The Future is Here And It’s In 3D
I’m living in the future with my latest obsession – 3D printing! If you’re like me, you’ve been hearing about 3D printing for a couple of years now and you’ve been seeing the nifty 3D prints of colourful plastics and interlocking shapes. And if you’re like me, you’ve thought “cool” and promptly moved on to the next thing.
Recently though, I stumbled upon the 3D printing site Shapeways and there began my new obsession. Shapeways offers 3D printing to the public in a variety of materials from plastic to steel to precious metals – they can even do ceramics! Shapeways opens up the world to your imagination! They also provide tools like their online “2D to 3D” tool that makes it easy for ANYONE to create simple 3D prints (it IS however a steep learning curve if you want to make more complex prints).
I used their online 2D to 3D tool to create this plastic Linked Swirly Hearts pendant:
I also created a more budget-friendly thinner version for precious and semi-precious metals (with the help of another 3D program):
And a chunkier version so I could print my swirly hearts in steel:
If you want to bring your doodles to life, I highly recommend checking out Shapeways’ tutorials. While you can just draw, scan and upload your image, I took the intermediary step of bringing my drawing into Inkscape (a free and open source vector graphics program) to make some minor adjustments and create smoother curves than in my hand drawn image.
The minimum depth you can get with the online 2D to 3D program is 2mm. At 2mm, I could print my swirly hearts in almost any material offered by Shapeways (except Steel, Sandstone and Ceramic). In my case, I wanted to print in precious and semi-precious metals but found that the pricing was a bit out of my budget, especially for the precious metals.
Shapeways however, provides material guides that include minimum specs etc., and since the specs for the depth of precious and semi-precious metals are less than that of plastic, I decided to make a second thinner version of my swirly hearts to be more budget friendly. But to do so I needed an additional 3D program. I checked out some of the options recommended by Shapeways and the helpful folks in the Shapeways forums and ultimately decided to dive into Blender (a free and open source animation program, so you can create 3D objects in it).
I’ve downloaded Blender a few times in the past, but it has such a steep learning curve that I’ve never done much more than blink at it. This time though, I have a real purpose in learning Blender so I think that will help motivate me. To date, I have learned how to change the size of my model (which I downloaded from Shapeways and imported into Blender) – resulting in the thinner and chunkier versions of the model pictured above. I know it isn’t much, but it’s a start!
I’ve also taken advantage of the Shapeways “Store” system. At Shapeways, you can make your models just for you, or you can offer your models for sale to the public – and since it’s print-on-demand, there are no inventory requirements. Shapeways also handles the sales, order fulfillment and customer service.
Since I’m new at this and none of my models have been printed yet, I’ve put my models in “Beta” as I may have to make adjustments to my models, depending on any feedback (or photos!) I may receive. I’ve ordered my Linked Swirly Hearts in plastic, polished brass and stainless steel and will post an update when I receive them (so excited!!). I’m hoping that I get proficient enough at 3D modeling that my PennyCharmer store at Shapeways turns into an additional revenue stream for me. As you can imagine, every little bit helps in my efforts to avoid the nine-to-five life! Either way though, I’m going to have a lot of fun with this!