Nothing Stationary in Stationery

Shower Invitation from Paper Muse Press

I have just arrived in New York to attend the National Stationery Show for the first time. I am looking forward to seeing all of the creative new card designs and making new friends in the stationery industry. It will be particularly interesting to hear their views on the trend toward personalized stationery.

Like many industries, there is a steady shift taking place in the stationery market.  The large social expressions companies including Hallmark and American greetings are struggling to maintain their sales while smaller, more specialized companies are gaining market share. A birthday greeting on Facebook may be sufficient for casual acquaintances, but more important events are worthy of personalized cards from Tiny Prints, Minted or Paper Muse Press.

For most of the show, I will be working in a booth for Black River Imaging which is exhibiting for the first time at a stationery show.  We are well known as a professional portrait lab, but more and more card companies have discovered that the printing, boutique packaging and drop shipping services that we provide for photographers are also a perfect fit for personalized stationery.  Exhibiting at the National Stationery show will make it easier for these types of companies to find us.

The card samples that will be in the booth are from Paper Muse Press, a brand new social expressions company that just launched their web store this morning. It has been more than a year since Emily Walters, Rowena Raborar and Sarah Carney-Norris launched Paper Muse Press as a lifestyle blog featuring do-it-yourself decorating projects and some printable downloads. The blog posts are beautifully photographed and clearly explained.

In addition to blogging, the ladies of Paper Muse Press, and a talented team of design artists and web developers, have been working frantically behind the scenes to furnish their shop with over 3000 unique card designs that can be personalized with images, names and dates. Emily and Sarah will also be attending the National Stationery Show, so be sure to congratulate them if you run into them.

If you will be at the show in New York next week, come by booth 2888 and say hello.

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The Creativity Paradox is sponsored in part by Convertible Solutions which supplies specialty paper substrates to digital printers, direct marketing companies and photo book fulfillment companies.

An Unforgettable Summer Job

In the summer of 1981, Carl Decker had completed his freshman year studying mechanical engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. He traveled to Houston for a summer job with a machine shop that made parts for the nearby oil fields. Many of the parts were made from castings which had to be shaped using handcrafted molds. Decker recognized the need for a method to automatically create castings from CAD drawings and began thinking of ways it could be done.

By the time he was ready to graduate, in 1984, he had developed the idea of using a beam of energy, such as a laser, to melt particles into a solid 3D object. He continued to work on the idea, developed the Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process and formed the company DTM Corp which was sold to 3D Systems in 2001. SLS continues to be an important part of the 3D System product line.

Selective Laser Sintering is a 3D printing method that uses a high powered laser beam to fuse small particles of plastic, metal, ceramic or glass into a solid layer. After each layer is fused, the part is lowered, a new layer of powder is applied on top of the first layer, and the fusing process is repeated. The bulk powder in the SLS machine is preheated to nearly the fusing temperature to reduce the amount of laser energy required.

Selective Laser Sintering Diagram from Wikipedia

The most common uses for SLS technology are rapid prototyping, additive manufacturing of complex or low volume plastic parts and fabrication of casting patterns.

When the SLS process is used to manufacture metal parts, it is usually called Selective Laser Melting (SLM). The Swedish company Arcam AB has a similar system which replaces the laser beam with an electron beam and is appropriately named Electron Beam Melting (EBM).  These processes are typically used to make parts for aerospace companies, personalized orthopedic implants and jewelry.

In 1993 Ely Sachs and Mike Cima of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a process that uses a powder bed like SLS, but binds the powder with glue injected using a print head similar to an inkjet printer. The process, which they named 3D Printing (3DP), was sold to Z Corp which was acquired by 3D Systems in January 2012. Z Corp created the first full color 3D printer by combining color print heads with the binder print head.

The invention of the SLS process by Carl Decker after three years of reflection on the idea he originally formed during his summer job is a great example of the need to let ideas simmer to allow the brain to connect the dots in a new and unique way.

What's cooking in the back of your mind?


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The Creativity Paradox is sponsored in part by Convertible Solutions which supplies specialty paper substrates to digital printers, direct marketing companies and photo book fulfillment companies.

Changing the World with a Glue Gun

In 1989, Scott Crump wanted to make a toy frog for his two-year-old daughter. As he worked in the kitchen shaping the frog with a glue gun, he was also inventing the 3D printing process that would transform manufacturing in the 21st century. Crump formed Stratasys to commercialize the process he named Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) and the company is now the largest manufacturer of 3D printers with a 44% market share.

FDM works by depositing droplets of melted thermoplastic in a computer controlled pattern much like a regular desktop printer jets ink.. The plastic solidifies after it is deposited to form one layer of a 3D object. When each layer is finished, the print head or print table are moved to allow the next layer to be added. This process is repeated layer after layer until the 3D item is completed.

The raw material for an FDM printer is typically a coil of plastic filament which is fed into a heating block to heat the end of the filament to the melting temperature. Stepper motors or servo motors move the print head to the precise x, y and z position to extrude each droplet.

Diagram from RepRap Wiki

Stratasys manufactures a wide range of FDM machines from desktop models for designers to large industrial models for manufacturing plants.  Stratasys has a trademark on the term Fused Deposition Modeling and the abbreviation FDM so the RepRap, Makerbot and most other small 3D printers which use the same process refer to it as Fused Filament Fabrication or FFF.

