Having recently been voted as Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company of 2013, Nike is keeping the bar raised high with the announcement of their (SLS) 3D printed football cleat today. 3D printers have been used for years in the development of various components of performance athletic shoes, but in terms of 3D printing as a…

148 brains have been drained of their futuristic spacecraft-inventing potential over the last month. Who is to blame? Makerbot and GrabCAD. The Makerbot Replicator 2 Design Challenge just finished up at GrabCAD and the winners have been selected. The challenge was to create a 2040 vehicle design. Most of the entries are fabulous designs and…

This post is part of our series on cool crowd-funded projects that are pushing forward technology in product development and introducing innovative product design. They’re all projects we’re contributing to as well. If you would like to participate and share your project or another you find interesting, submit it to kickit@www.solidsmack.com or let us know…

3D Systems is a positive potent powerplant of press releases. Coming off their acquisition of Geomagic, 3D Systems decided to unleash upon the unsuspecting world their second-generation line-up of Consumer 3D Printers, just in time for CES 2013 (okay, not so unexpected). We asked, what could the ‘X’ in CubeX stand for? Famously, when US…

Filed under awwww, Crayon Creatures mixes Elmer-glued 3D Printing and the drawings of your young ones, allowing you to figure their scribbles out and genuinly exclaim, “OHHH, it is a Giraffe!” But, there is a challenge – how does one stick it to the fridge? Magnets and more Elmer’s glue, but really, there’s no need as…

Shashinkan is Japanese for ‘photobooth’, and Japanese creative agency PARTY has created the ultimate in Shashinkans with the Omote 3D. The project will allow customers to buy models of themselves (at parties, presumably) in three sizes: small (10cm high), medium (15cm) and large (20cm). Prices start at a fairly steep $250, but depending on how…

Yes sir, it’s Euromold again and the big-wig 3D Printing companies have come out in force to strut their stuff and eye the competition. Although we theorize that these are merely rubber-band guns, it’s possible that Objet made a sword (rather, a golf club). They certainly have a machine of a size that is capable…

The Ditto 3D Printer is one of the best 3D Printers I’ve had the pleasure of seeing up close. Smooth lines, high-quality parts and superb prints. Like Brad Sublime’s Tantillus, it’s produced in Vancouver, Canada. During the unveiling of the Rygo at VanDusen Botanical Gardens, I invited Eugene and the Tinkerine team to bring out…

So, what does the University of Washington, milk jugs, recreational boating and 3D Printing have in common? Not much… until now! The new ‘Washington Open Object Fabricator’ Group (WOOF), UW Engineering students and the Open 3D Printing Lab managed to manufacture a boat from shredded HDPE milk jugs and a hacked Plasma Cutter named ‘Big…

The Rostock by Johann Rocholl is a 3D Printer like no other. Instead of your standard xyz gantry system, the Rostock uses 3 arms that are attached to 3 vertical axes, each independently driven by stepper motors. The end result? High-speed positioning, fewer parts, lighter setup and a look that is guaranteed to turn heads.

I walked into Vancouver Hackerspace the other day to hang out, There, in all of it’s colorful, tabletop printing beauty, was a new 3D printer and a smiling man named Brad (aka Sublime) giving a little demo on his Tantillus 3D Printer. It’s a small machine that packs a punch. The details were marvellous for such…

3D Systems is getting into the Consumer 3D Printing market in a big way. If you recall last January, the Cube was showcased on the catwalk we all know as the Consumer Electronics Show. From the outside, The Cube seems to ‘walk-the-walk’, but can it ‘talk-the-talk’? We will soon know. The Cube is now available…

Great gobs of gravy! If you think you can launch a highly technical project on Kickstarter and get funded with $2,000 pledges, in less than 24 hours, you would be RIGHT. Your name would also be Michael Joyce. Mike’s B9Creator kickstarter project has met the $50,000 goal and is nearing $100,000 after less than two…

You know, sometimes counting is difficult. 1,2,3… Uhg, Eleventy! Maybe you need a machine to help you along. A counting machine perhaps? An electro-mechanical machine!? How about a 3D printed electro-mechanical machine? One which runs on of the pure, unadulterated power of PUNCH CARDS? YES!

STL files have been around for a while. It was originally developed as a bridge between CAD files and 3D Systems’ first 3D printers. It has become the standard format for 3D printing, but it’s increasingly seen as antiquated and limited. In reality, an STL file describes a shape and not much else. In addition,…

Hollywood seems to have a love/hate relationship with 3D Printing. And who doesn’t love/hate Hollywood? Daniel Terdiman at CNET wrote a piece called “Why Hollywood Loves 3D Printing.” Its a great piece about how 3D printing is speeding up the production process and improving prop-making.

