But, it does produce much higher resolution prints with finer details and features than FDM filaments, so it’s no wonder makers and businesses favor it for decorative, artistic, and prototyping parts.

Best Budget ABS-Like Resin	Best Flexible Resin	Best Engineering Resin
eSUN Hard-Tough Resin	Liqcreate Flexible X	BASF Ultracur3d Rigid RG35
4.3	4.7	4.5
$36.99	$65-155	$119
Amazon here	MatterHackers here	MatterhHackers here

Best Budget ABS-Like Resin

eSUN Hard-Tough Resin

4.3

$36.99

Amazon here

Best Flexible Resin

Liqcreate Flexible X

4.7

$65-155

MatterHackers here

Best Engineering Resin

BASF Ultracur3d Rigid RG35

4.5

$119

MatterhHackers here

Are you looking for the strongest 3D printer resin?

For projects requiring extra resin toughness, there’s a growing trend of offering more durable and stronger 3D printer resin among manufacturers.

In this guide, we’ll explore exactly what is the strongest 3D printer resin, how strong is strongest 3D printer resin, and the applications that benefit most from this sturdy material.

Resin Strength Explained

Tough resins exist to tap into the coveted high-quality detail and precision of resin but also provide resistance against wear and tear, stress, impacts, compression, and strain. This makes it particularly beneficial for applications with low tolerance and high compliance, such as engineering and functional prototyping.

Just how strong is the strongest resin for 3D printing? And is resin stronger than FDM filament?

Here’s a breakdown of the average tensile strength – a measure used to signal the max stress or weight material can sustain – of standard resin, the strongest 3D printer resin, and some popular FDM filament types, ABS and PLA.

• ABS – 32 MPa
• PLA – 28 MPa
• Standard Resin – 20 MPa
• Tough Resin – 40-50 MPa on average up to 170 MPa for the strongest SLA resin

It’s important to note that these represent averages. Tensile strength and the perceived toughness can vary drastically based on the quality of the filament, layer height, and the structure of the printed part.

But, for a general understanding of how materials differ, these give us a good idea of how much stronger tough resin is than standard resin. Resin print strength is substantially improved when using tough variants.

Strong Resin Pros & Cons

Strongest 3D Printer Resins

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Now that we know what the strongest 3D printer resin is, let’s dive into the different types available.

ABS-Like Tough Resin

ABS-Like resin is a catch-all term used for what we’ll call the more standard type of robust 3D printer resin. As the name implies, it pulls in some of the properties of ABS: shatter-proof, decent levels of detail, impact-resistant, and heat-resistant.

If we compare ABS-like resin vs standard resin, ABS-like is a strong option for all types of durable resin 3D printing projects where a downgrade in overall surface finish and detail is acceptable.

Recommended ABS-Like resins:

• Peopoly Moai Tough Resin: Available in clear color and suitable for SLA printers, Peopoly Moai is a strong resin that can take a beating. It’s among the lowest-cost options out there, so one for those that want the benefits of tough resin without the high prices.
• eSun Hard-Tough Resin: Designed to work with LCD printers, eSun’s tough resin boasts a higher toughness impact resistance than typical ABS-like resing. It works particularly well for durable parts that benefit from a rugged material. It also has strong mechanical properties and can sustain drilling without any structural damage.

Flexible Resin

Flexible resin offers more elasticity than standard resin, approaching the properties of rubber and FDM flexible materials like TPU.

Printed parts are firm and have a high elongation at break percentage. They can be bent and easily pulled out of shape without breaking or shattering. Due to its elastic properties, flexible resin offers excellent impact and shatter resistance, much like rubber.

A sure-fire sign of a flexible resin is its transparent quality. Shore Hardness, a measure of a material’s overall hardness, is generally used to indicate the flexibility of the resin, usually around 80A.

Recommended flexible resins:

• Formlabs Flexible 80A: An elastomeric resin, Flexible 80A offers superb flexibility for a resin along with stiff shape retaining properties that resembles rubber. It bounces back when pressed, and offers a soft-to-the-touch surface finish.
• Liqcreate Flexible X: As the marketing blurb notes, Flexible-X is soft, flexible, and elastic with excellent rebound properties thrown in for good measure. It can elongate up to 160% and is compatible with all types of resin printers – SLA, LCD, MSLA, DLP.
• Siraya Tech Tenacious Flexible Resin: Siraya Tech Tenacious Flexible Resin stands out for its high impact resistance and flexible properties. According to Siraya, a part printed with the resin can withstand being bent 180° without snapping or shattering.
• PrimaCreator Value Flex Resin: PrimaCreator Value Flex Resin is a great option for those looking for an affordable tough flexible resin. It has an elongation at break of 130% and excels at bringing out details.

Engineering Resin

Engineering resin is a name given to a group of tough resins with different properties destined for professional, usually engineering-based applications with a hefty price tag in tow.

Popular variants include tough resins similar to ABS-like, flexible resins, strong and rigid resins with high thermal and chemical resistance, and reinforced resins.

These are chiefly designed for product development, prototyping, rugged end-use parts, housings, enclosures, jigs, fixtures, connectors, robotics, medical devices, turbines, fan blades, electrical casings, automotive housings, and more.

Recommended Engineering 3D Printer Resin:

• Liqcreate Strong-X: An incredibly tough and strong resin, the Liqcreate Strong-X boasts one of the best tensile strengths on the market at 84 MPa. It’s stiff, heat resistant, and is compatible with SLA, MSLA, and DLP resin 3D printers. It’s also well-priced for an engineering resin.
• BASF Ultracur3D Rigid RG35: BASF Ultracur3D Rigid RG35 offers superb rigidity and durability while also being reasonably flexible. It’s also moisture resistant and has a solid 49 MPa tensile strength.
• Formlabs Tough 4000 Resin: Formlabs Tough 4000 Resin aims to offer both stiffness and precision through a glass reinforced composition. This results in a polished finish, while also being resistant to deformation over time.

Biocompatible Resin

Biocompatible resin is designed to meet medical standards for prolonged skin contact, making them popular in fields such as dentistry and other prosthetic-producing medical fields. The properties of biocompatible resin are generally identical to standard tough resin with high tensile strength.

Some biocompatible resins emphasize resistance to fluids, fractures, shattering, wear and tear, heat (for sterilization purposes), and chemicals to ensure they retain their structure and shape when in contact with fluids, skin, and high temperatures.

Common applications include dental models and retainers, anatomical models, splints, wearable technology, surgical tools, laboratory jigs, fixtures, tools, and other medical devices.

Recommended Biocompatible Resin:

• B9Creations BioRes: A durable, impact resistant resin, B9Creations BioRes is designed for prolonged skin contact, making it suitable for dental and medical applications. At $320 a bottle, it doesn’t come cheap, though.
• Loctite 3D MED413 HDT60 Tough: Loctite 3D MED413 HDT60 Tough targets medical applications thanks to ISO 10993-5 & -10 standard biocompatibility. It’s designed to retain all its properties at body temperature. Other features include a smooth surface finish and solid tensile properties. Common applications include hearing aids and medical equipment components.

Speciality Resins

Specialty resins boast special properties alongside the toughest expected from strong resins that make them useful for specific applications. They tend to carry a hefty price tag due to their more complex formulas, reaching hundreds of dollars per bottle.

High-temperature resins can sustain air, fluid, and gas flows at high temperatures for applications such as mounts, fixtures, molds, inserts, and housings.

ESD resin is also considered a Speciality resin and is designed for parts used alongside electrical components. They are typically static-dissipative: trays, end-use components, prototypes, tools, and fixtures.

Others include magnetic resin, chemical resistant resin, and monomer-free resin.

Recommended Speciality Resin:

• Formlabs ESD Resin: Formlabs ESD Resin is designed for parts sitting alongside electrical components and circuitry. Applications include, static-dissipative parts and enclosure for electronics.
• 3Dresyn MH Magnet Holder: 3Dresyn MH Magnet Holder is an ultra-tough and rigid resin designed to latch onto magnetic surfaces.
• Liqcreate Composite-X: One of the strongest resins on the market, Liqcreate Composite-X boasts an 85 MPa tensile strength thanks to a formula that includes reinforced nano-micro composites. It works in SLA, MSLA, LCD, and DLP resin printers. Other attributes include chemical resistance and low shrinkage.

Tough Resin Applications

• Wearables
• Prototypes
• Gadgets and products subject to wear and tear
• End-use parts
• Aerospace
• Automotive
• Machinery components
• Dental applications
• Jewelry
• RC model parts
• Hinges
• Joints
• Shatter-resistant parts
• Seat belt clasps
• Enclosures

FAQs

What Is the Strongest 3D Printer Resin?

The strongest 3D printer resin currently available is Liqcreate’s Composite-X. It features a tensile strength of up to 85 MPa when UV and thermally cured properly, which is roughly four that of typical resin. This toughness is chiefly due to the use of reinforced nano-micro composite that makes it suitable for applications such as functional, rapid prototyping, industrial uses, and wind tunnel testing.

Which Resin Is the Strongest?

