Author: Robert Schouwenburg

In their annual Hype Cycle report technology research firm Gartner has moved 3D printing up a notch from last year. It is now entering the phase of what they call the peak of inflated expectations

Today NASA published a Request For Information (RFI) on in-space additive manufacturing (ISAM) subsystems. Even though, it is only a RFI it is great news that NASA is showing real interest in 3D printing technology.

Access and easy-of-use of 3D design software is important for the adoption of 3D printing. There is innovation happening in this area, and it is not coming from the existing industry players like Autodesk and Solidworks.

One of the stumbling blocks to let anybody create in 3D, is the current state of 3D design software. They are hard to use and have a steep learning curves. That is where we are today. There are promising ideas and developments in this area. I am confident that this problem will be solved over […]

One of the challenges for 3D printing and co-creation is, that 3D design software is hard to use. They have a steep learning curve and it is certainly not easy to create something.

Like any new disrupting technology 3D printing — when it matures — has great impact on society. Mass production brought us affordable high quality goods, mass-media brought us high quality entertainment, and up-to-date information and the internet is changing the way we work and live.

3D printing makes sense for one-off and small series production. That is the obvious answer. The more elaborate answer is that it depends on the actual volume of the product and its parts. Redeye (division of Stratasys) made some calculations and put them on the web.

Let's talk about iterative design. 3D printing makes it possible to produce unique one-off designs for reasonable costs. This enables designers to implement design improvements based on customer-feedback. It is one of the ideas of co-creation to let consumers and designers work together on a design.

Mark Ganter from the University of Washington works in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Together with Duane Storti he runs the Solheim Additive Manufacturing Laboratory. In their laboratory they work on new material recipes for 3D printing. They've come up with some interesting new materials.

Previously, I wrote about Digital Materials and Voxels. In this post I want to show you an excellent movie rendering of how both can be combined to make a machine. They call the machine the rapid assembler.