3D printing
(Page under construction; please feel free to add what you know)
Contents
References
Vincent Scalfani's presentation: Accessing 3D printable structures online
- Vincent F. Scalfani, Antony J. Williams, Robert M. Hanson, Jason E. Bara, Aileen Day, and Valery Tkachenko. 248th ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, USA, August 13, 2014
File repositories for 3D models
NIH 3D Print Exchange
Target audience and data is for biomedical applications (e.g., anatomy, labware, protein and macromolecular structures, bacteria, cells).
Searchable by names and phrases. This seems to work well for the target data.
RSC Crystal Data Repository
http://api.beta.rsc-us.org/Crystals/v1/cod/
One of four planned new RSC repositories (crystals, compounds, reactions, and spectra). Currently contains:
- The entire Crystallography Open Database (COD) of 289 395 .cif and 48 022 .hkl files of molecules and extended solids;
- 3D Printable Files: 31 239 .wrl files (color printing) and 11 732 .stl files
Still in beta mode, you can manually browse through files. Repository will soon have a user interface that is fully searchable (name, structure, formula, SMILES, InChI, and others) with deposition and crowd-source curation/annotation platform.
3D printing services
Print on demand from the file (e.g. 
.wrl exported from Jmol) that you upload.
| Produce multi-color objects | Adjust the scale of the model | Sell your designs in their site | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shapeways | yes | no | yes |
| i.materialise | yes | yes | yes |
Other sites with useful information
- Henry Rzepa's hints. We have 3D printed about 30 models in full colour (the material is gypsum + inkjet) and there the secret is to adjust the bond radius to ensure that the resulting model is reasonably robust. Despite such precautions, the models do tend to be fragile. This site also has instructions on how to scale the model (we adjust the scale to produce models of about 10-15cm in size, or ~£60) and how to produce surfaces (molecular and NBO orbitals for example). Also not found in standard coordinate databases are computed transition state models, which are useful for inspecting eg steric clashes/attractions which may determine reaction outcomes.
- Macintouch has useful reviews.