The strongest resin is typically engineering resin, formulated for high stress and strain applications, and aims to match the strength of injection-molded plastics. Alongside tensile strength, engineering resin tends to offer better chemical resistance and stiffness than typical 3D printing resin.

Second to engineering resin for toughness is ABS-like resin, which takes many of the tougher qualities of ABS to deliver durable, shatterproof, impact-resistant 3D printer parts. It’s also possible to buy tough resins that weave in some of the elasticity usually found in flexible materials. These aim to match the properties of rubber with excellent rebound performance, elongate at break, and smooth surface finish.

Can Resin Prints Be Strong?

Yes, resin prints, specifically tough resin, can indeed be strong, at least compared to what we’d usually expect from the material, which is typically fragile and breaks easily. If you want to create stronger resin prints, look to ABS-like tough resin, engineering resin, and flexible resin. These are available with up to four times the tensile strength of standard 3D printing resin.

Aside from using strong 3D printer resin, other factors can boost a part or model’s strength. These include using larger layer heights, employing supports during printing, and adhering to the proper, manufacturer-recommended washing and curing process. For the best results, we recommend adhering strictly to manufacturer-recommended temperature settings and cure times.

Other related articles:

• Large Resin 3D Printers
• Best Resin 3D Printers
• DIY Resin SLA 3D Printers
• Best 3D Printers
• Anycubic vs Elegoo resin comparison
• Resin curing UV light buyer’s guide
• Coolest resin 3D prints (with STL files you can download)

We were fortunate to spend over an hour speaking with Dr Bowyer and hear his thoughts on how the RepRap movement came to be, the struggles and obstacles the group overcame along the way, his thoughts on the future of open source 3D printers, how they invented a lot of the technology we take for granted in our 3D printer kits today, and much more.

Our questions are in bold, Dr Bowyer’s answers in quotes.

Before your first declaration of the RepRap movement in February 2004, how long had you had the idea for RepRap?

“I’d been interested in self-reproducing machines since I was a child, I don’t really know where that originated — nearly 70 years ago. That was a constant background interest. Though it wasn’t a research activity, I had not done any research into self-replicating machines.

“But, the real genesis of RepRap was when the British government gave my university a very large equipment grant, and rather foolishly perhaps the university gave it to me to spend! And I decided to buy a couple of 3D printers. 

“I had known about the tech for decades but had never worked in it or done anything with it. The machines arrived, and suddenly I realised that for the first time really, we had a machine that was sufficiently versatile, in the geometry that it could manufacture, that it stood a significant chance of making a good fraction of its own parts, if not all of them.”

And in 2004, in your eyes what was the state of 3D printing?

“It was a mature technology that had been going for 20, 25 years. The idea first appeared as a joke in 1974 by the New Scientist column by David Jones who used to write a column under the name Daedalus.

“He basically invented stereolithography with a laser, and invented it as a joke. A joke invention, but this one turned out to work!

“They [3D printers] were fabulously expensive: the cheapest one when I started the RepRap project cost around £40,000, and in fact that was one of the ones we bought at the university. When I looked at how it worked, it seemed it would be possible to make such a machine at a considerably reduced price, but my primary aim was to produce a machine that could produce most of its parts. And so, that was the way the project went. 

“Some of the machines we used cost a quarter of a million pounds, and I felt that some of them didn’t need to cost that much. And more importantly — they didn’t copy themselves; so I decided to make one that did.”

Everything points back to a Bath University £20,000 grant to kickstart the project. What did it require to get that, and did the people you pitched it to understand the RepRap idea at first?

“I was in a very happy position through no effort of my own, that the EPSRC had given Bath University a block grant that they could then divide up between [the university’s] researchers. 

“So I didn’t have to pitch it to anyone outside of the university. I basically had to put together a proposal for a group of academic colleagues in the uni itself. It was the smallest grant I’d ever asked for.

“I’d spent decades doing fairly large projects, costing a quarter of a million or half a million pounds. Those projects had almost all been successful, and so the fact I was asking for 20 grand didn’t raise too many eyebrows because I had had done things in the past for much more money, and I hadn’t lost the money! 

“But, I wanted to pitch it at a price that was half the cost of the single cheapest machine you could buy at the time, because I wanted to show you could do the whole project for less than the cost of the machine. 

“And I worked out that would be roughly what it would take to buy equipment and materials and so on. A slight cheat is that I also had a research assistant working on the project [Ed Sells, a key part of early-stage RepRap progress], and his living expenses were paid for.”

Did the people you pitched RepRap to understand it instantly, or did they not see the vision immediately?

“They got the hang of it. I had been working for some years on the overlap between engineering and biology, the idea of biomimetics — which is taking things out of natural systems and putting them into engineering — and had done quite a bit of work in that area anyway, and the obvious parallels to RepRap is that it’s a self-producing machine, and biology is the study of thing that copy themselves. 

“So, it was an area in which I was working, so I didn’t have very much work to do to persuade my colleagues that it might be a good idea. And when I explained it, everybody pretty much thought it would work — in principle. They couldn’t see any major impediments. But, in fact that’s not quite how it happened! It was they who persuaded me to do it!

“I mentioned that I wrote this paper on the idea, and I also mentioned that I was busy doing other projects, some of them for significantly more funds than I asked for for RepRap, so when I wrote [the paper] I didn’t actually think I would do it myself — I thought well, I’ll put this out there and if someone takes it up it might be interesting if they get it to work. 

“And as soon as I’d done that, several of my colleagues came and knocked on my door and said well why don’t you do it. So, it was actually at their prompting that I applied for the money, not my desire to do what turned out to be my own project.”

And without the money, was the project dead in the water?

“It would have been slower without the money. If I hadn’t got the money, and hadn’t got the research student, then I would have probably run it as a project for undergraduate students, which basically as an academic one has almost complete freedom, so it would have been developed in dribs and drabs. 

“It would have slowed it down, it wouldn’t have stopped it completely. The money let us devote one person full time and me part time to doing the thing.”

“He [Ed Sells] basically designed the first machine. He would design a bit, and we would have a meeting once a week and go through the current stage of the design, and change bits, try bits out, try things out, build parts of it, build parts of it experimentally, and that sort of thing. 

“By this point, around 2005/6, not only had the project been funded but I also put out a press release saying what the project intended to do, because it seemed potentially at least, it seemed a pretty game-changing project, for all sorts of industries and people, and I had a certain moral duty to tell people what I intended to do. It got picked up by the NY Times, BBC, CBC, and that publicity brought new people on board, and they saw an open source project they thought was interesting. So people in New Zealand [Vik Olliver], and the United States, were trying bits out for the machine, of those only Ed and I were being paid.”

[Ed Sells later became achieved a PhD for his work on the project.]

“[Vik Olliver, from New Zealand] was involved long before I met him, in that for years we only communicated electronically, had never seen or held a voice conversation — no Zoom at the time — so it was a bunch of people from all over the world talking by email. I subsequently met Vik, he has family over here.”

In early posts in the RepRap diary, Vik posts about a circular turnstile that would rotate when printing — a Polar 3D printer. What happened to this?

“In principle it worked, but the difficulty is when you get to the outside of the circle, the angular resolution you need in order to get an accurate print is very fine indeed, and we didn’t at the time have the ability to turn the turntable sufficiently precisely that we could make the exterior rim of it rotate by less than a millimetre. In principle it was a good idea and we could probably have printed well in the middle of the turntable, but couldn’t use the whole area given the electronics and the stepper motors we had at the time — and were developing the Cartesian machine in parallel anyway. 

“It was completely disorganised [their organization style], I didn’t particularly want to direct it in any orientation at all, we just said if someone has an idea, go away and try it out and see if it works. Ed and I were a little more directedfew because beyond the project my concern was that he had a good research project for his PhD. So when we discussed things it wasn’t only with the aim with RepRap in mind, but also making sure he had a decent bit of research. Someone would come up with an idea and we’d say yeah! Why not! And see if it worked.”

As patent holders at the time, what did Stratasys think about what you were doing?

“As far as the state of the machines is concerned, I’ve subsequently seen what goes on inside one and it’s pretty much the same as the way most RepRaps work, unsurprisingly. 

“We deliberately never took it [the Stratasys 3D printer they bought at the university] apart for two reasons: one, so we couldn’t be accused of copying it — and nobody ever did from Stratasys or anyone else — and two, because we didn’t want to constrain ourselves with what they had established. 

“For example, the Stratasys machine printed on a bed made of rigid foam, because then it could actually inject the first layer of plastic into the foam and form a very solid base. We decided not to do that, we decided just to try and print on a flat plate instead. You could see that as soon as you used it, without taking it apart. 

“We never had any problem with Stratasys complaining about what we were doing, there was only one thing that happened: we got a letter, very nice and very polite, very conciliatory, from one of their legal people saying they had a trademark on the term FDM and could we please not use it, so immediately I invented an equivalent term, which was FFF and we just edited everything on the site to that instead. That’s the only time they tried to interfere or anything else with the project. They never complained we were infringing upon their patent, which we weren’t of course [research projects in Europe can research a patented technology for the purpose of improving it without any kind of patent infringement], and we weren’t selling any machines.

“Once the patent expired in 2009, of course the project was free to do whatever it liked. Coincidentally, that was just a few months after we got the first printer working. It all came together fairly nicely in that regard.”

