Video: Modeling a 3D printed bristle dress

Ica Paru, an accessories designer and model, recently became the very first person to wear the Bristle Dress from Francis Bitonti Studio after donning the 3D printed garment at a Brooklyn photo shoot.

As MakerBot’s Blake Eskin notes, the two-piece dress is cloudlike, as much an armature that poses the body as a garment to pose in.

The Friday evening photo session, which yielded the striking images below, was the first time designer Francis Bitonti saw anyone wearing the dress.

“The computer is able to visualize everything accurately, I don’t really feel the need to do fittings,” Francis Bitonti told the official MakerBot blog.

“I wasn’t surprised about how it fit, I wasn’t really surprised about anything.”

Indeed, with the translucent top of the dress, Bitonti able “to bleed the body into the atmosphere.”

The Bristle Dress – made on an Atmel-powered MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer – is Bitonti’s second work of couture developed in his New Skins computational design workshop. The Bristle Dress was printed using MakerBot Flexible Filament and MakerBot Natural PLA Filament, with fake rabbit fur lining the tessellated skirt.

Interested in learning more? The relevant Bristle Dress 3D files are currently available on Thingiverse. The top takes 160 hours to print, while the skirt takes another 135.

Transforming your smartphone into a stethoscope

Those who are new to the exciting world of 3D printing often choose to create a simple personalized smartphone case as their first project.

 However, Suman Mulumudi decided to take things one step further.

Using an Atmel-powered Makerbot Replicator 2, the high school student turned his iPhone into a stethoscope with a unique 3D printed case (Steth IO) designed to collect and relay low-frequency sounds. 

After 3D printing a number of Steth IO prototypes, Mulumudi founded a company known as StratoScientific, which applied for a patent to cover the technology and is currently eyeing FDA approval for the innovative device.

“People have tried to put the microphone over the chest, but that doesn’t work,” Mulumudi, a resident of Washington state, told Blake Eskin of the official MakerBot blog.

“Interestingly enough, that’s how the first stethoscope was invented.”

In addition to the Steth IO, Mulumudi has also prototyped the LesionSizer, which leverages the technology behind an optical mouse to help doctors performing angioplasties select the appropriate stent.

Mulumudi now attends Seattle’s Lakeside School, where Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates went to school.

“People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz — mostly Washington people — they all did one thing: They took an idea and expanded that concept into something that changed the world,” he added.

3D printing a city of ideas

Writing for the official MakerBot blog, Blake Eskin notes that buildings designed today may not open for well over a decade. As such, architects often create models to help people understand what the future structures will actually look like on the ground.

However, before presenting their ideas to clients, governments and communities, architects need to envision the final design themselves with sketches, computer renderings, animations and physical models.

“The earlier you can look at a physical object, the sooner you can understand a building and also make better design decisions,” said W. Scott Allen, an associate architect and designer for Perkins+Will, a global architecture firm that has 7 MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printers in its offices.

Indeed, Allen recently set up more than 40 6-inch towers on an office conference room table to reimagine the space around the Bernardine Monastery in Lviv, Ukraine.

“You might have an entire set of models that are exceptionally functional and some that are wildly impractical but just look really awesome,” explained Allen, who made the models on a MakerBot Replicator 2.

“Rapid prototyping profoundly changes our own creative process. Making all of these on the MakerBot frees us up to test more ideas for clients and come at a nicer solution in the same timeframe. You can almost print at the same speed that you can draw.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the DIY Maker Movement has been using Atmel-powered 3D printers like MakerBot and RepRap for some time now. However, 3D printing has clearly entered a new and important stage in a number of spaces including the medical sphere, architectural arena and science lab. To be sure, the meteoric rise of 3D printing has paved the way for a new generation of Internet entrepreneurs, Makers and do-it-yourself (DIY) manufacturers. As such, the lucrative 3D printing industry remains on track to be worth a staggering $3 billion by 2016.

3D printing Robohands in conflict zones

Daniel Omar, who lives in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, lost both his arms at just 14 years of age when a government plane dropped a bomb near his village during the country’s protracted civil war.

“Without hands, I can’t do anything,” Daniel told Time Magazine. “If I could have died, I would have.”

Daniel – who is now 16 – only recently picked up a fork to feed himself for the first time in two years using a prosthetic arm with parts make on an Atmel powered MakerBot Replicator 2. The arm was designed by Mick Ebeling, the CEO of Not Impossible Labs, a California nonprofit devoted to technology for the sake of humanity.

Elliot Kotek, the chief of content for Not Impossible Labs, told the official MakerBot blog that the design for Daniel’s prosthetic arm was adapted from the Robohand, an open-source project designed by Richard van As, a South African woodworker who lost several fingers in an accident, and Ivan Owen, a prop maker in Seattle, Washington.

“Richard had already created the Roboarm and he also had modified the original Robohand so that it was enclosed at the top of the hand. This change will better protect the hands from the elements,” Kotek explained. “Richard is really out to make a difference on a humanitarian level. That spirit rubs off on us.”

Indeed, Not Impossible Labs recently transported two MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printers to Mother of Mercy Hospital, near the border with independent South Sudan. Ebeling then spent five days in Sudan training seven local fabricators to make prosthetics. Using the two 3D printers, hospital staff can produce one prosthetic a week, with each new arm requiring approximately $100 worth of filament, medical orthoplastic, and metal.

“If Project Daniel can surmount these challenges and scale up, it could transform the lives of tens of thousands of amputees in Sudan, and others around the world,” writes MakerBot’s Blake Eskin. “If you are moved to help, Project Daniel would welcome donations. And if you’re not moved yet, watch the video [above] produced by Not Impossible Labs, which shows Daniel’s wounds and his new prosthetics.”