Don your favorite bath robe, cream that coffee and get comfortable with this weekend’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. This week we saw everything from how a mechanical designer created an amazing 3D printed hand to a new dog toy design that is aimed at being more pleasing to the eye for humans and more. So lay…
It’s Friday, and you know what that means here on The Smack: time for another DIY project to add to your weekend plan arsenal. If you’re like us, you have a fairly organized workspace but somehow manage to continually lose your hammers…resulting in a drawer filled with replaced hammers down the road. If one of…
It’s Friday, and you know what that means here on The Smack: time for another DIY project to add to your arsenal. This week we’ve rounded up a dang-cool shelving project from software engineer-turned jewelry hacker Mat Brown who explains how to seal cracks and crevices of a piece of wood with glowing resin (AKA…
As more people get hip to streaming their music from various Cloud-based music services, the market for connected (and wireless) speakers has seen a huge surge in the past few years. While you could go out and get any number of connected speakers ranging from portable bluetooth options to more high-end kits made for serious…
For the science and audio geeks out there, you might already be familiar with a Ruben’s Tube. Invented by German physicist Heinrich Rubens in 1905, the tube uses flames to demonstrate the relationship between sound waves and sound pressure that is passing through the tube. It is also commonly used at hard rock concerts where…
There’s nothing like a little electronic art to get the heart pumpin’. This doesn’t do that, but it does make your eyes jitter and cause the people in the coffee shop to stop talking bad about their friends for a few minutes. Michael Chang is a designer, programmer, game creator and a master of three.js,…
I come across drum kits, shells, and accessories that I want to buy, all the time. However, I’ve never come across anything percussion related that would entice me to climb a mountain of volcanic ash to fight an epic battle with a mystical, 10-headed beast that has an appetite for arm flesh… Until now. This…
148 brains have been drained of their futuristic spacecraft-inventing potential over the last month. Who is to blame? Makerbot and GrabCAD. The Makerbot Replicator 2 Design Challenge just finished up at GrabCAD and the winners have been selected. The challenge was to create a 2040 vehicle design. Most of the entries are fabulous designs and…
A 3D printed Steampunk Earth is one way to bring fab-art inspiration to the masses, but nothing, and I mean nothing, is better than designing, printing and selling your own toys. Just ask Wayne Losey, creator of ModiBots, the snap-tastic, print-to-order robot toys you can mix and match for a custom creation of your own.
This Steampunk World could very well be a replica of the actual world sent back from the future. I’m guessing it’s exactly what the world will look like in… oh, let’s say 2840… give or take a few decades. It was created by Mauricio Chong (aka MacBurro) after discovering Shapeways and realizing that you can…
While there may be enough endearing puppet shows on the web waves, there are certainly not enough puppet shows that take on the build, hack, solder, crack, spark, squeeze and flow of electronics and circuitry. Adafruit is changing that with a new show airing next year called Circuit Playground. The show is set to premiere…
For those ‘Paper Junkies’ out there, your world just got a whole lot more colorful. FiftyThree has released a much-anticipated color upgrade to their Paper app, as well as a new touch sensitive feature for your iPad masterpieces.
In a short but sweet video recently released by the future-forward online media hub Crane.tv, Marc Newson provides some interesting insight into the current industrial revolution and how “you don’t have to be a designer to design anymore.”
