As one of the most memorable parts of Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space, the infamous “Printer Scene” gave an honest look at how some of us really feel about our office equipment when it fails to work as intended. While it may not reach the same level of badassery as seen in the film,…
There’s an interesting option available for those requiring a large-format desktop 3D printer: the T-Rex from FORMBOT. The open-style cartesian 3D printer appears to have a simple design, but there are some very interesting features beyond the basics of 3D printing. The most important feature, of course, is the huge build volume, which is measured…
Presented by The O’Jays. Remember those guys? Probably not, but I guarantee you’ve heard their most popular song, For the Love of Money. Two chords and a repetitive five-word phrase later, and you’ve got a song stuck in your head for longer than you want. Those could easily be five reasons integrated CAM matters to…
When’s the last time you went barreling down a hill on a skateboard the size of a small sea bass? Never? Well, there’s always a first time and while you’re at it, why not get extra crazy and have your questionable friends dare you to go down that hill on a 3D printed skateboards?
Since introducing their Futurecraft initiative late last year, Adidas has shown no signs of slowing down their exploration – and intention – of incorporating additive manufacturing and other next generation digital fabrication techniques into their supply chain in the not-too-distant future. Tomorrow, in honor of World Oceans Day, Adidas and ocean conservation group Parley for…
With so many cool things coming out each week, it can be hard to wade through all the rock-awesomeness. With ‘Cool Tools’, we’ve done the hard work for you. This week we saw an entirely new way to play ping pong when your friends are busy, how to create an epic water balloon launcher for…
Call it a first world problem, but keeping plates hot and drinks cold during a carefully-curated meal can be a problem for many chefs – particularly if they’re upholding a reputation in the elite ranks. First shown at the Salone del Mobile in April, the SmartSlab Table just might be the missing piece in a…
Presented by For those who have visited, it’s slightly difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes Amsterdam such an attractive city. No matter how you describe it, though, few cities are capable of melding that old European charm with the attributes of a modern metropolis quite like Amsterdam can. It should come as little surprise then,…
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…
The folks at E3D are most well-known for their very popular hot-ends, which are installed on many desktop 3D printers. Now they’ve taken a step out of bounds to produce a pretty amazing filament.
Rockers. Triggers. Directional Pads. No matter how you use them, nothing yells control quite like physical buttons do. Unfortunately, incorporating working analog controls into a piece of hardware is more often than not significantly more difficult than it sounds. From an industrial design perspective, buttons can both be a blessing and a burden. While size,…
Rendering out new product design concepts with markers can be a pretty daunting task. In my new multi-part series I look at how to approach rendering adventure toy concepts, combining old school marker techniques with some modern day digital photo editing techniques.
As athletes that rely wholeheartedly on nature to make or break a good day in the water, the surfing community has consistently been among the most active when it comes to preserving our oceans and keeping environmental threats at bay. Ironically, the materials used to produce the very boards they ride on also contain some…
As the latest in digital fabrication technologies – such as 3D printing in multiple materials – become more affordable and widespread, the promise of a supply chain-disrupting distributed manufacturing future – at least, for some products – continues to look more promising. As we continue to navigate the landscape of 3D printing and other digital fabrication…
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…
Like others who found their way to a career in product design, Dimitris Niavis spent a significant amount of his childhood tearing apart toys, figuring out how they work and ultimately reassembling them again. Today, the designer is using that same train of thought to rethink local manufacturing with the goal of creating a synergy…
By nature, the human eye is one of the most complex and intelligent examples of biological design – not to mention one of the more challenging biological features to design protection for in extreme conditions. For athletes that sweat and move in all directions rigorously for hours on end, this design problem is made all…
Whether you prefer to cook your steaks over an outdoor fire or in the kitchen, few materials offer excellent heat retention properties and a better experience than cast iron cookware. With its near-perfect design, the age-old cast iron skillet has changed very little over the past two-thousand years and continues to be handed down through…
With a deep fascination of what they call the “common territories between architecture and music”, designers Marcelo Ertorteguy and Sara Valente of NYC design studio Stereotank operate somewhere at the intersection of architecture, art and sound. Although the team is used to working at a large-scale, they’ve recently turned their attention to creating hybrid objects…
