The Shapeways blog points us to a unique new product they’ve produced for designer Alexander Pelikan. As part of a project with Dutch research institute TNO, Pelikan has made a set of 3D printed door handles.
[via Shapeways]

A forthcoming exhibition at the Appel Gallery in Berlin presents the new work of designer Hermann August Weizenegger. The Digital Couture work presents varied objects designed with rapid prototyping and traditional ‘turning’.

Shapeways recently unveiled a new fabrication service that allows 3D models to be printed using stainless steel, marking an incredible advancement in prototype and object creation.  The above images are of a möbius strip seen in the CAD design program and the finished product offered by Shapeways.  3D modelers can make their designs come to life in a process that was previously limited to resin or plastic models.
The technique takes tiny deposits of stainless steel powder and fuses it with a binding material.  The objects are slowly pieced together and take the full form of the model designed in the [...]

Styli for touchscreen devices are usually a kind of throw-away accessory. Not a lot of personality or design customization go into the little things.
Stephen Yurkevitch has usurped this bland legacy, and created a line of unique 3D printed styli, most of which feature decorative elements from video game worlds. His designs inspired Shapeways to make a Stylus Creator, where you can develop your own custom stylus.
[via The Shapeways Blog]

This weekend at the Renegade Craft Fair in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we spotted an interesting line of jewelry generated from rapid prototyping technology. Named Nervous System, the pieces were created by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenburg — both former students at MIT (appropriately enough) who studied in the fields of Architecture, Biology and Mathematics.

The jewelry — completely constructed using 3d printing technology, and titled with names such as lamina, dendrite and radiolaria — take inspiration from organic structures. Many of their pieces are generated from algorithmic processes and even allow you to customize your own pieces of jewelry through their website.

The following video is absolutely mind blowing. Intel and a group of academic researchers are is working on a programmable matter, a shape shifting material that can take on any shape, physical property or color that will rapidly transform into literally anything. It works by moving around microscopic glass spheres called catoms that have processing power and electricity generating capabilities built in. And although they have created small working prototypes in the lab, unfortunately, the video is an animation, a concept design of what they are hoping to achieve. If and when programmable matter becomes a reality, it will be [...]