V-Flash May Ship in 2009

3D Systems has announced that it plans to "resume its managed phased rollout of its V-Flash® FTI 230 Desktop Modeler". Full press release here. In an earlier press release, six months ago, 3D Systems had announced that they had "commenced commercial shipment" of V-Flash.

Lets hope for their sake, this time around, they actually end up doing it. Because Object seems to firing on all cylinders these days.

Wohlers Report 2008

I just read this off ConnectPress.

While conducting his annual survey on the state of the industry Terry Wohlers asked the question, "If you were going to add new AF technology, which would you most likely acquire?" Terry prefers to use the phrase AF (Additive Fabrication) and he has his reasons, which I will not get into here. Anyways, the results of that survey question can be seen here. Objet won hands down with 27.8%. Good old Stereolithography came in third.

I guess Terry asked the question "why?" as well. To find out you need to shell out $475 to get the 240-page report.

New Print3D Video

Today we put up a new video at our web site showing just how easy it is to get a price quote - literally at the click of a button. Watch the video here.

We Trashed The Toolbars

Today we trashed the toolbars in the Print3D Standalone. Why? Because users told us to. This is what the old toolbars looked like.

I agree, quite a mess. And this is what the toolbar (just one) looks like now. The boring 16x16 pixel toolbar buttons have been replaced by fancy 48x48 pixel buttons.

Some toolbar buttons have drop down menus for easy navigation. Over the next few weeks we intend to add some basic and advanced mesh editing capability to Print3D 1.0. Stuff like hollowing meshes, filling holes, sealing cracks, stitching faces, etc. And all this for free. And just so that you know, none of the free software offered by Print3D ever expires. Use as you please for as long as you want. I would appreciate it if you spread the word around.

The new Print3D 1.0 Standalone can be downloaded here along with our other free CAD plug-ins. If not for anything else you can use it as a free viewer. Print3D 1.0 can view the following types of CAD file formats:

• Stereolithography STL
• OpenRP RP
• IGES
• STEP
• 3D Studio 3DS
• Rhinoceros 3DM
• Wavefront OBJ
• Visualization Toolkit VTK

We intend to add support for more file formats along the way, such as VRML and probably AutoCAD's DWG and DXF.

Keep watching this space. I suggest you find yourself a feed reader and add this blog's feed to it so that you stay informed of the happennings at Print3D without having to come here everytime. I use RSS Bandit for two very good reasons: it's good and it's free.

I like free. Don't you?

Welcome to The Print3D Blog

Hello there. Do come in. I am Deelip Menezes, the Co-Founder and CTO of Print3D Corporation and you are reading the official Print3D company blog. This my first post. It's more of a test actually, to check if all the RSS feeds are configured and working properly.

I will be using this blog to talk about all the new and upcoming stuff at Print3D and the Rapid Prototyping industry in general. Stay tuned. There's lots of stuff that we are working on, stuff that we intend to roll out in the weeks and months to come.

Please feel free to download and try our free software at www.print3dcorp.com