If you thought B-Peeb’s render god rap was good stuff, wait till you see this–It might just be the greatest thing in the history of all things nerdcore. Luke Parnell, a long time SolidSmack reader and a SolidWorks master, weaves the words about complex curves and sheet metal burrs in this video he put together…
You’re in a meeting discussing schedule. The manager pauses mid-sentence and says, “Pop!” The boxy device in the middle of the table fires a fluffy popcorn morsel directly into his gaping mouth hole. Buttery, popped-corn heaven. The Popinator is a device from purveyors of fine popcorn snacking, Popcorn Indiana. They’ve revealed an internal project, designed…
“You have Zeppelin on vinyl? Pfft I have it on FisherPrice Toy Records. Thus, I am so much better than you – and more pretentious.” Seriously, there is now a way for you to take all of your favourite Extreme Swedish Death Metal Bands (Meshuggah on plastic – the irony would rock). Fred27 posted this…
If you happen to have a set of vinyl records sitting around, take a look at them. Check out all those grooves that ring around and around, jostling the needle that has made all those tunes that have enriched your life. Now imagine you had that record as a CAD file and you extruded the…
So – you decided to attend Burning Man. And above the Mutant Cars and the becostumed attendees, you notice a quadcopter flying about, with what appears to be a figurine hanging underneath it. Just then, you hear an alarming sound coming from one of a becostumed woman – its coming from a device in her…
Feats of Engineering. 3D Visuals. There are plenty of both. Projection mapping and slapping animated light effects on historic building seems to be all the rage. However, the way AntiVJ is interpreting a massive architectural masterwork of the past, in light of the architect’s thinking of the future, makes your blood pulse as much as…
When you saw Star Wars or Star Trek for the first time as a kid, the space travel scenes were pretty kickass. Especially on the big screen – it seemed way cooler than the so-so acting. Well here’s you’re chance to actually travel through the Universe – the real Universe as recorded by the Sloan…
I love a car with personality. Just today, I had a chat with a friend of mine who recently bought an old Honda, a ‘beater’ in desperate need of a paint job. He has a talent for the arts – Paint runs through his veins, so to speak. So, I recommended he graffiti his car.…
The graphics in video games just look better than the 3D objects in design software. No surprise there. That games have better(-looking) physics simulation than 3D CAD software though… that amazes me. It just shouldn’t be, but it is. CryEngine3 is a Game Development Engine available for free with non-commercial use. Developers are pushing the…
Do you have a soft spot for hardcore hacks, fanatical fabrication, robots, steampunk and funnel cakes? Do we even need to ask? It’s exactly why we were at this year’s Bay Area 2012 Maker Faire featuring all of that and a mass of 3D printers, tons of guest speakers, Tesla coils set to music and…
Japan has Godzilla, Russia has META-ELK. The idea is to deploy them in the thousands as… massive powerline pylons. Perhaps this is the next transmutation in the evolution of electrical Elk lords? We knew it was going to happen and these design renderings by Russian firm Design Depot put it all in perspective.
It’s agreed. In scientific trials carried out in a family living room, 3 out of 3 children agree that this robot is cool. The Morphex is a six-legged, remotely-operated, servo-driven transforming ball-bot of beauty. From a standing (or walking) position it can contract and expand its legs or pull them completely in to form a…
Designers of all strips and colours are producing a lot of interesting plastic-extruded work lately, especially where sound and 3D printing intersect. Here are a few things that have popped up recently worth a mention and a listen.
He’s finally done it. You may have heard of Jarno Smeets and his Human Birdwing project before, but this time he’s not trying to fly like a bird, he has flown like a bird. Has he actually cracked the mystery of human-powered flight?
The most awesome thing in the history of awesome things has just come to pass. The hack slappin’ crew at F.A.T. Lab has slipped the surly bonds of inoperable construction sets making it now possible to interlink your favorite blocks with the Free Universal Construction Kit. LEGO, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs and seven other sets are…
This is what I would truly call ‘a 3D movie.’ This ‘3Drehkino’ is a series of 3D printed figures of a man walking. An LED is triggered by each passing figure in his appropriate pose, illuminating it and giving us the illusion of motion. Tobias Krawutschke designs all kinds of Zoetropes (which you can see here),…
Wednesday already? Time flies when you’re having fun, or while you’re neck deep in projects with ridiculous deadlines. A tangled mess of wires doesn’t help either. What to do? Shake off the mid-week doldrums by taking a peek inside your favorite and perhaps not-so-favorite gadgets. Grab your toolbox and get inspired! This week’s entry: Just a…
A little dose of inspiration for your Monday. Can a spark be part of another spark? It most certainly can, especially when it comes to small fires, curiosity and that little thing called ‘an idea.’
