3D printing

[linziloop]

Hi guys! I've been looking into 3D printers all weekend, there's something about them that gets me quite excited, the ability to create prototypes or little vinyl toys to doodle all over is a graphic designers dream and I was just wondering, does anybody on here have one?!

[Moominbaby]

I recently went to a meep up where these guys where talking about 3d printers and what they did with them

3D Advent - Happy Holidays from Moving Brands!

I looked really cool but was something that is definalty in the very baby stages of development.
Also they were saying that they had to get a company to build one from scratch and it was massive. Them they had to work out how to translate the 3d models they want built into reality as you can't simply press print! it seemed like a massive learning curve even for them ! none the less the results where really fun and something that in a few years will really come on. If anyone has one on here I would love to see it in reality seemed like fun. Especially when used with chocolate like they did :)

[Katedesign]

The last company I worked for had one in their London office... they only had some kind of plastic to print/build with but it was pretty good. They sent out a Christmas crib they had designed for Christmas 2010.

The technology is not as new as you might think - we took a look at them a couple of years ago. And the price of the machine is not that high... though perhaps the learning curve for the desgin-to-print bit is!!

[linziloop]

What has got me really excited is that I can do the design bit in C4D and export it as the right kind of file type to be interpreted by the printer software, so the design part isn't all that perplexing. What I want to do next is find a way of scanning in 3D, perhaps with the Xbox Kinect, bringing the scan into C4D, playing with that and then using that in a 3D print, that would really open up the possibilities!

[Katedesign]

Ah! I didn't think it could be that difficult - the people they had working for them weren't overbright!

Is C4D as CAD programme?

[PureCreationsUK]

Great Post, ill be looking into 3D printers.