This is clever, though it'll probably disillusion me about whether even tinkerers can take a principled stand against walled gardens.
Expansion? It's not clear what you're saying here; I don't see any walled garden here.
Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
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Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#12Is it compatible with the three 3D Projects from the kickstarter? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1682938109/robo-3d-print... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affor... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/b9creations/b9creator-a-...
Yes, they are .stl files which, for the most part can be opened with any CAD/3D Modeling software and processed by pretty much every 3D printer.
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#13This is clever, though it'll probably disillusion me about whether even tinkerers can take a principled stand against walled gardens.
Expansion? It's not clear what you're saying here; I don't see any walled garden here.
Microsoft has asserted the authority to decide what you can and cannot do with phones like this one. I harbor a faint hope that 3D printer owners are the type of empowered people who find that unacceptable.
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#14This is easily the most exciting thing I've seen out of Nokia in years.
You should seriously try out the Lumia 920 then.
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#15This is excellent, but it it important to see it as more than something that enables you to print your own case.
Think, instead, about the number of times you need some kind of mounting bracket or adapter to connect two pieces of consumer goods to each other. Think about mounting a phone on a car dashboard, or on a bike or motorcycle.
If there are N of the first and M of the second, there's no practical way for any manufacturer to support all MN combinations. As soon as some more companies follow Nokia's lead here, you should be able to combine two models, apply any final tweaks or customizations, and print your own adapter, perhaps even iterating over time as you add subtle new features.
This is the future, and you'd better be ready for it!
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#16My company has a variety of 3D printers and we actually produced several iPhone case/adapters in the past. It's a small company, so we all helped out by testing different case designs.
The first round of testing involved a simple case design utilizing all of the plastics and printers that we have available. Most plastics were too brittle and would crack when you snapped them on the iPhone. In fact, only 1 ABS was usable. The consumer models had a hard time with the curved surfaces and felt much grainier in the hand. But once I tried out the final soft-touch part that was produced using injection modeling, I would never go back to the 3D printed model. The difference it feels in your hand is night and day. Oh, and the mass produced cases cost 3D printers are great for prototyping and hobbyists doing 1-offs. But the tech has a way to go before being useful to the average consumer.
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#17This is a very cool
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#18This is nice PR by Nokia but not much more.
Nokia are wrong in saying that they are the first to do this. Granted, Apple didn't realese STL files (which are a huge list of coordinates describing the vertices of triangles). But for several years now Apple released very detailed engineering drawings of their products publicly: https://developer.apple.com/resources/cases/. These drawings are actually useful for someone who wants to design and make their own case, whereas Nokia's STL files only let you reproduce whatever Nokia designed for you (modifying STL meshes is possible but the format limits the possibilities).
I also don't understand why Nokia puts a "noncommercial personal use only" license on this. Isn't an accessories ecosystem something they should want? I would have loved to use this design for adding this Nokia phone to an online customization tool for iPhone cases which I run. Thanks to this license my website will stay iPhone4/5 only.
Footnote: One of the Nokia downloads claims to be "mechanical drawings" but it only contains STL files.
Footnote 2: And why on earth do I have to register as a Nokia developer to get this?
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#19While cool, the cynic in me says this is driven by nothing but desperation.
Re: Nokia releases 3D printing files for Lumia phone cases
#20Nice. It's been such a long time since I've read something about Nokia and thought, "wow, cool!".
The last time for me was when they showed off the OIS and low-light capability of the Lumia 920. And the time before that was when they showed off the 41MP camera on the 808 PureView.
Both of which are far more interesting than them throwing up some schematics.