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3D printed coffee cups
- sanj 15y agoI've been looking for stackable coffee cups for a long time. The idea of designing my own -- with the ability to make them hollow walled (!!) -- is tremendous. One interesting artifact of 3D printing: no volume discounts. (pun intended)
- nickpinkston 15y agoAre you saying you're trying to make them hollow for a dewar effect? I'm not sure if they'll let you do a hollow wall as it's really annoying to get the excess powder out from enclosed volumes (via a small hole usually). With 3D printing - you do get volume discounts, but Shapeways has always reached the max of these discounts. After this, the companies need to start dropping machine/material prices and engineering for less labor in the post-processing.
- Luyt 15y agoOne interesting artifact of 3D printing: no volume discounts When you arrive at a design which is commercially feasible in larger volumes, you'd use the printed design for making plaster casting moulds, then use clay slip casting to produce the same cup over and over...
- cma 15y agoGood luck doing that with the Klein bottle cup
- eps 15y agoIs something like this possible to produce on mass scale? http://www.shapeways.com/model/25846/ora.html http://www.shapeways.com/model/25846/ora.html
- Luyt 15y agoWell, you can always find examples which are hard to cast. I was thinking more of serially producing coffee cups rather than ceramic art forms.
- sirwanqutbi 15y agoso much for 'cloudflare' the site's is offline.
- Luc 15y agoIt's amazing how Shapeways has improved the quality of these: http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/1078-New-Ceramics-is-Back-with-a-Bang!.html http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/1078-New-Ceramics-is-... I wonder how much handwork is involved in cleaning up the printed model and applying the glaze (unless the glaze is printed, too).
- nickpinkston 15y agoThey're made by http://www.viridis3d.com/ceramics.htm http://www.viridis3d.com/ceramics.htm The materials are dirt cheap ;-) and I believe they were applying the glaze by dipping them in racks.
- Luc 15y agoYup, it seems Viridis3D are the ones doing the actual printing and firing. I thought it was done in-house by Shapeways.
- vijayr 15y agoVery nice idea. Some of the designs are very funny (spouted cup, aroma cup). At 50$+ a cup, I wonder who'll actually buy them. But as they say at the beginning of the article, the intention is to experiment and not profit?
- rsiqueira 15y agoI almost bought one, but the smallest one is $ 40.91 + $ 19.99 (international shipping) = $ 60.90 a single cup. So I had to gave up.
- wavephorm 15y agoMost of the designs don't look that great and certainly aren't worth the price. But I don't think the point of the project was to really sell any cups, rather than to show how far the technology and processes have improved.
- angstrom 15y agoCoffee is my weakness; I damn near bought the Kryptonite one.
- pavlov 15y agoI just ordered several cups as Christmas gifts. I have a few relatives for whom these should be just perfect -- the combination of 3D printing, unexpected topologies and coffee is like a holy trinity that touches on all their interests :)
- josephcooney 15y agoAll of the ones I was interested in were 'not for sale' (like the Deer Cup http://www.shapeways.com/model/279127/one_cup_a_day___day_25__deer_cup.html?gid=sg82949 http://www.shapeways.com/model/279127/one_cup_a_day___day_25...). Disappointing.
- switz 15y agoI love the concept and idea. Good thing I don't really drink coffee, otherwise I might have had to buy that "The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dog" cup.
- marquis 15y agoMy designer friends are salivating over this. Does the future mean a home-fabricator as a household item, where we can create tools as well as edible items? I can imagine it would cut down on waste. The business model, like an iTunes for 3D models, will be massive.
- alexchamberlain 15y agoThe price has to come down dramatically before this will be a reality.
- nickpinkston 15y agoIt's less a factor of price for most things than just the material properties of the finished product and the fact that most things aren't a blob of material, but have circuit board, etc. that requires assembly. That said - cups, jewelry, etc. that can be made at once don't have these material/assembly issues. Jewelry only costs $20 more to do using 3D printed patterned (as opposed to molded patterns), but with ceramic cups you're right: price is the biggest hang up currently.
- marquis 15y agoEconomies of scale: our first VHS player was a couple of hundred grand.
- Luyt 15y agoDon't forget that for useful household ceramics you need a lot more than just a 3D printer alone -- You'll need equipment and materials to glaze, and a ceramics kiln (which you can't fire in your kitchen).
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago>and a ceramics kiln (which you can't fire in your kitchen) // Not [yet] suitable for this purpose but you can get a kiln that fits in your microwave! http://www.google.com/search?q=microwave+oven+kiln http://www.google.com/search?q=microwave+oven+kiln
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nickpinkston 15y agoOne was put on http://Thingiverse.com http://Thingiverse.com, so I'm sure there are FDMed ones (RepRap, Makerbot, etc.) - but there are actually nice looking ceramic ones.
