Rapid Ready Roundup: Xbox One, Sugar Printing, and Cyvasse

In the course of my diligent efforts to keep you good people up to date on the state of additive manufacturing (AM), I come across many interesting news items. I’ll gather them up every so often and present them in a Rapid Ready Roundup (like this one). You can find the last Roundup here.

Let’s hit start on today’s Roundup with some news about the Xbox One. Microsoft’s next generation of game consoles is scheduled to be released sometime this year. During the hardware design phase of development, the company turned to AM for rapid prototyping.

The Microsoft design team used Stratasys Objet printers to build prototypes of both potential console shapes and controller shapes. Moving at a pace that would have been impossible before AM, the team could produce up to two prototypes per day, in the process of fine tuning the look and functionality of the hardware components. Following the notion of “fail early, fail often,” Microsoft estimates it built around 200 different prototypes of the controller alone before they were satisfied with the results.

Moving on, a husband and wife team have opened a sugar confectionary business with complex edible artwork created using a 3D printer. The Sugar Lab was inspired when Kyle and Liz von Hasseln decided to make a special cake for a friend’s birthday using AM. According to the website:

We wanted to make our friend Chelsea a birthday cake, but we didn’t have an oven, so we decided to try to 3D print a cake instead. After a period of trial and error that lasted well beyond her actual birthday, we managed to print Chelsea a tiny cupcake topper that spelled her name in cursive sugar. She loved it! We thought other people might like 3D printed sugar, too…

Finally, if you enjoy reading A Song of Ice and Fire, the books which inspired HBO’s Game of Thrones, you’re probably familiar with the fictional game from the setting named Cyvasse. While George R.R. Martin has never fully fleshed out the rules for the game, Arian Croft from Ill Gotten Games has created a Cyvasse set using a 3D printer. The plans, and some home-brewed rules, are available at Thingiverse.

From the Thingiverse page:

Working with my good friend (and studious Martin scholar) Nate Stephens, I adapted the game to include everything mentioned in the book into a rules set I found believable for a game made during the emulated time period, while also keeping the games in mind that Martin has mentioned as inspiration during interviews.

Below you’ll find a video about the development of the Xbox One.

Sources: The Sugar Lab, Stratasys, Thingiverse