Creative Tools, the same company that brought us #3DBenchy, the free 3D printer torture test model, recently released a new open-source, DIY 3D-printing project to make photographing small objects easier than ever. It’s called the Smartphone Photo Studio, a bench that holds your phone parallel to your small objects, allowing you to take great, detailed…

It takes a lot of determination, bravery, and selflessness to be a firefighter. It also takes good amount of strength considering all the tools they have to lug around, not to mention their heavy duty PPE suits that can weigh 45 pounds alone. You want to get the job done fast. So, what if there…

So many projects being posted on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter – the DIY culture is booming. All over the country makerspaces are popping up are pouring out products of those ambitious enough to create their own. I believe now, the quality and practicality of a 3D printed project has become important as a whole. Perfect…

Have you ever been frustrated with the limitations of Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone and other mini computers? For me, it comes down to IO. I needed 100 IO pins on the Pi, and I had to get shift register ICs – annoying. Anyway, you’ve made simple hardware, but you’re ready to create something truly scalable, like…

Technology keeps advancing, but not always in the way we predicted in the 90s. Volumetrics hopes to change that with the rollout of its open-source volumetric display design, which is not only the highest quality available, but also the most affordable to produce. But wait. What is a volumetric display?

Nature is often a great tool for inspiration for designers, except when the weather isn’t exactly cooperating. Rain storms, high winds, and falling leaves all work against those of us trying to get outside for a few moments of sketching or inspiration.

Thanks to many innovations in the tech world, prosthetic limbs are more efficient and sometimes even inexpensive, but the design is usually similar. What if you could get something vastly unique that makes you feel like a superhero? That’s where Bristol-based Open Bionics comes in.

Ever since the release of Back to the Future, people have been clamoring for their own hoverboard. McFly made them look cool as he glided through the future streets. However, it’s 2015 and hoverboards are still not commercially available, neither are self-drying jackets for that matter. But one Canadian inventor is one step closer to…

Maybe your grandparents give you checks for Christmas or make the best cookies, but can they make you a rocket? Chris Knowlton became inspired to make a rocket ship playhouse for his 2-year-old grandson, Benjamin and the result is breathtaking.

I am currently certain that we are approaching the apex of our societal laziness. I would be surprised if future generations will even bother to walk or eat for themselves (they will probably create a button which will call a robot to do these things for them).

Whether we’re at work or just going out on the town, we all carry some items with us–a wallet, a smartphone or even a pocketknife. If you’re like me, that knife goes everywhere with you, but I must admit, my Benchmade Adamas is a little too big to be classified as EDC (Everyday Carry). For…

If you thought 3D printing was just for medical ingenuity and machine part manufacturing, you’re wrong. You can also make really, really creepy dolls or exceptionally cute, jointed robots, and Sonia Verdu is there to help.

While Richard Branson is attempting to wage war on worker’s boredom, one young entrepreneur is convinced that if you are bored at work, you’d might as well be bored and healthy. The new Perch desk is the “Revolutionary Sit-to-Stand Desk” that promises to be the most customizable, affordable and quickly interchangeable desk of its kind…

Liberty Trike is killing its Indiegogo campaign with a stylish new spin on the conventional motorized scooter. The makers claim it offers more versatility, more power and easier transport than traditional mobility assistance devices, but the price may leave you limping. Mobility is something we all take for granted, until it’s gone. Liberty Trike wants…

The tech world is swarming with stories about the latest drone innovations. Before you know it, someone else has built a drone that can draw, follow you, or build a bridge. It can be overwhelming, especially if you want to join in on the drone-driving party. Now, one group of Greek engineers have a challenge…

Super enhanced vision is something we dream about when we’re kids, only to discover the closest humans can get are corrective lenses or laser surgery. Apparently, that’s not good enough for the Interactive Architecture Lab. The London-based studio, out of The Bartlett School of Architecture, is interested in the behavior and interaction of things and…

Most everything in the maker community is becoming more open source. It’s almost a requirement–allowing modification of the original hardware or software design, through a free license, to suit the needs of the end user. Companies such as Raspberry Pi Foundation, Arduino and LittleBits all support the open-source initiative and even some of the larger…

There are literally hundreds of different smartphones on the market. We buy them, hoard them sometimes, and enjoy their apps while blocking out everything and everyone around us. Ah, technology.

