.MGX Design products

Exporting to more than 20 countries in the world, .MGX operates both as a supplier of manufacturing excellence and a design company mastering its own concepts and brand. Apart from its in-house products, it provides solutions in all types of fields such as design, art, architecture, interiors, fashion, beauty & cosmetics. Part of the Materialise group founded in 1990 by Msc. MBA Wilfried Vancraen in a joint venture with the University of Leuven, Materialise.MGX has benefited from the most renowned rapid prototyping services. As worldwide leader in this field especially in the applications and solutions found in medicine, dentistry and the automotive industry, Materialise decided strategically to broaden its competencies to the design world. With its new division created in
late 2003, Materialise has brought about a real revolution in innovative product development by giving the designers the opportunity to access new information and global digital tools. The quite recently born label ‘Materialise.MGX’ is confi dently going beyond tooling and digital CAD software by combining art and technology to an already well-established company experience of more than 15 years in the high-tech area of 3D printing techniques. Among those advanced technologies, the most popular are stereolithography (SLA), selective laser sintering (SLS) and fused deposition modelling

The sensational experience of producing extraordinary products started in 2003 by focusing on the development of lighting items. The new aesthetics generated by taking technology as a starting point for creativity is giving birth to a range of suprising objects. In 4 years time, the product range of Materialise.MGX has been broadened into multiple lampshades, furniture pieces, interior goods, jewellery and accessories. The production process, which is still quite expensive, restrics the product series to more limited editions and one-of-a-kind projects. Part of the 'Masstige' cultural and societal phenomenon, design products made by and labelled *.MGX are part of the growing smart luxury market.

.MGX is the file extension of the Materialise software, Magics. This software makes the rapid prototyping and manufacturing techniques accessible to professionals. The highly contemporary CAD fi le (made by today’s leading design software packages such as Rhino, 3dStudioMax, Maya, Microstation, Cinema4d, Solid Works, and more) can be transformed into an STL-fi le and then converted by Magics into .MGX in order to render the design project printable. Magics is a market leader in pre-press software interfacing between product design and 3D printer. The application includes analysing parts, making process related design changes, optimising *.STL models, finite element analysis, designing fixtures, tools and more. Magics, for those who are unfamiliar with rapid prototyping technologies, can be compared with the process of inkjet printing. Instead of spraying a text by inkjet, this technology allows to lay, or consolidate 3D layer over layer (slice over slice) in a
vessel of liquid polymer in the case of stereolithography or in a vessel of powder for selective laser sintering. The various Rapid Manufacturing techniques today use different construction methods but the principle shared by all them is additive fabrication, by transforming material from one state to another (liquid to solid or welding of material particles by the laser beam). The process of polymerising when struck by a laser beam is made possible in the cases of SLA and SLS by the photosensitivity of the polymer. Therefore, with the Magics production software developed by Materialise and thanks to 3D printing technologies, it has become feasible to translate 3D visual images into sustainable 3D material structures. Since 2003, this technology has created for the first time great novelty in lifestyle and interior environment. As evidence of inter national recognition, Material Connexion in New York selected the Selective Laser Sintering process for inclusion in its Material Archives as ‘Innovation Excellence’.

By bridging the gap between idea and reality, .MGX aims at materialising whatever the client would dream to achieve. Behind the .MGX technology, the brand philosophy and strategy is based on a custom-made approach of highly innovative design products that are conceived, developed, and in the case of .MGX collections art-directed, produced and distributed. .MGX by means of Rapid Manufacturing creates a dynamic and total transformative experience from the non-tangible creative process, with flow from data to a consolidated monolithic materialised product. It allows the designers and design studios, engineers, architects and manufacturers
to probe the infinite options of 3D printing in a new and futuristic environment, by growing the product 3D pixel after pixel, opening new gates to creativity and product intelligence. Since its creation in 2003, Naomi Kaempfer, Managing Art Director of .MGX, has launched every year a new .MGX collection. She commissioned circa 20 well-known architects, designers and design studios based on specific themes in order to developthe ideas and concepts as well as the various facets of the technology. Facing the phenomenon of mass production, the strategy of .MGX has been to find a confluence between art and technology in order to avoid reproducing the ordinary and already ‘cliché’ products seen on international design markets. Its quest and ability for inimitability and authenticity makes the .MGX brand products different from others produced by classical industrial means. By focusing on mass customisation through special projects and its own collections, Materialise .MGX has access to infinite options for product development. The MGX logo is made of a constellation of three dots representing a triangular form, the key structure of the 3D mesh, of the STL/MGX file. The geometry, which is produced on the design software package, is narrated to the skin properties of the 3D volumetric shape. By triangulation, the STL-file produces a numerical representation of the XYZ coordinates of the triangle vertices, located in the 3d design space. Quoting Leonard of Pisa known as Fibonacci (Pisa, 1170-1250): “Everything around us can be represented and understood by numbers”, the application of numbers to compute shapes is revolutionary today yet in fact goes back to the Middle Ages!