So you purposefully didn’t look inside or take the machine apart because you didn’t want to influence your own research, to see whether you could come up with an independently better answer?

“Yes. We wanted to make something people could make in their garage, where neither [injection molding or machining] were available. We wanted to make sure it gained its accuracy by virtue of clever design, rather than precision in the making of the components.”

Before you saw any results, did you feel like the work you were doing at the time was important, groundbreaking, or culturally important?

“I was rather more detached than that. It has always been the case that the primary reason I ran the project was to see whether it would be made to work, not trying to drive or force it forward or to work — I’m more driven by curiosity than ambition [Dr Bowyer laughs]. Well, completely.

“I honestly didn’t know if it was going to succeed. I was fairly sure we could make it work and that it would succeed technically. But I had no idea if it would make a big influence on the world or not. And so given that I had no idea, i just awarded the two possibilities 50%, either it would sink without trace, or it would take over the world, it was simply a coin toss. 

“Until people started making machines, that was my position. When others making companies based on it, I realised perhaps it was going to do something.”

What did it feel like when the first RepRap (in September 2006) printed a part of itself? Did you think before it worked it was likely to work, and how reliable was it then?

“It wasn’t very reliable then! And I didn’t know beforehand because that was actually done by Vik Olliver on the other side of the world! In fact, I didn’t know he was going to try and do that before he did, he did and then put up a blog post and that’s how I learned about it. 

“I thought waheyy, it worked!” [We joke Vik jumped the gun on him.] “No, because there’s no reason why we should have done it any more quickly than anyone else involved!” 

What did you feel when that happened? 

“It was the first indication physically that what had then had just been in my mind — it turned a hypothesis into a theory if you like. It was something with some substance behind it, and that substance was a literal physical object.”

And do you think now it’s the most important project of your career?

“To me, possibly. Though much earlier in my career I completed an algorithm for computing Voronoi diagrams that’s probably more widely used than even RepRap machines.

“But of all the research I did — and I enjoyed all the projects I ever did — RepRap was certainly the most fun to me. It was interesting because it was so social, it involved so many people interacting — and arguing! — though largely in amicable terms with each other in how to proceed. 

“But that aspect of it was something that made it really quite enjoyable. And once we could see it was going to work and that it was going out into the world, of course there’s some satisfaction in that, and now pretty much every FFF 3D printer in the world, with one or two exceptions, is to a certain extent based on what we did.”

And when you were in the design stage, did you envision something that would be in everyone’s house? What was your idea or dream realization at the time?

“I thought that ultimately the number of machines in private hands would probably be the same as the number of paper printers people have now, whatever percentage that is. That’s the sort of order I’d expect. There had been a number of research projects that showed it makes economic sense to have one of these machines, even if the number of machines you have is quite small.

“The analogy I draw is with a washing machine; everyone in the developed world has one, and 95% of the time it sits there doing absolutely nothing, the other 5% it washes your clothes doing very useful things, and I suspect 3D printers will be like that: you have it in the corner, and only use it when something breaks or you need something new.”

Studies have shown that 3D printers already represent a good return on investment, yet over 90% of these households don’t own a 3D printer. I think it’s an intimidation, information problem. How, as the inventor of these, would you get past this?

“Non-technical people criticise paper printers because they jam and break, and these barriers are not a problem for engineers because they know how to fix things and so on. 

“The real barrier I think is that, fortunately perhaps, because it would be unfortunate perhaps if the reverse were true, is that not everyone is an engineer, and you do need some technical ability and grasp for it. They’re getting simpler with the user interfaces all the time and better in that regard, but nonetheless you can’t use them without some understanding of what’s going on. It’s not like getting into a car and driving away without knowing anything about how an internal combustion engine or electricp motor works.”

There’s a gap of around two years between the first 3D printed part, and the RepRap 1.0 Darwin printing 50% of its parts. What happened in between that time was most noteworthy?

“Mostly, time was taking up designing once we got the hang of the technology. Those two years were basically writing software and doing mechanical design. There weren’t that many milestones: it was climbing a shallow hill as opposed to suddenly jumping up a big step. We got the tech sort of working, the first printed part, and then we did a lot more basic engineering creation and that was a continuous process.”

What were the biggest difficulties and hurdles to jump over that causes the most drama and difficulty at the time?

“The Cartesian movement of the machine was not difficult to organise, it worked almost from the beginning, and we had extrusion heads that worked. But we initially started by trying to make them as simple as possible which meant driving them with DC motors rather than stepper motors. So they were never wonderfully accurate because the speed they extruded tended to vary slightly even if you were precise, so there we made a decision to try to construct a part of the machine using tech that was going to be very cheap, which ended up being the wrong decision. 

“When we came back to making new designs for the extruder heads, we used stepper motors which then worked much better as we could meter the amount coming out of the nozzle. This helped us make the machines work a lot better than the first ones did.”

“[The software] had teething problems, but of the sort you always get when you write software. But three or four of us were working on it and it came together, obviously with bugs but those got fixed.

“And previous research on CAD systems meant I had good idea of how to deal with an STL file.”

So you were pretty well placed based on previous experience to make this work?

“Pretty well, but not uniquely. Thousands of engineers could have done it, they just needed to be good at computing, mechanics and engineering.”

Was there ever a conflict about whether to make it open source, or closed?

“I made the decision before I told anyone else about the project, literally within some minutes of having the idea. It was two-stage decision: I had the idea and then felt it was powerful to release this to the world, and how to make sure this doesn’t cause a great gap in inequity in people who have it and who don’t — and the only way to do that was to give it to everybody. 

“This was perhaps an uncharacteristically noble thought on my part! [Dr Bowyer laughs]”

“But if it copies itself, you’ve got to make it open source anyway, as if you don’t, you’ll be forever trying to stop people doing what it was designed to do, and I’ve got better things to do with my time! The whole idea of self-copying forces you to make it open source. 

“Some people do things like patenting seeds, which are also self reproducing machines, but they spend an awful lot on things like lawyers — which is a dull and uninteresting thing to do.”

Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you had made it closed source and monetized it?

“No, I never really thought about that. I suspect it would have made a lot of legal trouble for the [Bath] University. One of the things I did when I decided to make it open source was go to the University’s IP department and said I had the research project, and they looked at me a bit wistfully and thought, oh can’t we make money out of it? — but given the thing about academic freedom is that every academic is free to publish their own work in any way they choose, and open source is a way of publication, there wasn’t much they could do.

“They didn’t try to stop it either — they were more amused than anything else — but they couldn’t have done anything anyway.

“My wife and I were some of the financial founders of Makerbot. When Makerbot started, one of the founding members was Zach Smith, one of the founders of the RepRap project. He invited other guys in New York, and my wife and me to put up the original funds. 

“We chipped in some money, and of course when they sold the company that had quite grown. We did well out of that — it’s always nice to get a big cheque!”

What’s your opinions on the companies that rather than being completely open source, switched over to closed source, like Makerbot?

“I wasn’t too bothered about it. I wrote a little article at the time saying that I personally disapproved of what they’d done, but I’m not going to do anything about it. 

“But of course it comes back to self replication. If you have a closed source self-replicating machine, all things being equal versus open source, it’s obvious which is going to be most successful in Darwinian terms. In biological terms what you’re basically saying is that you’re going to make this sterile. And so it didn’t bother me unduly. 

On 23rd September 2008, 100 copies had been produced—

“—I didn’t know that! It doesn’t surprise me, but that’s not a fact I had to hand.”

How did it feel reaching 100 copies in 2008, and did it feel like a success then?

“It did feel like a success then because it worked technically, and the criteria was success was the criteria of a university engineering research project — proving the tech works. The success we felt occurred when we made a complete copy of the machine. That was the point we knew it was going to work: it’s physically here, it works — you can’t argue with that. So that was from my perspective the most significant milestone in the project.”

How did your machines end up differing from the existing Stratasys machines?

“The original Stratasys machines used a closed heated chamber, and we thought we would try and get away without having to have one. One of the first RepRap inventions was the heated bed, and in turned out that just by having the heated bed when printing, you could achieve results that were almost as good as the whole heated oven chamber that the Stratasys machines used.”

And how did you create the filaments?

“Stratasys filaments were made from commercial extrusion machines with dies; we didn’t have these. But what you could buy was plastic 3mm welding filament used for car body repairs, and use a hot air gun on these, like welding metal. That was our initial idea for source of filament. 3m

“That was where the 3mm came from, that was the standard diameter. Subsequently we decided to go down in diameter because the 3mm filaments were not try very flexible, and we also needed to pass the filament though a flexible tube for some of the designs of the machine we were coming up with. 

“In particular, one of the [projects] we did which we think was a RepRap innovation — we don’t know if any of the Stratasys machines before used this — which was to have the drive for the extrusion physically separate from the head which actually deposits the material, and connect them with a PTFE tube. 

“That has a great advantage in that you can keep the head very light, and keep the motor and drive very cool away from the heated head. The internal diameter of the tube we wanted to use was 2mm diameter, so we settled on 1.75mm diameter filament to fit through the tube.

