New Technology Gives Young Design a Chance

Australian startup Beehive are crowd funding a “design your own 3D printed eyewear” interface.

The Beehive team of industrial designers and engineers (including Engineers Without Borders founder Daniel Almagor) are building a website that will let anybody jump into the design process, creating a unique eyewear design that will be 3D printed.

You can change the shape, style, and pattern of the eyewear and then upload an image or text to emboss into the frames. You can even upload an image of yourself to try on the style. When you’re ready, hit “go” and they'll 3D print them for you.

3D printing is an exciting rapid manufacturing technology that was made famous by an Economist article earlier in the year showing a 3D printed working reproduction of a Stradivarius violin.

“When you print on paper the ink has a tiny bit of height above the page. If you printed the same thing on the same page again and again it would stack up. So instead of ink, we use plastics and metals to create amazing new objects – including eyewear!” said spokesman Adam Long.

“Lasers in the machine weld the plastics and metals together. It means that every time we make something we can make it different and unique."

The Beehive team are “crowd funding” the development of the website – letting people pre-purchase 3D printed eyewear to help fund the development costs.
The fundraising goal is $15,000 in 45 days, and they are well on their way with over $2500 raised already.

“It’s a great way to support startups and grab something unique. Once we hit our fundraising goal we send contributors loads of cool goodies. If we don’t raise the whole $15,000 then their money is returned.”

Some of the rewards on offer are laser-cut mahogany eyewear and limited edition stainless steel eyewear.

“Each pair comes with sunglasses lenses, but you can also get your optometrist to add in prescription lenses.”

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