Chances are if you’re normal and sane and at least remotely responsible with your money, you’re not dropping $2,000 on a 3D printer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tinker with 3D printing. eBay just released an app called Exact, that lets you customize and purchase your own items.
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If you’ve got a 3D printer and a little bit of imagination, you can make pretty much anything. While these machines are still too expensive to be completely ubiquitous, early adopters are making some really amazing things. We got a look at a few of these objects at the 3D Printing Expo in New York this week. Here are the most unbelievable items we saw. More »
The world of 3D printing has certainly done its bit to advance by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years, and this time around, we have received word that Sculpteo is offering 3D printed iPhone dock adapters for third-party iPod speakers, now how about that? These adapters will enable users to make use of Lightning connector iPhones and iPods to play nice on older dock connector speaker systems, ensuring that you need not fork out more money unnecessarily for accessory upgrades.
I guess you can more or less say that the beauty of such a system would be to make available such adapters across a wide spectrum of older speaker systems without having to grapple with the upfront costs that are associated with hiring a factory to churn out thousands of such units from a production line somewhere. The end user too, will benefit, as in theory, any old iPod speaker system can still play nice with the new Lightning connector iOS devices. A win-win situation that the late Steven Covey kept on advocating, no?
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Sony HDTVs With Quantum Dot Technology Start To Ship, TechPet Brings Back Memories Of Tamagotchi,
Sculpteo, a French 3D printing company, is now offering custom iPhone adapters for older iPod docks, allowing you to add connect to your old Bose, Sony, JBL, and other docks with the new Lightning connector. Obviously you need a Lightning adapter but the $17 pieces will make it much easier for you to connect your phone to these older docks.
But the most interesting thing here is that this essentially creates a sort of interstitial hardware. Instead of buying a new dock (or a new baby gate or a new garden parasol) you can buy and print or download and print your own spare parts. This obviously won’t put your local hardware store out of business and 99% of the world won’t buy this Lightning adapter, but the fact that it’s available is very important.
“This story and this adapter is opening a new field of 3D printed spare parts for a lot of different devices. Battery covers, clips, docks, handles … a lot of things can be lost, or become unusable because some other device changed or has been updated,” said Sculpteo founder Clement Moreau. “We really see 3D Printing here as a way to work smoothly in a moving environment, where big companies have really good reasons to change standards from time to time.”
This is print-on-demand hardware, designed for a very specific purpose with a very specific audience. Because they don’t have to hold inventory, you can essentially offer customized dock adapters. This one is a one-size-fits-all but you could feasibly print new ones for oddly-shaped ports or even adapters for different phones. It makes no sense to make 50,000 of these at a factory in Asia but it makes perfect sense to dump out few hundred to those in need.
This is hardly an earth-shattering announcement. Oddly enough, as a Makerbot owner I’d actually prefer to be able to download and print my own copy of this adapter rather than buy one for the ridiculous price of $20. I won’t, but still. This announcement does raise a lot of interesting points as to where the hardware business is headed. And when I can breathe new life into old docks with just a tiny piece of plastic I’m a much happier man. And, when someone inevitably creates a free copy of these things, we’ll have to begin asking ourselves what copyright really means in an era when we can print anything at any time, from iPhone dock adapters to guns.
Love Spore’s robust creature creator tool? Got an iPad? Autodesk has something for you. The company’s latest iPad app, Creatures, is a streamlined monster maker — allowing users to create the monstrosity of their dreams with relative ease. Abominations start as a simple stick figure, molded, thickened and textured with a suite of tools and lighting effects borrowed from Autodesk 123D Sculpt. Completed works can be exported for a more professional polishing Maya and other Autodesk programs, or sent to Sculpteo for 3D printing. The iPad exclusive app will eventually sell for $7.99, but will be available for $2 during its initial launch period. Skip on over to the rightmost source link to check out the app on iTunes, or read on for Autodesk’s official press release.
Filed under: Tablets, Software
Source: iTunes
For a few years now, Sculpteo has taken a different approach to goal of mainstreaming 3D printing. While the competition races to produce the first popular consumer printer, Sculpteo keeps its eyes on the cloud. We’ll be discussing the company with co-founder and CEO Clement Moreau.
Check out our full CES 2013 stage schedule here!
Update: video embedded
Filed under: Science
We’ve seen some ways that you can come up with custom cases for your iPhone in the past, so here’s another method you can add to that list. Dubbed the 3DPCase, this is an app for that iPhone that allows the user to come up with custom designs of their own, which can then be 3D printed and turned into an actual case. There are templates already available in the app for the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4/4S and according to the company, they will be reserving a section for the iPhone 5 which many believe will sport a slimmer and taller body. The good news is that unlike other 3D printed cases which might cost more due to the customization, 3DP cases are actually pretty affordable at $20-$25 each. If you’d like to learn more on how to get a unique looking 3D case for your iPhone (or future iPhone), head on over to Sculpteo’s website for the details.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Blackberry 10 expected to launch with more apps than any other first-generation mobile operating system, Google introduces new YouTube app for iOS,
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