MakerBot Industries

Come see limited edition Project Shellter shells at the Wonderloch Kellerland Gallery in Atwater Village, Los Angeles. Opening is tonight from 7-11PM and there will be music, live portraiture, and looping shell adoption videos. If you can’t make it tonight, the show runs through February.

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Project Shellter - Oxystele by TeamTeamUSA

UPDATE 2011-12-13 07:23Kylie Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here with annotations and music: youtu.be/LtvlLBQnEc0UPDATE 2011-12-07 21:35Kendall Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here: youtu.be/QpCusZ_q0wwUPDATE 2011-12-04 19:11The original oxystele.stl had spiral holes in it. After running it through cloud.netfabb.com the holes are gone. If you downloaded the file before, please re-download it. Another one of M. B. Cortie's greatest hits sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009784939390054D! Modeled on the shell of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxystele_sinensis, will Coenobita clypeatus - "Purple Pincher" - hermit crabs like this? Only experimentation will tell! It was created using Maya's shellNode plugin, which is based upon Cortie's model, and thickened using Blender's Solidify modifier blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-256-beta/solidify-modifier/. The goal is a workflow using open source tools, but this shell surface required a commercial tool. Thanks to a tip from thingiverse.com/mesheldrake, the conversion to a solid is now handled by an open source tool. :) Cortie's model and many of its resultant shells have been written in Maple maplesoft.com/applications/view.aspx?SID=3851&view=html. Porting them to an open source tool such as Sage or Blender is the last step in creating a complete open source workflow. Any python ninjas up to the task‽ Follow Project Shellter progress here:projectshellter.comtwitter.com/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterCamsbit.ly/ProjectShellterVideos

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Last night at Jefferson Market in Manhattan, a lucky New York Fashion Week crowd caught a glimpse of the upcoming Fall/Winter 2012 collection of MakerBot’s latest artist-in-residency collaborator, fashion designer Asher Levine.

Levine — known for his designs for Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, and Bruno Mars — has been working with MakerBot to create custom-made sunglasses to be printed on the MakerBot Replicator, and models were wearing these unique fabrications at the event. This collaboration marks the first time that a designer will be offering a piece from a collection to the public via an open-source download through Thingiverse.com. Look for the sunglasses on Thingiverse.com early this week!

What’s more, this also marks the first time in history that a MakerBot Replicator has itself participated as a runway model. Three of our most svelte Replicator prototypes printed away, broody and glamorous, at the feet of the other fashion models while tightly-packed guests and media snapped photos and clamored for interviews with Asher Levine and Bre Pettis. MakerBots also played a role in the music played at the venue — DJ Jet Black built beats from MakerBot Sound Library #001 into a distinctive all-MakerBot soundtrack for the evening (Check out the track here).

Thanks to Annelise for great shots of the MakerBotted glasses in action. Special shout-out also to MakerBot’s Elliot Cohen for creating the digital model for the glasses and Art Evangelist Michelle Zatta for putting several weeks into fabricating them.

BREAKING NEWS: Check out the MTV Style coverage of the event here!