Round and round the box we walked, thumping it ever so lightly now and then, waiting but a moment to hear a returning thump, followed by a short squeal and a puff of dust from the opposite corner. It wasn’t long before we realized, looking around to the corners of the room that we were…
Everyone in my family knows the top requirement for when I go all old and senile is a large, freaking cane. Preferably one with a live rattlesnake wrapped around it. They all think that’s dangerous. So, in lieu of a live rattlesnake, a hand-carved one will do. One EXACTLY like the incredible hand-carved rattlesnake canes…
The one instrument I would have my bodyguards play as we sauntered down the street is a violin. They’re sound is just wonderfully ominous and mysterious, while equally enchanting and… mysterious. After building a traditional wooden Guarneri-style violin, Brian Chan, an Engineer at Formlabs, took it upon himself to design a functional (and quite good…
Store those spare cables in your cheek bags no longer *all SolidSmack readers simultaneously spit cords out of their mouths*, there are other means of keeping those cords, cables and wires organized and out of the way. Sure, you could buy cable wraps, cable ties, or hire a butler to keep all that in order…
The boatswain sounding his whistle called the ship to arms, and found us a tailwind with the call. It was gaining on us, visible one moment, gone the next. It wasn’t the fire, the rapacious devouring holler or the balls of moss it threw that bothered, but the constant popping of its boiling skin that…
The thought put into speaker design is astounding. It nearly makes me forget all about the chipper/shredder sound emanating from my car speakers. We’ve admired Portland-based Grovemade design for a while. They have an awesome habit of showing what goes on behind the design. We highly recommend following their journal (and taking note if you’re…
If you’re not getting your recommended daily allowance of sawdust and aluminum shavings, chances are you’re looking at desktop CNC milling machine options. There are A LOT more options that we had a year ago and boy are we glad to see it. Prices for most can still be in the thousands though. That’s why…
This fabulous model? This is a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. You know, the device you can use to brain a hexapod, integrate a complete home automation system or link to form an impressive Raspberry Pi SuperComputer. Yes, this wee device has more compute capacity and capability than a couple of inept presidential candidates and…
Crooked fence posts propped up its torso and surly demeanor, clanking a grin as spindles and pumps whirred beneath the translucent neck skin. A movement would send tremors, with keg like mechanisms hitting the ground and spreading light from the cracks of these links. Ivan Smirnov – Super playful, colorful scenes full of all sorts…
I bet you have one bag you really love. And then an excess of other bags you don’t use at all. If you collect the goody bags at your favorite Tech/CAD conference each year, you probably have a massive stack o’ bag history in your closet. “I’ve made them into a bed. I SLEEP ON…
One of my 200 dream cars begins with Porsche and ends with 911 GT3 RS. Until I can sell enough plasma to purchase a used one that needs the rusted out floorboard replaced, I’ll settle for the highly prized 1:8 scale LEGO Technic version. And until one of you buy that and ship it to…
Music. Just what you need to get you through a tough task. It’s why we bring you SolidSmack Radio each week. What’s keeping you from enjoying that? The right pair of headphones. If it’s not tangled wires, it’s battery life. If it’s not battery life, it’s someone yappin’ in your face. The first two issues…
We’ve been keeping an eye out for VR/AR 3D modeling apps and, suprisingly… there’s not been much activity. Apparently we’re not in the future yet… yet… yet. There are an increasing number of ways to play in VR, but not so many ways to model in it. FEBCAD AR is one of the first that…
Around the castle it crept, a small, yet indecipherable gurgle of bones shifting. It was tall, lanky and faceless, yet with a whistle like a canary heard after a jolt of these links. Slava Triptih – HE has a way with ink. Beautiful black cloud spray portraits and even more ink illustrations and artwork. Little…
Remember the Mechwarrior model we shared a few weeks ago? So. Good. We’re in the process of printing up one of our own and can’t wait to paint it. Gambody, the same place we bought the model, has a interesting little operation going. They started as a marketplace for 3D prints of video game models.…
You know a mask of light that shoots out 50 million lumens whenever someone looks at you tends to cause temporary blindness and bouts of projectile vomit, so something at your desk that is still 1) eye-catching and 2) unique, is a must. Janis Jakaitis has a solution that will keep your 3D printer busy…
Sitting betwixt the legs of the elderberry roots, its eyes peered out. Not one, or two, or three, but eight at least, moving separately, then together, watching. Low to the ground, it moved, feelers out, stuffing mushrooms and cantaloupes into its pouches, preparing a spice to make from these links. Su Jian – Mesmerizing environments…
