The Rostock by Johann Rocholl is a 3D Printer like no other. Instead of your standard xyz gantry system, the Rostock uses 3 arms that are attached to 3 vertical axes, each independently driven by stepper motors. The end result? High-speed positioning, fewer parts, lighter setup and a look that is guaranteed to turn heads.
3D Model-to-Print (3DMTP) is a cloud-based 3D printing service for Architects and Developers that need to take their 3D models and 3D print them quickly and painlessly. After 3 years of development and testing 3DMTP has perfected an algorithm that makes it easier for users to upload their CAD files and sent to them tout suite. Laying…
As we’ve seen, Airbus thinks big. They made monster airplanes like the A380 and they took on aerospace giants like Boeing in the 1970s. They think big, really big. like 3D printing an airplane big. Not tiny little airplanes–big, honking super planes. 3D printing is primed to take off (pun intended) in the aerospace industry…
Who would have imagined that sound and shape mix and mingle so effortlessly! Brazilian designers at Studio Guto Requena took the street sounds of São Paolo and used them to alter a set of classic chair designs creating these fantastic Nóize Chairs. Yes, your chair has been infused with the Portuguese chatter, Samba music and untuned motorcycles,…
While watching the tweets from SEU 2012, Mark Burhop tweeted from a seminar on 3D Printing, “All this new #3Dprinting technology needs designs – “Great day to be a CAD person!” #seu12. But is it?
RepRap, is there anything you can’t do? The University of Pennsylvania announced they have managed to fabricate living tissue using a modified RepRap. (When is a RepRap never modified?) As if self-replicating machines aren’t scary enough, let’s have them making organic matter too. But this is great news for those in dire need of an organ,…
Innovation like this makes me excited! Solidsmack reported recently on how Optomec was experimenting with depositing metal on plastic and how damn cool (err, hot!) that was. Well, out in the land of RepRaps where printers of different breeds roam and their 3D Printistas tinker, manufacture and share ideas and objects, 3D printing metal on plastic…
It’s summer and what else is there to do but hit the road, eat Corn Nuts and jam to “Free Ride” by CCR on repeat? Dave Seliger, a contributor at Core77, recently went on an extended road trip. But this was no ordinary excursion. In an exposé named Route 77, Dave travels around America to…
This is a short video of three cars printed by Objet. These tiny 3D printed carsare all created the same way, re-sized and re-printed by the Objet Eden350 3D Printing machines. Watch this video – I couldn’t believe the resolution to make such small things was possible – printed, pre-assembled – My first thought? Monopoly pieces.…
Yep, we’ve looked at our stats. There are, in fact, a few Solidsmack readers in the frozen wastelands of Canada. If you were in my neighbourhood, and you like making things, you might have dropped into Vancouver’s mini-Maker Faire. Mini it was not! Hundreds of makers and vendors descended upon the Pacific National Exhibition grounds…
The Internet has given us access to resources unparalleled in the history of humankind. The volume of exchange for ideas, pictures, written text and now 3D models have been building to a climatic boom in creativity. To an extent, that depends on how you define ‘Creativity’. I see creativity as the synthesis of two previously…
Clothing, the oldest form of technology, and mobile phones, the most advanced form of technology… brought together. The Glove One by Brian Cera is part-glove, part-phone, part audacity, and all awesome. Tony Stark called – he wants his glove back. Brian is a native of Milwaukee, WI, self-described as an artist, designer and maker who…
A spacesuit, a pocket TV and a 3D Printer. What do these three things have in common? They’re all part of this week’s crowdfunding round-up and every bit of cool. While many Kickstarter project revolve around the arts and film industry, we like to feature the tech finds that are making Kickstarter a perfect place…
The biggest question in my head for years has been this. Can you start a business with a desktop 3D printer? With a nice little Makerbot, or a RepRap and a really useful product design, can I actually be my own, cigar-sucking factory boss? In my own living room, with a bathrobe on? An intriguing…
Remember the 3D Printed Guitars we wrote about in March? Well, designer Olaf Diegel and the ODD team have created another guitar. This one is called the ‘Atom’ and may make you look more ‘ROCK’ than a diamond studded jean jacket with the arms torn off.
