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3D printing crowdsourcing
MyLocal3DPrinting Works to Bring 3D Printing of Anything to Anyone, Anywhere through Crowdsourcing - 3DPrint.com
It seems these days that everyone is either involved in 3D printing or has some idea they would like to explore with the technology. For as much noise as has been made about how 3D printing democratizes production, it is still not truly accessible to everyone, everywhere. Partly this is because 3D printers are still reasonably expensive, certainly less so than they have ever been, but significantly more than most people have to spend on such a device. And partly their lack of ubiquity is a result of limited knowledge held by the public in terms of designing for 3D printing.
There is more to creating something from a 3D printer than just having a desire for an object. You have to be able to design, at least in the most basic sense of the word, and even if you master the software, which ranges from the user friendly to the nearly impossible, you still have to have a sense of design: some vision of something that you want to create. Not everybody is a designer. I don’t mean that in the sense of having or lacking good taste, I just mean that there is more to designing than waiting for inspiration.
The folks at the Australian company MyLocal3DPrinting want to work to broaden the possibilities for participation in the realm of 3D printing. As such, they have created a crowdsourcing platform that allows those interested in 3D printing to engage no matter what their skill level or design capabilities. It is true that sites such as Shapeways currently offer people the ability to order 3D prints, either of their own design or from a selection of available creations.
What makes MyLocal3DPrinting a bit different is the direct contact it can provide between the person who wants to purchase something that will be 3D printed and a network of designers who can provide the design service. The crowdsourcing idea extends to a network of printing places as well. You can upload your own design and have it printed by a verified printer in your area, reducing the shipping costs, something which they view as a primary part of making custom 3D printing more widely accessible.
“I’m the co-founder of a startup that is essentially Upwork for 3D Printing,” Bobby Lin of ML3DP told us. “The problem we have with 3D Printing is that even though it’s this amazing technology that’s going to make our lives and businesses better it’s still only limited to people who know how to use 3D printing. 3D Printing is still not as accessible as we think it is… We’ve made it possible for anybody; whether you know how to 3D model or not, the ability to have an idea or concept created, 3D printed and delivered all on our site. Basically we give anyone the ability to customize at an affordable price.”
Through their service, you can, therefore, interact directly with a designer who will help you to create exactly what it is that you are looking for and then have it delivered to you, nearly anywhere. This means that if you have no experience and only a few basic words to express what you want, there will be someone to help you turn that into a reality.
By the same token, if you are a designer already and just want to work with someone to bring your ideas to their best possible state, their network of designers can provide that as well.
The company explains:
“Our online visualization platform helps buyers track the progress of their project and find out the estimated printing price. Printing through our network is cheaper, faster, and helps users build strong working relationships with suppliers…3D printing and designing is certainly no rocket science, with many websites offering these services nowadays. However, MyLocal3DPrinting stands out from the crowd because we can help you get everything done under the same roof. Our comprehensive service facility makes us the only company brining crowdsourced designs and manufacturing to your fingertips, no matter what your requirements are.”
MyLocal3DPrinting sprung from Lin’s experience in 3D modeling in the visual effects industry. While the business model ultimately came from his experience with his company’s MakerBot 3D printer, “the drive is from something a lot more meaningful,” he says.
“I realized that if this business model is possible, then surely it is possible to develop a charity organization where people who are less fortunate can benefit from 3D Printed products to reach closer to a normal way of life, and all for free,” Lin explained. “Personally I don’t understand the ‘cheap’ prosthetic idea… We’re living in an age where there are now self driving cars, prosthetic limbs should be free and not ‘cheap’… this is the real driver for my business. For this to work there needs to be an existing ecosystem of the crowd-sourced design and 3d print idea and that’s what we’re doing.”
With a strong sense of both design and mission, MyLocal3DPrinting is bringing Australia to the next level in crowdsourcing, design, and conscientiousness in the 3D printing world. Discuss this story in the MyLocal3DPrinting Forum thread on 3DPB.com.
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Tagged with: 3d print crowdsourcing • australia • business • crowdsourced design • crowdsourcing • democratization of 3d printing • design • mylocal3dprinting • shapeways • visualization platform
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Top 13 Crowdsourcing Platforms to Design your Product
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Contents:
- Introduction
- What is crowdsourcing?
