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Thingiverse.

Started by Kai, January 15, 2012, 03:24:58 PM

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Kai

(Ed Yong is apparently my muse, because I'm on a roll today.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-wonderful-world-of-thingiverse/251121/


QuoteThingiverse, founded in 2008, is a design library from the folks at MakerBot Industries, the Brooklyn-based company that is designing and building open-source 3D printers. On Thingiverse, people can download the plans for obsjects, tweak them, and share their improved versions. As CEO Bre Pettis explained, "You just download this digital design or you create one yourself, and the thing is made right there for you. ... Up until now, you've been able to download books, you've been able to download movies, you can download music. Well, now you can download things. And, once you download the digital design, you can just crank up your MakerBot, fire it up, and print it out."

And there are pictures of makerbot made items with designs downloaded from Thingiverse at the link.
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Don Coyote


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Space Ninja uses 3-D printers to build miniature replicas of buildings and sections of the city that are under construction, it's pretty cool.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Cainad (dec.)

I know this was brought up in a previous thread on 3-D printers, but OMG once the tabletop miniatures community pushes into this the whole industry will be in upheaval (if they aren't already; I don't really follow that sort of thing closely).

Perhaps the sculptors and artists will sell downloadable models of their minis instead of the minis themselves? I do know that if I could get them for cheaper and in greater quantity, I'd use minis a lot more in my games.


Getting outside of the RPG dork mindset, I am interested in seeing how this new tech plays out on the larger scale. Will the Cheap Plastic Shit market undergo a massive revolution as people start cranking out their own shitty acrylic (or whatever they're printing with) widgets and consumer thingys? If the material can be quickly and easily recycled, will people be collecting their used up/broken plastic crap in recycling buckets so they can make NEW plastic crap instead of filling up landfills?

Maybe instead of paper plates and cups and disposable flatware, we'll be printing out plastic table settings the night before our parties so we can then wash them off and recycle them into easily-stored and more broadly useful buckets of plastic pellets, instead of throwing them away or taking up cabinet space with more permanent stuff?


This is all just me indulging in techdork fantasy, don't mind me. I know this tech will inevitably be turned towards porn, horrible new ways to kill people (somehow), and the oppression of more brown people in foreign countries (somehow), but let me enjoy the fantasizing while I can.

Don Coyote

I seriously thinking about just buying a makerbot.

Bruno

If I had an extra $1300, I would have one by now.

Maybe not an actual makerbot, though. Probably something from the reprap family.

I've been using Shapeways instead. I've spent about $150 there so far.
Formerly something else...

Don Coyote

Quote from: Emo Howard on January 15, 2012, 09:41:17 PM
If I had an extra $1300, I would have one by now.

Maybe not an actual makerbot, though. Probably something from the reprap family.

I've been using Shapeways instead. I've spent about $150 there so far.

Man, this makes me wish I hadn't joined the Army and stuck with my industrial design. I would probably have already heard of all of this stuff by now. :argh!:

Bruno

I think now is a good time to be getting into it. It's just getting out of the fairly crude phase, and starting to become something useful.

The reason this is taking off now, is mainly because of the expiration of patent No. 5121329 "Apparatus and method for creating three-dimensional objects" in 2009. Many more patents in this field will be expiring in the future. Patents last about 17 years in the US.

Right now, Blender seems to be the primary free program used for designing 3D objects for fabrication. Blender is quite a bit different from 3D CAD programs, since it was primarily developed for producing 2D images of 3D scenes, rather than designing real objects. Blender is known for having a disturbingly counter-intuitive interface, but that has been improved quite a bit with the release of Blender 2.5.
Formerly something else...