Officeworks’ 3D Experience Centre

Officeworks’ launched the first ever 3D Experience Centre in June this year. The experience centre is the first of its kind from a major Australian retailer, where people are able to buy 3D printers, scan and print 3D objects and become immortalised via the (already very popular) ‘Mini-Me’ 3D printer.

The 3D Experience Centre provides the public with the opportunity to create 3D replicas of existing products from a scanner, for example fashion accessories, artwork and model designs or children’s toys, using their own design file to create their own 3D product or create Mini Me of themselves using the full body scanner.

Mini Me

The “Mini Me” facility is your opportunity to create a miniature 3D model of yourself and share the experience with your family and friends using Officeworks’ state of the art 3D printing services.

3D replicas of existing products

We headed down to Officeworks’ Russell Street store Melbourne CBD to have a test drive of their 3D printer.

The 3D Printing is an exciting technology that lets you bring your creative ideas to life in three dimensions. All you have to do is bring the object of your choice to the 3D Experience Centre and speak with one of Officeworks’ friendly Team Members.

The object will then be placed in the 3D scanner which will scan it from top-to-bottom, left-to-right.

Once the process is completed, Officeworks will email you your 3D model file in ready to download form.

A 3D model file typically takes between 4-7 days to produce, touch up and prepare. The time and file size depends on the complexity of the object scanned.

Then, you can either print your 3D Model at home or at Officeworks.

Our 3D Apple Model

We decided to put the scanner to the test with a mission to create a 3D replica of an apple…

Pick the odd fruit out!*

And it came out extremely well. We were really impressed with the ability of the scanner to pick up all the subtle shapes of the apple we scanned.

The choice of Powder printing (as recommended by Officeworks’ staff) was perfect as it resulted in the apple being printed in full 3D colour.

Powder models are created by printing a binding material and coloured ink, layer by layer into a gypsum based powder. The result of this was that our apple model was very detailed, and was (in our view) the prettiest apple model we have ever seen!