- What can crowdsourcing do?
- The 3 best crowdsourcing platforms to make your idea grow
- The 4 best crowdsourcing platforms for graphic and product design
- The 5 best crowdsourcing platforms for everything in between:
- The 15th crowdsourcing platform: your network
Introduction
Afterward, all you’ll have to do is hop onto our website and 3D print your first prototype! Let’s see what is crowdsourcing and how these crowdsourcing sites can help your business.
What is crowdsourcing?
The term “crowdsourcing” is a contraction of “crowd” and “outsourcing”, which appeared for the first time in 2006, when Jeff Howe published the article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” in Wired. This quote from the article describes very simply what crowdsourcing is and how it’s made possible by technological advances:
“Now the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts is attracting the attention of old-line businesses, too. For the last decade or so, companies have been looking overseas, to India or China, for cheap labor. But now it doesn’t matter where the laborers are – they might be down the block, they might be in Indonesia – as long as they are connected to the network.
Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd.
The labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.”
Some tasks require special skills and you might not always able to work on some complete tasks by yourself.
There are actually different types of crowdsourcing platforms, but their goal is the same, it connects people and uses collective intelligence to go through new innovation challenges. It can be for both simple and complex projects. Let’s start your crowdsourcing project right now and get ready for some great business innovations.
What can crowdsourcing do?
The article talked about how stock photo sites like iStockphoto were revolutionizing the photography industry by reducing drastically the cost of an image, through the use of resources from “the crowd”: everyone who wanted to share a picture on the platform and allow for it to be sold at a low price. In the 3D printing and digital manufacturing industry, there is a very close neighbor to this kind of platforms: 3D files and 2D files marketplaces, that allow you to find very cheap or even free designs that you can 3D print, laser-cut, and redesign at will.
We wrote an article about 3D printing marketplaces and one about laser cutting marketplaces, in case you’re looking for a file to upload on our platform!
In his article, Jeff Howe gave other examples:
- the open source software movement showed that a crowd of passionate volunteer developers could create tools as efficient as the highly paid ones from Microsoft;
- Wikipedia showed that the wisdom of the crowd could create a comprehensive encyclopedia
Another obvious example of how projects can rely on the crowd to exist and thrive is crowdfunding: when a crowdfunding campaign is successful, it gives the project and company both its funding and its initial notoriety.
So, a community of strangers, connected by the internet and animated solely by their passion and enthusiasm, can provide, among many other things: performant software, high-quality images, comprehensive and sourced information, funds, and notoriety. What else can the crowd do? A lot!
The advantages of crowdsourcing websites are numerous, and this might be the perfect solution for you to develop your project.
These platforms can be useful for your products, but also for software testing, idea management, any idea generation, etc.
Today we give you a list of the best crowdsourcing platforms that can help you with your product design: from growing an idea to designing a 3D object, an image or a full product, and with every micro-task in between!
The 3 best crowdsourcing platforms to make your idea grow
Idea Bounty
Idea Bounty helps you take your idea from the seed stage to the full-grown flower stage! You simply write a brief, and wait for ideas to come up from the community. Once again, you only pay for the best one.
OpenIdeo
OpenIdeo is a platform to help ideas grow: you can create discussions, get help on project ideas, and help others. It is mostly oriented towards “greater good ideas”, philanthropic projects. So if you’ve got an idea that can make the world better, you can turn to it!
Innocentive
Innocentive: This is another “problem solving” platform, to connect solution seekers and collective or individual think tanks.
The “challenge solvers” come from many organizations, including businesses, academic institutions, and non-profit groups. This platform is here to provide crowdsourced innovation to face new challenges.
InnoCentive is gaining in participants, and reputation, and works with over 13 million freelancers.
The 4 best crowdsourcing platforms for graphic and product design
CrowdSpring
CrowdSpring lets you find designers for projects for as little as $7. This platform put you in touch with great designers, that will help you create your product and industrial design and grow your business. How does it work? You write down what you want and get submissions from freelancers on the platform. All you have to do is pick your favorite, and you’ll only pay for that one. It is a great tool, in particular, if you’re not confident in the product design you already have, to come up with new ideas.
99Designs
99Designs is an artistic platform, more focused on graphic design than product design.
