Formlabs has executed a very interesting experiment in hydrographics using their 3D printing equipment. Hydrographics, if you’re not aware, is the process of applying a color texture to a surface of a non-flat 3D object. The idea is to have paint or a texture floating on the surface of a fluid. The object is carefully dipped in the fluid, where the texture adheres to the surface of the object. It all happens very quickly. Typically this process is used to produce imprecise patterns on objects, such as a camouflage pattern on a helmet, for example. The problem is that it’s exceedingly difficult to align any specific textures on particular portions…

I have a notepad and I have a laptop. I’m one of the people who NEEDS a notepad, who looks like a monkey elbow-jabbing a computer screen if you say, “just take notes on your laptop.” CAN’T BE DONE. But ahh, the feel of paper beneath my pen *ahem* So, I have a notepad, but I’ve never had a notepad that could be used to take notes on my laptop. That is until I got my hands on the Lenovo Yoga Book. The Yoga Book is the smallest, thinnest, Windows-powered tablet I’ve used. It’s also the first I’ve used with both a touchscreen and touch-sensitive keyboard that doubles as a…

Like most somewhat avid outdoorsmen, I’ve gone rappelling once or thrice. After ending upside-down thinking I saw mountain lion preparing to devour me, I did the only thing you can do in that situation… scream while trying to cut yourself free from the carabiner holding you safely 50 feet over jagged rocks. Now, I’m not sure I would use a 3D printed carabiner to hold me off a rockface, but if I did, it would be one of these from

It’s become so common in our workflows that we usually don’t even think about it anymore. But let’s be honest here: working with different 3D file formats between all the various tools we use these days is a royal pain in the ass. But what if working with 3D files could actually be seamless? What if a 3D model created in one 3D modeling application could work smoothly in others? What if, like Apple said once upon a time, “it just works?” With the launch of StemCell this week, that’s exactly what TurboSquid has in mind as we move yet another step further into the next generation of 3D content.…

Here’s the story: A man shot a deer and then used its teeth to make himself a set of dentures, then ate the deer with the deer’s teeth. He used the teeth for three years before one broke while biting into a piece of bear meat. The man beneath the teeth was Francis Wharton, a woodsman who lived near Little Fort, BC in the 1950s and 60s. Before long, his set of cervine teeth became quite loose, dark, and dirty but their initial fabrication was certainly praiseworthy. He would have used extracted back molars from his deer because deer do not possess proper front teeth. Wharton then created the base…

No matter how you crease, fold, cut, or throw them, paper airplanes are a ridiculously fun way to learn the basics of aerodynamics at any age. For Sao-Paola based designer Arthur Sacek, they were also the inspiration behind his latest LEGO build: an automated paper airplane manufacturing contraption that can take a single sheet of paper, fold it, and launch it in one go. Designed and built for an Arrow Electronics commercial, the contraption was created by Sacek using only LEGO and the platform’s Mindstorms NXT programmable robotics kit. Seriously, what can’t that thing do? https://youtu.be/yueP7V6Wddc And the obligatory ‘making of’: https://youtu.be/nV3Slsu_mRE While it isn’t the first paper airplane folding…