Matthew Compeau and Biying Miao are architects and entrepreneurs who use The Replicator to bring their designs to life, including the fantastic jewelry from their latest project Hot Pop Factory. We asked them why they use a MakerBot, and they whipped up a post for us to share right here on this blog.

Hot Pop Factory’s collection of 3D Printed jewelry celebrates the unique texture of 3D Printed objects. The three-piece collection was designed using Rhino3D and Grasshopper and then fabricated with our MakerBot Replicator. Coming from an architectural background – a profession in which the tools and technology for dreaming up amazing designs are progressing much faster than the budgets and construction methods needed to build them, we realized that our MakerBot provided an amazing creative outlet to scale down those ideas and bring them to life in way that wouldn’t be possible with other fabrication methods.

Since it first started shipping earlier this year, we’ve been using the Replicator non-stop. After several months of experimenting with its strengths and limitations, we’ve been able to develop a set of striking designs that show off the stratified beauty inherent to the additive manufacturing process. During this time, The Replicator completely changed the way we design. Instead of iterating our designs through sketches and rough models, The Replicator lets us produce an unlimited number of full-size prototypes that we can touch and wear at every stage of the design process. The result was a visceral understanding of how each piece is formed that allowed us to tweak every detail in order to help bring out their true beauty.

As excited as we were about The Replicator as a design tool, we are equally passionate about its role in the future of personal manufacturing. As young designers we don’t have the resources that would normally be required to bring a product like this to market. Our MakerBot has empowered us to take full ownership of the design and manufacturing process. Instead of investing tens of thousands of dollars and trying to forge relationships with suppliers and fabrications, we can manage the entire process — from design, to fabrication, to distribution — from our living room. It’s an exhilarating feeling to have so much control over a project we’re so passionate about. We hope that as our business grows, we can empower others in the same way, by providing tools that allow them to personalize each piece for custom manufacturing.

Needless to say, working on this project has already been an exciting journey. We hope that you’ll join us as the experience continues to unfold at www.HotPopFactory.com.

UPDATE: okay, the video doesn’t work as an embed, my bad. Watch it here!

Speaking of architecture, here’s a video for:

• Architects
• Thing-O-Matic owners
• Anyone who ever played Nintendo and craves the music
• Anyone who loves — and I mean loves — LEDs
• People who just can’t get enough time lapse video

This video comes to us from Andreas Kretzer und Dennis Röver, whose Thing-O-Matic is on display at the German Architectural Museum (Deutsches Architektur Museum) until the middle of September, 2012. The team has students giving live demonstrations of making things on the Thing-O-Matic, but they also made hundreds of souvenirs available for visitors.

Tim Moore at ArchitectureSource poses the question, “Is 3D Printing Taking the Artistry out of Architecture?”

That’s a big question, and he’s applying it to just one part of the process, model making. Tim argues that 3D printing is just like a new technology in any other field. It helps the artists do their great work more quickly, and it helps the non-artists do their not-great work more quickly.

I’m not an architect, but isn’t it also possible that having a technology that speeds up your work can also help you improve faster? The whole post kind of suggests that the model making is the entire goal in architecture, but I always imagined it as a means to an end, a way to share your ideas with others. In my opinion, the quicker someone can tell you “that sucks, try again,” the better.

PrettySmallThings discussed how she uses her MakerBot to make models in her work as a theater set designer at our most recent MUG New York meeting (and has written a fantastic series right here on this blog). She told us that she basically uses her Replicator to make the things she doesn’t have the time to make or won’t enjoy making. However, if one element of a model is easier and faster to do by hand, she makes it by hand.

Also, model making is not the only way that 3D printing is being used in architecture. There’s also the question of building actual structures with 3D printing.

I’ve blogged about Matt Compeau before, the guy making the coral-like prints on his Replicator (speaking of, maybe someone should print this and put it in an aquarium, as my colleague MakerBlock suggested).

