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.…

Hang your head in shame. The surface finish on that part your 3D printer coughed out over two to five hours could be used to remove the coarse back hair off a grandpaw yak. We’re currently doomed to the hype of hi-res 3d prints but still getting jagged edges and snagly bits gumming up our…

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from our favorite paper-based 3D printing friends over at MCor Technologies. The proud Irish (they offer cans of Guinness at their booth during trade shows if you ask nicely FYI) company has reported annual sales of their eco-friendly printers up over 600% and are showing no signs of slowing…

Having only recently acquired the 3D printed sugar company The Sugar Lab a few months ago, 3D Systems is already keeping the momentum moving in expanding 3D printing to chefs, bakers, and anybody looking to create conversational-worthy sugar cubes modeled in Grasshopper to have with tea. Expected to be available in the second half of…

It’s only day one of the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but this year has already shaped up to be the most exciting year thus far for 3D printing enthusiasts. Among other announcements, MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis has unveiled what will certainly be an exciting addition to their lineup of 3D printers—which have…

Claiming that they have built the largest ceramic 3D printer ever made, Israeli design and research studio ‘Studio Under’ have certainly set themselves up to a high standard. Founded by industrial designers Eran Gal-Or, Liat Akerman and Omer Merzel, the studio of recent Holon Institute of Technology grads focus on designing and fabricating 3D printed…

Back in May of 2013, SolidSmack reported on a couple that found themselves in a horrible predicament: they wanted to bake a birthday cake for a beloved friend, however they didn’t have an oven. Being the design savvy couple that they are, a 3D printed cake of their own design seemed like the best alternative.…

As the market for artisanal goods keeps expanding in a world of disposable IKEA and H&M ‘goods’, so too does the desire for people to hear the stories behind these expertly-crafted artifacts. Murray Carter is another one of those makers who has spent his life perfecting the craft of bladesmithing…a unique craft that demands both…

If someone were to tell you five years ago that you would be able to 3D print a garden in the next few years, your disbelief would probably grow faster than the grass hair on a Homer Simpson Chia Pet. However the momentum of mixing digital fabrication with non-traditional materials doesn’t seem to be slowing…

One of the biggest hurdles in moving 3D printing forward has been the material constraints for creating ‘all-in-one’ products. Sure you can take apart that old computer mouse, hack together a new form factor in SolidWorks, spit it out of your MakerBot and fasten the still-warm pieces together, but few people would call that ‘revolutionary’…

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…

Well folks, if nothing stirs your curry more than some exciting CAM news, then this year’s Autodesk University in Las Vegas was for you! In case you missed the announcement from SolidSmack last week, Autodesk is moving forward with their Autodesk 360 collaborative cloud experience with the addition of CAM 360. We had a chance…

Autodesk is blowing off the metal shavings of static shop-side subtractive manufacturing, delivering the first of its kind collaborative CAM solution. Today, the software product/service company kicked off Autodesk University 2013 in a chilly Las Vegas announcing Autodesk CAM 360, pushing the computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) process to the cloud and milling out a sweet little oily…

File this under that ever-expanding ‘Why Didn’t I Think Of That?’ pile: Swedish travel and lifestyle photographer Jens Lennartsson was feeling like he wanted to get a little more attention from potential agency clients, so rather than going the traditional route and creating ‘the mother of all business cards’, he omitted the card altogether and…

We’ve seen quite the gamut of unique bicycle designs over the past year. From the 19th century velocipede re-imagined with today’s bicycle technologies to custom bicycle designs that utilize rapid manufacturing methods and everything in between, riders looking for a funkier ride have never had more options. The Sandwichbike from designer Basten Leijh is the…

It was only yesterday that we took a look at Autodesk’s Project Shapeshifter and explored how it is moving away from existing simple modeling apps and into more complex modeling aimed at the consumer market. Although 3D printer sales have surged (and will continue to do so), the bridge between concept and well-executed print is…

Autodesk has been making headway with various announcements leading up to next week’s Autodesk University in Las Vegas. A little over a month ago we saw the release of their Project Miller preview, which is aimed at optimizing and validating designs before hitting that heavy ‘Print’ button to send a file off to a 3D…

Consider it a handheld 3D printer of sorts—and not of the stringy-glue gun variety. The FreeD is MIT’s latest cool piece of tech that is essentially a handheld milling machine that allows a user to sculpt a pre-defined shape from a 3D model. As 3D printer manufacturers are moving towards higher resolution and accuracy in…

With it’s earthy tones and fibrous appearance, it almost looks appetizing enough to eat. Inspired by alternative manufacturing processes that could help re-shape the Greek economy, University of Edinburgh grad Spyros Kizis has developed a way of using Artichoke Thistle fiber mixed with a new waste-oil biological epoxy resin to create a plastic-like material that…

Having been friends since childhood, Are Audio founders Richie White and Ross Connolly shared a common passion for engineering, physics, and high-fidelity sound. Today, the two are hard at work with their custom audio speaker company based out of St. John’s Newfoundland. The hand-manufacturing process that goes into making anything audio-based is always a slippery-slope:…

