StudioGijs

Birdsnest eggcup in New York Times

Gijs — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:44:44 +0000

On 12th of january in an article in New York Times, the birdsnest eggcup is mentioned as one of the examples of objects that can be printed at Shapeways. It caused quite a lot of new traffic to this item. Speaking of traffic, this design has had already 16000+ hits since it was announced on the forum of Shapeways on Dec.11th last year!

Birdsnest eggcup

Gijs — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:46:15 +0000

Cheer up your breakfast table with birdsnest, an eggcup design with a cute little bird that keeps an eye on your egg.

This product was designed for 3d printing and is exclusively available from shapeways. Currently, the eggcup can be ordered in winter green, winter red and winter blue, apart from the standard white.

3D printing for kids

Gijs — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:12:40 +0000

A couple of weeks back, I had the opportunity to show a group of 8 year olds the magics of 3D printing. To make it even more exciting for them, I organized a small design competition, where they could win their own design printed in real!

The winning design was a very cute necklace designed by Sophie, that just makes you happy instantly.

The hard part was to turn her sketch into a printable object, while keeping the feel of the hand made sketch and the delicacy of the thin lines. Therefore, all the items were drawn instead of modeling a few and copying them. The necklace was printed at shapeways in a single run with a technique called laser sintering. During this process, small nylon particals are welded together using energy from a laser, where the product is built in very thin layers. In other words, the chain of figures is not assembled from separate pieces, but instead printed with the pieces connected.

Shown here printed in gorgeous ‘winter red’…

Belt holder

Gijs — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:03:01 +0000

Do you ever wear a belt that was just a bit short to hold the loose end in position? You’ll probably know how annoying that is. Luckily there is now an elegant solution for this problem. No more paperclips or elastic belts.

Printed in stainless steel

This design is printed in sturdy stainless steel which makes it a durable accessory. The belt holder is made exactly to the dimension of the belt which guarantees that the holder stays in place where you want it. Although the design is directly available in one size from the shapeways shop, other dimensions are made on request.

Printing sterling silver

Gijs — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:49:08 +0000

Shapeways is now offering sterling silver as a printing option until 7th of November! Since this is a time limited service, I took the opportunity to let them produce my 5 hearts pendant design in silver.

Lost wax casting

Although the title suggests that the design was printed in silver, the proces is a bit more complicated. It is in fact made by ‘lost wax casting’. The design is printed on a wax printer, sprues are added and the product is surrounded with gipsum. After this, the wax is removed in an oven, leaving an empty shell that is then filled with silver. After removing the gipsum shell the sprues are removed carefully and the product is hand polished.

This design and other designs can be purchased directly from shapeways and include free worldwide shipping.

Worklight

Gijs — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:04:46 +0000

This energy saving worklight was designed for Uni Elektra GmbH. The goal of this project was to increase light efficiency and to improve the manufacturability of their previous model. I developed a completely new light reflector that increased light output by 30%.

This new design has reduced manufacturing complexity and improved assembly as well as design features:

no tooling undercuts
less parts and screws
simpler tube construction
smaller form factor
integrated cord storage in handle part

Furthermore, thanks to photorealistic visualizations, marketing activities could be started long before there was a physical model available, saving Uni Elektra both time and money.

The old design, showing the inefficient light reflector design, open tube ends and impractical cord storage at the bottom:

Lounge seat

Gijs — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:23:15 +0000

Sometimes, models can’t be simply solved by 2D autocad drawings. A good example is this lounge seat, designed for the university of Amsterdam by Rudy Uytenhaak Achitects and manufactured by Gielissen Interiors & Exhibitions. I converted the initial sketches and rough autocad 3d model, combined with the 2D structural drawings from Gielissen into an integrated 3D model with all the parts necessary for manufacturing.

All the parts in the model were then converted to 2D drawings and nested for CNC cutting, where the seats and backs of the seats needed ‘unrolling’ to get the correct dimensions. The hundreds of parts were coded, and the 3D model was used to make assembly drawings from. Normally projects like these would have required many, many hours to get manufactured by hand, requiring difficult to make molds and much more waste material. Furthermore, the 3D model was used to get feedback from the architect about important design details.

Wireframe model, showing the structural elements:

2D parts, nested for efficient manufacturing: