Shapeways recently announced a new material, a ‘Maker-only’ material called Elasto Plastic — high strength, high flexibility, low detail and smoothness. I was intrigued. What wondrous creations could be manufactured with this wondrous material? Having created many other items with many other materials via Shapeways, there was definitely a lot of possibility for a more flexible material. Let’s explore, shall we?
BENDY BITS
I really could have used this a year ago. The material qualities that set Elasto apart are its strength, flexibility, and cost. I spent much of this past year developing a watersports tow rope handle (the DoubleZup) that involved lots of bendy bits in its many iterative forms. Prototyping bendy bits is both difficult and expensive. I have used both cast urethanes and other flexible 3D print materials like TangoBlack and TangoGray (not available from Shapeways). These can be the way to go when you need to match a specific durometer and have a finalized design, but are quite expensive. The role I see Elasto fulfilling is creating the many iterations before that stage.
…I’m quite happy with Elasto as a ‘maker material’ and it has some potential as a ‘consumer material” with some post-production love, perhaps in the form of washing, dyeing, and tumbling. I’m hoping (begging) Shapeways doesn’t hesitate to make this material permanent after the trial ends July 9th. And hopefully Shapeways will keep adding more ‘maker materials’ like wax, full-color paper or even more rubber-like materials like TangoBlack….
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!