Nokia Lumia 820 offers owners of 3D printers make their own shells smartphones

Nokia opens the 3D printing community publishing files that allow users to create their own shells smartphones. The owners of the Lumia 820 will be the first to benefit, today said the Finnish company in a blog post. for Malik Saadi, an analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, this shift is primarily part of a marketing strategy, when the contractor seeks to draw attention to its products.

The Lumia 820 was announced in September. It uses an interchangeable shell allows users to customize their smartphone with a number of colors. Now they can create themselves.

 Two file formats

For those who want to design their own shells, Nokia released models, case studies, materials and recommended best practices. Mechanical drawings in two file formats STL and STP can be downloaded from the developer site of the manufacturer. However, Nokia recalls that printed shell models can not be marketed.

After being confined to prototyping and niche curiosity, 3D printing began to grow through the products published by companies such as MakerBot Industries, Stratasys and 3D Systems and services such as Sculpteo, which allows users to download a file and then print it for personal purposes.