Hi everyone, hope you all had a great Christmas and are getting ready for the new year. During Christmas I always find it hard to come up with presents for people, I mean, most of my friends are middle class privileged boys and girls and there’s not much I can offer then that is actually useful. But I did find something pretty damn awesome (well, from the perspective of a geek…), which was 3D PRINTING GIFTS.
Ahh, isn’t this super exciting?

This is a Koch tea light holder, very simple model, printed with a makerbot. <3 <3

And it doesn’t have to be useless (in no way undermines how cool it looks tho), there are pretty neat models available on the internets, such as: iPhone 4 dock, business card holder, DSLR lens cap, etc…

Where can you find free models?
Depends on the printer you have I think, if you happen to have a Makerbot (or similar), this is the website I linked before: Thingiverse - You basically need the .STL file. You can also venture on Blender and produce your own models.

Where you find the 3D printer?
A shout out for the Zurchers, there’s one owned by the student group Bastli. You pay for the material, which is 15 CHF per 100g. (What I printed above was around 2CHF ;) ).
Otherwise, if you don’t have the luxury to be an ETH/UZH student, I believe quite a few technical universities have access to a 3D printer.

Anyway, this post is a bit late for Christmas, but next time you need something geek cool & pretty cheap, there’s an option to keep mind! ;)

If YOU happen to have a printer, or know some other good models website, and want me to list it here, send me an email! han.veiga@gmail.com