This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist brings an entirely new face-smack of great music to help propel you through those laborious, tedious design tasks for the next few days. This week we’re celebrating the release of Damon Albarn’s first-ever solo release! You’ve heard him before as the mastermind behind Blur, Gorillaz, The Good, The Bad…
This week we’re introducing a new feature here on SolidSmack that aims to highlight some of the best (and most ridiculous) apps of the week. This week we’re bringing you six apps for the iPhone and five apps for Android that are sure to keep you converting, killing, running and creating. This is the first…
SolidWorks World already seems like it was in the distant past, but in reality, it was just six weeks ago. However, now’s your chance to experience SolidWorks World all over again, or maybe even for the first time. Each and every break-out session and presentation that took place at SolidWorks World 2014 is now available to consume at your own rate, directly from their website.
Having an obsessive, deeply-rooted, and somewhat inexplicable passion for everyday objects is practically a required character trait in every Industrial Designer. For that reason, the task of renovating, reinventing, refining, and reforming the most common objects is one of the greatest and most enjoyable challenges for aesthetics visionaries. For millennia, domestic housewares, like furniture, have…
When Hans Christian Ørsted discovered Aluminum in 1825, it would have been very difficult for him to have foreseen the many domestic uses and aesthetic applications that the material would ultimately take-on in the modern age. It was hardly one century ago that architects and designers truly began to capitalize on the use of raw,…
For thousands of years, casting aqueous substances and drying them into usable forms has been a core technique in manufacturing, and one of the greatest advancements made in human technology. From ceramics and metals to glass and plastics, countless methods of casting have been invented to exhume objects from molds over the millennia. But unfortunately,…
Last November, SolidSmack reported on Gerhard de Clercq and Pieter Scholtz, two South African teens who developed a clever app that allows users to transmit plotting data from their mobile phones to 3D printers via Bluetooth. After achieving some well-deserved fame and respectable media coverage, the duo continued their work toward refining their original creation.…
It does not take a market analyst to realize that the explosion in mobile device sales within the past decade has made it relatively uncommon to leave home without at least one device featuring a touchscreen. While the innovation itself allows our gadgets to be great, the anti-ergonomic technology behind it is pretty far from…
3D modelers of both the engineering and artistic flavors can probably agree that seeing the realization of their digital models is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. Bringing digital dreams into the physical realm is what defines our current era, and it is the challenge of constructing unprecedented objects that pushes us…
If you are a fan of Do-It-Yourself projects and homegrown pyrotechnics on your patio, then there is a chance that you have heard of a tinkerer named Grant Thompson. This is a clever guy who has made a name for himself by building a host of fun (and mostly dangerous) devices from easily-sourced materials and…
Japanese electronics tycoon Sony, Inc recently filed a US Patent Application for a computerized hairpiece, aptly dubbed the “SmartWig”. The wearable technology is set to be outfitted with an array of integrated devices including, but not limited to, a camera, laser-pointer and ultrasound sensors. Additionally, it is anticipated that the hairpiece will be capable of…
For many of us fabrication fanatics, one of the more exciting aspects of the 3D printing industry is that it is bringing manufacturing back to the US. From one-of-a-kind prototypes to mass-produced retail-ready products, the versatility of 3D printed objects is broad, and the potential for their applications, almost limitless. But with so much focus…
These days, most digital tasks can be completed with a current smart phone, but until very recently, 3D printing has not been one of them. However, Gerhard de Clercq and Pieter Scholtz, two fifteen-year-olds from South Africa, have set-out to change that. The student duo recently unveiled an app that they programmed which can accurately…
These days, adding security features to cell phones is usually old news, but for the case of the Halo™ anti-theft system, maybe not. Being marketed as “The World’s Most Advanced iPhone Security Device”, the Halo is an all-in-one security gadget concept for the iPhone 5. Aside from lacking an actual defense weapon, it basically has…
Most folks can probably agree that it has been fun watching the progression of affordable domestic robots evolve in the post-millennium era. Undoubtedly, it is becoming increasingly conventional to employ automated machines to facilitate routine tasks that would have been manual ones not ten years ago. However, it is still fairly uncommon to find free-range…
One year ago, Madrid-based architecture and design studio Kawamura-Ganjavian introduced their Ostrich Pillow concept to the masses on Kickstarter. After crowd-sourcing nearly three times their original $70k fundraising goal, the company brought their head-enveloping pillow to market, and some might argue, laid seeds to revolutionize the world of napping. But they didn’t stop there—K-G Studio…
Few things can drive a human being more than passion—but coffee might be one of them. For this reason, it makes great sense that people are passionate about coffee. Some of the innovations that have surfaced in the realm of kitchen gadgetry in recent years have been pretty profound, but the coffee maker itself seems…
Have you ever fought with gravity in order to get your iphone into a hands-free position where you watch the screen and use your hands for more important tasks like cracking lobster shells or defusing bombs? Now you can! with Breffo’s new Gumstick smartphone stand you can support any smartphone on the market with a…
For centuries the chair has been the quintessential design challenge for creative minds the world over. How can I possibly do something new with this old form?—is a question that many designers have asked themselves over the ages, while trying to infuse their sitting-devices with style that is markedly their own. Fortunately for twenty-first century…
CSIRO, the “Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization” of Australia, announced recently that it has successfully 3D-printed the first pair of horse shoes. Using laboratory-grade 3D scanning and printing methods, scientists scanned each foot of the pilot horse and set-off to print a custom titanium shoe for each foot, which the team did in one…
At this point in the history of technology, most of us have become pretty familiar with electronic paper or “e-paper”—it is the wild invention that is responsible for the high-contrast black-and-white screens in our eBook readers. It produces the non-backlit, sharp and focused images that enable us to endure marathon digital reading with visuals that…