If you’ve ever stood in the shower wondering if you could be sued because you made a certain 3D model of a certain brand of car, wonder no more. Precedent has been set. BMW Group, which includes Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, BMW of North America, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, and and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA have…
We’ve covered a lot of Kenneth Smythe’s chair designs over the years. I’m always excited to see his emails with a new one, guessing it will be similar to previous chairs and completely surprised when I view it. The latest design is visual extrapolation of an emotionally and psychologically charged elitist pathology (ya got that?),…
Use to be, for a little ambiance, we just needed a time-travelling legwax salesman to unbutton the top two-buttons of his disco shirt… WAIT a minute, that would be the opposite of ambiance. That would be the 5th most uncomfortable situation imaginable. If you want ambiance, you need to check out this model created by…
There’s a reason LEGO mini-figs don’t look like fleshy human flesh-sacks. They would 1) not match the playful appearance of LEGOs 2) be totally creepy and 3) require small bottles of moisturizer. “I lather my LEGO mini-figs with three coats of jojoba oil weekly.” Well, good for you. Me? I prefer to watch a life-size…
Jumped off the ledge, the hammer fell, the blast rang out and the monstrosity of a caterpillar was no more. Usually smaller, but this one had been feasting. We hadn’t determined what the supplement may have been quite yet, but there were hints and a small trail leading back to these links. Alexis Rives -…
You know when you cried into that bucket of bolts because you couldn’t find the matching hardware? Those were sad, rough times. It’s almost as bad as when you stared into that bucket of PDM space searching for that one thing, that one guy modeled, that one time, that would never be needed again, but…
I think we can all tear open a bag of chips, pour some Saki and agree that, next to Akira, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) is the absolute best of 20th century Japanese Animation. The last scene where our cyborg heroine, Motoko, battles a massive 6-legged spider tank is some of the best animated carnage…
The trees towered, a grove of five just in front of us, a path around, and a trail of its fur, scales and laughter all along. We drew our bows, activated the trackers and readied ourselves to fire at these links. Cinta Vidal – In love with the architecturally surreal, perspective twisting, structure and nature…
When your plans for unboxing a laptop at 80 mph, while eating Lupita’s famous 50oz sour cream enchilada, doesn’t work out, you’re left with grabbing a cracked iPhone and shooting some shots of the laptop sitting atop some colorful blocks whilst being interrogated by a Stormtrooper with a stuffed lizard. That’s just what happened when…
By now, you’ve probably avoided running over multiple Pokémon Go players as they traverse parking lots, alleyways and continents searching out Pokémon, Poké Stops and Poké Gyms. Outside of making a blue, red or yellow outfit to match the team you chose at level 5 (someone just told us that’s what happens, promise), you’ve not…
Yeah, you know any old helmet won’t do. And you definitely know that Lannister guard helmet you fashioned from a paper bag, gorilla glue and wood chips is looking pretty weak right now. Well, there’s a better way to make a helmet and you won’t believe how simple it is. This week on Tested, the…
The blades buckled beneath the yarn. Paws were not meant to be that dexterous, but his training in the textile arts had surpassed even that of the nomadic mural weavers of old. Together with his swordsman-like bladework, he would weave a scene like never before, a scene threaded with these links. Oh Ji Hoon -…
Well, that’s it. We have a fav new website at SolidSmack HQ. Gambody. Gambody is the buy and sell marketplace for 3D print files of video game models–High-poly, super detailed and optimized for 3D printing. They already have a healthy handful of characters, vehicles and robots with more in the works and a growing community.…
I’ve been a long time SolidWorks user, but I knew I wanted (ahem.. needed) to learn another 3D modeling software. That’s when I started looking at Autodesk’s Fusion 360. The features that highlight its capabilities and differentiates it is what this series set out to do. They’re features that expand beyond 3D modeling and show…
Somehow, we were able to chop our way through the tendrils. As they grew back, a vocalizing noise of business lingo, land management deals and making strawberry metropolitans echoed around us–apparently an affect of consuming the entire downtown business district, too many printer cartridges and these links. Kevin Peterson – A contrast of innocence against…
When you’re mixing the sweet cream of CAD geometry on the screen like a dairyman on a mission from God, that intense look on your face is enough to make your boss step back for fear of being sucked into the vat of your frothy CAD skills. And then you hear that gasp, the one when they…
