Last year, 3D printers took off to print in space. Now, Shapeways is incredibly thrilled to announce that we’ve added the most innovative material to our portfolio yet – moon dust. Our engineers obtained samples from our friends at NASA and developed a unique method for leveraging our current SLS printers to 3D print with this groundbreaking material.
Moon dust surprisingly shares many of the same properties as the nylon powder we use in our SLS printers, so the design guidelines are the same. The finished product, though, has an extraordinary characteristic: a silver shimmer that only appears when held under moonlight. In daylight or under indoor lighting, moon dust products will have the same coloration as the color that we see the moon – a nice light gray with some white gradation. When held under moonlight, however, moon dust products have a beautiful, sparkly quality to them. Imagine how you will wow your family and friends with a smart phone case or bow tie that sparkles under moonlight, like the ones our community member created below!
Stay tuned for more details on our moon dust material, which we’ll open up to the public on the date of the next full moon. In the meantime use #ShapewaysMoonDust to let us know what you will design with this exciting new 3D printing material.
Funny…we were using ACTUAL moon rock with our 3d designs last year. No Joke.
http://www.cnet.com/news/diamonds-nah-burning-man-wedding-ring-holds-a-piece-of-the-moon/
April Fools
Next material: star dust!
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was how in high school I got to handle a piece of lunar rock.
It was the size of a pencil eraser, encased in a block of Lucite the size of a melon, and locked to a bombproof case that was hand-delivered to our science class.