We’ve been following what Matterport has been doing in the 3D Scanner space since they first came on the scene–excited about their debut, saddened by their dropping the handheld 3d scanner and now elated to see what they’ve been up to. In February, they announced how they’re teaming up with Google on Google’s Project Tango,…

Remember when Dell announced the announcement of their latest laptop last July at SIiggraph? Of course you do. The Precision M3800 is the sub-$2k lappy with loads of style that weighs less than a Maltese pup and cooks your cad models like a high-end cooktop. Today, the official release date popped up on the M3800…

Have you ever walked the hallways dangling portable 3D mice from your arms like a raging super villain who can expel them from beneath the skin as an effective attack mechanism? I knew you have. This may even less of an occurrence now as the wee, corded 3DConnexion SpaceMouse is shedding its ties to the…

I’m all for tossing up some highly complex, geometrically intense, 3-dimensional visuals on flat surfaces to wow the senses and, I tell you what, Bot & Dolly do not disappoint. Bot & Dolly is a design and engineering studio that specializes in automation, robotics, and filmmaking, but to show off what their rigs and equipment…

The new Haptix motion controller just one-upped the Leap Motion controller in a big way. Last week we saw Elon Musk fiddling about mid-air with a rocket engine using the Leap Motion, while weeks before the Haptix device was launched on Kickstarter. While similar to the Leap Motion, it looks down on your nubbin’s instead…

Those lines. Those edges. The inescapable patterns of grill and USB ports. The new Dell Precision line is here, and although the marketing images look identical to the previous Precision line, these puppies carry a bit more pop than the predecessors. Surprised? Let’s have a look.

In last week’s Cool Tools of Doom n’ Stuff, we mentioned Elon’s upcoming reveal for a gestured-controlled rocket design. Sure enough he shared the video yesterday via Twitter. This is Elon riding the ‘Future of Design’ like the broken colt of an Altai mountain stallion. Giddyup.

Whipping out a full size monitor willy-nilly whilst travelling the tube may get you banned from public transportation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it anyway. Why stop at one monitor though? How about three or four? Especially when you can fit them all in your backpack. Able-HD is a 17″ portable HD 1080p…

Don’t look down. Your keyboard is filthy. What if you could toss it? What if you could type, interact and control devices using a 3-dimensional multi-touch interface… on any surface? The Haptix Kickstarter campaign, headed up by co-founders Darren Lim and Lai Xue, is in full swing, passing the $100k funding goal, heading toward a…

You can have my new XBox One—this is the only toy that I really want this holiday season. Glassified is a modified ruler with a transparent display that supplements physical strokes made on the paper with virtual graphics—consider it an augmented reality of sorts for simple lines on a page. Before I make it sound…

As you know, people like stories–reading stories, telling stories, freeze-drying stories and mounting them on a zebra pelt. Some even laugh and get emotional while doing so. But where do stories come from? Imagine a box. A box that allows you to choose the direction of a story. An internet connected box called The Choosatron.…

Since he retired from his graphic art profession 15 years ago, Hal Lasko now spends 10 hours a day crafting pixel art pixel by pixel. Due to his deteriorating eyesight, Hal uses the zoom tool extensively to create works that even some of today’s most talented graphic artists could learn from. In this mini documentary…

SIGGRAPH 2013 has been kicking into full gear the past couple of days, and among other exciting news to come out of the Anaheim, California event is the announcement from Microsoft Research that they are developing embedded ID tags for 3D printed objects. Titled InfraStructs, the internal tags are created from the same 3D printing…

Who needs a dinner bell anymore? As smart home devices become more mainstream and accessible, so does the market for creating a ‘smart family’. The kid-oriented FiLIP smartwatch offers a glimpse into how an application-specific design (rather than a design for ‘apps’) just might be the answer for thriving in the smartwatch market.

Well hello little tower workstations and welcome to the world “world’s most powerful rack workstation.” What’s that you say? You’re the new Precision workstation products from Dell? Don’t worry little chubblings, your prominent branding and genetic predisposition to accessible USB ports gives it all away. It’s true folks. Dell has announced the T1700 Small Form…

Say you’ve always wanted to build a Wi-Fi-controlled robot that spits carrot chunks at your pet rabbit. Impossible you say. How about a solar-powered, plant-watering device that remotely triggers a siren when a new episode of “Vikings” is on? Even though that’s completely practical for a number of reasons, the ability to do it may…

I know a lot of people who would let out a blood-curdling scream if you told them a ‘Mantis’ was on their shoulder. Especially, if their shoulder was being pinned down by this massive beast. The Mantis Robot is the creation of designer Matt Denton. It’s no ordinary robot and he’s no ordinary designer. Matt…