“It was Vik Olliver who had the idea of using PLA in the machines. Until then, all the Stratasys machines had been using ABS. I mentioned [earlier in the interview] the foam bed that Stratasys used, the problem with ABS is it doesn’t adhere well the to bed and tends to curl upwards when printing. PLA doesn’t suffer nearly as much from that problem, and is also biologically sourced, so not using up oil resources as it’s plant-based. 

“So pretty early on, as soon as we discovered PLA worked well, we switched over almost everything we did to using PLA. HDPE [milk bottle plastic] mainly interested us as we had the idea of a recycler that would generate filament to go inside the machine, and milk bottles were the obvious thing to recycle as they were so ubiquitous, but again it was overtaken by PLA because it was so successful.

“The Recyclebots are a brilliant idea, particularly if you can make one from parts made in a RepRap, it’s an obvious thing to do…the more versatile the machine is, in the types of plastic you can accept for re-extruding, the better. There are a number of filament extruders now being sold, and there are some open source designs out there.”

Do you find it interesting that something that ended up being very well known arose from people who started the project without ever talking or meeting?

“It depended on the technology of the time. We had enough, for example Vik Olliver could design something in New Zealand, attach it as an STL file in an email, send it to us, and we would print it and put it in a cardboard box and send back to him in New Zealand, and he would have it in 4 or 5 day’s time. 

“That allowed us to do things fairly easily without any personal contact at all. And it was entirely electronic. We had the ability to store databases of designs online so anybody could download them, for the mechanical parts and the electronics, basically the whole thing is a bunch of computer files in the same way you and I are strands of DNA. The ease with which things can be transmitted made the project very easy.

In your 15 minutes of work talk, you offer a defence against RepRap printers only being able to print around 65% of their parts, saying humans only built 60% of themselves with amino acids, etc. Does that suggest a contentment with the current levels of progress, rather than pushing for a fully self replicating machine?

“I’ve never been all that interested in producing a fully self-replicating machine, because it’s an idea with two tiny exceptions that biology has completely abandoned. Any organism is entirely dependent on an ecosystem of other living organisms in order to reproduce, and I don’t think that RepRap should be any different. 

“RepRap is a self-reproducing thing. It lives in a world with of biology, principally the world of human beings, who are biological machines, so I don’t have a problem with the fact that most RepRap designs are 70% self-producing and 30% from outside. When the number of materials the machine processes get larger, and once we start printing electrical conductors that really will conduct electricity as much as metals, with ease, then the proportion of bits it can produce itself will increase. It’s bound to happen.”

So your belief is based on that there are so few things that completely self replicate, informs your opinion that we don’t need to push for it wildly — AKA a 100% self-replicating RepRap machine?

“Yes, it’s something that will happen when it’s easy to do, but it’s not something where I think we need to devote an enormous amount of effort to get an extra 3% — it’s probably more interesting to solve other problems.”

For me, I’d want to just do it all. I find it interesting that you use biological principles to say when you think enough is enough. For me I’d always want to do something more — I don’t keep myself to for example that biological example, where I’d go oh that’s fine or fall back on biology, so it’s interesting, I guess as a selfish human where I want to see it all happen and I’m impatient for it all.

“It’s not just natural self-reproducing systems and coming to the conclusion that none of them work well in isolation, it’s a little bit stronger than that, in that when we look at natural selection systems, that may well not be optimal. 

“If there was a Darwinian organism being able to live completely independently of all other organisms, we’d see more examples of it. I can see no reasons why the machine should try and struggle against the equilibrium which Darwinian selection seems to have settled upon.”w

And you don’t think the rules change when things cease to be made from cells and become made from electronics instead? You believe those rules still apply?

“It seems that that would be the null hypothesis. You’ve got to have some exceptionalism argument to say why that would not be the case and I don’t see that exceptionalism argument really.”

How did it feel to be awarded to be awarded an MBE by The Queen for your services to 3D printing?

“Oh, that was very gratifying — I got this envelope with all sorts of crests and things all over it. I originally thought it was some kind of tax demand and then I opened it and realised what it was. It was a New Year’s Honour [a recognition system in the United Kingdom for remarkable achievements in different sectors] and you get to hear about it around November time. 

“It’s very nice to be recognised by one’s academic colleagues and students, and people such as yourselves [us, 3DSourced, in the 3D printing industry], to receive this recognition by the nation into which one happens to have been born in and lived by geographical accident, is actually a very gratifying thing indeed.”

What do you think will be the end archetype — the final form — that will be the end design of FDM 3D printers?

“They address different problems. The latest things are these Infinite Z printers that have been made by Naomi Wu’s Creality colleagues and so on, from the original idea of White Knight by NAK3D Designs. That seems to be a very clever geometry because it allows infinitely large parts in a single dimension.

“It might well be that the final form is some sort of combination of belt printer and delta printer. If you imagine a delta assembly suspended over a moving belt axis then you can see that this would perhaps [combine] the advantages of both of those two approaches: delta moves much faster than a cartesian [3D printer] because the bits and pieces are lighter and so the forces involved when they are accelerated are much lower, and of course speed is important because you can print more quickly, so that might be the next version to come along.

You discuss the term Darwinian Marxism—

“—Yes, but that was me trying to wind people up.”

But many companies have made millions from it. Is this a bastardization of the original concept: Darwinian Capitalism?

“Yes, probably. It doesn’t bother me though — the world does what it does. And because the design’s open source and even if people close it off, the open source is still there so other people can adopt it if they want, and even if people close it off, the closed source people can copy it and justify it by the original RepRap license, so that’s quite an amusing thing. No court cases yet, but that might be quite an interesting thing. 

“The phrase you’ve just quoted [Darwinian Marxism] was a bit of tongue-in-cheek really from me trying to wind people up. And I don’t know if it succeeded or not. I don’t take these things too seriously I’m afraid.

You’ve been a proponent of UBI (universal basic income) in the past. Could a self-replicating machine encourage UBI?

“To an extent in that it separates you from the need to buy things. We’ve already talked about how a 3D printer saves you money because you can print things that would cost you more to buy, so imagine a more versatile machine being able to give you a wider range of goods, particularly if it copies itself, then you can let your neighbour have one for the cost for the raw materials. 

“The amount of money you’d need to start distributing to people to allow them to live without the necessity of being fully employed would reduce the more material goods they could obtain by other means, so yes it would help in that regard. 

“But we’re up against a problem: if you look at the way which productivity has increased since the introduction of the microprocessor in the middle of 1970s, the amount of wealth produced has increased enormously, but wages haven’t kept pace. They kept pace before because we were needed to make things, but now we can make wealth without people. We’ve separated out the necessity for people in the creation of wealth, and the inevitable capitalist consequence of that is that people become less valuable, and that’s why wages haven’t matched productivity. The only way to counteract that is to take the wealth that productivity represents and start redistributing that, and UBI is probably the fairest way of doing that.”

We had the pleasure of speaking to her about her inspiration and her work in 3D printed art. From experimenting with lucid dreaming to advice for others who wish to expand their work with 3D printing, Verdu offers unique and interesting insights in the world of 3D printing for art.

[Note that this interview has been translated from Spanish and paraphrased for readability.]

1. What would you say is the main inspiration for your art, and how do you transfer that inspiration to 3D printing?

‘Whenever I’m creating a new design, my first step is to think of something I’ll actually enjoy creating, not just the results. These projects are normally a challenge for me, so I look for designs that I can keep learning from. Most of the time I’m not even sure if I’ll get good results, but I always know that I’ll have fun trying.

‘The next stage is putting my ideas to paper by sketching them down in my notebook with the intention of being able to adequately translate the image to a 3D printable model. To do this, I alter the design to match the style of 3D printing that I want to use.

‘I generally use FDM 3D printers, and I try to make the individual pieces as easy to print as possible without losing the shape or function of the original designs.’

2. What 3D printers do you use, and which would you recommend? Are there any materials in particular that you prefer to use in your art?

‘I have been greatly surprised by the Original Prusa i3 MK3S, it’s astounding quality for its price. Though in regards to resin printing, I’m quite happy using the Formlabs brand instead. I would absolutely recommend both.

‘I have to say that I still have and use the first printer I got from Spanish brand BQ Hesphestos I, I think they did a great job with that one.

‘I would definitely recommend wood filaments too, because of their smooth and somewhat porous finish that you can paint however you like.’

3. Much of your work is based on sci-fi and fantasy themes, are these settings important or personal to you? Why?

‘I’m very passionate about anything related to fantasy worlds. Sci-fi and fantasy films have always held a fascination for me. I admire the illustrations of artists like Brian Fround, Alan Lee, Lius Royo, etc.

‘I feel inspired by the work of all kinds of big and famous artists, but also by the lesser-known artists who share their work on the internet. These works have grabbed my attention since I was little, and they found a home in my subconscious, so I naturally apply them to my own projects one way or another.

‘I find my dreams are another common source of inspiration for me: the mind is at its most creative in those moments just before sleeping or right before waking up. The brain changes between Alpha and Theta, and it’s the ideal moment to imagine and create.’

