Makerbot announced today at CES 2013 the release of their Replicator 2x Experimental 3D Printer, an upgraded version of their successful line of Replicator 2. I’m reading the feeds as the info comes in and it’s looking good. You get the impression Makerbot is trying very hard to hit the Living Room and the Office,…
3D Systems is a positive potent powerplant of press releases. Coming off their acquisition of Geomagic, 3D Systems decided to unleash upon the unsuspecting world their second-generation line-up of Consumer 3D Printers, just in time for CES 2013 (okay, not so unexpected). We asked, what could the ‘X’ in CubeX stand for? Famously, when US…
Filed under awwww, Crayon Creatures mixes Elmer-glued 3D Printing and the drawings of your young ones, allowing you to figure their scribbles out and genuinly exclaim, “OHHH, it is a Giraffe!” But, there is a challenge – how does one stick it to the fridge? Magnets and more Elmer’s glue, but really, there’s no need as…
Nylon, it’s wonderful stuff. A silky fabric when weaved or a flexible polymer when moulded. Reach out with your hands and chances are you will touch something Nylon (Warning: Solidsmack is not responsible for any injury, due to electric fan or angry, nylon-collered Wombats). Oh, you have a 3D Printer next to your computer? And…
Amazing new campaign out on Kickstarter – a lens attachment to give you, the iPhone user, the ability to scan an object and turn it into an OBJ, DXF or STL. So yes you can share your very best ‘ducklips’ over Facebook with an extra dimension of sheer silliness. The PhoneScope3D is placed over the…
2D Copy Centres are sooooo 2011. 3D Copy Centres – now that’s something I need. You know that feeling when you drafting a CAD model and you need it in your hand? And it’s 3am? And no one’s given you the new code to the Stratasys because you kept on 3D Printing what your boss…
Yes sir, it’s Euromold again and the big-wig 3D Printing companies have come out in force to strut their stuff and eye the competition. Although we theorize that these are merely rubber-band guns, it’s possible that Objet made a sword (rather, a golf club). They certainly have a machine of a size that is capable…
Yes, it’s a helicopter controlled by your brain. Something I never thought possible in my lifetime, let alone commercialized, but there you have it. The Puzzlebox Orbit is a toy chopper, the sort you fought for at Target on Black Friday. And had you avoided the hangry crowds you could have supported the Orbit on Kickstarter.…
3D Systems, the biggest and oldest 3D printing company in the World has filed litigation against Formlabs and their Form 1 printer. The infringement stems from one of 3D System’s stereolithography patents, a technique that uses a UV laser to selectively bind a vat of photoresin into a solid object. Not only that, Kickstarter is…
In the latest twist of the long-running 3D Printed gun debate, Stratasys revoked the lease on a printer that a company called “Defence Distributed” got. Defense Distributed is run by Cody Wilson, a student at the “University of Texas School of Law in Austin. He is a student of Bastiat, Locke, Hoppe, and Anthony de…
All of us are recovering from what was a whole lot of fun in the Big Apple at World Maker Faire. More detailed posts will be forthcoming as we digest (AKA sleep/render video) on what occured. Suffice to say, success! In the meanwhile, I thought I’d post some pictures and quotes from a gem blogpost…
Rumors were swirling of the launch of a new 3D printer by a relatively unknown, yet pedigree group of MIT grads who call themselves Formlabs. And yesterday, they unveiled the Form 1 3D Printer on Kickstarter. Backed by glowing recommendations of John Hirschtick and Skylar Tibbits, the Form 1 seems to be an ‘it’s all that’…
Last April, I was lucky enough to be contacted by the Discovery Channel (Canada) and have them put the spotlight on the DShape and the Rygo Project. I was unlucky enough to have suffered a bike accident a week before filming, so the bruiser and stitches above my eye make me look significantly gruffer and…
Rumors have abounded about whether or not Makerbot is going to release the documentation for their latest machine, as they have with the Replicator and the Thing-o-matic. Open-Source is Bre’s middle name. Tangibot threw a wrench into Makerbot’s narrative to be the biggest hardware company in the Open Source world. Lucky for them, the combination…
Last week Makerbot stuck a timer on their website, filling everyone with suspense about what the heck would happen at 3pm EST today. And lo and behold, Bre Pettis delivered upon us a press conference. Not his best performance – he seemed a bit nervous. But who cares – look what he brought! A new Replicator…