Right now, at this very instant, I’m listening to Moon Chon Chayoh (Zombie Disco Squad Remix) by Munnibrotherz. I am of course tapping my feets to the beats, gritting my teeths as I sits in my seats (or something). For the past three years the MIT Media Labs Design Innovation workshop at PESIT in Bangalore…

When you run around the office projecting your arm flabs in a wave-like motion toward people’s computers, you may believe you are bestowing unknown performance gains upon the PC’s of your coworkers. You are in fact, simply burning calories and injecting a small amount of fear into their workday. When you do return to your…

Lasers vs. plastic extruders. We all know laser cutters are superior to 3D printers. Mostly, because you can’t put plastic extruders on sharks (or any other sea creature) to make them even more vicious. It also turns out that laser cutters are a tad faster at fabricating certain items…. as long as it’s flat and…

When the Cintiq first came out, I vividly remember an illustrator friend of mine saying “It’s not a matter of if I’m going to buy one, it’s a matter of when I’m going to buy one.” Perhaps a lot of designers and illustrators have found themselves in the same boat and have waited for the…

Microsoft just put on the transparent face masks, lined up the sensors and released an updated version of the Kinect SDK. To the high-pitched squeals of (some) developer’s delight, Kinect for Windows SDK 1.7, along with an updated developer toolkit and new Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), is available on the Kinect for Windows website. It’s…

I know it’s bound to bring on the arm spasms, causing you to fall from your chair, spilling your coffee on your workstation tower and frying the Quadro GPU you already have, but that’s ok, because NVIDIA has gone and done the unthinkable, nay the unimaginable–they’ve released a new line of Quadro workstation graphics cards…

Yes, this is a post about the impending shipment of two products. Why would we be writing about such things? Well, first of all, they’re incredibly classy designs. Second, they are two of the most anticipated new tech gadgets of the new year. OUYA is the $99 Android-based game console that had its start on…

When a girl is applying that special shade of chemical-infused eye-liner to their lids, the last thing going through their heads is all the science and incredible amounts of process that go into it. Unless they’re a girl in science… or interested in science… or forced by their parents to watch sciency videos on making…

This post is part of our series on cool crowd-funded projects that are pushing forward technology in product development and introducing innovative product design. They’re all projects we’re contributing to as well. If you would like to participate and share your project or another you find interesting, submit it to kickit@www.solidsmack.com or let us know…

Two years ago, you blew your nose, looked up and everyone and their grandma’s elbow was using a device fit with a multi-touch screen and fifty finger-enabled apps. There’s not much that makes multi-touch newsworthy these days, but FlatFrog is going beyond resolution and screen size updates with a pressure detecting technology that makes the…

3D Printing has been lauded as the next way to bring jobs back to America and the rest of the West by the Economist and other intellectual luminaries like Glenn Beck (cough cough). CAD-to-Print technologies combined with geographic proximity to the buyer has been summed up as the solution to what some call “the China…

Researchers at the State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Northwestern Polytechnical University have been experimenting with 3D printing since 1995. And just recently they announced that they had printed a huge 3 meter wingspar out of titanium, strong enough to meet standards for aerospace use. Colour us impressed – to my knowledge, no one has created…

All the STEM news out of CES 2013 may have been tablets and 3D printing, but our eye is on the third generation of LEGO Mindstorm robotics as well. The new Mindstorm EV3 rolls in, firing balls of robot-educating awesome with a new programmable brick loaded with new features for today’s generation of tech-savvy kiddos…

Sit up straight! Grit those teeth! DON’T MOVE. Here’s just one of the many items we missed in our predictions for this year. Hand-held camera scanners. We saw a slew of prototypes last year, from devices tied into a Kinect, like ReconstructMe, to slick, smaller versions like the ARMADA concept. Lynx Laboratories is preparing to…

Vancouver-based EatART is an art research center that borders heavily on make space. They have a lot of cool projects, including the famous eight-legged, ridable robot, Mondo Spider–had to be inspiration for Artisan’s Asylum Hexapod–but the latest project has been a 50-foot electromechanical snake called Titanoboa that met a Kickstarter funding goal, stopped off at…

Trying to record and mix sound, especially when you’re simultaneously attempting to squeeze cats and slap your lower back in burst of rhythmic flare, can be both daunting and painful. There’s a lot of high priced equipment that makes it easier–one of my favorite being a BOSS VE-20 Vocal Processor–but if you prefer the more…

Hark! 2013 is upon us! In many ways, the previous year seemed a turning point for where we’re going while simultaneously lacking any sort of drastic, earth-shattering changes. However, there’s plenty of fat, tech-laden fodder on which to speculate for 2013 and that’s exactly what we’re going to dish out for you folks. In recent…