The FDM process works with several types of thermoplastics including acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) polymer, polycarbonates, polycaprolactone, polyphenylsulfones and waxes making it suitable for a wide variety of prototyping and manufacturing applications.

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The Creativity Paradox is sponsored in part by Convertible Solutions which supplies specialty paper substrates to digital printers, direct marketing companies and photo book fulfillment companies.

Who Can Tell How Events Will Be Transformed

Taijitu by Nyo

April has been an interesting month so far. Some of the events in our industry and our country have been very disturbing. But bad news is seldom as it appears.

The Tao Te Ching contains the following parable:

A poor farmer's horse ran off into the country of the barbarians. All his neighbors offered their condolences, but his father said, "How do you know that this isn't good fortune?" After a few months the horse returned with a barbarian horse of excellent stock. All his neighbors offered their congratulations, but his father said, "How do you know that this isn't a disaster?" The two horses bred, and the family became rich in fine horses. The farmer's son spent much time riding them and one day fell off and broke his hipbone. All his neighbors offered the farmer condolences, but his father said, "How do you know that this isn't good fortune?" Another year passed, and the barbarians invaded the frontier. All the able-bodied young men were conscripted, and nine-tenths of them died in the war. Thus good fortune can be disaster and vice versa. Who can tell how events will be transformed?*

 I don't know how things are going to turn out and neither do you.  In the absence of a personal Tardis, we can only travel the stream of time in one direction. Our best option is to move forward with the understanding that we will encounter obstacles and the confidence that we will overcome them.

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*Tao Te Ching, Chapter 74, translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Creativity Paradox is sponsored in part by Convertible Solutions which supplies specialty paper substrates to digital printers, direct marketing companies and photo book fulfillment companies.

The Paradox of Certainty

Probability Stories by Iruhdam

The world we live in is a complex place.  The impact of any event or
policy change is the result of a chaotic interplay between millions or
billions of individuals acting in ways that may not always be
rational. The probability of any particular result is almost never 0%
or 100%.

Whenever I hear a talk radio host or television commentator
belligerently proclaiming  the certainty of their particular view of
the future, I wonder whether they haven't thought things through
carefully or they're just being dishonest.


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The Creativity Paradox is sponsored in part by Convertible Solutions which supplies specialty paper substrates to digital printers, direct marketing companies and photo book fulfillment companies.

Postcards from the Netherlands

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled with my wife Terri and daughter Jennifer to visit our daughter Amy who is studying international law in the Netherlands. That's Amy above with her mentor Hugo Grotius, the "Father of International Law."

Amy lives just a few steps away from this beautiful canal in central Utrecht.

A bicycle is one of the best ways to get around the city center, but you have to park it somewhere. This parking area is near the Utrecht central train station.

It's easy to know what time it is in Utrecht.  It was nine o'clock when we walked past the Dom Tower and its bells began to ring.

We took a weekend trip to Maastricht where it had snowed the day before.  This water channel which feeds the moat surrounding the old town walls no longer has much defensive value. But it's great for a quiet walk.

The Maastricht Town Hall, which was across the square from our hotel, looks a little eerie in the moonlight.

I was surprised to see this in a shop window on the square in Maastricht.

When we returned to Utrecht, we were able to take a walk with these gigantic snowflakes falling. I particularly like the way the orange backpack contrasts with the dull colors of the cobblestones and bricks.

We had a wonderful time exploring the Netherlands with Amy and Jennifer. Where are you planning to vacation this year?

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The Creativity Paradox is sponsored in part by Convertible Solutions which supplies specialty paper substrates to digital printers, direct marketing companies and photo book fulfillment companies.

It Started with Stereolithography

Stereolithography diagram from Wikimedia Commons

As I have mentioned in previous posts, 3D printing is one of the fastest growing technologies and is poised to transform manufacturing over the next decade. This is the first of several posts I have planned to describe how specific 3D technologies work.

The first 3D printer was developed by Charles Hull in Valencia, California in the 1980s.  He first used the term stereolithography in his patent entitled “Apparatus for Production of Three-Dimensional Objects by Stereolithography” issued on March 11, 1986. Hull later relocated to Rock Hill, South Carolina and formed the company 3D Systems to manufacture the 3D printers.

Stereolithography works by sweeping an ultraviolet laser beam across a vat filled with a liquid photopolymer resin. Where the laser beam hits the resin, it solidifies to form one layer of a solid part. The part is lowered by a distance of .05mm to .15mm and a resin filled blade sweeps across the part to coat it with a fresh layer of liquid resin. This layer is also solidified by the ultraviolet laser and the process is repeated, layer by layer, until the full 3D part is completed. After printing, the parts are submerged in a chemical bath to remove any excess resin and cured in an ultraviolet oven.

The .stl file format, which is often used to store 3D dimensional data, was also developed by Hull to enable the transfer of the shape data into the stereolithography machines. 

Stereolithography was originally intended to accelerate the engineering process by allowing the creation of rapid prototypes and is still used primarily for that purpose. The process is also used to make molds for investment casting. The machines are typically large, expensive and produce parts with extremely high resolution and accuracy.

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The Creativity Paradox is sponsored in part by Convertible Solutions which supplies specialty paper substrates to digital printers, direct marketing companies and photo book fulfillment companies.