You know that burning sensation, the one where you dump crunchy granules of fertilizer all over yourself after the spreader explodes? Yeah, that one. What to do? You’re stuck because you want to finish feeding the nitrogen-depleted grass blades, but can’t. Your afternoon plans have been foiled yet again. Well, there’s no better time to dust off that ol’ 3D printer catalog and start looking for some plastic-layering power to make sure that this never. happens. AGAIN.
I know, you may be 5 layers of neon-green acrylic away from overdosing on your custom design addiction. Too bad, it’s about to get 1,000x worse. Ponoko and CloudFab have teamed up to combine the goodness of 2D laser-cut design and the multi-dimensionality of 3D printing to bring you… Personal Factory 4.
This is probably one of the best ideas to happen in the diy-fab scene yet. Ponoko has always been the source for custom laser-cut design. Now, they bring material suppliers, fabbers, creators and DIYers together to release the 4-headed hydra of product design delight.
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Are you ready? Really, you may want to cancel the cheese squeezing party you’ve been planning and instead plan on squeezing out some extraordinary 3D models. There is but one reason for this.
You have till Friday, November 26th to submit your model for the GrabCAD 3D Printing Challenge. It couldn’t be more simple either. Just upload your model, bask in the comments of others and see what everyone else is submitting. Here are the details.
Sculpteo, the 3D print service we featured last week, will announce tomorrow (October 19th) that their print service will be available to U.S. makers, fabbers or any other person that enjoys the feel of layered plastic.
I enjoy a good 3D print as much the next stark-raving mad 3D print fan, but there’s something cool about being able to upload a file to a faraway land via a slick interface, pay a fairly high price and get a freshly fabricated 3D print delivered to your front door.
One of the latest players in this field is Sculpteo.com. Hailing from the bustling suburb of Vanves, France (just southwest of Paris), they’re providing services for both artist needing a pretty print and professionals needing a better quality print.
You know what’s cooler than flesh-eating robots? Nothing. That’s the worse it can get. However, printing out robots and robot parts falls into a whole other class of cool which will distract you from any impending robot doom.
I’ve never thought about using Shapeways to print different variations of mechanical creatures and their implements of death. Although they can print just about anything you can model up, robots are slightly refreshing idea. Now if they’ll drop the price of what it cost to print items and continue to increase the available print options.
There are a few gems among mech print mix. Here are some of my favorites…
You remember that time you were yelled at by that German guy for putting putting peanut butter in the print mechanism? Yeah, that was hilarious. He was like, “SLA!! Schweinhund!! nicht meine Erdnussbutter!!!” and you were like, “wha?” while spraying a goat down with a water hose.
I’ll never forget that. It’s sad however that peanut butter doesn’t work in a standard, bolt-it-to-the-floor 3D printer. Maybe one day, but until then, you’ll have to settle with the standard materials and the standard operating procedures. If not… lets just say it thirty lashes with a week-old bratwurst.
Solid Concepts has your back in the mean time and the tips to help you along. Here they are.
Oh yeah, you know you’ve gone too far when you’ve got little Johnny sprayin’ cheese spread out his nose to form building for your moon-based train station display. Those hospital trips are about to drop significantly and your family can rest their weary nostrils. Fab@home Model 2 is here.
Fab@Home is a project started by Hod Lipson and Evan Malone of the Cornell University Computational Synthesis Laboratory (CCSL). Jeffrey Lipton joined the crew later to start the Fab@Home Student Team with Lipson and push the project to where it is today.
We shot Jeffrey an email to get his take on the fab scene, automation, best 3D software for 3D printing, and of course, the future. Here’s what he had to say.
The design process is something we absolutely CRAVE here at SolidSmack. You can throw up pretty pictures all day, but going behind the scenes and getting an idea of the work and thought that goes into a design… simply wonderful.
This is a perfect example. Jonathan Bergqvist wanted to have a shoulder mount for his Canon 7D. Fortunately for him, his pops is a skilled woodworker that can turn a raw stick of birch into a thing of beauty. From start to finish, here’s the process of Jonathan’s dad, Erik, creating the body, handles and focus mechanism for his son’s camera. How cool is that?
Look out folks, there’s a CNC storm a’comin’. A wee, cute little storm of laser cut, three-axis THUNDER! It’s the DIYLILCNC and it is so lil’ you’ll want to build it, give it a hug and then command it to do your gantry-mounted bidding!
In the same open-source artery as the Makerbot 3D Printer, Chris Reilly and Taylor Hokanson, with funding from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, have developed plans to create your very own desktop milling machine without having to even know what CNC means.
Earlier last month they gave a presentation at CAA Chicago 2010 that explains all you want to know. So, get your smock, align your cutting tools… GO.
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