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Prototyping Roots Manuva

Here’s an intriguing use of prototyping and laser scanning technology. Those UK Hip Hop afficionados out there will no doubt have got hold of Roots Manuva’s Slime and Reason late last year - I know I did. When I looked at the cover, I wondered how that freaky image has been made and the liner notes give it away with extra images from a white light laser scanner running across the Artist formerly known as Rodney Smith’s face and a small note thanking Metropolitan Works for its help on its creation.

Designed by graphic design duo Oscar & Ewan, the cover features a head and shoulders image showing the top of his head missing and the contents filled with green slime - as you can see. Apparently Roots came into Metro Work’s facility, had his head scanned and the scan was printed using Z-Corp’s Spectrum Z510 to create a master that was cast by a sculptor to create a ceramic vessel filled with slime.

Source: Develop 3D

What does ARC 3D Webservice do?

The ARC 3D Webservice allows you to transform your images into 3D models automatically. You only need a digital camera, a PC and access to the Internet.

Everybody can now make pictures in 3D, with a regular photo camera and the free ARC 3D website. You only have to take a number of pictures from an object from different angles, load it onto the website and you will be notified when you can pick up the 3D photo from the ARC 3D ftp-site. With the ARC 3D model viewer you can generate your 3D model, ready for viewing on the internet. For this you need to save it as a vrml or x3d file and download a 3D viewer from the internet for viewing in a webbrowser. You can also save the model in other higher quality formats. The free MeshLab software provides professional tools to enable you to refine and enhance your 3D model.

Source: KU Leuven

New Service: Solido

Another interesting 3D print service based in Rome Ital is called SOLIDO. While they deliver only to Europe, they do indicate they have competitive pricing and offer a full range of services, including Rapid Prototyping, Testing (Functional and Ergonomic), 3D Modeling, 83 micron 3D prints, mechanical analyses, postproduction and more.

The build chamber size (200 x 250 x 200 mm) suggests they might be using a ZCorp 310 or 450 3D printer. In any case, you’ll need to send them your .STL to get an estimate or a print.

Source: Fabbalo

From the 50’s: Mold-A-Rama (MAR)

Mold-A-Rama was developed in the mid-1950’s by Tike Miller of Phoenix. He licensed the invention to the Automatic Retailers Association, which installed and serviced Mold-A-Rama machines, reaching a height of over 200 machines around the country. The ARA decided to drop Mold-A-Ramas after eight years, but an employee, Roy Ward, negotiated to buy them out. By 1967, he and a few other independent operators owned all the machines. Ward decided to retire in 1969, and sold his business to Bill Jones, who now owns and operates 70 machines. Besides the Chicago locations, Jones has machines—mostly in zoos—in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin. The other major operator is based in Florida.

When you operate a Mold-A-Rama, polyethelene plastic at 250 degrees is pumped through a pipe at the bottom of the mold. A second pipe then blows cold air to force the plastic into the crevices of the mold. The plastic hoses which give the machine that cool techno-Frankenstein look, pump automotive antifreeze to cool the mold quickly.

Flickr
Moldaramaville

Source: Mold-A-Rama

The Printed Pot

In the Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory (located in the Mechanical Engineering Building at the University of Washington in Seattle), our research focuses on new and improved methods to describe complex shapes in a way that a computer can understand and to fabricate those shapes in ways that the computer can control (a.k.a., rapid prototyping).

Three-dimensional printing (3DP) is our favorite method of rapid prototyping, because the required equipment is not outrageously expensive and you can use just about any material that can be obtained in powdered form. While our initial research aimed to address a biomedical application (digital fabrication of alumina dental implants), it was not long before discussions with a co-worker led to consideration of other kinds of ceramics. The article presents the basics of 3DP and everything you need to know to put together the materials for producing ceramic art objects on a 3D printer.

Source: Ceramic Art Dailly

Dotmocracy: Crowdsourcing, Mashups, and Social Change

As San Francisco braces itself to be the first major American city to not have a daily newspaper, the canary has sung as the death of print looks eminent. But what new frontiers do new media really offer? Can media democracy be maintained through new forms of citizen media that are more interactive featuring user-generated content?

Now almost anyone can be a media maker, and the whole world is literally watching, recording and listening. The divide between the producer and consumer has begun to dissolve. Crowdsourcing means that news can be created from the people experiencing the situations directly. Instead of producing content in house, aggregated content is the new king, with a whole flood of users openly sharing their photography, writing, and art. 

Dotmocracy is an established facilitation method for collecting and prioritizing ideas among a large number of people. It is an equal opportunity & participatory group decision-making process. Participants write down ideas and apply dots under each idea to show which ones they prefer. The final result is a graph-like visual representation of the groups collective preferences.

Through breakthroughs in Web 2.0 technology a new form of digital democracy has emerged where the divide between media producers and consumers has dissolved and citizen media rules. In this new age of participatory media is transforming the central tenants which make up our democracy, opening up new channels for citizen participation.  While before citizens had to rally for mainstream media attention to catch the ears of politicians, now it is easier ever than before for citizens to launch awareness campaigns and get their message heard by the masses.  Even more importantly, new advances in digital publishing mean that we now have advance systems of filtering and prioritizing data collectively. Instead of the corporations deciding what is important for us to view, it is the power of the crowd that fuels and filters digital content. Online users can choose what news they want to receive through RSS feeds, and can easily forward newsworthy items onto their friends and share them over social networks.

