Vacuum forming is oftentimes a critical factor for many package designers during their prototyping stage when exploring manufacturing methods. And just like the physical product it houses, package designers employ prototyping processes for a variety of packaging types to ensure that their design helps unify the full customer experience—or at least, properly fit the finished product so that it stays safe in transport. As one of the most ubiquitous manufacturing methods for creating the packaging of various goods, vacuuming forming brings its own challenges to the table in terms of best practices including mold durability, draft angles, and part depth. The Prototyping Packaging With Vacuum Forming and 3D Printed Molds…
Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or modeling up a 3D storm, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week on SolidSmack Radio we’re getting things rolling with “Colomb” from Nicolas Jaar before rolling into a tasty set with tracks from Underworld, Chromatics, Talking Heads, Hot Chip, and others before wrapping up with the classic “Flim” from Aphex Twin. Ready?…
While many graphic designers prefer Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, avid motorcycle fan and graphic designer Gareth Fowler uses Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects to create some kickass concept 3D animations inspired by engines. Though his initial foray into Cinema 4D mostly consisted of static 3D images, his love of GIFs led him to experiment with his own animations and ‘virtual’ mechanical engineering experiments: Find more of Gareth’s animations on both his Instagram page and Tumblr blog. For the rest of his portfolio, be sure to check out his webpage, where he showcases his work as a graphic artist with some awesome drawings, logos, and much more.
As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Every Monday, we link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you to get your week started on the right foot. Be sure to check in each week for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite homegrown ‘Smack. What We’re Reading This Week: As Bad as WeWork Is, It Could Get Even Worse Ignore…
As if Xometry’s Instant Quote Engine and integrated instant quoting add-in for SOLIDWORKS weren’t enough, the rascals buckin’ the manufacturing trends at Xometry have introduced a finishing service to completely centralize your design-to-manufacturing needs. How does this help you? Ok, so you have a design, and parts in that design, that needs to be manufactured. From Xometry, you can source and secure manufacturing, and now, source and secure finishing. Typically, these processes don’t all happen in one place, but Xometry is making that happen. Plus, if you have a manufacturing vendor you just adore and source a finishing vendor worthy of high fives, you can connect them on the Xometry…
If you’ve ever accidentally let go of a helium-filled balloon as a kid and watched it slowly float into the sky, chances are you’ve also wondered where it goes. Does it float past the point of no return and into space, thereby giving an extra-terrestrial child the joy of finding a free balloon? Now that we’re older, we all know the air inside a balloon escapes long before it can exit the Earth’s atmosphere; dropping the empty rubber husk back to the ground just like your childhood hopes and dreams. Using the same principle, the guys at Garage 54 have taken a large weather balloon, strapped a scale model of…