I recently received a mail from Alex Mamalyha, web community manager for i.materialise, announcing the launch of a new service from Materialise NV. i.materialise is a rapid manufacturing service aimed at designers, and the beta site gives a good idea of the way the service will work. Obviously there are many web-based rapid manufacturing services these days, and the announcement of a new one is a fairly regular occurrence which I usually just ignore. But given the extent to which Materialise have supported and encouraged designers’ use of RM technologies through their .MGX initiative, I thought this was one service that deserved further investigation.

The ‘manifesto’ of i.materialise claims the service makes “3D printing as easy as printing on paper”. Obviously such claims owe more to hyperbole than fact, but the i.materialise interface is presented in a relatively simple and obvious way. A workspace in the centre of the screen visualises the model once it is uploaded, and a number of drop-down menus to the right give the choice of materials, surface finishes etc.

To test the service, I used a model I made previously for Nina Pirhonen, a Finnish designer and creator of the PomPom character and series of books. The model was originally created in Solidworks, but in order to upload it to the i.materialise site it first needed to be converted to .stl format.

3D model of PomPom © Nina Pirhonen

It’s here that some of the limitations of the i.materialise service first begin to show. Whether it’s to simplify the operation, or because limits don’t in fact exist, there’s no information regarding maximum file sizes or number of triangles/polygons. This is fairly basic information that anyone, designer or not, with the skill to create a 3D CAD model will want to know, since it has a fundamental effect on the quality of the manufactured model, and most CAD packages allow the quality of the .stl file to be easily determined. In this instance I used a relatively coarse setting, giving a triangle count of 20,024, and a file size of 1,001,284 bytes. I also imported the file into Rhino in order to export as .3ds, .obj and .wrl formats.

Exported .stl model of PomPom © Nina Pirhonen

Uploading the file is easy – click the upload button and choose your file – and quick; a 1.5Mb .3ds file took about 20 seconds to upload, with a further 8 seconds for the i.materialise software to analyse the file. Exactly what the analysis involves isn’t clear, but I assume the model is being checked to ensure it’s a closed volume. No errors or warnings were given about the model, which suggests it isn’t being checked in terms of the feasibility of it actually being made – the ears, arms and feet/ground of this model would definitely throw up problems, particularly in some of the more fragile material options. Once the model is uploaded it appears in the workspace of the user interface, and can be viewed from different angles.

i.materialise interface © Materialise NV (click for larger image)

Another limitation of the interface is that there’s no option to change the build orientation of the model. Since most rapid manufacturing technologies have different resolutions in their horizontal plane and vertical axis, this can be an important choice, affecting which surfaces have the smoothest finish. For a service aimed at designers it’s definitely an option I would expect to see.

On the right hand side of the interface there are a choice of materials, including ABS, polycarbonate and polyamide, alumide, and multicolour composite. As different materials are chosen the price automatically updates, along with the surface finishing options. Most materials can be painted and some can be mechanically smoothed (similar to tumble polishing). There’s also an extensive ‘library’ of information about materials and manufacturing techniques.

Multicolour Composite material properties © Materialise NV (click for larger image)

Given the nature of the model I was testing the service with, I was particularly interested in the multicolour composite option. Materialise use a Z Corp Spectrum Z510 for this process, which prints at 600 x 540 dpi. The problem was that, as far as I could tell there is no way to specify the colour of the surfaces. Usually Z Corp Spectrum printers use VRML files, but when I uploaded in this format (the system accepts and recognises .wrl files, even though they are not listed as a usable file type) no colour information was retained. The same was true when I tried an .obj file. Looking around the site and through the FAQ’s didn’t give any clues as to what file formats I should be using or whether this option is functional, but obviously this is something that needs to be fixed before the service comes out of beta testing.

All in all, I’m not really sure what to make of the i.materialise site and service. It’s stated explicitly that the service is aimed at designers, though it’s not made clear whether that means just design professionals or includes consumer-designers. Either way, for those with the experience and skill to create their own 3D models it seems a bit simplistic. There’s none of the control you get setting up a model for printing yourself, particularly deciding what orientation the parts should be printed. To be fair it’s possible to contact i.materialise direct, but then the service becomes little different to using a local RP/RM shop (although admittedly, the range of materials and processes is much greater than most shops are able to offer). And of course it should be kept in mind that the site is still in beta testing, the whole point of which is to iron out the glitches. In this respect at least, i.materialise have done a good job – the UI is easy to understand and the whole process of uploading a file, choosing a material and ordering is easy to follow.

Finally, one tantalising option, which isn’t possible to review but which is suggested in the FAQ’s, is the future possibility of ordering some of the .MGX designs. Quite how this will work is unclear – will it simply be possible to choose from a catalogue and hit ‘print’, or will it be possible to modify the design? But this is obviously one area where the i.materialise service can offer something unique, over and above similar web-based services or a local RM shop.

Update: Since posting this article I have swapped a few emails with Alex Mamalyha; my questions and his answers are reproduced below:

1. Is there a maximum file size, and is there a limit to the number of triangles or polygons in a model?
2. How are colours specified when choosing the multi-colour composite option (using the Z-Corp Spectrum printer)?
3. Will you attempt to make any model, or will you advise if an uploaded model is unsuitable?
4. What is your returns policy?

Finally, I noticed that it’s possible to upload a VRML (.wrl) file and the system will recognise it, but this isn’t listed in the ’supported formats’ list.