‘I’ve also been experimenting with lucid dreaming, and it is truly amazing what can be created in those dreams. I can visit different worlds, see beings from other dimensions, or I can create a room wherein lie all my next projects as I imagine them in a way I can take with me.

‘The only real restriction is finding the time to create this dreamlike world, which is brought to life through my own beliefs. The daily stress and social dynamics in which we live doesn’t lend itself well to creativity, so I need to actively search for moments of calm to do so.

‘While I don’t faithfully recreate everything I see in my dreams, they serve as a source of inspiration and energy that I bring to the table when I get to work.’

4. What are your favorite projects? Can you tell us a little about them?

‘I think that, of all my finished projects, the ones I like the most are the ones that have been the most challenging. Generally speaking, these would be all of my 3D printed articulated figurines, like the horse, the dragon’s hand, and the ‘Robótica’ woman.

‘Seeing these designs help inspire others to make their own creations is the most encouraging part.’

5. What achievements are you most proud of? Can you say a little about them?

‘I like learning about different creative techniques and tools. If I feel proud of anything, it’s my fearlessness when learning and trying out new artistic and expressive techniques. I prefer not to pigeonhole myself into any one artistic branch because I might want to try new things down the line.

‘I’m drawn to painting, traditional modelling, and software, and I love getting my hands dirty; cooking up a ceramic piece and seeing the results come out of the kiln is a feeling akin to creating a new 3D printed design for the first time.’

6. 3D printing if very technical, and most people see it as a male-dominated field. Is there anything you’d like to say to other women who want to be taken seriously using 3D printing?

‘Yes, it’s odd that there are far more men in the world of 3D printing, and I don’t really get why.

‘My advice for women is to enjoy this tool and all the possibilities it offers. I don’t believe there are any limits for women in this sense, and if they need help with the technical side of things then they’re going to find a tonne of information that others have shared on the internet.’

‘I’m grateful to all the people who help out by sharing tutorials on their channels and social network pages.’

7. What advice would you give to other people who want to use 3D printing to expand their art?

‘From my point of view, 3D printing is a marvelous tool, whether to create a final product or simply aid in the creation process. These days there are so many schools of art that are incorporating 3D printing technology into their education, and it makes the produced artworks so much more palpable.

‘It is doubtlessly also opening doors in commercial fields for many digital artists.’

‘My main advice is to just dive in to using these new tools with as much passion and as little fear as you can. Once you’ve carried out a project that you enjoyed working on, you will never tire of investigating and advancing your method. In this way, your own art will grow.’

8. Do you have any plans for the future of your artwork, or any long-term plans you’d like to discuss?

I’m currently a teacher at a ceramic art school in Madrid. There, we are applying 3D printing to the creation of ceramic objects.’

‘In my personal workshop, I’m working on a few new 3D printing designs that I hope to publish this year.’

9. Finally, is there anything else you’d like to say, or any other advice you’d like to give our readers about using 3D printing to create art?

‘3D printing is going to be with us for a long time, and it’s evolving exponentially. I would simply encourage people to continue experimenting and enjoying their time with it. I believe it’s going to bring artists many surprises to come, especially with newer printable materials.’

You can find more of Sonia Verdu’s work on her personal blog here.

Seeing Dr Khoshnevis’ achievements on paper, you could be forgiven for deducing that this was a glittering professional and academic career without any serious antagonist. Holding over 100 patents (the most of anyone in the field), winning two NASA International Grand Prizes in 3D printing in 2014 and 2016, and having invented a metallic 3D printing technique licensed to American giant HP, you might think this was just the work of a steady genius; a comfortable academic chipping away at the marble block of global innovation.

Peer behind the curtain, however, and the story of the father of construction 3D printing — and his company, Contour Crafting — is far more tumultuous.

We had the opportunity to speak with Behrokh Khoshnevis about the early beginnings of his vision, the difficulties with its development and navigating the political world of university research funding, moving into space for interplanetary 3D printing with local in situ materials, and finally, bringing the technology and construction 3D printers to market.

• If you enjoyed this interview, you can read more in our feature story covering 3D printing in construction.

Note: the interview transcription has been edited slightly to improve readability. No changes have been made to the verbiage.

“In 1994 I started thinking about large-scale fabrication with 3D printing. I wasn’t happy with the speed of fabrication of the early 3D printers, and still they haven’t changed much as far as speed is concerned. I knew there was no other way to increase the speed of 3D printing than increase the layer height, but if you increase layer height then surface quality will suffer.

“So then I came up with the idea that I call Contour Crafting, in 1994. My first patent on it was issued in 1996, a couple years after.

“I started with polymers. The concept of Contour Crafting was pretty simple in reality. Back then, FDM was already there, Scott Crump had come up with that. But that was for plastic filaments. The challenge of extruding composites was different.

“The second problem was I wanted to print with very thick layers, and I wanted to maintain very smooth surfaces. So the amount of innovation I put in there was significant enough to really call it another process altogether [to FDM].

“I was originally investigating methods of building big sand molds for propellors of ships and submarines, and large aerospace tooling.

However, realizing the potential of the technology to create shelters for populations decimated by natural disasters, he focused his efforts on housebuilding.

“When you’re working in a university you have to bring your own research money, they will go so far in giving you seed money, but you cannot always depend on that. And especially for this kind of research I needed a big laboratory, but getting the resources to justify having a big lab in a university campus that is nearly in the heart of the city, very near to downtown Los Angeles… land is extremely expensive.

“There is always competition among faculty for space, so it has been a difficult path. It’s really troublesome when you find a spot and you start building something and a few months later they [the university] ask you to move to another location. I switched three times.

“Anyone who brought more to pay for the overhead of the university, they had the priority, and that’s understandable.”

Dr Khoshnevis

“Then you have to work with transitional students and the kinds of research at the earliest stage was pretty cumbersome, mixing concrete, it’s not a very pleasant research activity to involve graduate students, and just cleaning the whole thing was a big mess.

“Every day after experiments, lots of the time concrete would cure inside devices we had spent so much time building, so we had to throw everything away.

“It was a different kind of research, not like a desktop machine like I worked with in regular small scale 3D printing, it is definitely not the job of one or two people to do the experiments and everything even if you have the machine there already, and we had to build the machine from scratch! But it was surely a journey with a lot of adventures in it.

“We [managed to first accurately extrude concrete] around 2003. And in 2004 my work became very famous, in the New York Times… and that’s when the world learned about [Contour Crafting], and it inspired a lot of others to go after it.

“So I had to also chase the money. In 2008, 2009, real estate went down… and with it went construction, and the support I was getting from industry disappeared. So that’s when I started thinking about space.”

Without funding or support, a project of such magnitude could not maintain itself. 

Yet, fully believing his idea of construction 3D printing could change the world, Dr Khoshnevis expanded his vision beyond our planet.

The idea was deceptively simple: if we could print concrete on a 3D printer on Earth, an adapted version could be made that could print with locally-sourced lunar regolith to create Moon (or Mars) bases for permanent settlements in the near future. 

It costs an eye-watering $10,000 to send 1lb into space, so shipping the materials to build shelters for astronauts won’t work. Sending a construction 3D printer to print harvested lunar materials, however, could save billions.

Khoshnevis’ Contour Crafting methods were tested, simulating microgravity environments and using materials that mimicked the properties and difficulties of genuine lunar soil. 

The 2014 NASA Grand Prize victory followed, receiving $20,000 to further the idea.

As of now however, Khoshnevis does not currently work or focus on the space applications of construction 3D printing.

“Because of my preoccupation with the company I have halted my activities for space. But I keep myself informed about it and we desire to get into space applications in the near future.

“We demonstrated at least two technologies that are viable. Technologies for building vertical structures such as hangars, shade walls, radiation protection walls, blast protection walls, and horizontal structures most particularly the landing pads, roads, we demonstrated the feasibility of those entirely to be made with in situ material.

“We actually built… and demonstrated it, that’s why we got Grand Prizes from NASA. My hope and expectation is that those technologies will eventually be used for planetary missions.”

No longer focusing on NASA and space, it was back to housebuilding and construction on Earth. The housing market, and confidence in it, had recovered. It was time to un-pivot.

And others saw the potential. Doka Ventures, a wing of Austrian construction company Umdasch Group, bought into the vision, taking a 30% share in the newly formed Contour Crafting company.

“In 2017 I received investment from a reputable European multinational construction company [Doka Ventures]. We started this company and our mission became looking closely at the real implementation issues and solving the remaining problems, difficult problems that once solved would make the technology maybe easier to use and more appealing to use.

“I don’t think that competing with conventional construction is a trivial change, it’s a major challenge. There’s a lot of hype about 3D printing, especially in construction.

“Since my first demonstration many years have passed, and yet we see that the technology has not taken over the world, right? It’s not a mainstream construction approach — one here, one there.”

Referencing other companies’ recent housebuilding demonstrations, he says:

“There’s not much information specifically about what the cost of building that construction was, and how long it took, what was involved in setting up the system on site, and what kind of talents and number of people were engaged in that construction activity, what were the logistics problems associated with it — we don’t hear much of those. So, unless there is an accurate assessment of any technology, there will not be necessarily a justification for the market to absorb it.

“So those have been the types of concerns I have had since when I started the company.