It’s Beijing Design Week at Parkview Green in the capital city, which means you’re either seeing constant updates on Twitter or you didn’t know Beijing even had such a thing. Either way, Beijing Design Week (BJDW) promotes design and infrastructure within the city and often showcases the latest in contemporary design. What makes this year…

Being deaf or hard of hearing can be a difficult impairment to overcome and while some turn to learning sign language to communicate, others turn to getting cochlear implants, which give them the ability to hear for the first time or regain some of their hearing after their loss. The problems with cochlear implants is…

Have a great idea for a new product but are afraid to bring it up at meetings or perhaps you are having trouble fleshing-out your idea and need direction? Then Adobe’s Kickbox might just be what you need to solve those issues. The idea behind Kickbox essentially gives all the tools necessary to Adobe employees…

Back in the late 20’s and 30’s, Japan was establishing their Folk Art movement (Mingei) due in no small part to philosopher Yanagi Soetsu. Yanagi became enamored with Korean crafts and soon after began ‘rescuing’ lowly pots used by commoners in the Edo and Meiji eras and found them to be beautiful in their own…

MechWarrior, Robotech, Titanfall, you name it- fighting using giant robots is awesome no matter how you slice it and could soon become a reality. MegaBots are looking to make that dream come true with the world’s first 15-foot tall, 15,000-pound robots. The robots will feature modular, pneumatic powered cannon arm emplacements that fire impressive 3-pount…

Chances are, if you are alive in any way, you have more than likely seen at least one episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. When the first show aired in 2003, it featured SpecialFX experts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage taking two or more popular myths per episode and performing a series of experiments…

Jupiter Ascending by the Wachowski siblings opened this weekend. After seeing the original trailer, I was struck by the hovering, glowing cool factor of the boots for “Caine” (played by Channing Tatum). Hmmm, LEDs on the bottom of the sole. And there lying in the corner of my shop, an old pair of my boots. It…

When we were kids, go-carts ranked right up there with game consoles and pizza as popular things we wanted to get our hands on. As adults, we like to think we’ve outgrown those childish things, however deep down we really secretly haven’t and Razor is capitalizing on our inner-child with the recent release of their…

One day while I was working in my shop I simply thought, “what if I packed an LED Throwie into a paintball?” LED Throwies (LT) have always fascinated me. Little complete systems with high-visibility and interactivity; just a little light with a big impact, visually, even artistically. LTs are typically thrown at ferrous metal walls or…

Walk into any grocery store and you will find a whole section of the store dedicated to meat of all kinds packaged and promptly digested. Most people don’t really know the undertaking it took to get those mouth-watering cuts (unless you’re a vegan) to their respective stores, which goes far beyond what a simple butcher…

…and the flood of desktop 3D printers keeps on coming. MakerBot, Stratasys and FormLabs are just a few of the models to hit the market over the years and even large corporations such as Autodesk and Hewlett-Packard are getting ready to release their own. Another large corporation, Roland DG, has recently announced their foray into…

It’s hard to imagine that back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, some vehicle manufacturers were building their cars with wood frames (nobody cared too much about safety standards back then). The long defunct Packard Motor Car Company was one of those who touted ‘Luxury’ using wooden frames. A series of silent films posted…

The 5AXISMAKER puts a mill, 3D scanner, 3D printer, water cutter and wire cutter into one desktop box.
Changing the machines function is done through a simple head swap, making it both easy and versatile.

