On March 9th, 2018, mHUB in Chicago celebrated surviving its first year and it’s showing a strong start to its 2nd. A product of Chicago’s rich manufacturing history, mHUB refers to itself as a “manufacturing and physical product innovation center”. It provides incubator-type resources, fabulous and expensive prototyping equipment & software, and coworking spaces. Their 1st birthday is no small accomplishment considering the recent closing of TechShop… which made poor Dan Slaski weep. With over 100 industry and community partners, nearly 200 startup company members, and over $40 million in capital raised by member companies, mHUB shows no signs of slowing down! At the party, we met Ashley S. Moy of CAST21 and…
Modeling a 3D object and prepping it for 3D printing on a 2D screen sounds counterintuitive… because it is. You’re stabbing your mouse at a 2D plane in 3D space to make something which can be interacted with in the real world. I thought we were in the future? So, what if you could design the object in 3D as it is printing in 3D? *pop* The Robotic Modelling Assistant (RoMA) is an AR CAD software/3D printer project by Huaishu Peng, Jimmy Briggs, Cheng-Yao Wang, Kevin Guo, Joseph Kider, Stefanie Mueller, Patrick Baudisch, and François Guimbretière which allows you to create 3D objects using both an Oculus Rift HMD moded into…
My kiddos are all about the Nerf Guns–there are so many Nerf guns the Nerf guns have Nerf guns. Well, now I have an example of why we don’t need any more Nerf guns–we can just MAKE THEM. Oh, I know. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place?” Two answers to that – 1) I’m super lame 2) I didn’t have a 3D printer, which doubles the amount of super lameness considerably. No mas, señor, NO MAS. Vedran Marjanović was in a similar spot. He bought a 3D printer last year, then another one five days later. Needless to say, he’s designing and printing like a madman now,…
You know Eric Strebel likes to show you how to make stuff, right? Did you also know he’s a science fiction fan. Upon watching a movie involving a magical, glowing amulet (which narrows the potential number of films down to about a thousand), he felt inspired to create his own wearable glowing rock – one which has a pulsing “heartbeat” of its own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7hKE8hAT9Y As with all his designs, Strebel starts off by sketching his ideas onto paper. Once he has the initial design figured out, he sets out to find a suitable stone for the amulet. The gem had to be big enough to house a simple circuit system,…
The Vensovians would land their ships at dusk. Tall and lanky with silver eyes and clip fins at each joint, the gill rifles hung at their hips like a set of pin pistols. They were effective shots too, easily taking out each lycanthrope to harvest tubes of these links. Steve Chinhsuan Wang – Dragons, ships, battle pandas, spacecraft, aircraft, armor and all sorts of amazing concept art you’ll just love to study. The Herons’ Tree – A massive steel tree with walkways, hanging gardens and large mechanical creatures walking beside? I’m just sad this isn’t finished yet. Lux Noctis – Reuben Wu’s landscape photos are shots of regular ol’ worldly…
This could be a very big idea: 3D Hybrid Solutions announced a system to convert everyday CNC machines into powerful 3D metal printers. The startup company, based in Los Angeles, offers add-on hardware that could become a tool in a multi-tool metal CNC machine. Typical competent metal CNC machines today offer the ability to mill solid metal into many geometric shapes and include a tool-changing capability. Tool changing is usually employed to make the milling process more efficient; use a large milling bit to chop off the majority of the material, and then use progressively smaller milling bits to grind down to the shiny result. But what if one of…