A friend of mine runs a company that produces a special type of cardboard — basically it has a thicker wave than usual, and it’s great for packaging. But over the years, they’ve also made a bunch of other stuff with it, like chairs, handbags, and similar things.
I’ve been racking my brain but can’t come up with something to do with it using a 3D printer, even though I feel like it has a lot of potential. So I thought about launching a contest to tap into the community’s creativity, maybe even give away a 3D printer as a prize.
How do I actually set up a contest, and how do I get in touch with MakerWorld? Do you think this is a good idea for a contest? It doesn’t feel that off-topic compared to the usual ones… plus it’s kind of green/sustainable.
yeah i think about that this night.. this could be a bit complicated.. Maybe I can design a 3d model of the paper in different size and shape. This maybe can help
A 3D model would give dimensions, but not stiffness, flex, curvature, etc.
Serious design work is going to need samples of the real thing.
And to get a photo of a model designed to work with the material… we need the material.
yeah, but you understand that is not possible send a piece of the material to every designed that wanna try..
For the other contest they never send the material, at least, they gave the 3d model
let me purge in for a minute, i read the comments between you and @ChrisCox and he is right, and as a designer i would want a sample so i can study and test the properties of the object i’m working on, most practical designer might not bother brain storming for a contest that has no samples to work on, we need to design and test if our design is properly working, at the end we do not want to face comments such as (it does not work) (this needs fixing) (the sheet too stiff to get handled with a 3d print) etc….
also i want to emphasis on Copyrights and commercial use regulations, just incase your friend thinks giving away a 3d printer would give him the privilege to used the designs commercially without consent or proper agreements with the design owner. (don’t get me wrong but this is sort of vibe i’m getting from what you mentioned).
but it isn’t that necessary if you don’t want. the contest could be more generic like “Packaging contest” or something similar, and if you want, for some users you can upload a model of the cardboard you like for inspiration. Hope it comes out! love the idea!
Combining 3D printed parts with commonly available and inexpensive bulk materials is one of my favorite things. There aren’t enough people doing this, so I think MW should do a lot of contests using this premise.
If it’s not a common material, people need to have access to it or the contest doesn’t really work. The corporate sponsored contests didn’t bring much in the way of value to the community. It was just advertising for the product. The more affordable and available the product, the more value the contest can bring to the community.
A general carboard + 3D print contest would be great. If the contest is open to any kind of cardboard, it has the potential to be substantially more interesting to more people. Then if you can somehow get that special cardboard into the hands of designers, they can work on incorporating that into new designs that leverage its properties.
All of those are solid objects, you don’t actually need one of the physical objects as providing a CAD model lets someone print their own parts to test against
