I’m extremely excited to share some news with you all! For the past 2 years I’ve been writing a book that is specifically focussed on 3D printing strategies and case studies for product designers. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Prof. Jennifer Loy and Prof. Olaf Diegel, both very well known leaders in the field. The book is called 3D Printing for Product Designers: Innovative Strategies Using Additive Manufacturing, and is now available for pre-orders direct from the publisher Routledge (at a discounted price!). In many ways this book closes my personal first chapter in the 3D printing in ..read more

In my previous post I detailed my first efforts creating a 3D printable NFT collection. At that stage I had created all the 3D models and shared them on the OpenSea platform, but I hadn’t 3D printed any of them. Well, now I have! Having created and 3D printed countless voronoi and lattice structures, I knew this wouldn’t be a problem, however, I can certainly breathe a little easier knowing that the models are robust and suitable for even a basic FDM 3D printer. I used my old Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus for the 2 models pictured above, and while the PLA filament was a little stringy (has not be ..read more

Welcome to my first post about NFT’s and 3D Printing! If you’re new to NFTs like me, I hope you find this interesting with a few little tips and tricks along the way. If I can say one thing about NFTs (aka. Non-Fungible Tokens), it’s that they’re difficult to wrap your head around. Even just a few months ago, I was telling people I didn’t have any interest in making them or buying them. But here I am, dipping my toes in the water, and enjoying the learning process. For me, I found that just jumping in, committing some time and money, and making some NFTs was the best way to figure it all out ..read more

Recently there’s been quite a lot of attention on the use of 3D printing to manufacture artificial eyes (aka. ocular prostheses). This has largely been due to an announcement out of the UK that the world’s first 3D printed artificial eye was implanted in a patient. Quite a cool milestone and application of 3D printing, and also happens to be a field I’ve been investigating for the past 6 months with some of my colleagues at the Herston Biofabrication Institute. We’ve just published a review of all research into the use of 3D printing for orbital and ocular prostheses, and you can access the f ..read more

Let me start this off by agreeing with you – yes, this is a weird idea! But when you work at the Herston Biofabrication Institute and spend most of your days working on neurosurgery and other medical projects, it hopefully makes a bit more sense why anyone would 3D print a “Merry Xmas” brain to decorate our office Christmas tree. The design of this was quite simple and was based on some tutorials I’ve previously written about mashups and remixes – basically, taking 2 (or more) different files and joining them together in a new and creative way. The brain itself was downloaded here, and then t ..read more

Jeff Crow/AAP Image Authors: James Novak, The University of Queensland | Andrew Novak, The University of Technology Sydney ** Please note: this is a copy of an article I wrote for The Conversation, published on 3rd September, 2021, and is shared under a CC-BY-ND license. You can access the original article by clicking here.** Major sporting events like the Paralympics are a breeding ground for technological innovation. Athletes, coaches, designers, engineers and sports scientists are constantly looking for the next improvement that will give them the edge. Over the pas ..read more

It’s official – my entire house now uses 3D printed light covers! If you follow this blog you may have seen some of my previous indoor light covers, featuring a 3D scanned sea urchin shell and a pineapple. Of course, I couldn’t stop with indoor lights, especially since the outdoor wall-mounted lights on my house looked like the cheapest fittings available. They were desperately in need of an upgrade. Luckily the fitting includes a piece that is easily unscrewed to accommodate standard DIY light covers. A few simple measurements, including the diameter of the fitting and distance of the protru ..read more

My desk is covered with 3D prints, some of them my own designs, and others are just cool examples of what can be done with a home 3D printer. This is one of those examples. Stian Ervik Wahlvaag (@agepbiz) has created a clever range of 3D printed vehicles known as “Tiny Surprise Eggs” – why? Well, because they fit within an egg of course! The unique feature of each toy (and egg) is that they feature moving parts printed in place, without the need for any support material. Once the toy is taken off the printer, it is ready to go. The example pictured above is “Surprise Egg #7 – Tiny Car Carrier ..read more

3D printing is a slooooow process. While 3D printing geeks like me can spend hours watching a printer lay down layers of plastic, it often turns manufacturers off who are used to rapid manufacturing process like injection moulding where parts can be pumped out every few seconds. However, there is a way to produce products en masse and it’s called the 3D printing build farm. Perhaps you’ve already seen images like the ones above – these are well known examples of 3D printing build farms at Ultimaker (left) and Prusa (right) that illustrate what they’re all about: Lots and lots of 3D printers ..read more

If you’re into 3D printing, no doubt you are familiar with some of the ways it is being used in sports. Some of my own products (above) have included a 3D printed bicycle frame, smart bicycle helmet and surf fins, while in the media products have included shoes, golf clubs and shin pads. However, as a researcher, I was interested to know how this translates into academic research. How many research studies have been looking at 3D printing for sports products? How much improvement does a 3D printed product offer over a conventional one? Which sports are adopting 3D printing? Working with my br ..read more