A Look Into Elasto Plastic, The Shapeways ‘Maker Only’ Material, via SolidSmack:

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….

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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!