While it’s natural to want to have every advanced woodworking tool under the sun available at your disposal – we’re looking at you, Frank Howarth – there is also something to be said about the simplicity of working with the least amount of tools possible, or even having a workshop to work out of at all.…

I haven’t heard much from 3DPrinterOS for a while, but now the reason for this is clear: they’ve been working on powerful integrations. 3DPrinterOS is a cloud-based system for integration with common 3D printers, which tend to be rather dumb. 3DPrinterOS makes them a lot smarter by hooking them up to a cloud network where…

According to designers Piergiorgio Robino and Andrea Sanna of Italy-based Studio Nucleo, the best way to learn about an object is to construct it yourself. Frankly, we couldn’t agree more. But what about growing an object yourself? Robino and Sanna’s TERRA! Growing Furniture collection might be a good place to start. Having originally appeared at…

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…

Already considered one of the most reliable and user-friendly consumer desktop 3D printers, the Ultimaker 2+ now has an entirely new feature for those who need to prototype on-the-run. The 2 Go Backpack, which keeps an Ultimaker 2+ fully contained and protected for traveling by foot, bike or plane, is a packaging “mod” that adds…

A newly invented process could enable large-scale use of nano-printed metal materials. 3D printing is most often done at a visible scale, but for many years researchers have sought methods of printing materials at a nano scale to take advantages of molecular effects and microscopic structures. While many of these experiments have been successful, the…

Traditional digital fabrication of 3D models relies on first completing the model, or a piece of it, sending it through the slicing software, generating the g-code, eating a sandwich, then printing it out piece-by-piece. Sometimes design changes are required based on printer output or maybe the model needs tweaked and the print needs to be…

While he may be best known for warding off zombies with skull piercing “Brain Slicer” arrowheads or prepping for lethal milk and cookies with his Oreo Separation Pump Gun, Jörg Sprave of The Slingshot Channel just might have created his most ingenious mechanized weapon device yet. With an iPhone attached as an augmented reality viewfinder,…

Commonly used to seamlessly join dissimilar materials with different melting points, friction welding has been used to manufacture everything from airplane parts and rocket thruster tanks to even space shuttles and the razor-thin iMac. But regardless of the intended application, the visual spectacle provided by forcefully joining two materials together with brute force is one…

Creative Commons recently held a workshop to identify ways to move forward in providing better ways to license 3D content. While “CC” licenses have long been used to protect digital assets such as software, images and video, the usage for 3D models has been less widespread. Some printable 3D model repositories offer the ability to…

While those in the Western world may not think twice about flipping the light switch on at night, off-grid communities such as those in sub–Saharan African have come to rely on dangerous and expensive kerosene to keep the lights on after dark. This kerosene can cost 20% or more of an individual’s income and have…

With vinyl record sales surging at a 28 year high, it’s no surprise that among those celebrating the resurgence of that “warm and fuzzy sound” are the vinyl manufacturers themselves. In 2015 alone, vinyl sales hit $416 million thanks in part to major retailers including Barnes and Noble and Urban Outfitters adding vinyl to their…

Originally made from leather and stuffed with wool, today’s tennis balls are manufactured from raw rubber to have an optimal bounce height that can make or break a play for professional players. But how do the iconic yellow balls get that bounce in the first place? Commissioned by leading tennis ball manufacturer Wilson to document…

I needed to build a very quiet, high-capacity compressor for making ID models and prototypes in my shop. The one I have is quite loud and doesn’t have the capacity I was comfortable with for urethane casting work. I sourced a 6-gallon air tank on eBay for $35, including shipping, from a fellow in Indiana.…

Although digital LED destination signs have become increasingly more common on public transportation vehicles since the technology has become more affordable to implement, they surprisingly aren’t the most favored method of signage on modern rail cars and buses on their way to pick up eagerly awaiting passengers. Alternatively, backlit roller bus blinds offer significantly cleaner…

With 3D printing services popping up like dandelions across the nation, and UPS, Amazon and other major retailers hopping on the bandwagon, 3D printing is becoming more available to consumers. Home printer quality is hit or miss, to be honest. Even printers made from M3D, a bigger company, have their own share of issues. I…