“3D printers…can only build the shell of the building. This is only maybe like 15-25% of the entire building. So all this hype really about 3D printing really solving the building construction problem really is not warranted. There is a lot more that should go into the building. My vision, as is reflected in my early patents, was to combine 3D printing with a lot of other robotics operations in order to build a more complete building.

“The technologies I developed 15, 16 years ago, are still the most advanced among large-scale 3D printing methods I see around the world.”

And though regulatory issues until very recently have plagued the development of 3D construction printing in the USA, Contour Crafting has carved an effective niche selling a custom-made, portable 3D printer to the government.

“We have released our new product, the first units of the product has gone to the government, they contracted us to build this machine.

“It’s a highly transportable machine, like a transformer, can quickly set it up on site. So, these are just different than straightforward gantry machines, so those are the areas in which we have worked. We have innovations in material processing, delivery and all that.”

The US Department of Defense funded the development of this custom 3D printer in July 2018, the CrafTrans. The CrafTrans is a sub-1,000kg rapid prototyper that fits snugly onto a truck and can be quickly unloaded and deployed in both military and civilian situations. It was delivered in December 2020.

So, despite rocky beginnings, being moved from laboratory to laboratory to accommodate perceived more fruitful research projects, and a financial and housing crisis just as the technology was getting off the ground, Khoshnevis showed that with the perseverance and creativity to pivot and the grit to keep looking for opportunities, you can win in the end.

“The reality is that I never gave up, I never gave up on it. Although I had other very intriguing projects, this was the most difficult one — the most cumbersome one — I never lost hope in it, and I still haven’t lost hope.

“I am doing as much I can to advance the technology, and what is important to me is really the journey. The destination is not in our control always, we just carry it so far as long as we can while we are around, and that is my philosophy in life.

“The important thing is to just move, when you have an idea keep on moving, and then you run in to opportunities, that movement teaches you a lot of stuff, rather than just sitting back and contemplating. That’s being a dream-weaver, not a creator. A creator always moves and makes things happen.”

And after two decades of being hardworking creator, the sands are finally shifting in favor of experienced Dr Khoshnevis. After decades of regulatory issues hounding development, in June 2019 a new acceptance criteria document was unanimously approved permitting automated construction. We could soon see metal concrete-extruding behemoths printing our future houses on our streets.

This led to working with 3D printer manufacturer giant 3D Systems before their recent rerelease as Sugar Lab, selling some of the most stunning 3D printed sugary treats ever made. These pricey 3D printed desserts include delicate cocktail bitters, chocolate bonbons, and much more, and we had to talk to Kyle von Hasseln about the latest chapter in their sugar 3D printing adventure.

• You can also check out more exciting projects in our feature story covering 3D printed food.

How did the original idea for 3D printing sugar come about?

I was at the Southern California School of Architecture experimenting with different architectural materials in additive manufacturing. On a lark, we tried sugar and it photographed beautifully. We were immediately captivated. We wondered, would pastry chefs collaborate with us to design gorgeous sugar sculptures? The answer was an emphatic ‘yes’!

What was the process for turning a standard 3D printer into one that could 3D print edible sugar?

The key realization behind Sugar Lab was that FDM was not an ideal mechanism for 3D printing in the culinary arts. The technology much better suited for this was powder printing which allowed key improvements that had never been seen before; mathematical precision, precision color application, and large, complex geometries that interlocked and mazed through space.

Having achieved this, you partnered with 3D Systems. What was that like, and what are you most proud of with your work there?

As the Director of Culinary Technology there I championed developing a powder printing system that lived up to the promises Sugar Lab had shown were available with the right 3D printing system. I’m super proud to have worked with some of the most talented engineers in AM who all pulled together under tremendous pressure to do something for the first time: bring a true, professional culinary food 3D printer to market. None of that would have been possible without Brill Inc., who believed in the technology from day one and helped bring it to market.

Are we likely to see a sugar / food 3D printer akin to the ChefJet range?

Yes, it is available now. It just has a new name–the 3D Brill Culinary Studio, which credits Brill Inc, for their important research, investment and operations to pull this into the market.

Now you’ve restarted Sugar Lab, what are your main focuses, and what can we expect to see from you in the future?

The main focus at Sugar Lab is making beautiful, colorful, designer chocolates and candies that look as good as they taste; that are affordable luxuries available for everyone to experience and share. We do this through tight collaborations between our 3D designers and chefs, who are both looking to use the tools of their trades to inspire and satisfy.

What are your dreams of achieving within the food and sugar 3D printing space?

I have achieved one dream already–a serious, professional, fast and precise 3D food printer, a powder system, is on the market at long last, the first of its kind. Now we’re building a business on the foundation of that technology, driven by 3D designers and led by chefs.

We want to inspire people everywhere with our beautiful 3D food. Because admiring these designs means celebrating with our chefs for the important arrival of 3D design and 3D printing in the history culinary arts and tradition.

Molds have had a cherished role in creating beautiful 3D food for centuries, but we’re finally able to take another step forward and marvel at the unprecedented precision, color and shapes that are newly achievable. Pastry chefs everywhere are eager for the many possibilities that can now be folded into their craft.

Not only do you get access to the powerful tools available within Daz Studio — read on to find out more about these! — but you also get access to Daz’s unbelievable range of 3D assets and characters you can use and design with. And best of all, it’s free to download!

We were fortunate enough to speak with Daz 3D about their most exciting new features, recent achievements and plans for the future, as well as their position on open source software.

• You can read more about Daz Studio and its extensive feature list here.

What recent achievements are you at Daz 3D most proud of, having developed Daz Studio for over a decade?

Daz 3D has taken tremendous steps to continue to bring powerful 3D content and software to every 3D artist, from beginners to professionals. In the past year we’ve developed the new Daz Bridges, which port our astounding, versatile, and high quality 3D content to Maya, Unreal, Unity, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max so users can keep working where they’re most comfortable with the best content available.

Daz 3D and Tafi are also forging new strategic partnerships with industry leaders like Samsung, VRChat and Sinespace, among others, to bring our Avatars and Character System to engaged and active users everywhere.

We’ve continued to make meaningful updates to Daz Studio to give users cutting edge technology and functionality — our newest version, Studio 4.14 gives users the Filament Render Engine and Viewport, which drastically decreases the wait time to render and gives you a near real-time preview of how your render will look as you’re working on it.

And last, we’re perhaps proudest of our global network of Daz Published Artists. These 3D designers and artists are the driving force behind our product library and the amazing 3D content Daz is able to offer all of our talented and enthusiastic users.

What inspired you to open up Daz 3D’s assets with Daz Bridges — allowing anyone to import Daz assets into a host of other 3D modeling software?

Daz wants to make sure that every 3D user has access to the best 3D content available, no matter where they work. Daz Studio is a powerful and free software, but other platforms are preferred by users according to their workflows or specific projects like apps and games.

The new Daz Bridges open up the Daz Product Library and give 3D creators everywhere the most functional, versatile, and good-looking content available. These open-source Bridges help artists and designers create, share and explore the 3D art world with vigor, which helps Daz 3D’s mission of helping to build a strong, talented and diverse artistic community.

Regarding the Daz Filament Viewport, it now allows designers to see their renders post-render in real time without rendering. How did this come about, and how important do you think this will be in the future?

The Filament Viewport is a huge development for Daz 3D and our active user base, and a functional real-time viewport is something that the community has wanted for a very long time. The Filament Render Engine and Viewport were pretty difficult to bring to fruition, but our designers worked around the clock to implement them.

Because Filament is a PBR, or physics-based renderer, users are able to see a more accurate reflection of light collisions as they happen, and are able to see what their artwork looks like as they’re building it. This is a stark difference from other render engines, where users have to wait to render to see how specific parts of their image will look when finished (like lighting or your background), and after waiting for a long render time, mistakes stick out like a sore thumb. With the Filament Viewport, you can see the value and effect of your adjustments in real-time, which is invaluable in 3D content creation workflows.

Filament also makes use of systems that might not be specifically outfitted for 3D work and rendering — this PBR renderer takes full advantage of less developed computer systems, and still works in a fraction of the time.

As far as Filament’s future is concerned, it’s working fantastically on lower-end systems while still being lightning fast. We’re excited to see how far we can push this render engine, and how we can use it to continue to make 3D content and software available to everybody. We think Filament’s functionality and power mean it will be around for a long time, and we’re sure we’ll see it emulated on other platforms.

Daz Studio’s dForce Movement Simulator promises to transform previously static surfaces like clothing and hair. How big do you think this could become in the future, and do you have more plans for these features?

Once dForce came out, the reaction was overwhelming, and the amazing art that has been done with that technology by our community and artists never fails to amaze.

More than anything else, dForce is a faithful physics simulator that mimics realistic movement. The applications for realistic physics simulation in 3D are huge, and at Daz we’re always looking to build the next step. Suffice to say we’re already working on what comes next, and we hope that it’s as exciting, dynamic, and game-changing as dForce!

Both Bridges and Filament are promoted as open source projects. What inspired this? How committed is Daz to open source going forward?

