It’s no secret that the announcement of Carbon’s M1 3D printer is big news – but it’s not the only 3D printer that’s turning heads this week. Aiming to empower designers and engineers with the ability to 3D print nearly any product in a single process, Stratasys yesterday unveiled the world’s first 3D printer capable of producing full-color, multi-material prototypes in a single 3D print in the form of the Stratasys J750, the latest addition to the company’s Objet Connex series. The printer, which allows users to pull from 360,000 different color shades and multiple material options, will effectively allow for designers and engineers to produce extremely accurate models for…

I can’t even recall the first time I thought about using SolidWorks on a tablet. It was years ago, but let’s go back even further. I started using CAD software with AutoCAD and a digitizer. A digitizer, if you’re wrinkled enough to remember, is a bit like a touchscreen, off the screen. Similar to a Wacom tablet. Since then it’s been nothing but mouse and keyboard. Until now.

Forty years ago, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne established Apple to sell the Apple I Personal Computer Kit. Designed and built by Wozniak himself, the first units of the Apple I Personal Computer Kit would go on sale just a few months later for $666.66 ($2,772 today) and effectively put into motion one of the most influential companies of all time. It’s hard to believe it’s been four decades already, but Apple quietly celebrated their 40th birthday over the weekend. To celebrate the milestone, the infographic designers over at Brooklyn’s Pop Chart Lab updated their insanely awesome 2011 poster – “The Insanely Great History of Apple” – to include…

With an estimated 1 trillion plastic bags being consumed worldwide each year, it’s unfortunate to know that less than 5% of those bags ever end up being recycled. This effectively leaves roughly 95,000,000,000 opportunities for toxic chemicals to end up where they shouldn’t be. While thought leaders, lawmakers and grocers continue to find alternative solutions at a higher level, Utah-based industrial designer Carter Zufelt decided to take matters into his own hands for his Senior Thesis project. After months of experimenting and fine-tuning various melt temperatures and processes for the plastic bags, he developed a new material: Müll. Says Zufelt: “Müll is a continuation of my Senior Project. Through my…

Since storming onto the 3D printing scene with a jaw-dropping TED presentation in March of 2015, Dr. Joseph DeSimone – CEO and Co-Founder of Carbon (formerly Carbon3D) – has fought relentlessly to bring his revolutionary CLIP (continuous liquid interface production) technology to market. Now, just a year later, the public can get their hands on the revolutionary 3D printing technology in the form of the M1 3D printer – a first of its kind that prints injection molding-like parts 25 to 100 times faster than any 3D printer before it. The commercial 3D printer, which can produce parts up to 144 x 81 x 330 millimeters with speed, accuracy and a…

This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist knocks you in the pop sockets with head-boppin’ groove tuneage to help propel you through the work week in style. Whether you find yourself inking markers until they’re dry, grinding material through a bandsaw or working that 3D geometry all day, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week we’ll start things off with Air’s “Surfing on a Rocket” and work our way through an eclectic mix of Ariel Pink, Arcade Fire, Brian Eno, Flying Lotus and others before wrapping up with “More News From Nowhere” from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Have suggestions? As always, let us know what…