Another sleep-deprived Wednesday, and nothing seems to be working. Cup of joe? No. Vat of ice? No dice. How ’bout a nice whisker plucking? Why yes, that will do just fine, thank you. After you clean up the bleeding, you can shake off the mid-week doldrums by taking a peek inside your favorite and perhaps…
After what I’ve just seen, I feel as if I could point my hand at a simmering pool of metal and shape it with the power of my mind. Dutch Designer Jólan van der Wiel is practically doing just that. He’s created a process (and a machine) to pull a metallic-formulated resin from a liquid…
If you’ve ever mistakenly drank ferromagnetic fluid thinking it was coffee, you’re likely dead, or highly magnetized and sitting at In-n-Out gnawing on a burger dressed like Magneto. I am… right now actually, staring into the screen at the Kickstarter project David Markus has launched. Ferrite – Interactive Liquid Sculpture is a visual display of…
I’m all for kinetic sculptures that look like they could disembowel you, devour you, the move your remains through their undulating, kineticly cool structure. U-Ram Choe who is know for amazing metal work mixed with an array of glass, coils, resin, electronic bits and movement has a new sculpture showing in New York at the…
If you were to wad up a piece of paper, throw it in my face and yell, “what’s your favorite artistically represented graphical element!” I’d have to wipe the blood from my lip, pinch my elbow skin and scream from the depth of my lungs, “A decent, yet imaginative typeface!” Nothin’ better in my mind,…
There are some robots that take me back to my childhood, like this skateboard-mounted, paint-spraying graffiti machine whipping an arduino-driven pendulum arm around. Not that I went around spray-painting objects, but that I was often attached to a pendulum arm, but who wasn’t, right? It’s just the sort of thing that may have inspired So…
I tell you what. There’s nothing like the thought of riding atop a container of -195˚ Celsius liquid nitrogen, while its vapor spews from a small tube positioned between your legs. Nope, no problem with that. Why? Because it’s the future and it goes along quite nicely with ice pants. It’s called the MagSurf and…
There are just not enough opportunities in the world, the stand silently in a crowded room with a mask of your face… over your face. Amirite? Slap another one on the back of your head, a couple, in your arms, swaddled in blankets and you’ve got all sort of creepiness going on. The best thing?…
I know you have them, thousands of them. Photos, the 2D type… and even more images you’ve cut out of magazines and library books. If you’re like me, you’re fine with gluing them on odd shaped creatures and giving them out as gifts. If you want something more, you may be interested in 3Defy, a…
If you’re hankering for a magnificent piece of man metal (and a magnificent manufacturing process), RogueDZN is about to make you clench your teeth so tight they shatter… twice. Matt Tremblay, Founder of RogueDZN (and chief designer at __________) just announced the release of the ultimate in high performance, machined G5 titanium hotness for your…
Oh, how wonderful the feel of a digital explosion across your screen. Am I right? YES. How’s it happen? Exocortex Technologies. They’ve released Momentum 3, a slick multiphysics engine for Autodesk Softimage. While it’s not useful for anything mildly related to the usual cadre of CAD apps we talk about on SolidSmack, it does give…
You’ll need more than a forklift to get your jaw off the floor once you find out the details of the upcoming Apocalypse. Yes, it involves robots. OBVIOUSLY. Yes, it involves sharp cutting tools. LESS OBVIOUS, but… yeah. And yes, it even involves 3D CAD…and bikes, and… Go NOW!
Don’t you just love art installations that make your optic nerves twist around each other in jaw-tightening delight? LOVE IT. This is just such an installation. It’s an exploration of process brought to life in a 3D environment by Christoph Bader of DepotVisuals. What at first seems abstract shapes become a duo-tone delivery of slices…
I’ve considered a 24 hour Inception marathon – watching it attached to the ceiling whilst eating large quantities of burritos inside of burritos inside of burritos. Instead, I think I’ll just stare at this wonderfully cool Inception Chair design for a few hours and call it done. Created by Vivian Chui from a fine specimen…
What’s more fun that regular old fun? We you put four ‘e’s in front of ‘fun’ and scream it in your highest pitch possible. Then, after you’re done choking on phlegm and throat skin, move your finger to the mouse and click on eeeeFUN.com. You’ll be glad you did, because if you’ve been sitting at…
Ugh, Wednesdays. Like a punch to the gizzard, only slightly less satisfying. Friday’s around the corner but just out of reach. What to do? Shake off the mid-week doldrums by taking a peek inside your favorite and perhaps not-so-favorite gadgets. Grab your toolbox and get inspired! This week’s entry: a 3Dconnexion SpaceExplorer
If you’ve run out of excuses to slop sour cream on your iPad screen with frantic glee while modeling in sweet 3D, that’s all about to change. Today, as a supplement to their free 3D modeling program, 123D. Autodesk has introduce Autodesk 123D Sculpt for the iPad. They’re spreadin’ the 3D bulgin’ love all over…
I love my 3DConnexion 3D mouse, don’t get me wrong. But even the recent version 10 drivers have left me wanting more. I want to control reality like I do my viewport. As it turns out, that might be doable. 3DConnexion posted a video on Youtube, showing them controlling a Parrot AR Drone with a…
In times like these, when you sit teary-eyed staring at the 3D mouse/keyboard/mouse device horror sprawled out before you, the future may seem bleak and filled with long hours of moving your hands about your multi-buttoned workspace. But have hope, the future hold unbound possibility. The time has come to take matters into your own…