What a great question! Since offering Daz Studio to every user for free almost a decade ago, Daz 3D has recognized that community is the primary driving force in 3D art. We’re only as strong and competent as our artists, our developers, and our users are together.

The Open-Source philosophy promotes openness, collaboration, and flexibility. That means that any user can observe, adjust, and use the code according to their own needs, and come up with their own creative solutions to any limitations that may be there. With continued feedback from our community, we can take these technologies further than we could imagine, and faster than we thought — we’ve already released an updated Daz to Maya Bridge built off of feedback from our users!

Daz is always committed to making 3D content, software and artwork accessible to everybody, and making open-source projects is a huge part of that. Ultimately, we’re inspired by our community and we need their feedback to continue to move these bridges and other projects forward and make sure that they work for everyone, and across a variety of platforms.

While many 3D printer companies have since reached billion-dollar valuations, been sold to billion-dollar companies, or just adjusted their communications to sound like a billion-dollar company, Robo 3D remains relatable and personable.

Even Co-Founder Braydon Moreno’s answers to our interview questions are conversational — interspersed with exclamations and the capitalization of letters. This is a rare interview where you do not feel like you’re being sold to, or talked at — a conversation, not a pitch.

Robo 3D Co-Founder Braydon Moreno: on what goes into creating a new 3D printer, 3D printing in STEM education, and MyStemKits

It makes perfect sense that while Makerbot and Ultimaker have moved towards a more industrial consumer with their Method and S5 printers respectively, that Robo 3D have doubled down on education 3D printers. What area could possibly be more suited to a 3D printer brand that emanates fun, friendliness and creativity?

Intrigued, we spoke to Co-Founder Braydon Moreno about Robo 3D’s plans for the future, their education printers, innovation process and their recent acquisition of MyStemKits, a company focused on utilizing 3D printing for STEM education.

How did Robo 3D come about originally? What unique problems were you trying to help solve?

Robo started on a dining room table in San Diego, CA. We initially built a 3D printer for makers and creators at home. We wanted it to be affordable, easy to customize, and flat out cool. We launched it in 2013 on Kickstarter hoping to raise about $40k in preorders for the product. When we ended up raising $650k, we realized we were onto something.

The Robo R1+ is still a machine greatly loved by so many maker movement and we have made countless improvements on it, but our goal was always to create a machine that you felt a love for, could customize, and could really make it your own.

Since being founded, Robo 3D have created some really highly-rated desktop 3D printers. What goes into the R&D process for each new model, and how long does it take to perfect? What challenges have you faced along the way?

Making a new 3D printer is something we were excited about even after launching our first generation 3D printer. We knew when we came out with the Robo C2 and Robo R2, they had take it up a notch. We had to make a machine that would work at home, in schools, or at a business. A 3D printer that turned on, lit up, and was easy to function.

When you are building a machine of that caliber, you have to almost reverse engineer it. What type of things would the ideal users need? How do we want them to interact with this machine? What do we want to limit them on so that we can just expedite them to actually printing an object the quickest way? These were all questions we had to answer. 

Then into the design phase, it was all about creating a machine that had style – one that didn’t look like a box necessarily, but had some curvature to it, and looked great into any type of environment. A machine that someone would be “proud to own.” All this comes into play in the design process. We went through 10 different styles of curves on it and damn near drove ourselves crazy until we picked the one that ended up being the Robo C2 and Robo R2.

The toughest challenges were just getting the entire vision to come to life 100% how we had planned. We did have some challenges with shipping and some other minor problems with the software, but you just work through it. You make it better, and improve batch over batch until it gets to where you want it to be. It was an amazing learning experience. 

And now, with the Robo E3, we have a very turnkey simple 3D printer that just works. And integrates with our 300+ lesson 3D printable STEM curriculum so schools have the opportunity to use 3D printers to actually TEACH in the classroom.

Recently you’ve acquired MyStemKits to offer your printers as packages geared towards education. What in particular motivated that move towards education? Just how important do you think 3D printing can be in education and in schools in the near future?

We came to a point where the market for consumers and business was flooded with too many players and we decided we needed to make a shift. We knew when we went to education shows that schools were buying 3D printers in groves, but then they ended up sitting in the back of the classroom collecting dust.

We realized that there was a huge opportunity in the space to develop a full turn key 3D printing solution for schools so when we found MyStemKits, we knew that with that platform and the Robo E3, we could really build something incredible. Now our program includes the Robo E3 3D printer, an extended 2 year warranty, spare parts pack, 2 hours training and certification online, and access to the MyStemKits 3D printable STEM curriculum and design challenges. All for only $999.99. It’s a KILLER DEAL and really is working within schools.

Are there any particular cases in which you’ve found 3D printing in STEM teaching has made a big impact?

Of course. My favorite story is a teacher named Shelley Emslie, who teaches 5th grade in Big Fork Montana. Big Fork is a town of only 5,000 people and Shelley took the approach that she wanted her students to think outside of a small town mentality and realize they could make a difference in the world.

So she decided to take her 5th grade class, connect them with coral reef scientists and marine biologist, and 3D design and 3D print artificial coral reefs (which happen to be dying across the globe in massive numbers). The impact that this has had on her 5th grade class has been incredible. They are discovering that the problem with coral reefs dying and designing solutions to help sustain and promote coral reef growth within the ocean. It’s fascinating and inspiring.

Are there any other interesting projects going on at Robo 3D you’d like to let us know about?

Robo always has interesting things going on haha but the main thing right now is just really adding amazing content to the MyStemKits platform, enabling teachers to do MORE with 3D printing in the classroom, and in schools libraries and maker-spaces. We want the 3D printer to be a foundational tool used within schools to enhance all types of products, including other STEM products so that is where our focus and attention have been placed.

How did you first develop an interest in art? And what took you from that interest in art and into 3D printing?

My passion for art and painting in particular started during early childhood. I used to move and change where I live a lot with my family, and switched from different languages and mentalities when I was a child and teenager: I was born in Russia, grew up in Israel, then moved to Italy where I currently live and raise my child. My parents are also from different origins, so I never felt tied to one nationality. I understood that it’s all relative to who you are, what lifestyle you have, and the culture you live in.

Art reinforced my understanding of this and helped me transcend these boundaries. In this way I acquired different artistic traditions from various cultures, without being bound to a specific one. This gave a major freedom to my creativity.

I gradually developed interest to 3D printing after I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan as a 3D artist. I started working for a high-end audio product manufacturer, V-MODA, using jewel grade 3D printed designs for the first time ever in consumer electronics to customize headphones, earphones and speakers.

How did you come to realize you had a passion for creating jewelry in particular? And how does 3D printing help with this in ways that other technologies perhaps couldn’t?

During that time I worked closely with Shapeways, the largest 3D printing service and community online, learning about the 3D printing processes and guidelines and working on various projects and collaborations with famous brands including Microsoft and artists including AVICII.

After visiting Shapeways factory at Eindhoven, Netherlands in 2017, I realized that the design possibilities that 3D printing offered were limitless. I was doing a lot of experiments with materials at that time, ranging from nylon, stainless steel and precious metals, gradually developing a passion for jewelry.

3D printing was the perfect match to create my own unique jewelry designs, being able to realize complex shapes and fine details that would be impossible to achieve using traditional processes.

What’s your creative process for sculpting each jewelry piece? Do you have a particular 3D printer you use, or a specific technique to create each piece?

My pieces are crafted using handmade drawings and digital sculpting. I prototype my designs using PLA in my studio in Milan, and the final prototypes are 3D printed in New York in a process which combines the technology of 3D printing with the traditional lost wax casting technique, developed by humans thousands of years ago.

The materials that I use for my jewelry range from sterling silver, brass, gold, and gold plated brass. After the 3D printing process is done the pieces are carefully cleaned and polished by hand.

Much of your jewelry focuses on nature, with many of your pieces featuring animals such as frogs. What inspired your love of nature?

Art for me it is an opportunity to connect with nature and celebrate life. It’s much like a meditation. Nature is the perfect place where to find peace and concentration. The more I spend time in nature, the more I understand that I’m not separate from it, and the more creative I become.

All of my jewelry pieces tell stories that reflect my experiences and the things I love. I also include frogs in my work. I’m fascinated by their anatomy — which is very human-like — and lets me easily manipulate and position them in often surreal compositions.

I also see frogs as a symbol of change and free spirit. Being naturally flexible creatures that jump from place to place, frogs adapt themselves to new challenges and spend their life in constant movement. Just like my characters, I try to avoid situations that tie me up and make me feel trapped, and need to let my spirit be free in order to boost my creativity.

Do you have any upcoming and exciting projects you’d like to tell our readers about? Any new jewelry designs or other projects?

I’m excited to be able to design my own jewelry, it really feels like a whole new field. Soon I will be releasing a few new designs dedicated to botanical and organic compositions, as I look forward to further expanding in 2020.

Ahead of the imminent release of the metalONE, we spoke with Sharebot about their journey into the industry, their unique Italian identity, and what the metalONE can do that other metal 3D printers can’t.

• You may also be interested in our metal 3D printer buyer’s guide, which the Sharebot metalONE features in.
• We also have a guide to all the major metal 3D printer manufacturers.