- Luyt 15y agoI'd like a 'bullcup', a cup with two large bullhorns. And a 'spongecup', where the inside of the cup is filled with a filament-like structure. Maybe impractical, because hard to clean.
- deepkut 15y agoThese are unbelievably awesome. Christmas gift for that family member who has everything x2?
- Luyt 15y agoThis is inspirational. I'm going to try to reproduce some of these cups using traditional means: throwing on the potter's wheel, and some assembly when the clay is leather hard. For example, the 'half cup' isn't hard to make, and a great joke cup for when you ask someone "Do you want another coffee?" and she answers: "Hmmmm, ok, a half one then". The octocup is easy too, just attach 8 handles to a standard cup, but the effect is surprising. The 'double espresso cup' is the same, only two handles vertically stacked. And a cup with two bullhorns ;-) What would be a nice name for that cup? A 'Texas Cup'?
- marknutter 15y agoI'm interested to see what happens when these 3D printers become mainstream and people start to "pirate" physical objects.
- daeken 15y agoOne of my favorite short stories is highly related: Printcrime by Cory Doctorow ( http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_Printcrime.html http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked... ).
- omaranto 15y agoOn the subject of 3D printing and Cory Doctorow I expected to see Makers mentioned, not printcrime. http://craphound.com/?p=2371 http://craphound.com/?p=2371
- alexis-d 15y agoIt reminds me this discussion: Is Printing a Gun the Same as Buying a Gun? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019163 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019163)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jxcole 15y agoI love this. I have in my mind a future where we don't just use open source software for our computers, but we use open source designs for our home appliances and electronics. I have the feeling that, if done well, you could get all sorts of very nice stuff for almost nothing. The next big revolution, after the information revolution, will be the home fabrication revolution.
- adestefan 15y ago> I have the feeling that, if done well, you could get all sorts of very nice stuff for almost nothing High quality raw materials have a high cost.
- ralphsaunders 15y agoSomehow I think it's more likely that they'll get a flawed product and will have to buy a replacement from a store.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Samuel_Michon 15y agoI would use a modeler that uses solids, like Vellum Cobalt or SolidWorks (both on the list). However, those aren't free or even low-cost. However, they make creating objects like coffee cups a lot easier and they're a lot more precise. Edit: The post was removed, but the question was: which program to use to design coffee cups with for ordering with Shapeways.
- huhtenberg 15y agoThanks. Sorry about nuking the post, we had a race condition :) I realized that all product names on that list [1] were clickable, and so I decided to first look at the products one by one and then come back with more specific questions. Would Sketch Up work in your opinion? Also Mathematica is available under non-commercial license for $295, which is reasonable (and I always wanted a copy of it anyways). [1] http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/supported-applications http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/supported-applications
- nuromancer 15y agoSketch Up would not be a good option because it produces mesh models which look like garbage when printed, a good low cost Nurbs modeling software that produces true curves for digital fabrication would be Rhino 3d. The educational version of Rhino is $195. http://www.rhino3d.com/ http://www.rhino3d.com/ Edit: and if you want to make your cups parametric like the examples the grasshopper plugin for Rhino is the way to go http://www.grasshopper3d.com/ http://www.grasshopper3d.com/
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- Samuel_Michon 15y agoI'd advise you not to use SketchUp for this. When creating organic shapes it's best to use solids [1], not mesh modeling. Otherwise your coffee cups will look like they've escaped from Tron. Ashlar has a lite version of Cobalt, called Argon - a commercial license costs $1200 or you can rent it [2]. There's also an educational license for $200 [3]. A less costly program that supports solids is TurboCAD, at $500 [4]. I've never used it, but like Ashlar Vellum, they've been around forever. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_modeling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_modeling [2] http://www.ashlar.com/3d-modeling/3d-modeling-argon.html http://www.ashlar.com/3d-modeling/3d-modeling-argon.html [3] http://www.ashlar.com/shop/3d-modeling-argon-stu.html http://www.ashlar.com/shop/3d-modeling-argon-stu.html [4] http://www.turbocad.com/TurboCAD/TurboCADMac/TurboCADMACProv6/ModelingFeatures/tabid/1735/Default.aspx http://www.turbocad.com/TurboCAD/TurboCADMac/TurboCADMACProv...
- MetallicCloud 15y agoSeems like a good idea, but the end result isn't smooth enough for me to get one. http://cunicode.com/the-octocup-3dprinted-review/ http://cunicode.com/the-octocup-3dprinted-review/