If you weren’t obsessively clipping your toenails last week and saw the ‘Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion’ by Kokichi Sugihara of Meiji University, Japan, then your brain likely squeezed its way out your ear canal, grabbed your jowls, looked you in the face and said, ‘YOU’RE MAKING MY BRAIN HURT!” (Yes, your brain just told you that…
The Crumbling Cliffs. That’s where the creature lived, but nary a soul had seen it. Oblong-shaped and bent, with a single leg and, what looked like, a meat slicer off each side of a small container of fizz which strangely enough and quite magically allowed it to dispense endless amounts of these meaty links. Sleepypang Li -…
I hope you weren’t planning on trying to impress everyone with YOUR 3D printed musculoskeletal mask because, as you would expect, Björk just totally schooled everyone with one of her own. Stratasys, who helped print the mask using their full-color, multi-material tech, called it “yet another fashion-forward step.” We prefer to call it “so damn…
Though most people do 100% their writing on a computer or smartphone, there are still a few old people and those with the digit dexterity of a quilt sewer who prefer to write with a pen. Whether you like the feeling of pen meeting paper or just find it easier than nub-punching a keyboard, there’s…
You remember that dream of your fists being replaced by portals to one world with unlimited meat cannon buffets and the other to a world of candy dinosaur rides? Yeah, this Venus Box is exactly what those portals looked like. What’s even weirder is how you ALL had that same dream and wrote me about…
Captured in the rain and looking toward the hill, we ran. The rumble of the swarm oscillated with the falling water to the point we couldn’t hear our own footsteps. It might as well have been the silence of white noise, and suddenly… it was. For out of the hill rose a beast with a…
You know what you need on your fireplace mantle? Two deer skulls, a He-man action figure and some old books. Next to all of that, you need a 3D printed jet engine. After that, no one will question you when you lean against the fireplace with a seductive look in your eye whilst making jet…
He was a kind old soul, trudging to and fro. Where there wasn’t a path, he would spend days making one with his wooden spoon, large feet and a whistle you had only to hear once to remember forever. With the grass and branches he did something strange though. Bundled them up and set ablaze…
Raise of hands. Who has rebuilt an engine? How about a Flathead V-8 engine? Ahh, the Ford Flatty. Likely the most iconic engine of its time, if not all time, and certainly the most powerful when it came out in 1932 as the Ford V-8.
We wrapped a few of them in toasted cheese curdles and a donut. “Don’t worry, you’ll realize the potential after you taste it.” That’s what she kept saying, but we were not convinced. Food just shouldn’t look like that, and the way they exploded if you handled them too rough? Well, it only made it…
Presented by The O’Jays. Remember those guys? Probably not, but I guarantee you’ve heard their most popular song, For the Love of Money. Two chords and a repetitive five-word phrase later, and you’ve got a song stuck in your head for longer than you want. Those could easily be five reasons integrated CAM matters to…
There’s just something that’s really awesome about drawing on paper… erasing it, wading it up. Even with all the tablet and pen options available, it’s something that just can’t be matched. But maybe I’m just partial to not staring onto a screen more than I already do. That’s where the this Digital/Ink Smartpen caught my…
When’s the last time you went barreling down a hill on a skateboard the size of a small sea bass? Never? Well, there’s always a first time and while you’re at it, why not get extra crazy and have your questionable friends dare you to go down that hill on a 3D printed skateboards?
We would pop a few over the fence, just to hear the reaction. It was usually a grumble of sorts, a low guttural sound of pre-digested enzymes breaking down the fats. We had yet to see it, until one day, when we bound ten together around a ball of butter. Lowering it slowly, we saw…
Why would you need a procedurally generated 3d printed tree? Why wouldn’t you?! Really, think about the possibilities here. You could print a bunch of small ones and glue them to yourself. You could shave a cat and glue them to the cat. You could glue one to your spouses forehead and wake them up…
We had already eaten our fill when they wheeled out the largest bucket we had ever seen–it’s why they had removed the wall and fitted that senile, old robot lady with two railgun arms. The smell was yeasty, but soon forgotten after they handed us our bibs, and a fork for each hand. They told…
Presented by Well, well, well. We have quite a cocktail coming together here. We’ve poured in some Fusion 360 part modeling and assembly features, and squeezed in a little simulation. Now it’s time to add that dash of collaboration. On the CAD capability excitement meter, this gets about a two. The geekiest of the…