Combining new and old, Ross Barber, at the London College of Fashion, has been stitching leather with 3D Printed pieces to create these absolutely superb ‘Future Noir’ shoes. It’s beyond commercialization at this point, so it’s not going to be available at Target soon or something you could buy and rock out with at a…
Hey, we haven’t done one of these in a while! What’s going on in Crowdfundland? Brilliant ideas? Or Annoying ones? We probably only notice the brilliant ones, because Kickstarter filters search results to prevent the unsuccessful campaigns from appearing. Hey Google indexes the internet so I only get the most ‘cited’ pages out there. Same…
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,…
When new technology reaches its ascendancy, a question is posed. Can it be used to improved the lives of less fortunate? Specifically, those people that live in lesser developed countries? Sure, the latest Shamwow doesn’t apply – but what about more expansive and innovative technologies? Like 3D printing? Well certainly. But you have to find…
Solidsmack was kindly invited down to Waltham, MA to meet, greet and speak with the SW team, hang out at their fancy new campus and witness demos for Solidwork 2013. Josh nor Adam couldn’t make it, so I was freeze-dryed and packed into the luggage compartment and flown out. It was a brilliant experience. Once…
Okay, you know the rule. You can only cut once. Not twice, not thrice. But once. And when you have powertools, your mistakes are magnified. Curse be to the Human Condition, your hands shake, you’re eyes are dim and maybe you barely have the strength to handle your powertools. It is a reality, but a…
“You have Zeppelin on vinyl? Pfft I have it on FisherPrice Toy Records. Thus, I am so much better than you – and more pretentious.” Seriously, there is now a way for you to take all of your favourite Extreme Swedish Death Metal Bands (Meshuggah on plastic – the irony would rock). Fred27 posted this…
M.C. Escher, one of the great rappers of art and mathematics, whose work has been plastered across college dorm rooms and famous galleries alike for decades. His work has been given a new twist – literally. All those impossible shapes you saw on the cover of your grade 11 algebra textbook (just to give you…
And while Australia is going big with 3D Printing, Austria is going the opposite direction. The Vienna University of Technology has developed a method for 3D Printing on a microscopic scale using lasers. If you recall they printed a tiny F1 car, complete with details right down to the steering wheels and hubs. Now they’re…
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…
Even Grandma is getting into the act, posting her best 3D printable CAD models of lids that expand the usefulness of that ubiquitous items of every food preserving home, the Mason jar. Lifehacker gathered up a few from Thingiverse – SolidSmack added a few more. It started when a Thingiverse user uploaded his Mason jar…
RichRap out of Gloucester, UK has been colouring his work with a new type of multicolour and multi-material extruder. 3 filaments enter – only one can leave. That sounds like an epic extruder in my book. RichRap’s extruder produce vibrant yet oversaturated coloured prints – not really the fidelity you need to make exact replicas…
If you happen to have a set of vinyl records sitting around, take a look at them. Check out all those grooves that ring around and around, jostling the needle that has made all those tunes that have enriched your life. Now imagine you had that record as a CAD file and you extruded the…
After warnings from retired Engineers and seasoned VCs, the World has reached peak hype in 3D Printing. All those Kickstarter campaigns for 3D printers, all those busy CAD artists, all those blog writers who talk endlessly about it (noooo), are going to hit a brick wall. No more cool materials, no more cool designs, no…
So – you decided to attend Burning Man. And above the Mutant Cars and the becostumed attendees, you notice a quadcopter flying about, with what appears to be a figurine hanging underneath it. Just then, you hear an alarming sound coming from one of a becostumed woman – its coming from a device in her…
Getting your CAD file to the physical world is often the longest mile in 3D Printed Design. Printing resolution is getting higher and the materials are getting stronger, but most models have to be manually checked to see if they’re printable. Even after careful fine-toothed inspection, things get missed and valuable time is wasted. As…
Rust never sleeps, especially in Ohio. The heart of the steel manufacturing has suffered more from the decline of the industry and the recession more than anywhere else in America, and 3D Printing has been hyped for how it could bring jobs back. It might, but the story is more complicated than what it seems.