Whether it’s a toy Lightsaber, a miniature city, a robot or even just a plain old box, few materials can fuel a child’s imagination like cardboard can. Not to mention, the environmentally-friendly material is easy to work with and is nearly free – depending on where you look. Aiming to make creating awesome cardboard toys easy…
A new filament from Avante demonstrates how much more advances in 3D printing filament chemistry can achieve. The new FilaOne GRAY filament from Avante Technology is one of very few materials specifically designed for 3D printing engineering applications. Avante explains: FilaOneTM GRAY provides very high flexural modulus, yet can bend and recover without crack- ing…
With so many cool things coming out each week, it can be hard to wade through all the rock-awesomeness. With ‘Cool Tools’, we’ve done the hard work for you. This week we saw an incredible real-time table tennis training device, a pair of sleek 3D printed lampshades, a new app that promises an auditory experience…
As a UX designer, Tobias Eichenwald believes we’re on the cusp of a shift that will move us away from generic Graphical User Interfaces to a new generation of Natural User Interfaces that engage multiple human senses including gesture, speech, haptic, visual interfaces and more. He is also the co-founder of Senic, a new hardware…
As the internet and Photoshop has taught us, pictures aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes they’re manipulated to a point where it’s something completely different. Other times, they’re optical illusions playing tricks on the eye. But what if these manipulations can be applied to actual furniture?
As anybody who has seen or personally created spin art knows, the power of centrifugal forces can lead to some pretty impressive results. But how might you apply the same psychedelic effect to physical goods? For industrial designer Maor Aharon, this question became the basis for his recent experiment “Matter of Motion” – a project…
It’s critical to make your company distinct, especially in the world of 3D design and digital fabrication. Manufacturers often boast about the capabilities and features of their 3D printers, such as printing with more than one material, fabricating at lightning speed or having a high resolution. While those claims are often true, few compares to…
Despite more recent efforts to clean up plastic waste in our oceans, a recent prediction by the World Economic Forum forecasted that the total weight of plastics will be larger than the total weight of fish – specifically due to the overall rise of global consumption. But what if at least some of those numbers…
Although the sport of lacrosse may elicit thoughts of East Coast prep schools, the game was in fact invented by a confederacy of six Native American nations – the Iroquois – whose territory once stretched from Lake Erie in the west to Lake Champlain in the east. Unlike the contemporary lacrosse sticks of today that…
Despite revealing their anticipated new iPhone SE and a smaller iPad Pro at their Keynote last month, the most impressive announcement from Apple came in the form of Liam, an industrial robot designed to tear apart discarded iPhones. Announced onstage by the company’s Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson, Liam is…
As conventional casting methods have taught us, the best way for reliably manufacturing multiples of any object is to start with an accurate and sturdy mold. For their recent Fabric Forms explorative material study, however, architects Joseph Sarafian and Ron Culver wanted to do something that was anything but conventional. Working with the Grasshopper plug-in…
Imagine if you could own a piece of furniture many would consider a piece of art? That’s how you would describe the Lagoon table by LA Table, a design company that goes the everyday design of traditional furniture. Thier new project is the brainchild of creator and designer of the company Alexandre Chapelin, who has…
Love ’em or just plain prefer something else, there’s a reason why Nike stays at the top of the innovation food chain. Going all the way back to the original concept of making a shoe from a waffle iron, thinking outside the box has been embedded into the brand’s DNA since day one. Like Apple’s…
How are vinyl records made? Have you spent nights awake just pondering that? Well, let’s put your mind at ease. It begins with a metal flat disc and a coat of lacquer, and ends spinning on a turntable. Boom. Done. The Vinyl Factory provides a glimpse on how they make records in a 60 second…
Our smartphones can do anything and almost everything. Think you’re lost? Whip out your phone. Need to look up an address? Phone’s got you covered. Get in a fender bender? Your phone can take pictures. But even with this technology at our finger tips, there are some situations where a smartphone is useless, like getting…
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…
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…
While most people prefer to park their car on the street in favor of using their garage as a workshop or walk-in utility closet, stuntman and woodworker Ben Tardif had other plans: he converted his entire garage into a giant marble rollercoaster. Called Marble Mountain, the ‘still under construction’ marble machine consists of 25 sections…
There’s one thing I’ve been looking forward to since SolidWorks World. And now that I have that shower out of the way, I’d like to reveal what Lenovo shoveled me off from the event to the dark corner of a hotel restaurant to show me secretly whilst enjoyed an assemblage of assorted meats and cheeses.…
Remember getting a Spirograph for Christmas? Yeah, baby! That was the BEST. That wee creative toy had an infinite number of intricate geometric designs within those simple plastic gears. Well Joe Freedman’s LEAFpdx has taken that idea to the next level.
