Gadgetory

hey guys I am here back at TechShop to take advantage of their 3d printers 3d printing isn't just for the super geeks and people making components for cars you can use it to make everyday objects like an iPhone case and today I'll show you how to do just that all right we're going to use a free program called Autodesk one to 3d and instead of making the phone template from scratch I'm going to use one that's already pre-made and loaded in this program so now all I have to do is customize it and I'm thinking I'll make it really personal so I'll add my name to this actually I'll go ahead and add my handle Sharron vac and let's change the text okay so this looks good so far but right now it doesn't have any depth it's not elevated it's not a cup I think I'm gonna cut it out just like this see net case so I'm going to use the extrude tool and since this is a 3d program I can view it in 3d so I'm going to change the angle here and how cool is that now what I want to do is cut this out pull these letters out right click OK and now check it out I have Sharon back cut out of my case that's it and then that's pretty good it's a custom case I know I can't buy that off-the-shelf at Apple or Walmart or whatever so we're gonna go ahead and print it I have to do a few things have to save it as an STL file save to my desktop here alright let's open up replicator G that's the program that talks to the actual 3d printer so what you're seeing here is the platform I want to make sure that the phone gets printed in the center of the platform so I'll do that I also want to scale it up just a little bit because the first time we printed this it actually was too small for my iPhone so we need to scale it up well that's what's great about it 3d printing is so cheap at least here at tech shop that you can really tinker with it now we are going to write the file make sure all of our settings are ok generate the g-code and this takes a couple of minutes g code is an old-school programming language that tells the machine exactly what to do ok the G code is ready so now I can put the file on the SD card that will allow us to put it in the 3d printer so save it and we're good to go let's put it in the printer all right now all we have to do is print it so I'm going to select my file and hit print thinking all right we're going to print it in this bright green color that's what's hooked up to the machine right now it's actually made of a corn-based plastic there are other materials but that's what the MakerBot works with it's heating up this is going to take about an hour and a half to make so we'll be back to check up on it the spool of plastic is pulled through the back tubes and into the extruder the extruder heats up the plastic and pushes it through a tiny hole your object is made one layer at a time okay it looks like we're at ninety three percent so it's almost done and it totally looks like an iPhone case it's only been going for about an hour but it will need ten more minutes until I can peel the sucker off and put it on my phone now if you want one of these MakerBot 3d printers at home it's going to cost you about $2,000 so with the tech shop membership at about one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month it's all free for them the cost of this spool which is the material that's used to print is about 40 bucks so altogether my iPhone case will cost about a dollar for them that's pretty cheap okay now it's not just for making iPhone cases there are a lot of ways people are using 3d printing these are some of the more fun ways like look at all these baby Darth Vader sculptures this is really neat this one took about 84 hours to print and it was printed on a more advanced machine okay this is really neat people use 3d printing for prototyping so this college sophomore made a kite that converts wind into energy and he used 3d printing to create these components here okay I think that by now my iPhone case might be ready so let's check it out okay all right it is stuck a little bit to the platform but that's normal so we're just going to use one of these guys to just nudge it off I am so nervous and excited oh yeah there we go oh okay let's put it on and it fits perfectly check it out my own custom 3d printed iPhone case now if you're dying to get your hands on this and you don't have a 3d printer or access to one you can use a printing service like autodesk or shapeways com alright if you have any cool ideas for 3d printing please send them to me at sharing back on Twitter or send us an email at always on at cnet.com