It’s always nice to see well-designed creations built from relatively cheap materials. With a little ingenuity and (in some cases) a lot of hard work, you don’t need a fortune to craft something worthy of a showroom floor. Among others, master builder Mike Clifford recently proved this with his homemade white glass-fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) table. Using a $10 piece of maple wood he bought on eBay as the focal point of the table, Clifford begins his build process by carving a casting box out of a sheet of melamine. Because the casting box is going to be the same size as the finished table, he also carves out an…

These days, you can get just about any computer rig designed to your exact specifications. Whether you’re a RAM-hogging SolidWorks user, or simply just want a powerful workstation, there’s something for everybody. But no standardized hardware mod will ever replace the satisfaction of building your own rig from scratch. If you’ve ever wanted to create your own custom-built PC but didn’t know where to start, boy do we have great news for you. The How to Build a Computer Bundle consolidates five intensive online courses (a total of 126 individual lessons) ranging from how to create a blueprint for your desired desktop or laptop setup to how to overclock CPU…

Since raising nearly $300K from backers on Kickstarter in 2016, documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit has been hard at work putting the finishing touches on Rams — the first feature documentary film covering the life and philosophies of design icon Dieter Rams. Hustwit, who same may know as the force behind the Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized design documentaries, was granted unprecedented and exclusive access to Rams for several weeks in his home and studio. The result is what is sure to be the most in-depth look at how Dieter developed his Ten Principles for Good Design and paved the way for designers and companies that praise the ‘less is more’ spirit. As…

Brought to you by We’re super excited to be teaming up with Lenovo to bring you an exclusive webinar for SolidSmack readers! If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the internals of your computer and specifically what is needed to power 3D CAD software, you won’t want to miss this! Save my seat The Anatomy of a Workstation The specs to know and what works best for the 3D modeling workflow. It sits there cooking sweet 3D on your screen, but how does that workstation actually do the wonderful things it does? In this exclusive webinar, the Lenovo team takes us behind the scenes to reveal the…

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 we’ll get the groove going with “Smoke Machine” from Jesse Woods before diving into sweet melodies from Monster Rally, The Concretes, Blake Mills, Mothers, and others before wrapping up with “Seve” from Tez Cadey. Rock! Have suggestions? As always,…

YouTube user kiwami japan has a bit of an odd obsession with making homemade blades and other weapons from obscure and unusual materials. Case in point. This knife wasn’t made from a hard-to-find metal, but from a roll of aluminum foil you likely have stashed in your cupboard to wrap a sandwich or make tin foil hats. What some may not realize is that enough sheets of aluminum foil can become a block of aluminum foil. And said block can be sharpened. Crafting a knife from a sandwich wrapper isn’t simple, with considerable tempering and hammering of the layers needed to create the slab of metal to be sharpened. From…