The Raspberry Pi has been on the scene since 2012 as one of the more popular SBCs on the market and it’s clear to see why. It’s incredibly small for all the hardware that’s packed onto it and won’t break the bank in terms of cost, however there is a relatively new contender in the…

There are a ton of open source hardware projects built around the Arduino microcontroller…such as the Airmonica musical instrument and the Pixelate interactive eating game, however none of these offer the aesthetic appeal of DoNothingBox’s OSWatch. Let me rephrase that, nothing has more of a fad appeal like a “smartwatch.” I want it, but don’t…

As we all know, not all 3D printers are equal when it comes to the printing materials. Depending on the fabrication process, 3D printers can use any number of materials including thermoplastics, metal alloys and even edible substances. The DWS Lab XFAB however, wants to change that. Using laser stereolithography, the new XFAB is capable…

Guitar players have all been there before: you’re laying-down some great riffs for a new song and then BAM!, the phone rings. After talking up a storm about the song you just wrote, you go back to play it again and your mind is blank and you can’t remember how to play it in that…

3D printers are great for making personalized object designs, but they typically don’t allow for customization while augmenting design parameters on the fly. This becomes a problem for those who want to design customized items such as personalized face masks, jewelry or irregular-sized parts for ‘not-quite-right’ projects. Norwegian-based software company Uformia is looking to solve…

3D printers rely on the input of G-code to print CAD-based models layer by painstaking layer over what seems an inordinate period of time. These slicer apps are inherently ‘non-customizable,’ meaning you cannot manipulate the extrusion thickness of the material being deposited or vary the deposition path along the printer’s X, Y and Z-axis. Simply…

3D printing and CAD software couldn’t function without each other, they go together like a match made in pythonOCC. As 3D printing continues to build its freight train like momentum for home users and hobbyists, so too does the adoption of CAD software that can be both expensive and difficult to master. Software such as…

Most desktop 3D printers used by hobbyists, such as RepRap and MakerBot, manufacture objects using the ABS ‘extrusion’ method, which is great for producing objects at resolutions at 100 microns on average (like the Replicator 2). While there is nothing wrong with making objects at that resolution, sometimes projects require increased resolutions that those printers…

I work with a guy who routinely lifts whole sections from a dev-board pcb layout and places it into his own design. Lets call him Sparky. You think Sparky is gonna calculate values for the discretes surrounding that maxim boost converter?  Heck no! Not if he can help it. Sparky is all about easy street.…

Drones are quickly becoming commonplace and it’s not only military and law enforcement who have them. Even the kid a couple of houses over has a quadrocopter lit up with LEDs he flies at night a couple of times per week, prompting me to take video and uploading it to YouTube to see how many…

It’s true, the ‘Dark Side’ always seems to have the better equipment over their ‘Rebel Scum’ adversaries and just looks better to boot. It looks like the US Army is taking a page strait out of the ‘Empire’s’ handbook with a new CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiation and Nuclear) filed mask for soldiers deployed in combat…

Fresh water is in short supply these days…just look at the statistics for California and you will have a pretty good idea of how scarce it really is. Technically speaking, only 3% of the world’s water is fresh, which isn’t saying much considering it still needs to be filtered or treated before it can be…

When RobotChallenge announced it would be teaming up with Arduino and RS Components for this year’s “Hack the Arduino Robot!” competition, pocket protectors went shooting into the sky. And for good reason. The 11th annual RobotChallenge competition features innovative, and quite frankly, creepy, robot creatures, raising the bar for what a simple Arduino-bots can become.…

It almost seems as if mobile device screens will crack under any circumstances, from the lightest tap to accidentally stepping on the device. This notion is inherently true for iPhone users who, according to Square Trade, spend roughly $1-billion a year to fix cracked screens as well as other ailments such as water damage. Companies…

Most everyone has watched The Jetsons at one point or another. One of the most iconic moments of the show was the opening where George’s space vehicle folds into a briefcase when he gets to work (those 9-hour work weeks were murder). While we don’t yet have flying cars that can fold into luggage, we…

When it comes to mechanical keyboards, users fall into one of two categories- they either love them or hate them, there is no middle ground. Some find the auditory ‘click’ of the keystrokes soothing, while others would rather undergo a root canal than listen to the incessant clacking of the keys. For those that fall…

It sounded like Santa was on his way at SolidWorks World 2014… at all times. Santa wasn’t delivering overly packed innovative tech and software, but the I.D. badges everyone wore rang out that signature sound. The way the lanyard connected to the badge holder was with two loosely fitted stamped sheet metal parts. The result…