When looking at companies embracing the 3D printing movement, it’s hard to deny that Microsoft is taking large strides towards making their products more seamless in the 3D printing experience for the mass market. With the combination of introducing native 3D printing support into their recent Windows 8.1 update—a first for an operating system—to the…

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…

Why, just the other day, 3D Systems announce the Geomagic Sense scanner aimed at the home user and hobbyist with a few millimeters of accuracy and handheld coolness for $400 bones. Just think though, professional scanning with 60-118 micron accuracy and a desktop scanner/tripod/software/power cable could be yours for just “$14,900 to $24,900.” (Yes, power…

With their recent launch of Cubify Design, you would think that 3D Systems would hypothetically be sitting back in the boardroom drinking coffee and eating jelly doughnuts while waiting for the world to take notice. While that actually doesn’t sound like a bad way to spend a Friday morning, 3D Systems are keeping their momentum…

Boy, howdy. Just when you think it’s not safe to walk down a dark alley unarmed, a 3D printing service company out of Austin, Texas goes and prints a metal gun. Solid Concepts has ‘done gone’ the unthinkable (to some), the unimaginable (to others), and has used lasers, powdered metal and considerable time to 3D…

Before the lowrider caddy, the diamond-encrusted 3d printed sunglasses and a poodle in your arms named G-Code, you had the dream of becoming the biggest 3D print service on your block. A $10 domain and two weeks later, you’re rollin’ in the muh-hu-hu-ney, siftin’ stl’s and ringin’ dinner bells… It’s all due to 1) the…

Perhaps you’re chillin’ in the eclectic abode of Shanghainese family of brush-tailed porcupines wondering where they curate their wonderful assortment of furniture and lighting. Perhaps the conversation leads to the discussion of computers, generative design and applying moisturizer in hard-to-reach places. With such discussions of computers and design, there’s likely one person’s name to pop…

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…

Just about every library I’ve been to in the past 172 years of my life has had a lot of books, a lot of quiet and a lot of room left vacant for spur-of-the-moment MLM meetings. The child who brings a desktop lathe and scrapes of grandpa’s wood to sit quietly tooling away in a…

Having directed both live-action and animated films for over ten years, Nando Costa is no stranger to film production, yet waiting for over 800 pieces of maple to be laser-engraved and used as individual frames for a short film is somewhat new territory. In his latest Kickstarter-backed short film “The New America”, Costa puts those…

In a world where mass-manufactured Nike Air Jordans, Teva Sandals, and Croc Clogs dominate the sidewalks, it’s easy to overlook the time and patience that goes into designing and making shoes by hand. Sure there’s value in appreciating how the latest sneaker design came to fruition, but the amount of disconnect is surely larger than…

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…

We’ve been seeing an onslaught of great Maker-inspired ad campaigns from various alcohol makers in the past few months ranging from DeWars’ 3B Printing Project campaign to Ballantine’s Ballance. The latest to join the ranks is Baileys with their Baileys Chocolate Luxe campaign that will really, really, make you want to have some chocolate after…

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…

Putting a 3D printer in the back of a car might not be that revolutionary, but considering what kind of power that could put into the hands of various service people? Now that’s getting interesting. From plumbers to electricians and even general contractors, the ability to have on-demand part production on-site could rapidly speed up…

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…

Operating in the fields of design, fashion, and architecture, Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves of Studio Swine have made a unique name for themselves through their exploration of design through material innovation and creating new sustainable systems with a strong focus on aesthetics. Having received multiple international awards including those from Wallpaper Magazine and the…

Living in 150 square feet doesn’t sound appealing to a lot of people, but for ultra-minimalists and those looking to pinch their pennies, downsizing their living space has been a liberating experience according to recent news stories over the past few years. With the rise of such couch-surfing/house rental sites such as AirBnB, micro-houses have…

Inspired by the unique balance of what gives a fine whiskey it’s character, (in this case, Ballantine’s 12), Stockholm female design trio Front have created a unique sculpture set by the name of Ballance that embraces the ritual around consuming the fine liquor…so long as you can avoid ‘catching it’ with it’s balancing optical illusion…

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…

Make the World. There are a lot of people talking about the shake up 3D printing is bringing to the manufacturing space and a few actually making it all happen. Our friends at Adafruit have announced a new month long Google+ Hangout series that takes a deep dive into the stories that are shaping this commonly stated…

The story of Gordon LaPlante may have started out similar to many other maker/tinkerer/Ima-gonna-start-my-own-3d-printer-company types. Tearing apart mechanized contraptions at an early age to determine their inner workings seems the prerequisite foundation–rebuilding, revising and improving on shortcomings to reuse the parts or make it twice as gooder than it was before. The gMax 3D Printer…

The last time I used straws to make something other than a spitball shooter had to have at least been in primary school when we were tasked with building a bridge as part of our civil engineering curriculum. Besides being used as an educational tool, we’ve seen some innovative uses for drinking straws in the…

Have you been crinkling your nose in the mirror, wondering about all the hullabaloo over Staples getting into the 3D printing scene? Well, with MCor Technologies as their partner, they just opened their local service in Europe, introducing “that was easy” to the hoards ready to get their 3D printing fix whilst picking up some…

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…