No stranger to modding things to his liking, ex-Mythbusters host Adam Savage has documented the process of created everything from custom tool storage in his incredible workshop to even a working replica of the Star Trek Captain’s Chair. Not surprisingly, the results are always entertaining. For his latest, Savage is sure to make Nerf fans drool with a Sniper mod for the popular foam dart blaster. Starting with a generic store-bought blaster, Savage documents the process of taking the Nerf toy apart and putting it back together with his functional and aesthetic improvements. If one thing’s for certain, you might want to bring extra protection and more than a few…

Whether or not Apple actually makes a self-driving car for the masses or not, perhaps just as interesting is what the company would envision a car in 2020 to actually look like—you know, considering that it would be chiseled away by a team of the world’s most elite industrial designers. To give them a boost, ClickMechanic—a sort of AirBnB for auto mechanics and garages in the UK—crowdsourced some rather interesting concepts inspired by some of Apple’s most iconic products over the past few decades. “Apple has led the technology industry since the 1980s and has become the definition of cutting edge,” says the company. “With rumours surrounding the company producing…

Unlike desktop 3D printers, which have only grown more connected and technologically advanced over the past few years, vacuum forming has remained somewhat Lo-Fi—oftentimes consisting of a homemade jig hooked up to a shop vac. But what if desktop vacuum forming finally got smart? It would probably look a whole lot like the Vaquform, which bills itself as “The World’s First Digital Desktop Vaccum Former”. But what exactly makes a vacuum former “digital”? According to Vaquform, Inc., the digital integrations go far beyond the machine’s LCD interface. The Vaquform is the first thermoformer that has preset heating profiles and an IR probe to monitor different types and thicknesses of plastic…

WorldViz is a developer of virtual reality software, but they’re approaching it differently than most. The team, led by Matthias Pusch, Peter Schlueer & Andrew Beall, Ph.D have been developing VR tech since the 90s (no, not the Virtual Boy). They started out in academia, at MIT and the University of California, creating methodological tools for studying human cognition and visual perception leveraged by the unique abilities of VR to address scientific questions. What sets WorldViz apart from other VR software developers? Well, for one, they aren’t making video games; they aren’t making consumer products at all, and it’s working out for them. While the rest of VR world focuses on…

While 3D printing failed to live up to its hype as a viable form of manufacturing—at least, in a way that makes sense—there were a few bespoke product companies that managed to pave their way through the noise and found success using more advanced additive manufacturing technologies to produce their one-off wares. Among others was MakieLab, a startup that made bespoke 3D printed dolls tailored to the very specific request of customers. Unlike mass manufactured Barbie or American Girl dolls, MakieLab was able to create dolls tailored to very specific requests from a customer before fabricating with SLS 3D printers and processing to a finished product quality. This morning, the…

With online games and other interactive programs tailored to the needs of the coding novice, the days of learning basic coding principles through a traditional coding environment are long over. But what if we want to get away from the screen altogether? Such is the premise behind Musicon, an interactive wooden musical instrument that doubles as a coding teacher created by designer Kamil Laszuk as a part of his graduation thesis in 2011 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland. Laszuk, who also holds a degree in music, was inspired by the traditional “barrel organ” to create an exploratory device with hundreds of moveable buttons that active various…