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Let There Be LIGHT, Said Fraunhofer ILT: A Mammoth Print Job for Self-Supporting Letters

How do you create a showstopper display for an exhibition about lasers? You let there be LIGHT! For the LASER World of Photonics 2015 exhibition, the Fraunhofer Institute of Laser Technology ILT wanted to display a set of giant luminescent letters, each taller than an average person, spelling out the word LIGHT. And our Mammoth Stereolithography machines were happy to oblige—even when the size of the data set topped anything that we’ve ever sent to a 3D printer before. (For a detailed look into how this project was designed, prepared, and 3D-printed, check out our case study here!)

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Rejoice, Architects! You Can 3D Print High-Quality, Colored Maquettes

An image says more than a thousand words—architectural models are a great way to represent a future construction. It makes it easier to visualize a construction in a certain setting or to discuss and evaluate the design. Many architecture students, as well as professionals, will remember making maquettes through late night hours with cardboard or Styrofoam. Today, that hassle is no longer necessary! With a 3D printer and advanced 3D printing software, you can generate highly complex, multi-colored architectural models of your designs.

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Toyota's Lightweight Car Seat: A Bionic Design

How do you produce a lightweight car seat prototype with a minimal volume and an optimal heat capacity? And how do you edit and 3D print such a large and complex file? Materialise has a solid reputation in the automotive industry, built on extensive knowledge in the production of large prototypes. In a quest to assist Toyota in creating a lightweight car seat, the software team added new features to our design enhancement software 3-matic, and developed a slice-based operations technology which is incorporated into the Build Processor software.

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The Other Kind of Fashion Modeling: 3D Modeling Melinda Looi’s ‘Gems of the Ocean’ with Samuel Canning

Fashion designer Melinda Looi’s new ‘Gems of the Ocean’ collection includes one of the world’s first full-length gowns to be 3D-printed as a single part. It also comes with unique 3D-printed accessories straight out of a mermaid’s world. So what does it take to make a collection like this one? A highly skilled team of 3D modeling wizards celebrating all the design freedom offered by 3D Printing! Here’s how they did it – and here’s why even a 12-core CPU with 64GB RAM can seem like it’s not enough computing power sometimes.

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Want to Meet the 3D Printing Community and Share Ideas Worth Making? There’s an App for That

Troubleshoot, discuss, or even just browse 3D Printing ideas and models on the go: Ideas Worth Making is back, and this time it’s on your Android! The new Ideas Worth Making app is downloadable for free from Google’s Play Store, and it’s making it easier than ever to share inspirations with the 3D Printing community.

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A Drive for Fashion: FashionTech Designer Anouk Wipprecht collaborates with Audi!

Dutch FashionTech designer Anouk Wipprecht and car brand Audi have joined style-savvy hands for the A4 collection, in a collaboration aimed at merging the provocative with the practical. Here’s a peek at what happens when a tech-inspired fashion designer meets a luxury carmaker: smart cars and smart dresses. (For more details on how Anouk designed this collection, check out our case study!)

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The World of 3D Printing Met at the Materialise World Conference

The world’s leading thinkers and doers in the world of 3D Printing came together for the Materialise World Conference at the Square in Brussels last Thursday and Friday. From industrial, to biomedical, to clinical, to consumer applications, over 1,000 novices and experts gathered to exchange their work, ideas and knowledge about software, engineering, design, and more.

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Materialise at Inside 3D Printing in Brazil!

A few (lucky) members from Materialise’s software team went to São Paulo from March 9-10! And it wasn’t because they were a few months late getting over for the World Cup or felt an incredible urge to Samba; instead, they went to the largest 3D printing event in South America: Inside 3D Printing in Brazil. Read more

Using Topology Optimization for an Aircraft Engine Bracket

 How can you reconstruct a topology-optimized object in CAD? And what is the most efficient way to do this? Max van der Kolk, a master’s student at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, wrote his thesis answering these questions.

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Magics Helps Realize Gaudì’s Sagrada Familia Dream

The great architect Antoni Gaudí knew the importance of moving from a 2D plane to a 3D one when he was designing his magnum opus, the Sagrada Familia. He knew that by holding something in your hand, you can instantly get a better idea of the way a decorative feature or intricate element would look on a building when compared with a static 2D drawing. That is why since the project’s official start in 1882, Gaudi and his predecessors would often handcraft models of the elaborate building to get a better understanding of the design.

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