Although Dyson’s Bladeless fans look freakin’ cool and feature a Helmholtz cavity designed to capture and dissipate motor noise, the bladeless tech comes in at a hefty $300 – easily sitting in the upper price bracket for desktop fans. While the bladeless fans feature ridiculously cool-looking internal parts just like Dyson’s vacuums, is the bladeless technology…

Centuries ago, the process of manufacturing wood objects such as bowls, utensils, and even toys involved foot-powered lathes that were powerful enough to dwindle rough chunks of freshly-cut wood into the usable items. While we’ve since replaced the need for foot power with electricity, the process of getting from wood block to finished object hasn’t…

There’s a peculiar startup offering a secure method of handling 3D design files called, Make it LEO. “LEO” stands for “Limited Edition Object”, and Make it LEO enables you to produce LEO files that contain the 3D design. But they also contain information about how it can be used. They explain: In a LEO (Limited…

While covering over 1,000 miles on a dog sled in only a matter of days in whiteout conditions is certainly awe-inspiring, designing and building lightweight carrying vessels by hand that can withstand demanding Alaskan winter terrain while transporting a human is equally impressive. As a builder of Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race sleds, retired Alaska…

In the “YOU MAKE IT WE SKATE IT” YouTube series, a group of skateboarders with a video camera and a penchant for material science create skateboard decks and accessories out of random objects to see if they ride or not. To date, this has included riding on everything from a flatscreen TV to a series…

The last time we checked in with Swedish musician Martin Molin, he had just completed building a 3,000–piece wood marble machine that uses 2,000 marbles to ring sweet melodies into our ears. While the original Marble Machine YouTube video has racked up nearly 22 million views since he released it earlier this year, Molin has…

There’s been speculation for years now about whether giant Apple would ever sell a 3D printer. Turns out they have been for a while. There have been some tantalizing hints that the consumer giant would eventually market some kind of advanced 3D printer for consumers, and even some patents clearly in the 3D print technology…

It’s not necessarily common to hear that somebody was “inspired by sushi” unless we’re talking about taking lunch early for a plate of California Rolls and a Sapporo. But for Tel Aviv-based product designer Ori Ravgad, “inspired by sushi” led to an entirely new dimension of constructing wooden veneer objects. Specifically, Ravgad was inspired by…

At just 54 inches long and just 41 inches wide, the Peel P50 has held the Guinness Book of World Records’ title of world’s smallest production car for over 50 years. Originally manufactured from 1962 to 1965 by the Peel Engineering Company on the Isle of Man, the three-wheeled urban micro cars – which were…

Since raising over $350K for their desktop 5-axis CNC mill on Kickstarter last year, the husband and wife engineering team at hardware startup Pocket NC has shown no signs of slowing down their hustle to bring fabrication tools to desktops. Announced last week, The Machine Shield is the latest desktop fabrication machine from the Bozeman,…

Early last month, SolidSmack reported on an impressive large format 3D printer made from two $9.99 IKEA LACK side tables created by Northampton-based 3D printing enthusiast Wayne Mason-Drust – AKA the “Printtable”. Using an E3D V6 Titan Extruder with an MKS SBase controller and an MKS TFT using Smoothieware, the (

Every summer, thousands of people around the world flock to a handful of Greek islands to spend their summer vacations in a Mediterranean paradise. Similar to what happens in other seasonal small towns around the globe, this influx of vacationers tests the limit of small infrastructures designed for a very small population that lives there…

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…

An experiment by researchers at the University of Copenhagen attempted to persuade an A.I. to create a 3D model from scratch. It did. It’s a peculiar approach that was used in this experiment, and is very similar to “genetic algorithms” in A.I. research. Here’s how it worked: The A.I. creates a random shape Images of…

Known for being almost impossible to carry around without a gig van, the last thing that any drummer would expect to be able to carry on their back is a drumset – particularly for impromptu acoustic jam sessions. But heck, what if they could? The cardboard DRUMKIT from OBILAB music just might be the best thing…

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…

As the complexities of hardware design continue to be broken down and simplified into build-it-yourself projects for inspiring the next generation of inventors, the quality of these build kits only continue to get better. More recently, Bose has tapped into this new category of build-it-yourself consumer electronics with their BOSEbuild lineup, which includes appealing end…

