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Comment by shashashasha | Hacker News Reader

They're even thinking about 3d printing on large scales. Here's 3d printing concrete for buildings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfbhdZKPHro

And on the consumer side, you're definitely seeing more and more products based around mass customization and 3d printing. See Nervous System (n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com) and all the excitement around the Makerbot.

My girlfriend and I actually recently launched a sideproject around this, http://meshu.io, letting people enter in locations to generate custom jewelry that can then be printed into silver or plastic, using Shapeways.com as our 3d printer.

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I was reading your description and had the vision of a randomly generated 3d fractal-like sculpture based on your current location.

Then again, why base it on your location? Generate a hash from the combined names of you and your partner and create a 3d sculpture from that.

I might be just rambling here but I certainly can see how 3d printing is creating new businesses.

I think the important thing for us is that it's both personal and abstract — most things that are generated look random, or like a lot of faceted jewelry out there, but the person wearing it knows which way it faces and what each point means. It's a little different to say "this is randomly generated for you via seed X, congrats". I think it's viable, and interesting, for sure, I'm just more interested in the personal (see also an old project weeplaces.com)

Impressive,

what is the feedback so far? I don't think the shapes are very jewelry-like :)

Feedback has been awesome! Lots of people are putting in special places (where I've traveled with my wife, where I've lived in America, special places for my boyfriend and I) and are either making them as mementos or gifts.

Genuinely curious, what do you think jewelry-like shapes look like?

:) Maybe that's just me and my european thinking that jewelry should have more "curves" and round shapes.

I'd like to know more about your project, I'll contact you via your website!

I think there's an interesting trend around faceted jewelry / forms in a bunch of different fields right now, which is maybe a separate discussion: http://pinterest.com/search/boards/?q=faceted

have you ever seen a building construction? it's pretty much 'manual 3d printing'

they form some crude walls with cheap wood, and pour lots and lots of concrete, and the bigger challenge for bigger building is that you have to pour one level at a time in one shot. and if you pour too much it gets too hot while it dries and the concrete gets flaky.

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