Don your favorite bathrobe, cream that coffee and get comfortable with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. The Weekend Reader features a handful of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack over the past week ranging from tips and tricks to inspirational designs, processes, and more. So lay back, relax and take a load off while reading the top ten stories on SolidSmack this past week. Oh and uh…don’t forget to shed some much-needed sunlight on your face, too. This 965-Part 3D Printed Jet Engine Actually Works Count this one under one of the coolest engineering class projects, ever. Wrecked Ford Mustangs Find New Life as High-End Timepieces Of all…

4 AM and the mouse nest stirred. Frost lit the channels, the straw, by the moon. And stolen away in the warmth, a light gray, eyes set ablaze, by the flames that were set, in the morn on the quest, for this raw band of links. Vitali Timkin – The concept artist from Minsk can crank out any angle of any ship and make the whole scene look daunting, massive and absolutely awesome. Embryo of Phoenix – New 2017 work of London-based artist Ikuko Iwamoto who has a talent for making porcelain look both creepy and cool. Viewing of other work highly recommended. Wind of Okhotsk – Beautiful winter photography by Ying…

We’ve said it time and time again, but the Raspberry Pi is just so dang cool and we believe all designers and engineers should have one in their toolkit—if not on their desktop. While there is a bit of a slight learning curve, it’s nothing that today’s designers and engineers can’t handle on a leisurely Saturday. So why not start now? Better yet—why not help make someone else’s Saturday epic? The Raspberry Pi Mastery Bundle includes 8 courses to get started creating your very own Amazon Echo or even a ‘vintage’ streaming internet radio over a weekend. Throw in your own 3D printed housings, and the opportunities are limitless! For…

If you’re a beginner looking to get into the wonderful but painful world of skateboarding, there are a couple of tips you might want to keep in mind. First, a good helmet might cost a little bit of money up front, but it can save thousands on medical bills—not to mention, your life. Second, treat stairs like the devil’s advocate; attempting to skate down them doesn’t usually end up well. That is unless you’re riding the Stair Rover Longboard, which includes an extra set of wheels meant to make traversing uneven terrain a heck of a lot easier. Designed by Allrover, the Stair Rover can be best described as a…

When it comes to internet browsers, I’ve used them all–Chrome, Safari, Edge, Opera, Firefox, you name it. While each of these browsers has their strengths and weaknesses, over the years I find myself just using Chrome and Firefox and, between both, Chrome comes out as the clear winner. Of course, this was before I updated to the latest version of Mozilla’s new browser: Firefox Quantum. Is it better than previous versions of the world’s 2nd most popular browser? In a word, yes. However, no browser is entirely perfect, although Quantum comes very close. Especially when you consider the available security extensions. Here, we’ll take a quick look at how much…

The web-based version of SketchUp is now official. Trimble’s SketchUp is a very popular 3D modeling tool that is used worldwide. I believe a large component of its popularity is due to the fact that for a time Google-owned SketchUp before it was sold off to France-based Trimble, who has managed the product since then. Traditionally, SketchUp has been a standalone software product, one that you would download from the net and install on your computer. Available for several operating systems, the software proved very popular among students and entry-level 3D modelers. SketchUp 3D Modeling… Online Recently Trimble has been testing a web-only version of SketchUp, which operates entirely without…