14 DAY TRIAL // Until now, only solid objects, or parts of objects, were successfully made via 3D printing, but the first moving, shape-changing item has finally been made.
I'd expected it to take a lot longer than this for a moving 3D printed object to be designed.
Fortunately, I have been proven wrong. Though the “Blossom” is not mechanical, it can change shape.
Long story short, it is an inflatable item, owing to the use of rubber or flexible plastic as build material.
Former Victoria University School of Design student Richard Clarkson is the one that invented the Blossom.
You'll have to pump air inside the hollow spaces located in the black rubber buds. When you do, the petals pull apart, revealing the colored core.
Clarkson is now a masters student at the School of Visual Arts in New York and designed the two blooms separately, but printed them at the same time.
The printer can combine two materials and adjust the mixture, to vary the amount of flexibility of the product.