We all know what happens when you sit young children down at a high-speed pottery wheel. It’s not pretty, especially when the cat is used to ‘improve carving technique.’ However, clay provides endless hours of moldable entertainment for young minds. Add an iPad to the mix and you’ve got days of pure, clean finger-jabbing fun.…

How long does it take to cook up a 3D print of a microscopic racecar? Not long at all apparently. A laser beam, some liquid resin and 4 minutes later you have a super tiny, super precise 3D print. It’s a new -printing technology using “two-photon lithography” in conjunction with new, highly-efficient photoinitiators which make…

Imagine a Record Executive going over to a 3D file sharing site downloading a pair of patent-protected headphones, laughing as he jiggles and listens to his DRM’ed music list. Ironic. You may think ‘big deal’ when you hear it, but thePirateBay.org, a site infamous for file-sharing and online piracy is making torrent-tearing waves with the…

It just makes sense. Take some photos of a thing, upload them, 3D print that sucka. My choice? Photos of my fist hitting my face, repeatedly. Unfortunately, motion capture and ruptured blood vessels can not be properly translated into seamless point cloud data as of yet. Nonetheless, hypr3D is putting 3D prints where your 2D…

Does the idea of a 6 foot long, 16 inch wide robotic worm crawling beneath your epidermis frighten you? Not to worry because Dr. Jordan Boyle, post doctoral fellow at the University of Leeds, is working on making it smaller. His focus is also on creating a robot that can manage it’s way through small…

If I had one choice in a car, one which was more a necessity to have than a wanton desire, it would be an Aston Martin. A V12 Vantage to be exact. After the incisions healed… from the cuts to remove my organs which funded such an investment, I’d drive it all up and down…

Slowly step away from the cheese spread and permanent markers. You no longer need to dowse your sorrows with imitation milk products to add color to your 3D prints. If you know Shapeways, you know they keep excreting multiple ways to create 3D printed products. Now they’re adding a new machine to the mix that…

Quick, while nobody’s looking, slip those goggles on that make you look as if you’ve slipped through time to warn yourself about reading this post. “DON’T READ IT!” your future self says, but curiosity grasped your eyelids and pulls them clear over your freshly shaved hairline. You just can’t start a new decade without throwing…

2010. It’s here… or almost here. Which means it’s time to reflect on all the fun innovations that we ran screaming towards, or away from, over the past decade. Over the past ten years I went from storing data on a CD to storing data online. I also went from emailing someone a couple times…

I see that look in your eye. You want to see some sweet bicycle convertin’ design that makes falling off your bike and hitting a street sign look like fun again. Well, here it is. It’s called the ZWEISTIL [two style], named by the designers, Stefan Wallmann and Daniel Knüpfer, for it’s unique variable frame…

You’re probably thinking the same thing I am. Soon 3D printing will be just as sure a part of the design process as having to pluck ticks from your eyelids after a nosedive into a damp, brushy floor of a wooded hillside. Barring analogies to lyme disease and the whole blood-sucking thing, it pretty obvious…

I didn’t get to try out the Embody Chair, but I’ve been living in a Steelcase Leap Chair for the past month. It’s been a… different experience I’ll tell you all about in an upcoming post. In the meantime, feast your taste buds on this. I had the chance to also ask the design team…

I’ve got an idea. Let’s make starting a project really easy. Throw a bid at the screen and watch the assembly build itself. While that isn’t exactly happening (yet), SolidWorks Labs is stirring the boiling cauldron of 3D CAD efficiency in an attempt to bring that one step closer. The Treehouse project allows you to…

Twitter = accessibility. It has opened up clogged lines of communication and expanded personal and community networks around the world and it just keeps getting bigger, I tell ya. When some of us were on months ago, there’s wasn’t much buzz on the 3D CAD side of things. That has changed big time in the…

A group from USC have created an Interactive 360º Light Field Display. I didn’t understand what was interactive about it until I saw the video. (below) These types of displays are called horizontal-parallax multiview 3D displays and this one is actually kinda scary. It’s basically a light field projected onto a mirror rotating 20 times…

Imagine strolling through a park where plant life changes its color based on the weather, where pathways adapt to the flow of foot traffic, and where lighting is both sustainable and interactive. This might sound like a scene straight out of a futuristic movie, but with the rapid advancement of technology, such possibilities are nearing…

The creative industry is currently at a crossroads of tradition and innovation, with the digital revolution broadening the cultural scene and permitting novel means of expression. Digital technologies, such as the XPPen drawing tablet for PC, are key to this transformation, significantly altering artistic creation and dissemination. The XPPen tablet is a holistic creative solution that…

