Feb.18, 2014
On November 15, 2013, Ruiken & Horn GbR opened first 3D printing shop in Bremen, Germany. The company offers affordable 3D printers, accessories and 3D printing services to the public, aiming to bring 3D printing to the community.
Founded by Roland Ruiken and Werner Horn, the startup sells Mendel Max, Rostock, Prusa i3 3D printers and a selection of filaments (3mm, 1.75 mm). In addition Ruiken & Horn wants to print your family in 3D.
Up to now a portrait has always been a simple picture in 2D. With 3D printing the company could produce real 3D portraits for customers. The duo has developed their own method of 3D scanning for family portraits. Using a Kinect 3D scanner in combination with a software Ruiken & Horn staff could scan you within some minutes. Afterwards they use a software to generate a 3d file which can then be repaired or scaled using freeware or open source software such as MashLab, NetFabb Studio. "Our favorite program to manipulate or redesign the scan results is the open source program named "FreeCad"." said co-founder Ruiken.
Customer will be able to choose an in-store desktop 3D printer to print the 3D models, or order the 3D color prints from Ruiken & Horn's partners.
Ruiken shared his experiences with slicing the model and printing setting for printing figurines.
"It took us months to find out the right slice settings for each kind of 3D object. For our 3D-Portraits we found the following slice settings in slic3r provide the best result:
- Perimeter: 4
- Solid Top Layer: 5
- Solid Bottom Layer: 3
- Infill: 7-15 % with Honeycomb filling
- Support Material: set on AutoDetect with Honeycomb Pattern;
- Distance: 2.5 – 4mm
For 3D printing we set the layer thickness to 0.4mm when using PLA plastic."
The company is currently working on a new 3D scanning technology to be able to scan your pet or any moving objects, for example a running horse. The technology utilizes 50 cameras to shoot photos at the same time and the startup is developing their own software to convert these images into 3D data. This new service is expected to be launched within this year.
In the future the duo plans also to create photos of cities with a GPS controlled drone which flies over a city or big buildings. They can then convert the images into a 3D file and create 3D printed miniature building or city.
"3D printing and 3D scanning is a new trend in technology and it could have a huge "boom" in the future of manufacturing." says Ruiken.
Posted in 3D Printing Services
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