Remember a whole two days ago when we told you Carbon introduced the M1 3D Printer? Well, we just had word that Dr. Joseph DeSimone, Chemist, Inventor, and CEO/Co-Founder of Carbon, will be the leading keynote of the Inside 3D Printing, New York, event next week.
We may still be quite a few years off from the Mattel hoverboard we were “promised” after multiple viewings of Back to the Future (sorry, self-balancing two-wheeled millennial movers don’t count), but that hasn’t stopped many of us from dreaming. Among others, London-based animator Garth Lee has taken the obsession to a new level and…
While most people prefer to park their car on the street in favor of using their garage as a workshop or walk-in utility closet, stuntman and woodworker Ben Tardif had other plans: he converted his entire garage into a giant marble rollercoaster. Called Marble Mountain, the ‘still under construction’ marble machine consists of 25 sections…
The wild and unpredictable color combinations that result from melting crayons has been the cornerstone of many an arts and crafts project for decades – but why haven’t we seen a wood shop project yet? Whether or not you have a particular fondness for the Grateful Dead and funny tasting mushrooms, it’s hard to deny…
$199 can get you a lot these days–smartphones, single-board computers, robots, a latte. Getting a 3D printer for that price usually entails assembling it yourself and is, more often than not, limited in the area of print quality. Kodama wants to change those limitations with the Trinus 3D printer, set to hit Kickstarter March 30th…
Ever since I was a kid, blowing Play-Doh through letter shaped cookie cutters, I’ve had an interest in typefaces. I like to think I’m the one who confronted my second-grade teacher about the font choice and kerning on that awful “Mister Seahorse’ bulletin board. I imagine Loren Kulesus, a Brooklyn-based designer, has had a similar…
It was just last week when Valve announced that they were making the CAD files for the external parts of their Steam Controller publicly available for users to mod, accessorize and 3D print. Now, Amazon wants to get on the DIY wagon, too. Organized and published to GitHub by Amit Jotwani, Amazon’s senior evangelist for…
As Easter is welcomed this weekend and next weekend in churches, homes, and local events, some bomb squads have come up with an innovative way to make sure that all children can participate in very special Easter egg hunt around the country.
During the late 1920s – just before The Great Depression – those who were fortunate enough to own an automobile preferred the bright highlight of a whitewall tire to contrast against the increasingly gloomy and dark surroundings. Ironically, because blackwall tires required less effort to maintain after curb scuffs due to a greater amount of…
Although we’re just as excited as anybody else about the future of manufacturing – particularly AR applications, Cloud-based CAD and improvements to digital fabrication workflows – our appreciation for traditional craftsmanship techniques is still shining as bright as ever. Among others who have taken manufacturing goods to the complete opposite end of the spectrum is…
For some, the sight of a school lunch tray might bring memories of rubbery fish sticks, generic ketchup and grape juice with strong notes of cardboard – but for artist and furniture maker Kim Markel, the sight of a school lunch tray means one thing only: tasteful opportunity. The late-blooming furniture designer, who left a…
I have no earthly idea how we walked down dark halways prior to having smartphones. Anyone remember? Surely it was too dark to even venture out or, my goodness, GO DOWN STAIRS?! Smartphones have changed things. Soon, we may be asking, “How did we 3D print things before smartphones?!” If the OLO 3D printer is…
Forget a smaller iPhone or iPad Pro, the real winner of yesterday’s Apple keynote was something that most people will never get to hold in their hands – let alone see. Revealed on stage by Lisa Jackson, Apple’s SVP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Liam is an industrial robot designed for no other purpose than…
Autodesk just revealed their plans to jump from desktop 3D printer/platform development to taking on high-production industrial machining. And it goes way beyond hardware. A few years ago, we wouldn’t imagine Autodesk even getting into hardware. We joked about them producing their own 3D printer, then they did. But one little ol’ 3D printer, with…
Despite what seem like a seemingly endless array of sneaker models and colors in existence today, the competition for having the tightest kicks on the block is a heated one; it’s getting harder to find that “one of a kind” pair. In what started out as a necessity to stand out from his high school…
Although wood is a considerably easy material to work with, replicating designs by hand can be difficult unless you have years of experience and a penchant for crafty jigs. Inspired by key duplicators that are common in any hardware store, the Clone 3D is a professional grade copy carver/pantograph that allows existing objects to rotate…
It’s always good to end the week on a high note – and more often than not, insane garage inventor Colin Furze ends up somewhere in the top three of our highest notes to end the week on. For his latest stunt, “The Furze” – somehow still alive – created a Firework Rocket Launcher that somehow…
