14 DAY TRIAL // 3D printing technology has proven quite lucrative in many fields, but every success was built on the discarded scraps of many prototype printers and print trial runs. WirePrint decided to make prototyping less painful.
When you're building a model for a 3D printed object or part of a 3D printed object, you only need 3D software know-how and patience, plus imagination and a modicum of visualization capabilities.
However, making the actual part doesn't always turn out well the first time around, which is why prototyping is such a common practice.
Alas, making a prototype doesn't go any faster than 3D printing the actual, final component, and it can be a drag to spend days waiting for the printer to finish its task, only for the result to be faulty or otherwise unsatisfying.
WirePrint has the solution
Essentially, WirePrint is a software that takes a model and uses it to create a hollow, wire-prototype of the actual object you want to make.
It may not help all that much for delicate components of, say, many-part action figures and mechanical machinery, but it can be great for everything else.
Why? Because the prototypes are hollow, and due to being produced out of wires (nets, more like), they take a lot less time to make.
Overall, it brings the overall weight down by about 90% and reduces the time it takes to 3D print the thing by the same amount. Thus, you get to make more trial and error runs in a fraction of the time. An hour or two instead of a full day, for example.
The software was developed by German PHD student Stefanie Mueller, with help from others from the Hasso Plattner Institute and Cornell University. Students Sangha Im, Serafima Gurevich, Alexander Teibrich, and Lisa Pfisterer also contributed.
The technical term of the prototypes is “low-fidelity wireframe previews.” All in all, they can be a great way to save time and more quickly decide what the overall shape of your project should be.
The catch
There actually isn't one. WirePrint lets you build wire prototypes using pretty much every 3D printer out there. It's only used to modify/create 3D models after all (it slices the 3D model vertically into horizontal slices, extracts the contours, fills the space between slices with a zigzag pattern), as well as guides the printer in the correct way to extrude the filament directly into 3D space.
Thus, instead of the time-consuming layer-by-layer print method, the hollow wire piece is produced much more quickly, but just as accurately (insofar as rough drafts can be accurate anyway).
After the product is ready, it can be dipped in glue to make it stronger and incorporate mesh or even a logo on the surface.