It has been over six years since the 2007 debut of the Sony XEL-1—considered by most to be the world’s first OLED television, and inarguably the first to become widely-available to consumers. But it has been a long six years for OLED technology, which has continued to evolve and offer futuristic promises, but hardly in…
In theory, if I were to take a hot glue gun and adapt a CNC-machined nozzle with a heat-sink on it to replace the existing glue-gun nozzle, then I could do what a 3D printer pen does in wax instead of plastic…but would I call the result a 3D print? No. It would be a…
Several months ago, the world was presented with the “3Doodler”—at the time, a conceptual analog device proclaimed to be the world’s first 3D printing pen. After achieving much notoriety, esteem and extensive international press coverage, the small Boston-based upstart behind the project, WobbleWorks LLC, shattered its now comparatively-modest $30,000 fundraising goal to make the device…
In a machining era that is quickly becoming dominated by 3D printing technology, it is important to not overlook some of the advancements that are developing in the CNC world. After all, not everything can be build-to-spec from the ground-up, and for those projects which just ‘need some relief’, we turn to our mills—and what…
We’ve seen a lot of biomedical applications for 3D printing in recent years—the medical industry is a natural breeding-ground for marketable ideas which require the extreme customization that 3D printing and scanning can provide. The promising real estate for 3D printing in human anatomy is diverse, and has many open doors for innovations ranging from…
As designers, we all want our designs to last forever but we are also beginning to see what a terrifying world it would be if everything we create really did last forever. The permanence of plastics has gone from a dream to a nightmare where literally everything that we have made out of plastic that…
If you were to pluck a stranger from the street, sit that person down, and ask them to rattle-off a list of famous instrument makers, they might begin by listing famous guitar manufacturers and piano builders (after looking at you very oddly and protecting their wallet and organs). If you were to then ask that…
As many of you might already be aware, some exciting developments have been unfolding in the portable fuel cell market in recent months. Unfortunately, the excitement at the moment seems to be geared more-toward the potential for the technology itself, rather than the strange array of available consumer products which currently employ it. But hey,…
Have you ever dreamed of what it would be like to live in the dark, popcorn-scented and smoke-filled acoustic glory of a 1950’s movie theater? If you have somewhere between $18,500-$175,000 to spend on a stereo system, then your 1950s-nostalgia dreams could come true with a custom, handmade audio system from Oswalds Mill Audio, which…
Here at SolidSmack, we do our very best to keep you on the forefront of the 3D printing world…but occasionally, it’s nice to simply sit-back and ogle something pretty! In terms of aesthetics, “pretty” might be one way to describe The Product’s Soundmachines, but stimulating, might be an even better word to encapsulate the Berlin-based…
If you are thinking that it is about high-time to be bustin’ out the old pumpkin carving knife then think again! Egg-coloring season might still be seven months away, but Evil Mad Scientist’s “Original Egg-Bot” can lay graphics on a whole variety of spherical objects to keep you busy until spring. The manufacturer claims that…
It is no secret that high-fashion is like history; it is known to repeat itself. While the latest fads might not always be carbon-copies of their predecessors, the roots of modern style are often painfully obvious to those with an observant eye—and eyeglasses themselves might be the perfect example of this. With the recent rise…
We’ve come a long way from the bulky, steam-spewing technologies of yesteryear. Today’s gadgets are sleek, sexy testaments of where we’ve come from and where gadget design for the home is headed. Some operate invisibly, working from behind the scenes to make your life easier, while others catch the eye like a camera flash. What…
Shapeways recently announced a new material, a ‘Maker-only’ material called Elasto Plastic–high strength, high flexibility, low detail and smoothness. I was intrigued. What wondrous creations could be manufactured with this wondrous material? Having created many other items with many other materials via Shapeways, there was definitely a lot of possibility for a more flexible material.…
If you’re like most people, you can easily spot the difference between a cheap product and a quality product — the price typically matches, too. A lot of time and attention goes into the design and craftsmanship of quality products, which is why they cost more. However, some companies go above and beyond the normal…
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…
Continuing improvements in workstation graphics processing units (GPUs) allow users to dramatically increase interactivity with SolidWorks by upgrading existing workstations with the latest NVIDIA Quadro graphics. For example, a Dell Precision workstation running a current Quadro GPU, based on NVIDIA Fermi architecture, can deliver up to three times the performance of previous generations.
The universal challenges faced by Trek in creating a new generation racing bike apply to many companies today: Create products that are sturdy yet use lightweight materials, spot design defects earlier in the design phase and reduce time from sketch to physical prototype.
Specking out a new fixed or mobile workstation for your CAD work can be a challenge. First, you need to identify the type of work where you really spend most of your time. For example, do you model simple parts, complex assemblies, or both? Do you do first-pass or complex FEA or structural dynamics analyses?
New technology enables a single workstation to simultaneously perform complex design, analysis, and visualization tasks.
A new calculator from BestForCAD.com instantly computes the payback of a hardware upgrade.
Ah, the project scope. The crucial document many of us follow as a guideline while we’re designing or engineering the next greatest thing. Its entire existence is to keep the focus by describing in detail the new product’s soon to be features, costs, and milestone dates. Love them or hate them, many of us couldn’t…
Take a change of pace with me and see a completely different side of manufacturing. A side where designers don’t worry about being first to market or appealing to the largest consumer base possible. I’m talking about a side where products are produced specifically for individuals who appreciate the novelty and the art of the…
Guest post by Bradley Derry from bradleyderry.com Design is details. Design is the tiny elements in a product that work their way into final production from hours of sketching, prototyping, and CAD. Details are what the designers agonize over and what the manufactures spend so much time trying to get just right. This post is…