How did Sharebot start, and what inspired Sharebot’s entry into the 3D printing industry with your first 3D printer?

At the end of 2013, Cristian Giussani read an article on Wired about Andrea Radaelli, one of the first pioneers in Italy to create a 3D printer. Arturo Donghi informed by Cristian, decides to contact Andrea to create a company focused on research and production of 3D printers. Thus Sharebot was born.

The founding team consists of: Arturo Donghi, current CEO, responsible for the company’s strategy and marketing; Andrea Radaelli, President and Head of Research & Development of 3D printers; Cristian Giussani, Head of Software Development; Ambrogio Donghi, COO; and Marzia Pezzali, Head of the Academy.

This group of highly qualified, experienced and passionate people shared the same goal: achieving the Sharebot dream. More than five years have passed since, and today Sharebot 3D printers are all over the world.

Whereas most companies specialize on a particular 3D printing technology, you have chosen to cover a diverse range – including FDM, DLP, SLS and now DMLS. What inspired this decision, and how do you think this gives Sharebot an advantage over competition?

The mission of our company is to spread 3D printing technology to small and medium sized businesses and enable everyone to design and realize their own projects. All technologies help us in our mission. We didn’t stop with FFF / FDM [fused deposition modeling], the industry demanded more, and by integrating more technologies we could accomplish and satisfy all the needs of our customers.

We decided to enter the Research & Development world with our SLS 3D printer, Sharebot SnowWhite, and now metalONE. We are trying to give SMEs the techonology needed to upgrade and rethink their production processes.

For more information on the Sharebot SnowWhite, check it out in our SLS 3D printer ranking, or view the video below:

Many industrial 3D printing companies seem to be from either USA (3D Systems, Stratasys) or Germany (EOS, SLM Solutions). How does it feel to be a rare Italian 3D printing company, and does this affect your strategy?

We have imagination, passion, dedication and culture; Italy is among the most industrialized countries in the world, starting from Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei up to Antonio Meucci, Enrico Fermi, Guglielmo Marconi, Rita Levi Montalcini, as well as Carlo Rubbia, and Fabiola Gianotti, the first female CERN Director-General, plus many others that are successfully working abroad.

Italy started from the Roman Empire, and revolutionized the way things are made and created. That has inspired the fantastic Italian “unconventional way of doing” tradition. We, as many other innovative firms, are trying to keep this tradition up to date. I think the right word isn’t “rare” but “out of the ordinary”. We try to do all the things differently, as our motto “do it different”.

Sharebot asked us to include this video showcasing some of Italy’s finest aspects:

Your Sharebot BIG 3D printer utilizes LSL technologies. How does this differ from other resin 3D printers and the way they work, and what advantages does this technology give over standard SLA/DLP printing?

It’s a Led Screen Light 3D Printer that uses Special Daylight UV resins. The advantage is the bigger print area bundled with an affordable price.

The first deliveries of the new DMLS printer, the Sharebot metalONE, are set to be delivered soon. How difficult was the research and development process in creating this printer, and how long did it take?

It has been a long way started in 2014; at first we released our SnowWhite SLS 3D printer in 2016 [selective laser sintering] and now have more then 60 printers installed around the globe. The metalONE can be considered a direct descendant of the SLS SnowWhite project

The main difficulties encountered are in the profiling of various metal powders starting from steel, nickel, titanium to aluminum.

How does the metalONE differentiate itself from other DMLS printers?

Easy to use, in 10 minutes you can start a new print, and in less than 30 minutes you can clean the printer and change powder. Affordable, completely open parameters with a lot of info inside the log files in order to fully understand the process layer by layer. There are also some photos of each layer in order to implement AI solutions. The ideal metal 3D printer for all those who want to test new materials and thanks to its printing area and the standard DMLS printing process, it allows the creation of objects and prototypes using only a minimum of 800gr of metal powder.

The ideal printer for research and those who want to experiment with a metal investment with a reasonable investment.

We feel it is probably the smallest, most affordable and easy to use metal 3D printer on the market.

What is a 3D printer model?

A 3D printer model is a file – usually an STL file – of a 3D object printable on your personal 3D printer. Once downloaded, you can open these 3D printer models within a variety of 3D software options or slicers to then print at home.

The model can be edited and customized if you have those design skills, or just printed in whichever colors you fancy based on the color of filament, or material, such as PLA or ABS.

So here are 10 of our favorite 3D models you can download for free right now, with links!

“BraQ” Dragon by BQ

We’re starting off with a pretty crazy 3D printer model, made by Spanish 3D printer manufacturer BQ – who also make their own DIY 3D scanner. Made of 42 different 3D printed PLA pieces, this dragon is big, mean, and shows the level of detail that even cheap 3D printers can reach on a model.

All of the parts can be 3D printed, though the assembly requires other materials to tie the pieces together into one cohesive model. This isn’t too difficult however, with all the instructions in both English and Spanish on the download page.

Download the 3D printer model here.

3D Printed Jet Engine

Simply an extraordinary design, this 3D printer model is a complete jet engine model, and one that the designer – CATIA5FTW – designed himself. That’s right, the user created an entire jet engine model himself, and though it has some similarities to other, existing engines, we have to commend the designer for the creativity in designing a whole engine from scratch.

It’s not simple to print and assemble; consider it a high level 3D printer kit. However, building this incredible 3D printed jet engine will undoubtedly prove rewarding as you can then look at this beautiful piece of machinery in your house.

Download the 3D printer model here.

3D Printed Crossbow

Another of the crazy 3D printer models available on Thingiverse, this 3D printed crossbow is an upgrade on a previous version that can fire real 3D printed arrows with surprising accuracy!

You will need some extra parts to fully assemble the crossbow – a screwdriver, some screws, some nylon fishing line among others. However, it’s well worth it; not only will you save the money buying a real crossbow, but you’ll also have the satisfaction of creating your own 3D printed crossbow at home! We’ve included a video of the crossbow 3D printer model firing below.

Download the 3D printer model here.

3D Printed Marble Machine

This is definitely one of those 3D printer models that triggers serious childhood nostalgia. Printable in just four parts, this marble machine will provide hours of fun for any child lucky enough to have it.

It’s cleverly designed so that when twisting the top, you keep bringing marbles back to the top of the machine to roll down the slides again. This saves having to repeatedly pick up and put marbles at the top of the slides again, and generally makes it more fun to play with.

Download the 3D printer model here.

3D Scanner you can 3D print for just $30!

Not only can you 3D print models that look nice, but also 3D printer models that serve important and useful functions! This model features parts you can assemble to form a stable 3D scanner platform which, with the aid of some 3D software (more details on the download page) and a smartphone, becomes a fully fledged 3D scanner.

So if you don’t want to spend a lot of money on a 3D scanner, you can make your own DIY 3D scanner with this fantastic 3D printer model. Admittedly it’s not so simple to get working, but hopefully the video we’ve attached below helps you assemble your own $30 3D scanner.

Download the 3D printer model here.

3D Printed Remote Control Racing Car

Designed to be used as a week-long class project, you can make this fantastic remote-controlled car featuring a bunch of 3D printed parts from the comfort of your own home.

Parts such as the axles, wheels and other parts are 3D printed, though to get this car fully functional does require a number of screws, electronics and more. When finished however, it is fast, nimble and very fun to play with. The video below shows just how fast this rocket league-reminiscent car goes!

Download the 3D printer model here.

HIVE Modular Hex Drawers

An innovative and practical 3D printer model, these honeycomb-inspired containers are perfect for keeping things organized at home. Not only are they perfectly sized for items such as jewelry – including 3D printed jewelry we have written about previously – as well as earphones, pins, and more.

Not only are they great as individual containers however, but they’re also designed to seamlessly slot into each other. This means you can create a small wall-sized hive of containers to store each individual item, which also looks aesthetically pleasing in any room. Overall, it’s a fantastic solution for low cost storage.

Download the 3D printer model here.

USB stick, SD card and MicroSD holder

Another practical 3D printer model, this device keeps all your USB sticks, SD cards and MicroSD cards in one place so you never lose them.

It’s super simple and can be fully printed as just one large part, so there’s no assembly required. Simply press print, and when it’s finished it’ll be ready to go!

Download the 3D printer model here.

3D Printable Business Card Holders

Simple to 3D print and very useful in business, these elegant and sleek business card holders keep all your business cards – and any other cards you may pick up from other people – in one place.

Based on your 3D printer filament color you can customize how your business card holder appears, and no assembly is required – simply print and they’re ready to go.

Download the 3D printer model here.

Read more: 3D printed business card files

Geometric MacBook Pro Stand

It’s estimated that millions worldwide suffer from RSI, back pain and more due to not concentrating on the ergonomics of their work and home setup. This MacBook laptop stand helps with that, standing your laptop closer to eye level to prevent neck pain, helping make your setup more ergonomic.

It’s super easy to assemble as it’s just two parts, so even 3D printing novices will have no problem getting this 3D printer model to work.

Download the 3D printer model here.

Related articles:

• Best sites for STL files
• Best Thingiverse alternatives for STL files
• Top free 3D modeling software for beginners
• Best 3D scanners for scanning 3D models to print
• Best Free Blender Models