Nervous System is a design firm that churns out mathematically generated CAD files which are then printed and sold online. They make beautiful earrings, necklaces, bracelets and home decor, the perfect gift for your nerdy girlfriend, math teacher or CAD-lover. Really anyone with a pair of eyes and a beating heart in my opinion (except…
Cute Robots. Perhaps two words not heard together often. Cool Robots, yes. Fleash-eating robots, sure. But cute? In this case, yes! The Pingbot is a testament to what Instructable user Tomdf can do with a piezo buzzer, IR control, some electronics skill and a sense of humour. Oh and of course, a 3D printer. Tell me…
The challenge of staving off sickness from sleep deprivation suddenly has a direct correlation with chair design. A class of fourth-year Architecture students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts may be use to sleepless nights by now and even more ready to prove they have the chops to join the design elite. Each…
Telecommunications! It’s the oldest/newest thing – all the cool kids are doing it – tapping via telegraph, talking via the telephone, even video chatting via Skype – FUN TIMES. But, what about carrying on a conversation with a 3D representation of your pal? Holograms… whatever, it has all been done – we’ve all seen Snoop Dogg…
Rumour has it that Kickstarter will be going international by the end of 2012. This is freaking awesome, as I live in the frozen reaches of Canada, and know quite a few other people stymied by the rules as well. Indiegogo is great for non-US makers and creators with a super idea and insufficient funds…
I walked into Vancouver Hackerspace the other day to hang out, There, in all of it’s colorful, tabletop printing beauty, was a new 3D printer and a smiling man named Brad (aka Sublime) giving a little demo on his Tantillus 3D Printer. It’s a small machine that packs a punch. The details were marvellous for such…
Handheld scanning. We haven’t seen enough of it. There are a lot of moments when I wish I had a simple, easy-to-use and cheap scanner readily available. Say, I break my favorite cup after trying to escape out the window from wild dogs. Why are there wild dogs in my house. NO IDEA. So, I want to…
Fab-fabulous machines of fabbing people. The Fabbster was developed and manufactured by German company Sintermask, the very ones who develop a unique sinter and powder deposition technology that utilizes principles similar to a silkscreen press. What sets Fabbster apart isn’t the fact that it’s high-speed (400 mm/s) or has a incredibly high-temperature extruder (300C or…
I’m always amazed by how good graphic designers have become at explaining information. Since design has leapt into the 3rd dimension, so has the elaborate art of infographics. We’ve seen it with Johannes Tsopanides’ InfObjects in a previous article. We’ve seen it with 3D printed bracelets that are made from stock market data. What’s next? Have a…
I love a car with personality. Just today, I had a chat with a friend of mine who recently bought an old Honda, a ‘beater’ in desperate need of a paint job. He has a talent for the arts – Paint runs through his veins, so to speak. So, I recommended he graffiti his car.…
So iPhones. Good for 2D imagery. How about 3D imagery? That’s a difficult one. Yet somehow, we can say with some confidence, there’s an app for that! Trimensional is completing the digital to physical process with a new iPhone app that takes scans produced by the app via your camera to 3D printed part on…
Hungry for pounds and pounds of purple filament to feed through your printer? I know the answer to that is a pellet-melting YES. However, the cost of this filament… RIDICULOUS. Sure, 3D printers are awesome – You can make virtually anything – But the filament is expensive and there isn’t an easy way to make…
Kickstarter is awash with iPhone, iPad and other Apple paraphernalia – it speaks the website’s yuppie creators and contributors – not that it’s a bad thing (Apple user here). After going through the website to make a long-overdue edition of Solidsmack’s ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’, I discovered that many of the best, most funded projects…
Ah yes! Another addition of to Solidsmack’s legendary catalogue of “What the Heck is THAT?” The Ryno is a one-wheeled beast of an invention, manufactured and sold by Ryno Motors. It combines the technical sensibilities of the Segway with the look, feel and, quite literally, half the badass-ness of a motorcycle. I was never a…
¡Híjole! 3D Printed Burritos. To be honest, I thought that this project was an April Fool’s joke. Perhaps it was posted as such and I’m just now seeing it. Nope, it’s for real. Marko Manriquez has developed the Burritob0t as his graduate thesis for the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Ready your tortillas, prime the…
GrabCAD just may be the latest and greatest resource in the world of CAD – a massive online community of engineers and designers building a user-generated CAD library with a litany of features to encourage collaboration on design projects. GrabCAD bagged a cool $4 million in venture capital recently. Now, they’re looking for the top…
3D Systems is getting into the Consumer 3D Printing market in a big way. If you recall last January, the Cube was showcased on the catwalk we all know as the Consumer Electronics Show. From the outside, The Cube seems to ‘walk-the-walk’, but can it ‘talk-the-talk’? We will soon know. The Cube is now available…
What’s the best way to illustrate years of information and research in a space small and visually stimulating enough that even the most attention deficient of us can understand? Infographics baby! But let’s add a dimension or three to that and see what can be visualized through the glorious technology of 3D printing.
