The company’s mission is to ‘reach and teach’ a wide audience on the use of CAD software and creating ‘fun and meaningful’ things like jewelry, toys, car parts and whatnot, using 3D printers.

Kai Backman, Tinkercad’s co-founder and CEO, explains that one only needs a browser and a couple of minutes to use its browser-based software and have a 3D project ready for printing.

“We use game-like quests to teach what we call ‘design literacy’, understanding the design of physical things. By lowering the barrier of entry, our users have been able to create and print a wide variety of awesome items”, he adds.

Tinkercad is free, and encourages sharing designs under a creative commons license. Once users create designs with the software, which seems pretty easy to use based on my rudimentary testing, they can order designs directly from printing services likeShapeways and i.Materialise or download STL files to use other printing services or personal 3D printers like Makerbot’s Thing-O-Matic.

If you’re into this kind of stuff, check Tinkercad out, and I would also urge you to also visit GrabCAD.

Source: Techcrunch.com

The project is two-pronged. First, Spark will exist as a platform that users can build upon and use to render 3D prints. Based on this platform, Autodesk will produce a simple stereolithographic printer for an estimated $5,000. The plans will be available to anyone who wants to build the unit themselves.

According to a blog post on the site:

Spark is an open 3D printing platform that will make it easier for hardware manufacturers, software developers, materials scientists, product designers, and more to participate in and benefit from this technology. Spark connects digital information to 3D printers in a new and streamlined way, making it easier to visualize prints and optimize them without trial and error, while also broadening the range of materials that can be used for printing. And because the Spark platform is open, everyone can use its building blocks to further push the limits of 3D printing and drive fresh innovation.

Autodesk needs to enter the desktop printer space. Stratasys announced solid revenue thanks to their acquisition of MakerBot and 3D Systems, another industrial maker, is busy trying to grab the home user. Why? Because industrial printers are prohibitively costly and are sold with a lot of overhead. Home 3D printers are basically commodity devices, like any HP inkjet.

Here’s hoping that the Spark will help grow the stereolithography market considerably and that it becomes the Android of 3D printing. Printers need standards and given the massive changes going on in the community, a bit of stability will be quite welcome.

Source: Techcrunch.com

These patents cover some of the most basic aspects of 3D printing, from the process of creating “infill,” the cross-hatched pattern that printers use to support the inside, to the heated plate that keeps objects stuck during printing. MakerBot, in fact, has long infringed on these very same patents and, for most of its existence, has skirted lawsuits, albeit with positive results. Many smaller manufactures haven’t been so lucky.

Even Formlabs, makers of the Form One stereolithographic machine, weren’t immune. They went to market last December while facing down 3D Systems lawyers for daring to use a similar printing technique.

Why is Big 3D finally paying attention to little guys like Formlabs and Afinia aka Microboards Technology, LLC? It’s because they’re finally getting traction in the home market. While it’s usually fine for B2B companies to snipe each other – nobody cares when big CRM smashes some puny competitor – this sniping is actually hurting the industry. By slowing down the adopting of home 3D printing, Stratasys and 3D Systems are cutting into their own bottom line. IBM, in the 1980s, never actively attacked the “clones” that sprung up on the market and we now have a variegated ecosystem of hardware that ranges from mobile devices to mainframes. No one stopped Linux from copying techniques and tricks used by Unix and, eventually, Windows, and the result is a deep and rich vein of open source computing prowess.

Patents served Stratasys and 3D Systems well when 3D printing was hard. To compete with them, competitors had to have deep pockets and be ready to pay licensing fees. Now that literally anyone can build an MakerBot-like FDM machine out of a few simple parts – this guy made one for $100 – the impetus for protection is far more mercenary. They are, in short, threatened.

The EFF has been trying to swat down fake patents, for better or worse, but the problem will continue to plague small makers until the patents expire. It does not benefit Stratasys to troll the small guy (unless it’s to protect its MakerBot investment, which would be a delightful bit of irony) and, in the end, it hurts the industry as a whole. The more people who know how to do home 3D printing, the more people who will be interested in professional products. That said, perhaps Stratasys is concerned that the home 3D printers will supplant its professional business. If this is the case, it’s a baseless fear akin to Ford being afraid of go-kart hobbyists.

Patents are fine when they truly protect the filers from predators. When the filers themselves, become the predators, however, the issue clouds the market, destroys innovation, and makes the big guys look mean. That’s not good for anyone.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Personne ne veut rater le train de l’impression 3D. Microsoft non plus. L’éditeur annonce le lancement de sa première application d’impression 3D pour Windows 8.1. Et si l’OS supporte en natif les systèmes d’impression 3D, il lui manquait encore une interface de création. C’est désormais chose faite avec 3D Builder. 

3D Builder propose à l’utilisateur de piocher dans un catalogue varié d’objets et de pièces en 3D (boutons, briques, clip…), de régler l’échelle, faire tourner et ajuster les mesures de l’objet à imprimer. La prise en charge de la création de plusieurs objets en une seule session d’impression est également au programme.

Disponible gratuitement sur le Windows Store, 3D Builder n’a cependant pas pour vocation à se substituer aux logiciels de création d’impression 3D du marché comme ceux proposés par Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes ou Stratasys, Materialise et netfabb. A noter que le support des logiciels 3D spécialisés 3D Systems, MakerBot et TierTime sont prévus fin décembre.

Source: Www.journaldunet.com

That would make it appealing as an accessory for hobbyists who already own the MakerBot Replicator. It’s a low guess, but not unreasonable; since MakerBot today officially merged with the much larger Stratasys, which makes professional-level 3D printers for industrial prototyping, it has a lot of resources to scale the Digitizer up to cheap mass production.

At such prices, we could be about to enter an era that pundits have been wringing their hands about for some time: the age in which it’s possible to rip, mix and print physical objects with the same ease that was once reserved for music and other media. Indeed, US copyright czar Victoria Espinel has warned that it could lead to an increase in counterfeit and pirated goods. Some entrepreneurs seem eager to bring about this future: A company subtly named Pirate3D held a very successful Kickstarter campaign in June for its 3D printer, the equally subtly named The Buccaneer.

Makerbot’s competition, the Fuel 3D, is also a Kickstarter project (and also a very well funded one). The difference between it and the Digitizer is that the Fuel3D is handheld and can hypothetically composite a scan of anything, of any size, located anywhere. The Digitizer may end up cheaper and more user-friendly for MakerBot users, but it’s still limited to smallish objects that you can hoist on to your desk. They join competitors such as the Photon 3D scanner (around $450) and theNextEngine (around $3,000).

Updates on the MakerBot blog have shown a steady progression in the quality of 3D scanned and printed objects since the Digitizer was first announced in late April. The scanner will use a two-laser system to reflect light off objects in order to read their depth, and scans can be modified easily once digitized. MakerBot also claims that the software is great at filling in missing information, and that you can easily scale a design up or down before printing it. This is important, because it means you can turn cat figurines into earrings.

Source: Qz.com