It has been a good week for personal fabrication enthusiasts. A plethora of new technologies, services, and content were released:
1. Zazzle Embroidering – Zazzle has been on a tear recently announcing custom skateboards, sneakers, and now embroidered garments. Embroidering may not seem like the highest tech innovation, but this development allows them to sell goods in a much higher value product class. This helps move them from a place to get a gimmicky shirt to a high quality fashion outlet.
Why It Is AWESOME!
- Amazing Preview: One of the biggest problems with custom goods is creating a preview that accurately reflects the finished product. This preview does a magnificent job of showing the actual stitches in the embroidery AND a realistic, real time rendering of the manufacturing process.
- Quality: All “Direct to Garment” printers have a kind of cheap iron-on appearance. These embroidered garments are much higher quality, more durable, and vibrant.
What needs to improve…
- Cost: A basic hoody will cost ~$35 and preparing the stitch pattern is another ~$35. $70 is pretty steep for a sweatshirt.
- Speed: It takes 24 hrs. from the time you submit your design to when you see the preview, presumably because humans must tweak it to work with this manufacturing process. With no immediate feedback you lose some of the fun in designing and make it a very task oriented experience. It will also be difficult to get as nice a design as the one pictured without intimate familiarity with the sewing process.
2. NIKEiD Lasering - Nike has released a new version of their iD line that allows you to add a message to the sidewall of the shoe, not through embroidery, which is the standard, but by using a laser cutter to cut the leather. It is a small improvement, but it is good to see customization services using different process to increase the dimensionality of their offerings.
3. RepRap is Repping – RepRap is an open source 3D printing printer that can be built for $500. It is capable of printing silicone and chocolate at fairly low resolutions. The most exciting aspect of the project is the enthusiasm of the project contributors chronicled in these blogs.
4. The Coming 3D Printer Revolution
Gartner Analyst Peter Basiliere provides information about the trends in 3D printer technology in convenient podcast format.
5. Spoonflower Comes out of Beta
Spoonflower is a Fresh out of Beta startup that allows users to upload designs for fabric and have it printed on demand. This allows fashion designers to get short runs of a custom print, quilters to make their work less “crazy”, and artisans of all sorts to be free from the gauche patterns available at most fabric stores.
6. Desktop Factory is Selling – Desktop Factory has been developing an ultra low cost ($5k) 3D printer for the last few years. The quality is relatively low, but the price tag is about 20% of it’s nearest competitor so it has great potential to be deployed in schools to educate students about 3D printing technology while aiding lessons in math, science, and engineering.
7. Objet is Smooth – The Objet Alaris 30 printer is a desktop sized 3D printer different from others in its price range (~40K) in 2 dimensions: size, most 3D printers are the size of a fridge, and finish, the models come out of this machine smoother than most. Most 3D printers have lower resolution producing models with a distinct, grainy texture. The Alaris 30 is the first printer that gets close to a finished “injection molded” finish. Much progress remains to be made, but this is an encouraging development.
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