Dotmocracy: Crowdsourcing, Mashups, and Social Change (pdf)
Source: Dotmocraty

Pickwick innovatie via RedesignMe

Pickwick nodigt designers en theedrinkers uit om mee te denken over het kopje thee van morgen. De thee-expert gaat inzichten en ideeën van consumenten en ontwerpers verzamelen via het online Open Innovation Platform van RedesignMe. Dit platform is voor Pickwick een nieuwe manier om te zoeken naar inzichten over thee en het bekende theemerk.

Innovatie is belangrijk voor een succesvol merk als Pickwick. De introductie van Fruit Wellness, de 100% natuurlijke fruitthee is hier een mooi voorbeeld van en kwalitatief onderzoek via online platforms, ook wel co-creatie genoemd, past goed bij het merk. Consumenten en ontwerpers kunnen hun wensen en ideeën delen, waardoor er producten ontstaan die nog beter aansluiten bij de wensen en behoeften van theedrinkers. Via Pickwick Challenge kunnen consumenten en designers al hun ideeën en wensen kwijt voor het kopje thee van morgen.

Pickwick is een van de grote merken van Sara Lee en is sinds jaar en dag marktleider in Nederland met thee. Het merk werd in 1937 in Nederland opgericht en is nu te vinden in vele landen over de hele wereld. Het merk staat bekend om zijn vele verschillende soorten thee voor consument, kantoor, instelling, hotel, restaurant en café.

Source: RedesignMe

Co-Creation in Service Design

Ben Fullerton has an article out in Interactions magazine on Co-creation in Service Design. It focuses on the Make It Work project for the Sunderland City Council and live|work’s efforts to collaborate on the design of a program for the long-term unemployed. 

Genius design may well work for something that will be built—whether software, hardware, furniture, an environment, or any other tangible form our design might take. But how well does it work when we design for less tangible experiences? If there is nothing that can be seen, touched, or used that clearly embodies the whim of the designer, how does the role of the designer change?

The (relatively) recently developed practice of service design seeks to address exactly these types of problems, concerning itself with applying the thinking learned from crafting well-considered, tangible experiences to those that do not terminate in a single product at a single moment in time, such as our experience of interacting with our cell phone provider, using our bank account, or when we visit a hospital. 

Ben Fullerton has been active in evangelizing service design in the United States, speaking at the Berkeley iSchool and Adaptive Path, facilitating workshops and recording a podcast with Jennifer Bove.

Download Article (pdf)
Source: Design for Service

First Eindhoven FabLab Workshop

Studio:ludens and Little Mountain -two companies from the creative sector of Eindhoven- are strong believers of the power of the FabLab concept. They decided to test hands-on what the benefits of such a place would be for the creative business of Eindhoven and so the first FabLab workshop in Eindhoven was born.

On the 27th of March, they put together a one-day FabLab at their own office. Sponsored by Trotec, Kubra an EZtronics they created a complete workshop with a lasercutter, hand tools, a large variety of raw materials and a bunch of of the newest electronic kits. Mixed teams of design professionals and design students (both Design Academy & Industrial Design) were challenged to create a new USB concept and deliver a working prototype at the end of the day.

The results were highly impressive: combining their variety of skills in an act of strong teamwork, the participants turned their ideas into reality. Through an iterative process the initial concepts were refined step by step. In the end, three visually and technically attractive working prototypes of the designs were presented. Studio:ludens and Little Mountain believe that this workshop demonstrated some of the potential benefits for the creative community of Eindhoven:

• Increase personal interaction between design students from different areas.
• Create fruitful links between the professional creative industry and creative students.
• Unleash the true potential of creatives by providing them easy access to Rapid-Manfacturing technologies.

Feel free to read the in-depth review (with many pictures!) of the whole day at Blog Ludens.

Workshop Rapid Manufactoring

Om kennis te maken met de mogelijkheden van Rapid Manufactoring (RM) heeft TNO Eindhoven workshops opgezet. Deelnemers kunnen zo op een praktische manier kennis maken met RM en ook zelf cases aanleveren. In kleine subgroepen worden de cases ter hand genomen. Met verschillende RM-technieken worden samples van producten gemaakt en ervaren de deelnemers de mogelijkheden van deze technieken zelf.

De workshop is opgezet voor het bedrijfsleven en richt zich met name op ontwerpers, projectleiders, constructeurs en product engineers. In 2008 werden de eerste gegeven en de ruim 150 deelnemers waren zeer tevreden. Deelnemers willen deze technieken gaan toepassen voor onderdelen in kleine series en dan vooral voor aanloopseries en functionele prototypen. 

Na de workshop:

• heeft u mogelijkheden om te maken wat met andere technieken niet te doen is.
• kunt u beoordelen welke onderdelen in aanmerking komen voor RM.
• weet u hoe u door functie-integratie een constructie kunt vereenvoudigen.
• kunt u omgaan met eventuele beperkingen van RM-processen.

Workhop

• Aantal: 3 dinsdagmiddagen
• Datums: 10 maart, 31 maart en 21 april 2009
• Tijd: 13.00-18.00 uur
• Waar: TNO Eindhoven
• Kosten: 750 Euro voor MKB (<250 medewerkers)
• Folder workshop Rapid Manufacturing (pdf)

Aanmelden

• TNO Industrie en Techniek
• Henk Buining en/of Bart van de Vorst
• Tel 040-2650556

3D Modelling Symposium 2009: Concepts Beyond Geometry

The 3D Modelling Symposium Berlin 2009 will take place from 30 March until 1 April 2009 at the University of the Arts Berlin. The 3-day event is conceived for both professionals and students of the disciplines architecture, industrial design and engineering. There are four modules: Lectures, Case Studies, Master Classes and Workshops. The overall theme is: Concepts Beyond Geometry. Check the preliminary program.

Source: 3D Modelling Symposium