1. There is no limitation on the file size or number of triangles in the model.
2. Colors should be stored within the uploaded file, so if you choose Z-Corp we will print it in color (I realize it is a bit confusing since the preview generated images are in single color, but we will improve that bit shortly).
3. We did some testing with Blender users. If the uploaded file is not suitable for printing we will fix it ourselves, unless it requires severe design changes (after all we don’t want to print cube when the person is ordering sphere) in which case we will contact the designer and explain what has to be changed. We will not attempt to print something that is not printable. Additionally, we are developing plug-ins for major CAD programs that will provide designers with the info on problems with the file before they even upload it.
4. Once we print and ship the model, it cannot be return for obvious reasons (usually it’s one of a kind design)

About VRML support. We are still in a pretty early BETA and some info may not be consistent in all parts of the website, but we will do our best to provide support for a number of different file types.

Are there plans to add functionality which would allow the designer to choose the orientation of the part in the build chamber? Or maybe make it clearer which is the Z-axis so the part can be oriented in the modelling application?

We are working on functionality, so that preview window on the website will allow designers to rotate the model, rather than have screenshot generated (as it does now). It does not matter how the file is located during the upload process, we have support engineers, who check all incoming files and position them, we don’t expect people to know how the model should be oriented for printing purposes.

This post deals with the results and conclusion of the user trial discussed earlier. The findings of the study can be divided into two main areas: the results of the drawing exercise and the success of developing the drawings into a 3D CAD model, and the results of the two CAD modelling exercises. It’s important to stress that in both cases the objective was not to judge or analyse the quality of the design, but rather to gain subjective feedback from participants about which activities they enjoyed or disliked, and which approach resulted in the product they were most happy with.

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From Configuration to Design: Capturing the Intent of User Designers is the title of a paper I recently presented at MCPC 2009 in Helsinki. It details a user trial conducted as part of my PhD research, which sought to understand the extent to which non-professional user-designers are able to engage in design exploration and to communicate design intent. The paper itself, together with the presentation given at the conference, can be downloaded from the Papers and Presentations page of this site. Much of the background argumentation to the study has been made in previous posts, therefore what follows is an edited version of the paper, focusing on the design, conduct and conclusions of the user trial. This first post deals with the design and conduct of the study, a follow-up post will concentrate on the results and conclusions.

Design of the Study

The focus of the trial was the design of a USB memory stick. This was chosen as a relatively simple product whose functionality was easily recognised by those who took part in the study. The trial was intended to investigate two main research questions:
What is the best method for consumers to conduct design exploration?
How well are consumers able to communicate design intent?

It built on the observations of a number of researchers with regard to the way designers and architects use drawing as a way to generate and evaluate design solutions, but sought to place such observations more specifically within a mass customisation scenario. It also sought to understand the practical difficulties of expecting non-designers to use drawing in the same way that trained designers do. The intended outcome was to better understand what future tools will best enable consumer-design, which will form a major part of my future PhD research.

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Day two of the conference started with a keynote by David Gross and Jeff Beaver of Zazzle, together with James Johnson of Avery Dennison. Zazzle and Avery have recently launched a collaborative effort, the first example of which allows consumers to customise and order ring binders in a minimum quantity of one. In this instance Zazzle is acting as a ‘gateway’ to Avery’s manufacturing capabilities, with Avery producing the custom binders at their own facilities. James Johnson described clearly some of the challenges involved in setting up a mass customisation enterprise inside a business which has always excelled at mass production – Avery had already tried it’s own MC initiative before collaborating with Zazzle, but three days after the partnership launched there were 60 times the number of user-created designs than Avery had attracted in a year.

Looking back at my report on 2007’s MCP conference, I can see that I was somewhat disparaging of Zazzle, who I compared unfavourably to Ponoko and Threadless. Following this presentation I was much more impressed by what Zazzle has achieved and how fast they are advancing the benchmark of what consumers expect when customising products. For example, Zazzle has invested in body mapping capabilities more commonly used for special effects in the film industry, this allows custom clothing to be presented in a much more realistic way, with designs mapped onto folds in the fabric. And within the Zazzle system, users can open their own stores, setting their own prices for products and (in some cases) running a full time business by customising, and allowing others to customise, their designs.

Vintage Player by the3rdbase, printed on Heather Grey American Apparel T-shirt. The custom graphic maps over the folds of the fabric (click for larger image)

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The Mass Customisation and Personalisation conference here in Helsinki marks a couple of milestones for me. Firstly it means I’m a couple of years into the PhD, my progress in which is probably best characterised as ‘fitful’. At times it’s been racing ahead, but in the last few months it’s taken a back seat due to my professional workload. Secondly it’s the first conference where I’ve given a paper, but more about that in a later post. These next few entries are really a personal overview and reflection on the conference and some of the points raised.

The opening welcome was given by Matti Alahuhta, who I guess was technically my boss at one point at Nokia, and is now CEO of Kone. He gave a brief presentation of the ways in which Kone lifts can be customised, but disappointingly it wasn’t much more than a corporate gloss-over. He showed a few slides comparing Kone’s relatively ‘industrial’ products of just a few years ago to current products which show much more evidence of an ‘interior design’ approach, and I would have been interested to learn what this meant for the way the company and its designers worked.

The opening keynote speech was given by Joe Pine, who of course introduced a lot of people to the concept of Mass Customisation in his 1993 book. I had been looking forward to his presentation, because his speech at the previous MCPC in Boston had been one of the highlights of my conference. But to a large extent this was just a repeat of what was presented two years ago. I spoke to a few people who hadn’t been in Boston who thought the presentation was really interesting, but personally I felt a bit cheated.

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