Founded in 2010 by students from Aalto University in Finland, ideas2cycles aims to bring wild and new bicycle design concepts to market as quickly and efficiently as possible. Using 3D printing to speed up their development process, the small company consisting of a single industrial designer and an engineer have found a unique and affordable way of providing the current generation of customization-friendly youth with ‘the wildest bike concepts using the latest rapid manufacturing methods’.
It wasn’t too long ago that Flatter Files was putting SolidWorks and AutoCAD files in your pocket. Ouch! Pardon your reach! Now they’ve churned out an update aimed at access to a wider array of content and have pushed their platform to the far reaches of the Android universe with a new app available for free on Google Play. There are a variety of different viewing apps out there, but this one is both complementing those and will be a must have app for the engineer in the shop or on the go.
As we all know, getting from 2D to 3D in various CAD packages has typically involved importing multiple sketches, centering at the origin of the XYZ, and building out from there. At the recent SIGGRAPH Asia however, a new software by the name of 3-Sweep was previewed that allows a user to extract 3D data from a single 2D photograph. Sound too good to be true? Let’s take a look.
It came with little surprise that those having the most fun at the Faire were those that required a (very happy) chaperone. From the crowd surrounding the ‘Make-Your-Own Marshmallow Shooters’ stand to the long line waiting to get into the ‘Learn How to Solder’ tent, you might have mistaken all the kid-centric excitement as a pop-up Disneyland (ironically, Disney is the premier Maker Faire sponsor). If the amount of excitement and enthusiasm from this year’s Young Makers are any indication of what tomorrow’s future will look like, we’re all going to be in good hands. From complicated schematic diagrams penned by those barely old enough to see a PG-13 movie to the intelligent questions being asked about 3D scanning over at the MakerBot tent, this year’s Young Makers just might be the ones giving those three or four times their age a lesson in design and engineering within the next couple years.
It’s no secret: 3D printing and other methods of digital fabrication are more popular than ever before. From access to 3D printers becoming increasingly easier to 3D modeling tools that even 5 year olds can use, the presence of 3D printing at this year’s Maker Faire highlighted just how far 3D printing has come in the last year alone. At last year’s Maker Faire New York, a large tent was setup for all the Makers involved with 3D printing. Due to the surging popularity of 3D printing in the last year, the 3D printing aspect (and other methods of digital fabrication) ballooned into an entire ‘3D Printing Village’ within the Faire’s grounds. In addition to an increased presence of 3D printer manufacturers and those involved in the industry showing off their latest goods (like MakerBot and their Digitizer and Ultimaker with their new Ultimaker 2), an entire stage had been erected for round-the-clock 3D printing-based presentations. Here’s a look at some of the exciting action that happened in this year’s 3D Printing Village.