I’m reading a piece in Newsweek describing how the 3D printing bubble has “burst”, and wonder how such a thing could be true. The story describes the story familiar to Fabbaloo readers in which, after the initial 3D printing patents expired, several companies raced to produce and capitalize on low-cost 3D printers, largely through a…

With a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering and over 9 years of experience at NASA (7 years of which were spent working on the Curiosity Rover), Mark Rober knows a thing or two about how to make stuff work. More recently, Rober teamed up with fellow engineer friends David and Ryan from the YouTube channel…

Presented by In seismically active, emerging nations that have suffered through devastating earthquake damage, rebuilding communities doesn’t just end with repairing homes, schools and other community structures – it ends when a foundation has been laid for a safer, more prosperous community. Unfortunately, many rebuilding efforts are based on routine cookie-cutter procedures that are incapable…

Released last month, Nike’s Vaporwing Elite running sunglasses consist of a one-piece design that fuses the lens with the frame to significantly reduce weight while minimizing wind resistance and debris. While casual sunglasses designed for the average pedestrian are one thing, eyewear designed for the demands of competitive runners is a whole different ballgame. Among…

Considering how pianos can become the centerpiece of a living area within a home, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen more collaborations between instrument manufacturers and hand-crafted furniture manufacturers. If we did, we’d probably see a lot more pianos like the KIYOLA ‘Made In Japan’ Series KF-10 from Roland and Karimoku Furniture. Designed by Karimoku’s…

Having started his custom shoe design business during high school in 2008, Jacob Blaise Ferrato soon gained exposure in the massive underground sneaker community when he started posting pictures of his hand-painted Nikes in online forums. Today, the now 25-year-old custom sneaker designer demands upwards of $2,000 per custom pair of sneakers – both custom variations…

When it comes to fascinating alternative use cases for manufacturing processes, waterjet cutting has had no shortage of applications, yet New Zealand-based designer Mark Wilson might have just come up with the best use case yet. In the waterjet manufacturing process, the high-pressure water stream can lose its pressure and precision soon after entering a…

As far as factory tours go, the LEGO Inside Tour at the LEGO production facility in Billund, Denmark exists in a league of its own. Assuming that you can grab a spot on one of the four scheduled LEGO Inside Tour weekend dates that take place in May and June of each year, the price…

Botzen Design Studio will have a 2-day, hands-on Model Making Workshop Saturday, June 25 – Sunday, June 26th. It all happens at the Botzen Design Studio in Southfield, Michigan (northwest Detroit).

Monocolor 3D prints are so dull-looking; that’s why many people paint or finish them. But what if you could do so with the world’s darkest material?

While it’s not uncommon to take 3D printed parts to a high-level of finished quality, it’s not necessarily something we tend to see too often when it comes to stationary toys and objects that have become synonymous with consumer FDM 3D printers. At their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY, the Locknesters team of toy designers are…

As one of the most memorable parts of Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space, the infamous “Printer Scene” gave an honest look at how some of us really feel about our office equipment when it fails to work as intended. While it may not reach the same level of badassery as seen in the film,…

As far as turning wooden bowls on a lathe goes, Frank Howarth is the man. Even so, the master himself needs an added challenge every now and again…and this one is three years in the making. For his most recent project, the woodworker/filmmaker took a bowl he had previously turned from a raw piece of…

There’s an interesting option available for those requiring a large-format desktop 3D printer: the T-Rex from FORMBOT. The open-style cartesian 3D printer appears to have a simple design, but there are some very interesting features beyond the basics of 3D printing. The most important feature, of course, is the huge build volume, which is measured…

While Apple’s industrial design team is known to sweat every last detail of a new product in their top-secret lab, a not-too-secret team of aftermarket hardware customizers at the ColorWare facility in Winona, Minnesota have been turning back the clock to keep the characteristics of yesterday’s Apple industrial design alive in 2016. Founded on the…

As the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Northern European countries, uitto – or log driving – was the process of moving logs from a forest to sawmills downstream using the current of a river. It is also the inspiration for a group of Finnish skateboarders who want to bring sustainable skateboard…

As a professional carpenter who has worked in commercial construction for over 30 years, Ontario-based woodworker John Heisz is no stranger to making use of old and rusty saw blades that he comes across. As a matter of fact, he has an entire YouTube channel where – among other projects – he injects new life…