While there may be enough endearing puppet shows on the web waves, there are certainly not enough puppet shows that take on the build, hack, solder, crack, spark, squeeze and flow of electronics and circuitry. Adafruit is changing that with a new show airing next year called Circuit Playground. The show is set to premiere…

Small form factor is a given for a cuddly, plush chub of cuteness, but when it comes to bricks of sheet metal and PCB’s, it’s typically an afterthought. Not so with the new Stealth WPC-525F (name needs work). Stealth Computer is known for rugged, industrial strength computer systems. Now they’re slamming high-performance and their multi-level…

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) aims to reduce the amount of electrical and electronic equipment being produced and to encourages reducing, reusing, and recycling in the UK. Ultimately, this is forcing manufacturers to collect and recycle electronic equipment at end-of life more than ever before. Designer Ed Boaden explores the middle ground…

Getting through airport security is more difficult than ever with close, personal examinations of everything from your footwear to your body. There are some special considerations when you’re taking electronics through security at the airport. If you’re smart and ready when it comes to getting your laptop through security checkpoints, you should have nothing to…

Imagine an interactive air screen that puts an image/video/CAD model into the air. Now imagine that image stays totally penetrable for physical objects and is powered by a multi-touch optical system that is controlled by your gestures, sans gloves, controllers, and gadgets. Now stop imagining…its real and it’s here.

If you’re looking to inspire the Kid Maker(s) in your life, we’ve done the maker-appropriate gift giving research for you. Everything in our Gift Guide for Kid Makers is bound to have the junior designer or engineer in your life destined for greatness. Lifesavers storybooks are so yesterday.

The Season of Giving is in full swing–and there’s still time to get your shopping or wish list done. Perhaps you have no idea what to get your design buddies, or even ask for yourself? For those who are lost in the world of gift giving and want some inspiration for the perfect gift, refer…

ShapeShot can scan a human face in 1/2000 of a second. The result is a high-resolution water-tight 3D-print-ready mesh file. A favorite S.L. Jackson quote comes to mind: “When you absolutely positively got to [scan] every m*f* in the room, accept no substitutes.” And that’s what makerbot store NYC is planning to do: scan every…

Calling themselves “The Next Dimension of Touch”, Qeexo’s new FingerSense technology features a tiny acoustic sensor installed into a touchscreen device that listens and measures the vibrations of objects that touch it. Whether the input comes in the form of a a fingertip, knuckle, or nail, FingerSense adds an enhancement to touch interaction that allows…

We’ve seen motion sensing keyboards like the LEAP and Magic Cube, tactile 5-finger keyset devices like the Amenbo and Jellyfish and even foot switch input devices, but we have yet to see a minimal 10-button touchscreen keyset… until today. ASETNIOP (pronounced a-set-ni-op) is the creation of Zack Dennis and, as you’ll see, reduces the massive complexity of that…

You know, lately, it’s like the internet got all kinds of excited and threw up 3D all across your web browser. It’s actually quite a few companies who are tickling the tummy of the web, causing all sorts of sites and ideas about how we can view and interact with 3D within the browser. Most…

Ever wonder what a 3D Printing store would look like? Mix a little bit of Willy Wonka’s charm with Bre Pettis’ hair and you’ve got yourself a MakerBot store. AND WE WERE THERE. IN NYC! Check out our video as we talk to Bre at the NYC MakerFaire and then hop on over to the…

Typically, the only sound that physically levitates objects is the scream from your vocal cords beating against the screen when that thin-extrude doesn’t work. Perhaps there’s another way to use soundwaves to manipulate geometry? Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) are successfully using an acoustic levitator to develop pharmaceuticals. Using the device originally developed by…

Rapid Manufacturing of bio-compatible materials is taking off in a big way. If researchers aren’t developing new ways to use a Reprap to create veins or printing prothetics beaks for Bald Eagles, they’re exploring avenues to perfect the art of making organs. Is this a harbinger for things to come? We hope so. Hey Solidworks,…

In Spetember of 1995, you couldn’t take photos with a phone and turn them into 3D data. Last week you couldn’t either. This week, you can. Hello future, nice to meet you. Yes, turning photos taken with your phone into a 3D model is now possible. Autodesk 123D Catch has been available for desktop and…

As the bottom end of 3D Printing is being filled with hundreds of different companies competing for market share, new machines are appearing. Only a month after Airbus announced its intentions of developing massive 3D Printers that can manufacture whole wings and fuselages, researchers at Swinburne University in Melbourne Australia managed to develop one of the…