Great gobs of gravy! If you think you can launch a highly technical project on Kickstarter and get funded with $2,000 pledges, in less than 24 hours, you would be RIGHT. Your name would also be Michael Joyce. Mike’s B9Creator kickstarter project has met the $50,000 goal and is nearing $100,000 after less than two…
Oh, to drown your mornings in a scalding hot cup of java. Perhaps you recognize the Octo cup from Shapeways – you can buy it in white ceramic for $56. The eight-handled cup was designed by Cunicode design agency as part their ‘One Cup a Day’ project. Over a single month, new cup designs were…
By day, you’re an ordinary citizen. Yet, when you hear a cry for help, you dash into the nearest telephone booth, drop your disguise and become the savior to an innocent, mildly over-reacting damsel in distress. Or at least, you would, if it were true. Everybody wants to be a superhero, but if dressing up…
When bending wire around your arms and face isn’t efficient enough for your wire bending needs, call upon this machine. The DIWire Bender from Pensa is a different take to going from digital to physical.
Last month, Fujitsu Laboratories along with Fujitsu’s Research and Development Centre announced that they’ve developed a potent way for CAD designers to search through a CAD library. Just like you can use Google Image Search to look for similar images, you can look for any CAD model based on a keyword, yes, but also a desired…
You know, sometimes counting is difficult. 1,2,3… Uhg, Eleventy! Maybe you need a machine to help you along. A counting machine perhaps? An electro-mechanical machine!? How about a 3D printed electro-mechanical machine? One which runs on of the pure, unadulterated power of PUNCH CARDS? YES!
What’s going on in the world of Crowdfunding? Amazing things! But before I get into this edition of “Wisdom of the Crowd”, I’d like to point out that Maxifab has beat its target of $5,000, pulling in a whopping $24,393 and iZen Bamboo Keyboard past its goal of $18,000 reaching $26,436. Pretty kickass if you ask…
3D printers are slow, but they can make virtually anything. Humans are slow, and most of them can make virtually anything as well. What does this mean? SHOWDOWN.
Have a spare Fisher-Price record player around from your childhood? Do you like playing Portal? Well, we have the record for you! Shapeway user “Pittance” designed a record that plays the song “Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton, the featured music in the end credits of the popular game “Portal”.
Japan has Godzilla, Russia has META-ELK. The idea is to deploy them in the thousands as… massive powerline pylons. Perhaps this is the next transmutation in the evolution of electrical Elk lords? We knew it was going to happen and these design renderings by Russian firm Design Depot put it all in perspective.
Sure, you could be boring and screw wood and metal together – but what if you could drop-forge molten metal into the woodwork? Hello SPECTACULAR. Well, that’s exactly what Hilla Shamia has been doing. The wood is cut to size, a mould is placed around it and molten aluminum is poured in, filling in all the cracks…
After pulling a little April Fool’s prank about “3D Printing your Pets” , The Economist returned to true form with a feature piece analyzing the future of manufacturing, discussing at length advances in capital and informational technologies. It’s a stellar read – if you have time, definitely read the entire piece. Here is the key takeaway.
3D printing is growing fast. It’s rather amazing that something once considered a speciality item for engineering and design firms has now slipped into the consumer market in only a few years. Right now Solidsmack is working on 3D Printing Resource page and it’s impressive how many 3D printing companies and printers there are.
STL files have been around for a while. It was originally developed as a bridge between CAD files and 3D Systems’ first 3D printers. It has become the standard format for 3D printing, but it’s increasingly seen as antiquated and limited. In reality, an STL file describes a shape and not much else. In addition,…
Have you ever wanted to actually interact with your 3D model? Sculpt its surface as if it was clay? Feel the response to bending your rubber do-hicky? How about have an snazzy-looking, aluminium 3D printer for less than $1000? Or, how about a low cost construction system without the need for specialty hardware? It may…
The Smithsonian. The Forbidden City of Beijing. You hear these names and perhaps you think of crowds of visitors and old, dusty relics. Oh, and getting completely lost (those museum maps are impossible.) Well, what else do these two places have in common? 3D scanning and 3D printing.
A team of scientists led by Professor Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow have developed 3D printed “reactionware” that can make particular chemicals based solely on the geometry of the design and the chemicals within the constituent printing materials.