With so many cool things coming out each week, it can be hard to wade through all the rock-awesomeness. With ‘Cool Tools’, we’ve done the hard work for you. This week we saw a sleek wood handlebar that rivals any midcentury furniture piece, an incredible self-sustainable planter, a handy new 3D sketching app for iPad,…
Ever since I was a kid, blowing Play-Doh through letter shaped cookie cutters, I’ve had an interest in typefaces. I like to think I’m the one who confronted my second-grade teacher about the font choice and kerning on that awful “Mister Seahorse’ bulletin board. I imagine Loren Kulesus, a Brooklyn-based designer, has had a similar…
During the late 1920s – just before The Great Depression – those who were fortunate enough to own an automobile preferred the bright highlight of a whitewall tire to contrast against the increasingly gloomy and dark surroundings. Ironically, because blackwall tires required less effort to maintain after curb scuffs due to a greater amount of…
Why does modern furniture have to either be expensive or low-quality? Such is the pressing question that a team of 9 designers from California-based online home goods brand SWENYO recently asked themselves. Aiming to bring premium products that embrace a balance of form and function to today’s average consumer, the design team turned their attention…
According to Australia-based Knog, bike bells generally look and sound a bit ugly – but what if they were streamlined to fit the existing profile of a handlebar and sounded like an angel playing a glockenspiel? That’s a big “what if” – but if their recent success on Kickstarter is any indication, thousands of bell-ringing cyclists also…
With so many cool things coming out each week, it can be hard to wade through all the rock-awesomeness. With ‘Cool Tools’, we’ve done the hard work for you. This week we saw a sleek wood handlebar that rivals any midcentury furniture piece, an incredible self-sustainable planter, a handy new 3D sketching app for iPad,…
Although we’re just as excited as anybody else about the future of manufacturing – particularly AR applications, Cloud-based CAD and improvements to digital fabrication workflows – our appreciation for traditional craftsmanship techniques is still shining as bright as ever. Among others who have taken manufacturing goods to the complete opposite end of the spectrum is…
In Part I we went through the steps of creating a silicone mold. Now we are ready to cast the actual part. Are your ready for this?
For some, the sight of a school lunch tray might bring memories of rubbery fish sticks, generic ketchup and grape juice with strong notes of cardboard – but for artist and furniture maker Kim Markel, the sight of a school lunch tray means one thing only: tasteful opportunity. The late-blooming furniture designer, who left a…
Xacto knives. Pfllllt. They walked in and thought they were the go-to tool for precision crafting. Ok, I admit, they pretty much have been, whether it’s for a small art project or a huge building design, they seduce us with their oh-so-sharp blades. But holding the knife for so long can literally cramp yo’ style.…
Forget a smaller iPhone or iPad Pro, the real winner of yesterday’s Apple keynote was something that most people will never get to hold in their hands – let alone see. Revealed on stage by Lisa Jackson, Apple’s SVP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Liam is an industrial robot designed for no other purpose than…