Home-cooked meals are supposed to be special. They’re also supposed to be organic, free-range, cruelty-free, gourmet meals custom-made to suit your desires – because everyone’s picky. And why not? 3D Printing both the food and the preparation tools might just make that easier. Or sillier. We think we can have both. Remember the Burritobot? Printing…
ParaNorman is a film to be released tonight, a zombie flick that’s fun for the whole family. Its not just another 3D computer animated film – its entirely stop-motion. Portland-based LAIKA studios, which brought you Coraline a few years previous, uses a 3D System ZPrinter individually manufacture every single head for every single character. All…
When you look at an ordinary photograph, the image remains the same regardless of how you illuminate it. That’s great if you don’t want any additional realism in your High School Yearbook (seriously, what was I thinking with that shirt? And that haircut??) However, if you would prefer to view those captured memories in more detail,…
Ever so recently, a number of awesome infographics on 3D printing, and fabrication in general, have appeared on the Interwebs. You probably haven’t seen or heard enough about 3D Printing, so we’d like to share them with you so it’s firmly ingrained into your brain tissues. What’s 3D printing? – Still have no clue about…
Matt Strong has begun a Kickstarter campaign to sell the Tangibot, another 3D Printer. Wait it’s not just any 3D printer – it’s an exact copy of the Makerbot Replicator, and a relatively cheaper one at that. $1,199 instead of $1,749 for a single extruder and $1,299 instead of $1,999 for a dual extruder. Discussion and…
The Ditto 3D Printer is one of the best 3D Printers I’ve had the pleasure of seeing up close. Smooth lines, high-quality parts and superb prints. Like Brad Sublime’s Tantillus, it’s produced in Vancouver, Canada. During the unveiling of the Rygo at VanDusen Botanical Gardens, I invited Eugene and the Tinkerine team to bring out…
Thomas Edison would have been impressed if he was alive today and could see what’s coming out of Kickstarter. Zombie Edison is impressed and wants your braaaaains. Some argue, Edison never invented to much – he just had the money to hire the right people (like Nicola Tesla) and get them to churn out ideas, cherry picking…
When you saw Star Wars or Star Trek for the first time as a kid, the space travel scenes were pretty kickass. Especially on the big screen – it seemed way cooler than the so-so acting. Well here’s you’re chance to actually travel through the Universe – the real Universe as recorded by the Sloan…
While the rest of the world was freaking out about 3D printed guns, Stratasys released a positive story about how 3D printing is impacting the life of one little girl. Emma was born with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, a condition that has left her with limited movements. There was an Orthopaedic prosthetic called the WREX, but it…
Sean Charlesworth is a digital designer from New York, and no doubt, 20,000 leagues beyond his colleagues. His OPUS V is a 3D printed, sea-punk submersible, his final project for his Masters at NYU. Complete with LED lights, moving parts and flexible tentacles. Bar none, it is the most impressive 3D prints we’ve ever seen…
This is how I imagine things would go down if the Jetsons went to the beach. The Stone Spray 3D Printer is the end result of a six month project by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and Fab Lab Bcn in Barcelona, Spain. Isn’t it amazing what you can do with a computer, an armature system, sand, glue…
Trying to get your buddy out of the clink? Hit up your friendly neighbourhood Fablab, churn out this handy double-ended key and chances are you’ll be able to uncuff him quicker than you can say, “I didn’t do it officer.” A German hacker named Ray has demonstrated the key vulnerability in a great majority of…
So, what does the University of Washington, milk jugs, recreational boating and 3D Printing have in common? Not much… until now! The new ‘Washington Open Object Fabricator’ Group (WOOF), UW Engineering students and the Open 3D Printing Lab managed to manufacture a boat from shredded HDPE milk jugs and a hacked Plasma Cutter named ‘Big…
Okay, I admit. It’s more like a ‘Pen-on’ experience, but you get the idea. Why point and click on a model with a mouse on an ol’ 2D screen when you can pull them right off the screen in 3D – near holographic-like, virtual 3D. The zSpace platform by Infinite Z promises to “transform today’s…
Logging into Shapeways last week was a bit disconcerting – almost made me think I was at the wrong website. Shapeways has completely revamped the look and feel of their site, their logo and their interface. The reason? Evolution we suppose. As Shapeways begins to offer more materials, higher quality and a better platform for its…
Cubify Invent is CAD software aimed at the uninitiated consumer with a 3D printer like the 3D System’s Cube. Unlike the free to use AutoDesk 123D, TinkerCAD or SketchUp, it cost $49, but has all the functions you would need to make almost any part fairly quickly. Extrude 2D into 3D? Yup! Fillets and other such…
In between writing blogs on 3D printing, I’ve been working hard on another project – The Rygo. Made of 3D Printed Concrete, this incredible piece is going to be properly unveiled on Thursday, July 26th in Vancouver, Canada. Weighing some 3,600 pounds and standing close to 7 ft tall, the Rygo is by far the…
Whether you’re recharging your mind with coffee or recharging your iPhone, you want to do it with style, you want to do it with ease and of course say, you want to say, I saw it on Solidsmack and bought it on Kickstarter. This week we bring your two projects that are crucial to charging…