Since introducing their Futurecraft initiative late last year, Adidas has shown no signs of slowing down their exploration – and intention – of incorporating additive manufacturing and other next generation digital fabrication techniques into their supply chain in the not-too-distant future. Tomorrow, in honor of World Oceans Day, Adidas and ocean conservation group Parley for…
Often used for the production of engine parts, lost-foam casting (LFC) has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years despite having first been invented by sculptor Armand Vaillancourt in the 1950s and first used commercially by General Motors in the mid-1980s for their Saturn car line. More recently, Dutch industrial designer Klaas Kuiken became…
Perhaps best known for sand casting his Pewter Stool in the natural landscape of Caerhays beach on the South coast of Cornwall back in 2006, industrial designer Max Lamb has continued on his quest to explore new ways of manufacturing products in nontraditional ways over the past ten years. For the Crockery Collection, Lamb turned…
Except for perhaps the Raspberry Pi or Arduino, few products are as capable of going from zero to hero with a little DIY ingenuity than IKEA furniture – otherwise known as IKEA Hacks. At its core, an IKEA hack is a modification or repurposing of an IKEA product that breaks into the IKEA code of furniture…
Earlier we published a story on the massive CoLiDo Mega 3D printer, but some believed the print was faked.It does look a bit surreal in the image, however. For those accustomed to printing smaller items on smaller 3D printers, the sight of a giant print may seem, well, impossible.
The force has always been strong when it comes to interest in Star Wars prop replicas, but Disney and Lucasfilm have always relied on licensing official designs and schematics to third-party companies. While the resulting products may hold up well when it comes to sales numbers, they’ve been a far cry from what would be…
UK-based Laykanics is an interesting service that offers monthly 3D print-based project kits that I think could be very suitable for educators looking to expose students to 3D printing.
Having received multiple awards from countless institutions as well as being a favorite for the world’s elite, Steinway & Sons pianos continue to pass all standards since the company was founded by German immigrant Henry Steinway in a loft in New York City in 1853. Unsurprisingly, making the world’s best piano is a time-honored process…
From removing his socks with a handbuilt rocket launcher to creating a working homemade hoverbike, garage inventor Colin Furze has somehow managed to keep his limbs intact over the past few months – which is saying a lot, because his projects as of late have been getting bigger, faster and certainly a lot more explosive. With…
Presented by For those who have visited, it’s slightly difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes Amsterdam such an attractive city. No matter how you describe it, though, few cities are capable of melding that old European charm with the attributes of a modern metropolis quite like Amsterdam can. It should come as little surprise then,…
What happens when aerospace specialists develop a motorcycle with bionic algorithms instead of calculating spaceship engines? According to Airbus subsidiary APWorks, the result is “the world’s lightest motorcycle,” AKA the 77-pound Light Rider. 3D printed with the company’s own Scalmalloy material – which they describe as being a 3D printing-optimized, aircraft-grade aluminum with the strength of…
When it’s time to get some new spoons, the first place you turn is Ikea or Amazon, if you don’t feel like leaving the house. But some prefer to make their own spoons, the old fashioned way. Giles Newman is one of those people. But once you see Newman’s hand crafted spoons you won’t want…
The folks at E3D are most well-known for their very popular hot-ends, which are installed on many desktop 3D printers. Now they’ve taken a step out of bounds to produce a pretty amazing filament.