An effective blender should be able to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food items properly. This will all be possible with the right blades and powerful motor. With this, it is important to check these specs when looking for one. However, there are still a lot of factors you need to consider if you are…

Nowadays, cellular phones do not just merely serve as a communication tool. And with the help of technology upgrades, we witness how these gadgets are gradually adopting the other main attributes of some gadgets like DSLR. With this, phones inch by inch turned into portable cams that soon gave birth to camera phones. Camera phones…

When I was younger, I always wanted to label everything. My younger brother and I would constantly fight over things, and the only way I could stake my claim on something could only be possible if I put my name on it. Doing this was easy enough on books and toys (thanks for the tip,…

Pablo Sobron, PhD gave us a tour of the R&D company, Impossible Sensing, which he founded in St. Louis, Missouri. See the video below for a look inside their lab: https://youtu.be/okNBlVQI1XY Most of the systems Impossible Sensing builds are to be used in aerospace by NASA. Others are for deep ocean and oil & gas…

With the changing climate and challenges being faced by the farming industry, raised garden beds or raised bed gardens are getting a lot of attention. Thanks to the convenience and great efficiency they have, they are being chosen more and more not just by a lot of professional farmers, but so as by those who…

While it may not be up there with Christmas, Easter, and your wedding anniversary, Amazon Prime Day is slowly but surely making it’s way into a more significant event each passing year. For two days and two days only beginning today (from 12 a.m. PT Tuesday, Oct 13th and concluding at 11:59 p.m. PT on…

Two years ago, we interviewed Anthony Mattana, founder of Hooke Audio, about his comically arduous hardware startup story. And today, he’s back. His first product, the Hooke Verse, are wireless headphones that record in binaural 3d audio. More than just stereo sound, this tech gives listeners a literally jaw-dropping feeling of physically being where sounds…

Software company nTopology has announced a hefty Series C funding round set to accelerate its offerings of engineering design tools for advanced manufacturing. The $40 million round is led by Insight Partners and joined by Grant Verstandig and existing venture partners Root, Canaan, DCVC, and Haystack. Insight Partners’ Josh Fredberg is joining the nTopology Board…

It’s days like these where you’re in your speedboat zipping from port to port with bags of frozen melon balls ready to hand out and bless everyone’s day with sweet, icy goodness. Yet, how do you keep those melon balls from getting drenched by the mad wakes you’re frothing up in the bay? I know…

The tour of this makerspace just outside Denver and Boulder, Colorado took place in September 2019, long before COVID-19 flipped spaces like these on their heads. However, as of today, TinkerMill is open for business, albeit with several precautions in place. Take a peek inside this massive, and well-equipped space in the video below with…

Anyone old enough with an internet connection will know a lot of life-size scale LEGO models of real vehicles have been made over the years. Whether it’s a stationary Volkswagen hippie van made from 400,000 bricks or an actual, driveable LEGO Bugatti Chiron, there’s a sense awe that comes from seeing 1:1 scale builds made…

I’ve received a detailed update from Photocentric regarding a spectacular improvement in their COVID-19 production rate.  If you recall, last week I reported on the Photocentric’s efforts to mass-produce a disposable ventilator valve. This component is, in some areas, in short supply and thus there could be interest in being able to produce them quickly. …

Stratasys announced a new workflow system, GrabCAD Shop. GrabCAD GrabCAD is Stratasys’ main 3D model repository, having acquired it from independent owners way back in 2014. Stratasys bills it as: “The largest online community of professional designers, engineers, manufacturers, and students” And this is likely true, as they say there are currently over 6,550,000 members.…

3D printing is additive. CNC milling is subtractive. Vacuum forming is transformative. It transforms a sheet of formless flat plastic into extraordinary complex copies. It transforms preconceived limitations about functional part thinness — the interplay between “consumable goods” (foodstuff) and “durable goods”(not food) — and low-volume throughput speeds. It transforms endless eternities (hours) staring at…

Huddle around the computer a little bit, your digital detox is a farce! How can you stay away from great stuff that you can read and chew on … mentally that is! We got you covered, while you were away, busy with your digital detox diet. Don’t be shy, take a look at the week…

Between September 16th-20th this year, Denver was overflowing with out-of-towners for Denver Startup Week. (Which was much to the dismay of native Denverite Uber passengers.) Here, you can read about the many physical product development related goings-on at this free conference. There were a lot. See below for the video: The Venue I try not…

While it may not be up there with Christmas, Easter, and your wedding anniversary, Amazon’s Prime Day is slowly but surely making it’s way into a more significant event each passing year. For two days and two days only beginning today (from 12 a.m. PT Monday, July 15 and concluding at 11:59 p.m. PT on…