Since founder Eric Singer created the first hardwood wayfarer sunglasses style in 2009, Portland, Oregon-based Shwood has only continued to push the boundaries of what’s possible for materials in sunglass frame design. Particularly, sunglasses made from natural materials that are continuing to resonate with the outdoor enthusiast market. Since creating the original hardwood frames, the…
Gotta catch ’em all! Pokémon is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and it still has a huge dedicated fan base. Whether you have been a fan since the original 150 or are new to the Pokémon world, fans all over show their love of the series in various ways, including recreating their favorite pocket…
Between a colorful variety of open source sex toys and the ability to have 3D scans of a fetus 3D printed for sharing with the whole family in advance of birth, you’d think we’ve seen the full gamut of possible uses for today’s digital scanning and fabrication technologies. If the Nudee from UK-based Firebox is…
It might not be the most common thing to do, but building one’s own home from scratch is surely one of the most satisfying things to do – especially if it’s built from trees that you felled yourself. Unless you’re one of the few who has the time on their hands to build a log cabin…
Last time we looked at Opendesk, they were nestled amongst freshly cut timbers and the warm glow of computer screens, a new site with a few pieces of furniture you could download and make or have made locally. Since then, well, let’s just say they’ve grown. The founders of FabHub have constructed a site that include…
In case you’ve been sitting there staring at your new 3D printer for two weeks straight, wondering what to do next, and you’re badly in need of a shower, we’ve got some news for you. The sharp all-things-3D teaching team over at SolidProfessor has two new 3D Printing courses that are bound to get you…
In the vast and wonderful world of guitar pedals, it can be hard to stick out from the crowd, but 21-year veteran guitar pedal builder Zachary Vex just might have developed the strangest and most unique pedal to date: the Z.VEX Candela Vibrophase. Powered entirely by a tea light candle, the vibrato/phaser is a highly-efficient…
I build a lot of mock-ups and prototypes of various consumer products that I design for my clients. I cast a lot of parts in silicone molds, but I don’t cast a lot of silicone parts, much less gaskets. So, this project will take an existing process and combine it with 3D printing in a new way to make…
Comprising of 3,000 wood pieces, 2,000 marbles, and the patience of a 16th Century Zen Master, the Wintergartan Marble Machine by Swedish musician Martin Molin is certainly unlike any other instrument you’ve seen before. Although the machine looks like a highly-complicated loom that could knit you the most satisfying sweater ever, it is instead a…
Fours years ago, I remember hitting New York, plastering SolidSmack stickers around town with our Managing Editor Simon Martin, for the very first Inside 3D Printing event in New York. It was small, but larger than expected, with tracks that not only covered the tech, but also the business side of 3D printing.
We’ve seen how viable direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) is as a method of reliably producing metal parts in industries ranging from aerospace to dentistry – but what about industries that regularly depend on structures made from multiple metal materials for different structural needs? Standing at the intersection of machine learning, advanced printers and cloud software…
Forget the Apple smartwatch. How about a watch, with a tourbillon, that’s almost completely 3D printed? Swiss engineer Christopher Laimer has you covered. Laimer has created the world’s first fully functional 3D printed winding watch. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, it uses a tourbillon, a marker of high-end watchmaking developed in 1795 by famed…
Need a bike? Print one up. Yeah, I know. It’s not exactly new to see custom-made 3D printed bicycles- back in 2015 Italian design studio Eurocomposti unveiled their Bhulk MTB bike frame made out of recycled PLA filament and Portland-based Industry lifted the curtain on their titanium 3D printed, ‘connected’ bike Solid. While both of…
On his YouTube channel How To Make Everything!, curious human Andy George explores everything that it takes to make everyday objects – from food to industrial goods – entirely from scratch as a way of better understanding complex manufacturing and production processes that are often taken for granted. To do so, he travels the world and…
For years now, the promise of on-demand athletic shoe manufacturing hasn’t lived up to its hype. While the top brands have presented various interpretations of what a “3D Printed Shoe” would or could look like, little has trickled down to the consumer other than the option to customize colors a la Nike iD. Needless to…
Joerg Sprave of the Slingshot Channel never fails to entertain. (Check out our interview with him.) He can make a slingshot from anything. His latest video proves that, with the complete process of how he weaponized his beard.
