Playsets are the thing in 3D printing: MakerBot announces playsets free to download

The fun thing about a disruptive technology like 3D printing, is that its utility and destiny is defined along the way. Right now, playsets are the thing in 3D printing.

From BoingBoing:

MakerBot has announced "MakerBot Playsets," a series of freely downloadable dollhouses, furnishings and dolls for your 3D printer. Whip up as pieces as needed, on demand, and amaze the wee ones (and compulsive hoarders) in your life.

So without further ado, straight from the soundstage backlot of Annelise’s Replicator music video, The Right Heart, we present you with the MakerBot Fairytale Castle Playset and the Damsels! 

MakerBot’s own design superstar Michael “Skimbal” Curry, creator of such Thingiverse megahits as the Turtle Shell Racers and Gothic Cathedral playset, starts the ball rolling by architecting a pair of MakerBot Playset buildings. Introducing two new Thingiverse superstars: Cushwa and PrettyLittleThings are doing a tremendous job furnishing these playsets with their imaginations.1

Makerbot playsets: free, downloadable 3D files for dollhouses, dolls and accessories

Also check out DVice's take on this:

The notion I find most seductive when it comes to 3D printing is its parallels to digital distribution. If I want something, I can find it on the Internet and zap it right into the home — my 3D printer will whip it up. We're not there yet, but we've got a little peek of that future through MakerBot Playsets. 

The beauty of a project such as the MakerBot Playsets is that a couple of super skilled designers can create something that everyone can enjoy. Sadly, since 3D printers are a little more expensive than toasters — though they're definitely getting more and more affordable — said "everyone" is still a pretty small group.  

Still, you can't help but love the work done here. The mastermind of the playset is Michael "Skimbal" Curry, whose work we've showed off before, with help from other designers around the Thingiverse, MakerBot's 3D printing community hub. Curry can crank out the framework and a few models, and then others can come in and fill, say, a doll-sized television or egg-shaped chair. 

One step closer to a replicator: MakerBot's 3D-printed playsets

3D printing, Anti-consumerism, Thomas Jefferson, Occupy Wall Street: it's what binds the USA together

Dylan Tweney at VentureBeat.com has something to say about the intersection between 3D printing, the American pioneering spirit and current countermovements in contemporary culture and politics.

“We have a consumer product that’s anti-consumerist,” MakerBot Industries founder Bre Pettis told me at CES 2012, where I captured the short video below. “When you get a MakerBot, you have an alternative to buying things. You can download them … or you can design something and make it custom yourself.”

(...) I’m convinced that the people who have embraced the DIY movement have tapped into the core of what makes the United States great: Self-reliance, experimentation, innovation and a non-dogmatic reverence for facts. Over the decades, innovators tinkering in metaphorical (or literal) garages have played important roles in the development of electricity, radio, computers and, now, the internet economy.

DIY, or at least a willingness to take initiative for doing things on one’s own, outside the usual structures, has also played a role in political life, with grassroots organizations like MoveOn.org and loosely organized movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street drawing much of their strength from people’s iconoclasm and sense of self-sufficiency.

Dylan’s Desk: Saddle your horses and fire up the 3D printer

Konica Minolta 3D Scanning Labs Expands its Services to Include 3D Printing

From the press release (via MarketWatch):

Konica Minolta 3D Scanning Labs announced today its new rapid prototyping service. The company is now offering 3D printing services with the addition of 3D Systems' Projet(TM) HD 3000 3D Production System. The Projet(TM) is ideal for a wide-range of applications including concept development, design validation, form and fit analysis, molding and casting patterns, investment casting of jewelry and other fine feature applications.

$2000 Replicator prints large objects, dual colors

The $10 million in venture capital for MakerBot is beginning to pay off I think. Sure, $2000 for the new MakerBot Replicator (CNET) is quite a steep price, but I think it fills a gap between the hobby crowd (read: Cube) and professional additive manufacturing, where printers usually cost in the tens of thousands. From the link:

One barrier to wider adoption might be price. The fully-featured Replicator, the model with dual extruders for printing two-color objects, costs $2,000. The monocolor Cube costs $1,300. Spools of ABS plastic, the printers' chief consumable, go for $50. Those figures aren't entirely out of reach, but they do put 3D printing out of Wal-mart.

I'm sure that in the not-too-distant future, we'll see the Replicator's price go below $1000. We're at a stage where the home computer was, say, 25 years ago.

3D Systems will soon have a new 3D printer available. Compared to Makerbot this seems a bit pricey... But I assume it's more oriented to the less DIY-inclined among us, which is good.

Sometime in the next few months, 3D Systems will start selling a new Cube 3D printer priced at $1299 that comes with a cartridge of plastic available in ten colors. The printer is 14-by-14-by-18 inches, weighs less than 9 pounds, and can print about ten to twelve "average size" parts, which Rajeev Kulkarni, 3D Systems VP and general manager of consumer solutions, says works out to be about $4 to $5 per part. When it’s time to reorder a new cartridge, the cost is $50.

One thing: after living through 20 years of inkjet cartridge fascism, I seriously hope the future of 3D printing comes without cartridges. Thank you very much.

MakerBot receives $10m in funding

MakerBot has some big news: 

Today, I’m excited to announce that MakerBot is taking $10 million in investment, with Foundry Group leading the round. 

(Via Boing Boing)

3D printed plane lowers cost, build time, complexity while increasing performance

3D printers don't just make funny shaped D&D dice. They're revolutionizing rapid design and manufacturing. According to New Scientist, a team from the University of Southampton has designed and built a fully functional UAV in one week and on a 5000-pound budget:

"With 3D printing we can go back to pure forms and explore the mathematics of airflow without being forced to put in straight lines to keep costs down," says Keane.

So Keane's team set out to see how quickly they could design a 1.5-metre-wingspan, super-low-drag UAV, print it and get it airborne. A UK-based 3D-printing firm, 3T RPD of Greenham Common, Berkshire, joined the venture, agreeing to print the UAV out of hard nylon.

"We designed in printable hinges that would let the ailerons move," says 3T RPD spokesman Stuart Offer. "And we decided where to split the fuselage so the nose could be snap-jointed to the fuselage easily."

It'll be a while though before you can go on holiday on a printed airplane.