These types of crowdsourcing sites allow you to develop a new brand, logo, website, or packaging. You simply create a design brief on the platform, choose from one of the 4 packages that the platforms offers, and then your project is turned into a contest between more than 1 million professionals. You choose the winner, and they win the prize. You can provide feedback on the design you’ve chosen: unlimited revisions are part of every plan.
Cad Crowd
Cad Crowd will interest you even more, if you’re looking for 3D design and 3D printing ideas: it works with a similar system as the previous two programs but focuses on CAD (Computer Aided Design) modelers. You run a contest, once again, but you can then choose to hire the winner of the ideas competition in a more traditional way (paying by the hour for example).
You can use this crowdsourcing website to find 3D modelers, designers & drafting contractors for your designs, 3D printing or any product projects.
DesignCrowd
On DesignCrowd you can find designers with various filters, like specialty (Blog, Facebook Page, Twitter Page, Banner Ad, Magazine, Landing Page…), country, earnings, percentage of jobs awarded, etc.
Designers’ stats and performances are also rated, and their cost increasing with their quality.
DesignHill
On this creative crowdsourcing platform, you can easily choose from thousands of graphic designers to work with you. You fill your brief and get numerous designs. You will just have to choose your favorite. From graphic design to website design and book covers: you can ask for anything.
Guerra Creativa
This crowdsourcing platform uses the same principle. You choose your packages and receive tons of ideas from talented designers. You can then choose the idea fitting your project.
The 5 best crowdsourcing platforms for everything in between:
Need some workers to further develop specific aspects of your project?
There are many platforms that offer a broader range of crowdsourced services, not focusing on ideas, product and graphic design. We are going to give you another example of crowdsourcing sites. They will allow you to get freelance workers for various tasks, often small, one-time tasks.
These can be useful at any stage of product development, so they deserve to be looked at as well! We’ll give you a less detailed list of some of these crowdsourcing platforms:
- MicroWorkers: for micro-tasks, most of the time very simple and requires just a few minutes of work each, like completing surveys, signing up for websites, or sometimes simply downloading files…
- Amazon mechanical Turk or mTurk: this website is run by Amazon and allows for companies or entrepreneurs to ask for “Human Intelligence Tasks” (HITs). Once again, this Amazon Mechanical Turk is made for very simple tasks like answering surveys, commenting on blogs, rewriting, image labeling…
- crowdSPRING: sign up as a buyer and get over 100 entries for a single project.
- oDesk.com: this platform helps you find profiles as varied as web developers, software and development designers, information systems specialists, proficient translators, writers, and even administrative support members.
The platform enables you to keep in touch with the talents you like, so that you can build a lasting relationship in spite of the freelancing. - Elance: once again, a platform with a wide range of talents: mobile app designers, data scientists, content writers, SEO specialists… You can post a job and request interviews. You don’t have to pay before the job is completed, but there is a minimum of $20 for one project.
The 15th crowdsourcing platform: your network
Whether it is through your own website, through a mailing ritual or through social media, it is possible that you have resources that you do not suspect in the community that has formed around you or your company! When it is appropriate, listen to your customers and followers, ask for feedback and suggestions, designs and ideas.
Here you go! With this list of crowdsourcing platforms, you can go from idea to product almost without doing anything. All you’ll have to do next will be to hop onto our website and 3D print your first prototype (or maybe even your final product).
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3D printing of prostheses using crowdsourcing / Sudo Null IT News
ivansychev
Biotechnology Crowdsourcing 3D printers Medgadgets
Using ready-made projects to print prostheses is much more effective than creating a prosthetic arm from scratch. The Enablingthefuture.org project works on the principle of crowdsourcing: it allows you to find people who can help design a prosthesis, and people who can print it on their 3D printer.
The video shows Isabella, an 8-year-old girl who received her hand thanks to Enablingthefuture.org. The prosthesis was designed by Stephen Davies, who previously received his own hand thanks to this project.
The parents of an eight-year-old girl found out about the e-NABLE project on Facebook. They watched the videos on the page and read the stories until they asked Isabella if she would like to try such a device. The girl agreed. The project paired her with volunteer developer Stephen Davis. Stephen traveled to Bristol, UK to personally present the girl with her new arm.
