also, the media has been calculated to have filed a massive 16k articles last year as opposed to 1.6K articles in 2011.
One helpful point of reference to offer to mainstream readers is the degree to which dentistry has adapted to and perfected the practical application of 3D printing in the field — Wohlers shared the data that they estimate that 15k printed parts for use in dental work are printed every single day.
My favorite part was his list of what he sees as the five central “Myths and Misconceptions” that plague 3D printing in the popular media. While his arguments to refute each misconception skew towards an industrial-centric notion of these topics, I felt his list is very solid and worth thinking over:
MYTHS: 3D Printing/Additive Manufacturing is:
“Push Button”
“Just as inexpensive to build one part at a time.”
“AM will replace conventional manufacturing.”
“AM can print guns.”
“Everyone will own and operate 3D printers.”
Terry Wohlers, Principal Consultant and President of Wohlers Associates, Inc., has been named one of the most influential individuals in rapid product development and additive manufacturing.
Today, I’m excited to announce that Andreessen Horowitz is leading a $30M investment in Shapeways along with our friends at Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, and Lux Capital. We believe that technology is at its best when it enables human creativity. The Internet unlocked the world of bits. 3D printing is unlocking the world of atoms.
I’ve been enjoying the first tutorial session lead by Practical 3D Printer writer and instructor, Brian Evans. He has been engaged with this stuff as long as I have, and has done a great job of introducing those brand new to 3D printing to what those desktop units are all about! In the above photo he quickly put together “3D” in OpenSCAD for the audience.
Tutorial 1: Desktop 3D Printers – From Start to Finish
A look at designing models for desktop 3D printing for artists, designers, engineers, and inventors looking to bring fused filament fabrication (FFF) to their desktop with a guide to the design do’s and don’ts for successful 3D printing, including an introduction to solid modeling and how to prepare digital models for printing.
Brian Evans
Assistant Professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver
Brian Evans is an artist working in electronic media and Assistant Professor of Art at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He is the author of Practical 3D Printers, 2012, and Beginning Arduino Programming, 2011, both with Apress Media. His work has been shown at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park, the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, and the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach. In 2009, Evans was a resident and contributor to the Grounding Open Source Hardware residency and summit at the Banff New Media Institute in Alberta, Canada. He received an MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 2008, and a BFA from Arizona State University in 2005.
Inside 3D Printing has kicked off with a conference session packed for the opening keynote from 3DS CEO Avi Reichental. Given how many different aspects of 3D this company interfaces with, this ended up being a helpful preview of topics that will be covered for the rest of the conference. And I think I saw my timelapse of Yoda being shared as a sign of dangerous trends in 3D printing (though MakerBot’s Annelise might have shot that one): warmed my heart to see that great model!
Reichental also shared about his beloved skunkworks project: printing chocolate in 3D and teased us with the promise of future results.
When I’m not at Adafruit or off somewhere blogging for Adafruit, you’ll find me these days typing away on my MAKE book project Design & Modeling for 3D Printing (Sept 2013). Drawing from this research and from interviews with makers and 3D artists, I am going to share about the history of CAD, what tools makers are using these days, why these tools can be daunting — and what can you do about it.
For those who don’t have passes yet, click here for the Adafruit 15% discount code!
Tutorial 4: Design Tools in the Age of 3D Printing (Continued)
At the core of every 3D printing process is an electronic blueprint – the design file that tells the printer what to print. Without design files, 3D printers are like iPods with no music. Design files are either created from scratch using computer aided design (CAD) software, or are generated by optically scanning an existing physical object. This session will describe some of the techniques for generating design files. Leading industry experts will describe the state of the art and their vision for the future of design in the age of 3D printing.
Here’s One Of Matt’s 3D Tutorials in the Adafruit Learning System!
3D Printed Watch Body for the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit: Model and print your own enclosure! The Adafruit TIMESQUARE DIY Watch kit already ships with style to spare, but why stop with the silicone band that comes with the kit when you can make your own? Here are the steps taken to create the “Circling the Square” custom 3D printed TIMESQUARE watch body. (read more)
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! 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!
Just press “print” and out pops, whatever you want, really: an iPhone case made from powdered nylon, a unique designer lamp, an 18 karat gold ring–even a replica of a multi-million dollar Stradivarius violin! You can also design your own jewelry on a computer program–like a pendant—then, print that and wear it!
“This is going to change the way we make almost anything,” says co-founder Julie Friedman Steele. “This completely disrupts the manufacturing supply chain.”
That technology can be seen in Chicago at “The 3D Printer Experience,” the only retail and interactive store of its kind in the Midwest.
To show us how it works, co-founder Mike Mocheri first scanned an image of FOX 32 reporter Amara Walker from every angle. That image was sent to the makerbot printer and instead of using ink, it dispensed a silver spool of plastic filament.
“So this works by having a filament that comes through nozzle like a hot glue gun,” Mocheri explains. “So just when you pull the trigger, it squirts, squeezes out of nozzle onto a platform up and up and up.” …
My first exposure to the world of 3D printing took place in 2009 approximately 500 feet under the Earth’s surface in a former missile silo in the Washington state desert. There, three founders of a new Brooklyn-based 3D printer company hosted a workshop on building a 3D printer kit as part of Toorcamp, a nerdy version of Burning Man. At the end of the kit’s 4-hour assembly we printed out some tiny jewelry boxes. At the time 3D printing seemed to me like a novel technology for hackers with lots of potential, but not one I had any specific use for. Four years later, that use was found.
Museum sculptures are an interesting case in accessibility; they exist in a place the public can access but usually aren’t allowed to touch. Most sculpture materials aren’t too smelly or noisy so that limits the sensory experience to sight. However, not everyone has the ability to see, and although special exemptions are occasionally made to allow the visually impaired to touch some sculptures, you can only feel so much of a large object.
Sight includes the ability to expand the size or detail of what you’re looking at by moving closer or further away from the object. This isn’t possible in the two-dimensional web, so the paradigm of pairing a “thumbnail” image with a full-size counterpart became an established method for having both a high-level and up-close view of things. With similar constraints in mind, we’ve utilized 3D scanning and printing to create a “thumbnail” for large sculptures which can be used as a tactial maps of the object’s entire shape.
So how do you go from marble masterpiece to plastic replica? Like 3D printing, 3D scanning has also recently broken out of the expensive-equipment-for-expensive-professions world and into the much more afforable world of hobbyists and institutions with modest budgets. AutoCAD’s 123D Catch is a free download which was launched last year as a way to create 3D models from photos using stereophotogrammetry, which basically means taking a bunch of photos from different angles and letting software figure out how far away stuff in one photo is from stuff in the 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! 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!
The Adafruit 6 second electronics film festival!#adafruit6secs
Call For Entries: Announcing The Adafruit 6 second electronics film festival! Share your cool project in 6 seconds of video and win up to $600 at the Adafruit store, with six runners up winning $60 store credit each.In a 6 second video, we want you to share the best project you’ve made. Be sure not to use any copyrighted music, video, etc. This should be all your project, all by you. The Adafruit team will be looking on Twitter, G+/youtube and beyond for Vines, 6 second videos and more tagged with #adafruit6secs. The deadline is 6pm ET, 5/6/13. The Adafruit team of judges will pick their favorites and announce the winner on May, 12th at 6pm ET.
tl;dr – Post a 6 second video of your electronic project(s) using Vine on Twitter and tag it #adafruit6secs !
Printable catalog (PDF)
FEED