An anonymous puzzle maker has made history by building the world’s largest twisty puzzle in the world with a 22×22 Rubik’s cube. The designer failed twice when previous designs exploded, but due to dogged determination the mysterious designer has finally succeeded.
With over a million views on his primitive technology-related videos, the YouTuber appropriately known only as Primitive Technology has indeed found the recipe for viral success. While primitive technology and streaming video might go together as well as oil and water, a recent surge of views in survivalist-related content – particularly those that document primitive…
Whether it’s a cantaloupe, an anthill, or even raw steak, there’s no shortage of what’s possible for testing the effects of casting or pouring molten metal in or on natural objects – at least, as evidenced by a rising tide of YouTube videos of people doing just that. While pouring molten aluminum in both anthills…
People have been using Google search since 1997 (in 1996 it was known as BackRub) to search for information on everything under the son and beyond. With the rise of desktop 3D printing, hobbyists have turned to just about every search engine (Bing, Yahoo, WebCrawler, etc.) to get their hands on any number of 3D…
These days, it seems like we rarely go a week without some crazy blacksmith vying for YouTube view counts with an attention-grabbing blade design. Regardless of whether the skilled blacksmiths are recreating Jaime Lannister’s Sword from Game of Thrones or demonstrating the process of repurposing a circular saw blade into a usable knife design, we’re…
When it comes to 3D printing, there are several methods you can use to help anchor the print to the print bed–painters tape (blue tape), hairspray, glass with a little adhesive… While all of those are useful for keeping the print stuck to the print bed, getting them off is a different story altogether.
According to Cornwall, UK-based traditional wooden boat builder Ben Harris, a wooden sailing boat is perhaps the most glorious instrument the human hand can build. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, his mother even said that his first word was ‘log’. Having been working with wood professionally since the young age of 15, Harris first cut his chops…
Although we’ve seen a fair share of 3D printing applications for midsoles in modern footwear design, we’ve been yet to see any additive manufacturing technique that’s been practical enough for creating uppers on a mass scale, too – a critical missing component of being able to manufacture shoes on demand. Designers and engineers at Nike, Adidas,…
At nearly 200 years old, the simple bicycle is still a complex design challenge that many have used for testing the limits of materials, processes, and design – particularly in the more recent age of digital fabrication. Although the two-wheeled frame design has remained largely unchanged during this time, developments made from both large companies…
Existing somewhere between the land art of Robert Smithson and traditional metal manufacturing processes, Copenhagen-based designer Andreas Konradsen has successfully created what is likely the first chair design to be fabricated using a natural body of water. Konradsen, a recent graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Design, created the “Ripe…
To our subtractive manufacturing excitement, we’ve seen an increase in the number of desktop CNC machines internetting their way into our lives over the past year. The latest of these is the Evo-One, a sleek package from MakerDreams that fits in 530cm (20.8″) envelope. A perfect size for that woodtop desk next to your well-groomed…
With smartphones practically hanging off our faces, accessories for them are essential. Do you want to be the person without a custom case or a cracked screen? Of course not, which is why those cases and other accessories are as important as the phone itself. With a variety to choose from, it’s easy to customize…
3D printing is rapidly becoming the one and only way to manufacture parts – making anything from little action figures to wearable clothes. But, no matter how expensive or fancy your printer is they all have the same problem: getting finished parts out of the printbed. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? It wouldn’t be if…
Star Wars fever is real and running more rampant than ever. Seething, even. Before you ready your wardrobe for the movie this Friday, you’ll want to prime your 3D printer. The official BB-8 Builder’s Club just released open-source plans on how to print your very own BB-8 replica just in time for Star Wars: The…
Jimmy DiResta is notorious for his exquisite woodworks- from chess sets to custom guitars, there is seemingly nothing he can’t create. Craftsmen always make woodworking look incredibly easy to do – when in fact even simply whittling a tree branch into something resembling a walking stick is a near impossibility for people like me. More…
Although it may have quieted down substantially compared to the early days of MakerBot, the exploration of 3D printing in consumer applications has never been stronger. While small companies such as print+ are testing 3D printing in distributed manufacturing sales models, larger companies with more substantial budgets are exploring how they can create new consumer…
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from our favorite UK garage inventor Colin Furze, but we’re glad to see that he’s wrapping up 2015 on a high note. The 32-year-old plumber and daredevil, whose previous projects have ranged from the World’s Fastest Pram to a hydroformed suit for wearing while being shot at with…