His latest post at Emergent Forms shows us how he delivered a “randomized” ceiling for a client.

MakerBotted model of a custom ceiling section, by Matt Compeau

The piece above was printed, presumably on The Replicator, to show how the same section of segmented wood baffles would piece together to give a random looking solution. Each of these represents a 2′x8′ portion of ceiling, and Matt shows how those sections themselves are laid out in a way that will maximize the look of randomness.

Go to the original post to play with the web-based tool he devised to demonstrate the process to the client. Fun stuff.

This post reminds me of Kacie Hultgren, aka PrettySmallThings, in that she and Matt both use their MakerBot Replicators and/or TOM’s to demonstrate final products to clients. Did you see Kacie’s post over the weekend about how to work in scale? It was the first in a series that she’s put together for us, and the next one is pretty tops, too. Look for that on Friday.

Do you use MakerBotted scale models to communicate your ideas? Tell me about it.

Personally, I will not be happy until most of the world’s architectural marvels are available for download and printing at Thingiverse.  So of course I was extremely happy to check my favorite building New York off the list: the Chrysler Building.  While the famous crown ornament, the literal and figurative high point of Art Deco, doesn’t shine quite as brightly in ABS plastic, we’re still very happy to have it as a printable model on Thingiverse.  Thanks, jwolee!

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Train Coupler by h-kimura

As a child bristling with curiosity about everything around me, I asked more than my share of questions. I suspect I drove my parents, teachers, librarians, and every other at-hand adult nearly to the limits of their patience. “What’s that?”  ”Where does that come from?” “How does that work?” “How can I do that?”

A beloved important early reference for me was David Macaulay‘s The Way Things Work, a far more practical codex for my research than any of my grade school teachers. Macaulay’s book was my mechanical World Tour¹ guiding me from the simplest practical machines through to complex electronic devices.

There were just so many machines in the world — and learning how they worked, how their parts fit together, didn’t diminish their magic but rather enlarged it. Sure, I dismantled my share of toys and appliances beyond my ability to repair them, but I learned enough to use the automation functions on the VCR, and repair any mechanical clock I encountered.²

Thingiverse Teaches Us How Things Work

It has occurred to me lately that Thingiverse is staged to be the The Way Things Work for the latest generation of the curious and tinker-inclined. Not replacing resources like Macaulay’s book, but expanding from the printed word and 2D diagrams into tangible, real-world objects.

I have been extremely grateful to members of the Thingiverse community such as h-kimura who invite us into their own investigations of the world around them by recreating interesting machines, parts, devices, and structures as models that we can then print out on our MakerBots. A month ago, h-kimura shared Mysterious wood joint that he described as a “type of joint used in a gate of OOSAKA castle in Japan.” This is a level of detail I probably wouldn’t have picked up from a photograph of the castle, much less a hurried tour. His latest model works out how train couplers function on Japanese passenger trains. Checking out his site³ I was thrilled to see even more investigations and recreated machines.

Lately, I’m very much the same curious kid again from my youth, learning about gear mechanics from syvwlch, Skimbal, and stickoutrock, learning about math and geometry from George Hart, and learning a little bit about designing and distributing something called a “3D printer” from from my bosses and colleagues at MakerBot.

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1. An experience I had again recently reading Dustyn Roberts’ excellent Making Things Move. [↩]
2. It might be more correct to say that I got them ticking again. [↩]
3. in Japanese — so I used Google Translate to investigate [↩]

Though we do have some famous buildings already, but this is certainly a nice addition to the bunch.  This is without a doubt the most famous bit of 20th-century architecture available on Thingiverse — cheers Disrespective!

It does imply a bit of a challenge though…doesn’t make you want a printable Guggenheim Museum or Fallingwater house?  Or perhaps Sagrada Familia (heck, we can even print a completed one!)

It’s great to see additions to Thingiverse’s architectural library.  Keep ‘em coming!

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