Although it has advanced significantly within the past few years, the process of going from CAD model to 3D printed object is still a bit rough around the edges – particularly in industrial applications. Aiming to expand their 3D printing ecosystem with a refined design-to-print workflow for product designers, engineers and 3D printer operators, Stratasys…
Back when my generation were kids, we created projects using the most state-of-the-art technology on the market–Tinkertoys, Erector Sets and the eternally popular LEGO. It took a lot of imagination (along with cuts and bruises) to create projects that somehow always ended up being some crazy Rube Goldberg contraption. Imagine if we had access to…
As predicted, hot off the (literal) heels of HP’s unveiling of their HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solution this morning, the first of many companies have stepped forward in support of incorporating Multi Jet Fusion technology into product development processes and low production runs. First up to the plate is none other than Nike – consistently…
Completed in 1912, Portland’s Steel Bridge is the only double-deck bridge with independent lifts in the world and the second oldest vertical-lift bridge in North America – after the nearby Hawthorne Bridge just a stone’s throw down the Willamette River. For his 3rd-grade son’s recent school project, our woodworking YouTuber Frank Howarth of Frank Makes…
As athletes that rely wholeheartedly on nature to make or break a good day in the water, the surfing community has consistently been among the most active when it comes to preserving our oceans and keeping environmental threats at bay. Ironically, the materials used to produce the very boards they ride on also contain some…
As the latest in digital fabrication technologies – such as 3D printing in multiple materials – become more affordable and widespread, the promise of a supply chain-disrupting distributed manufacturing future – at least, for some products – continues to look more promising. As we continue to navigate the landscape of 3D printing and other digital fabrication…
Like others who found their way to a career in product design, Dimitris Niavis spent a significant amount of his childhood tearing apart toys, figuring out how they work and ultimately reassembling them again. Today, the designer is using that same train of thought to rethink local manufacturing with the goal of creating a synergy…
There have been multiple attempts to develop a feasible method of 3D printing buildings, and Branch Technology is trying another method.
By nature, the human eye is one of the most complex and intelligent examples of biological design – not to mention one of the more challenging biological features to design protection for in extreme conditions. For athletes that sweat and move in all directions rigorously for hours on end, this design problem is made all…
According to San Diego surfboard shaper Josh Oldenburg, the most critical challenge of being a local shaper in an international surfboard manufacturing mecca is the level of competition and design standards that go into each and every board. Needless to say, just to be considered a shaper alongside names like Rusty, Chris Christenson, and Jeff…
Whether you prefer to cook your steaks over an outdoor fire or in the kitchen, few materials offer excellent heat retention properties and a better experience than cast iron cookware. With its near-perfect design, the age-old cast iron skillet has changed very little over the past two-thousand years and continues to be handed down through…
With a deep fascination of what they call the “common territories between architecture and music”, designers Marcelo Ertorteguy and Sara Valente of NYC design studio Stereotank operate somewhere at the intersection of architecture, art and sound. Although the team is used to working at a large-scale, they’ve recently turned their attention to creating hybrid objects…
Responsible for churning out everything from construction helmets to hot tubs, vacuum forming is easily one of the most fascinating forms of manufacturing for the non-technical crowd due to its relatively simple process: heat plastic and pull it around a shape to create multiples of that shape. Aiming to package this vacuum forming experience with…
While some dusted off their lightsabers or danced around the house in Darth Vader socks this past unofficial Star Wars day (May the Fourth be with you), Frank Howarth of the YouTube channel Frank Makes celebrated exactly how you would expect him to: by turning wood on a lathe. Unlike his usual lathe projects, however,…
I’m viewing a very curious video from Tokyo-based ENOMOTO, who seem to have developed a 3D printer that can print in many directions.
The last time we checked in with totally-insane-yet-completely-brilliant garage inventor Colin Furze, he was epically removing his socks with the aid of a firework rocket launcher and somehow walking away unscathed. Yet again, we still don’t know how this guy doesn’t end up in the hospital. Yesterday, Furze shared what is likely his most impressive…
Whether it’s a toy Lightsaber, a miniature city, a robot or even just a plain old box, few materials can fuel a child’s imagination like cardboard can. Not to mention, the environmentally-friendly material is easy to work with and is nearly free – depending on where you look. Aiming to make creating awesome cardboard toys easy…
A new filament from Avante demonstrates how much more advances in 3D printing filament chemistry can achieve. The new FilaOne GRAY filament from Avante Technology is one of very few materials specifically designed for 3D printing engineering applications. Avante explains: FilaOneTM GRAY provides very high flexural modulus, yet can bend and recover without crack- ing…
When it comes to creativity and DIY culture on wheels, few people embody the creative spirit more than the British Columbia-based Zenga brothers (AKA Zenga Bros). Born and raised by eclectic parents in Vancouver, the six brothers (of nine children total) were taught from a young age to explore their creativity – regardless of where…
Kickstarter is littered with failed projects that never made it close to their respective pledge goals and then there are those that smash through those goals within a few hours. Projects like Uniz Technology’s Slash 3D printer.
