Here on SolidSmack we’re always on the lookout for cool projects. Sure, our readers love to take a juicy sketch and model it up in CAD for a slick 3D print or a more involved manufactured product, but sometimes it’s the simple and easy projects that can help keep our creative itch scratched…especially on the…

Brought to you this week by Paul Bunyan’s bunions, be sure to check out the all new episode of Cool Tools of Doom n’ Stuff! By the way, we love our SolidSmack readers! Have something cool you’ve come across and want to share it on SolidSmack? Don’t hide it in your neck skin! Send it…

Well, time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved mobile device, be it iPhone, Android or Windows. The Weekly App Smack is the best of design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy professional and this week we have a list sure to…

It’s common knowledge that 28% of people printed in ABS cauliflower blue, prefer to be smacked with savings on a daily basis. Fortunately, the extruders have aligned and our good friends over at Mediabistro Inc. have 1) announced the program for the Melbourne, Australia Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo and 2) are providing SolidSmack…

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 dusting off some of our favorite vinyls for a well-rounded mix of rock and roll classics. We’ll start with Rock and Roll from…

Time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved mobile device, be it iPhone, Android or Windows. The Weekly App Smack is the best of design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy professional and this week we have a list sure to make…

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 heading off into the desert night with an eclectic mix of excellent driving tunes. We’ll start navigating our way with Compass from Jamie…

Brought to you this week by an alien lung bubble covered in pine mulch, be sure to check out the all new episode of Cool Tools of Doom n’ Stuff! By the way, we love our SolidSmack readers! Have something cool you’ve come across and want to share it on SolidSmack? Don’t hide it in…

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 starting off with the chill-out vibes from Bob Marley in the form of ‘Mellow Mood’ before working our way through an eclectic mixture…

Brought to you this week by a salty cod lounging on a lawn chair drinking strawberry soda from a swirly straw, be sure to check out the all new episode of Cool Tools of Doom n’ Stuff! By the way, we love our SolidSmack readers! Have something cool you’ve come across and want to share…

안녕하세요! Strike up the band! Warn the children! Cover your grandma’s eyes! Inside 3D Printing Seoul kicks off NEXT WEEK. It’s set to be the first 3D printing trade show in South Korea, aaaaaaaaaaaand as one of the largest events Inside 3D Printing has hosted to date, SolidSmack readers can get in on the action…

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 starting off with the latest from The Kooks and then we’ll work our way through some Kasabian, Damon Albarn, Nick Cave, St. Vincent,…

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 picking up the tempo with some indie electronic music that is among the best available today. We’ll start with Paper Trails from the…

Leave it up to industrial designer Adam O’Hern and his industrial design training site cadjunkie to sharpen those SolidWorks Ninja skills. Released today, the new and improved course pages for the SolidWorks 101, 201 and 301 series are the perfect way to stay on top of your SolidWorks skill set. Featuring projects including a robot…

Brought to you this week by a passive-aggressive guinea pig wearing an extra-large sombrero and singing the Macarena, be sure to check out the all new episode of Cool Tools of Doom n’ Stuff! By the way, we love our SolidSmack readers! Have something cool you’ve come across and want to share it on SolidSmack?…

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. For this blues harp-inspired playlist we’ll start with ‘Blowing the Blues’ from Sonny Terry and work our way through some Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed…

Brought to you this week by a mutant Koala bear with vodka tentacles and a guacamole hat, be sure to check out the all new episode of Cool Tools of Doom n’ Stuff! By the way, we love our SolidSmack readers! Have something cool you’ve come across and want to share it on SolidSmack? Don’t…

Between the recent developments in creating 3D printed houses, replicas of T-Rex museum displays and even carbon fiber race car parts, the limits of additive manufacturing are being pushed daily. In the past, 3D printers were commonly used for creating prototypes and one-offs in the product development process. Today however, everybody from middle school students…

While using a stylus and a tablet for sketching is still a cumbersome experience for a lot of designers (particularly in the fine-point tip department), it is still very doable with enough practice…and in some cases, with some spare paper nearby. We’ve seen two-in-one hybrids that pair a stylus tip with a pen in the…

It comes with little surprise that with the rise of Kickstarter videos and ‘launch campaigns’ there is a growing trend in creating ‘start-up parodies’. Perhaps the most well-known is HBO’s Silicon Valley tv show in which the main character navigates the weird and wild terrain of the California start-up scene. Similar to the essence of…

Still the most iconic of all video game systems, the original NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) is arguably still just as relevant today as it was when it released in North America in 1985. With its expansive game library and lo-fi simplicity, it’s a breath of fresh air for not only retro gamers but also those…

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’ve put together a high-tempo playlist to help you hammer out those marathon sketch sessions. We’ll start with ‘Here It Goes Again’ from OK…

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…