Rapid Products

The design products-department at the Royal College in London teamed up with a company called 3D Systems to get their hands on some state-of-the-art rapid-prototyping equipment. The brief was to create projects that are not prototypes but products that couldn't have been made with any other technique. The results were quite stunning and point towards a future of manufacturing that seems to be swiftly approaching:

Oscar Narud concieved a three-dimensional labyrinth game in which there's a tunnel inside a toy figure. You drop in a steel ball through its mouth and have to get it out of the eye. Yota Kakuda made a hyperelastic mesh and Tithirut Kutchamuch designed a set of "virgin" rings that come, since everything is produced in one go, in sealed cases that you have to break first. David Sutton applied a generative software normally used for simulating the growth of roots while Joe Wentworth created a gorgeous snap-off calendar. And, finally, Tim Stolzenberg designed a gun that came out of the printer - working. I've tried it.