As a UX designer, Tobias Eichenwald believes we’re on the cusp of a shift that will move us away from generic Graphical User Interfaces to a new generation of Natural User Interfaces that engage multiple human senses including gesture, speech, haptic, visual interfaces and more. He is also the co-founder of Senic, a new hardware…
There was a time when 3D printing and building robots seemed out of reach of regular civilians, reserved for experts in the technology field. Now top-end technical tools are readily available at the hobby level. BoxBotix is yet another open source software aimed at hobbyist in the field, AND WE LOVE IT.
As anybody who has seen or personally created spin art knows, the power of centrifugal forces can lead to some pretty impressive results. But how might you apply the same psychedelic effect to physical goods? For industrial designer Maor Aharon, this question became the basis for his recent experiment “Matter of Motion” – a project…
When it comes to the expansive community of product designers focused on 3D printing as their medium of choice, few have offered more in the way of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible than Emerging Objects. Between printing a Utah Tea Set out of actual tea to creating a 3D printed house that you’d actually…
It’s critical to make your company distinct, especially in the world of 3D design and digital fabrication. Manufacturers often boast about the capabilities and features of their 3D printers, such as printing with more than one material, fabricating at lightning speed or having a high resolution. While those claims are often true, few compares to…
Although the sport of lacrosse may elicit thoughts of East Coast prep schools, the game was in fact invented by a confederacy of six Native American nations – the Iroquois – whose territory once stretched from Lake Erie in the west to Lake Champlain in the east. Unlike the contemporary lacrosse sticks of today that…
In most cases, using a 60,000 psi waterjet to cut material is a perfectly safe and sane process. For those who have an appetite for the recent phenomenon of object destruction videos, it’s also the perfect tool for cutting everyday objects perfectly in half to see a real-world cross section. On the ‘object destruction’ YouTube…
As conventional casting methods have taught us, the best way for reliably manufacturing multiples of any object is to start with an accurate and sturdy mold. For their recent Fabric Forms explorative material study, however, architects Joseph Sarafian and Ron Culver wanted to do something that was anything but conventional. Working with the Grasshopper plug-in…
Back in December of 2015, Alex Bolderoff and Joe Mosfet of Arcadian 3D came together to bring the ARC-one 3D printer to the world through crowd-funding website Kickstarter.
Like our favorite woodworking YouTuber Frank Howarth (AKA Frank Makes), blacksmith Niels Provos has an uncanny ability to balance the craft of videography with working in the shop. The results – which are almost always narrated step-by-step – offer a peek over the shoulder of a master at work. Unlike Howarth – who focuses solely on wood-related…
Jack Lennie is a recent Edinburgh-based product design graduate with a first class honors degree, a SolidWorks certification and a national award under his arm. He also just released a downloadable build kit for manufacturing a motorcycle in nearly any modern workshop. Not bad. Designed to breathe a “new lease of life into damaged or…
Despite the growing excitement around some of the latest additive manufacturing technologies, producing multiple plastic parts is still best left to traditional manufacturing methods – particularly injection molding. That said, there’s no reason why the two can’t continue to live in harmony as different respective steps of the design and production process. To further explore the…
Although short films that document manufacturing processes are as popular as ever, some of the most shining examples have existed for decades. In 1958, Dutch filmmaker Bert Haanstra paid a visit to the Royal Leerdam glass factory where an army of chain-smoking glassblowers delicately crafted crystal wares by hand. He also visited another factory that…
Although support material is a necessary part of the additive manufacturing process, it is far from desirable due to the time required to carefully remove it and finalize a print’s surface quality. But what if the support material became an actual part of the design of a product itself? In a recent collaboration with Materialise,…
As far as DIY weaponry goes, Joerg Sprave of the Slingshot Channel knows a thing or two about turning otherwise random objects into near-deadly projectiles. Among his expansive portfolio of ingenious solutions for surviving a zombie apocalypse, the Slingshot Zombiehammer with Skull Ejector and Skull Splitter Zombie SlingSword are surely weapons that you don’t want…
How are vinyl records made? Have you spent nights awake just pondering that? Well, let’s put your mind at ease. It begins with a metal flat disc and a coat of lacquer, and ends spinning on a turntable. Boom. Done. The Vinyl Factory provides a glimpse on how they make records in a 60 second…
Like many other designers and engineers who work in front of the computer all day, robotics engineer Mike Parris was tempted to leave the office environment for good in favor of working directly with his hands. At the time, Parris was working as a robotics engineer at Carnegie Mellon developing the technology that would later…