Isabella has become one of the beta testers who will help develop stronger and more comfortable prosthetic hands for other recipients. One of the difficulties was control: Isabella has to use muscles that she had not used before. Now she is experimenting, trying to grab different objects, exploring what she can and cannot do with them.
The girl's father was worried that Isabella would be embarrassed by the prosthesis.
But the girl was glad to go to the store with a multi-colored hand and walked with her, she wanted to show the prosthesis to the whole world, she constantly told how this hand works.
She is magical and I love the colors! I will use it the best way I can! Isabella
Stephen Davis is forty years old. He knows what it is like to live without a hand, and how to live with an uncomfortable prosthesis. He was born without a left arm. The National Health Service gave him a prosthesis that "could be described as a hook from the Middle Ages." The e-NABLE project helped Stephen find developer Drew Murray. After receiving his first hand, Stephen raised money for a 3D printer in a few months and became a volunteer.
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Ivan Sychev @ivansychev
Communication Specialist.
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Crowdsourcing 3D construction in Russia - drones lay out a house from 3D printed bricks It all started with the project of the American professor Berokh Khoshnevis from the University of Southern California.
He presented a 3D printer that prints the walls of future houses from special concrete. After his statement that he intends to reduce the cost of building houses at times, thereby reducing corruption in the construction business, he was attracted to design NASA projects to build various lunar bases away from Earth. But the first grain has already been dropped into the ground. Startups associated with 3D construction in different parts of the world immediately began to sprout like mushrooms. The Chinese did not remain indifferent. They responded to the Americans by printing 10 houses. After that, 3D construction began to be talked about seriously. One of the latest high-profile projects is the construction of a castle by Andrey Rudenko in Minnesota.
Russian startups decided to keep up.
At the recently held high-tech exhibition “Make it show” in Moscow, the project of the startup GlavRobotStroy, a 3D house, was presented.
The essence of the 3D house project was to combine two modern breakthrough technologies into one effective project through crowdfunding. On the one hand, 3D printers printed original bricks with the logo of a company or an individual (the brick was specially created in such a size and shape that it could be printed on the simplest 3D printer), on the other hand, quadrocopters laid out brickwork, building a house.
A beautiful idea, in theory, needed practical confirmation. Manufacturers of 3D printers and filament decided to participate in the project at the exhibition. As well as companies selling and making drones. As a result, companies such as Picaso 3D, REK, IGo3D (selling Ultimaker), 3dexperts, TsMIT - academy, provided their 3D printers and a thread for printing bricks with their logos, and companies specializing in drones: Karlsson, Copter Express, Quadrone, - provided quadrocopters and hexacopters for trial planting of bricks at the construction site.
At the exhibition, it turned out that different printers and different plastic threads significantly affect the speed and quality of bricks. Some printers printed one brick up to 8 hours, others did it in 2.5 hours, although the quality of bricks printed longer was significantly higher. PLA plastic bricks turned out to be perfectly shaped, ABS plastic bricks could have defects and slight shape deformations. But, the main thing is that, thanks to the tolerances, they all folded into each other according to the Lego principle, allowing you to assemble the walls of the future house.
Figure - Hydrop provided a brick coated with a protective nanolayer.
Quadcopters with bricks were also landed in the construction area. When landing, it was necessary to make a circle around the cargo drop zone so that people were at a safe distance. There were no special fasteners for smooth detachment of bricks at the exhibition. Therefore, we tried landing with tied bricks on a carbine.
An interesting variant turned out with Quadrone hexocopter. A six-membered robot was attached to the drone, and that, in turn, was trained to release 3 bricks at the right time. The robot itself weighed about 2 kg + 400 grams of 4 bricks (each brick weighs 100 grams). When dropping the bricks, it was somewhat blown away by the wind created by the powerful propellers of the hexocopter. From the above, it became obvious that the quadcopter should not be very powerful, just enough to lay a 100 gram brick. It is also necessary to refine the process of laying bricks. It can be done automatically only in an open space where there are no passers-by.
Crowdsourcing succeeded: 3 companies selling and manufacturing 3D printers, TsMIT - academy, 3 companies selling and manufacturing drones, manufacturers of filament for 3D printing REK, 3D printing laboratory "Prototype", robotics store Ro-Bo.
