Amongst the sad Keanu Reeves figurines and modified vacuum cleaner parts, additive manufacturing is also stepping in to solve some major medical problems in ways no one predicted it would. Similar to how Makerbot and RepRap managed to cut the cost of desktop rapid prototyping, Philadelphia-based startup BioBots has been focusing their efforts on radically…
Among other recent technological breakthroughs, it is now possible for dreams to be translated much more efficiently into physical 3D creations. Among others, ‘The Wire Collection’ of vases designed by Ivan Zhurba is a testimony to that fact. Produced using selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printing technology, ‘The Wire Collection’ vases thrive with the spontaneous…
Enabled by new developments in 3D Printing and Computer Vision, footwear design company SOLS has been trying to tackle the area of orthopedics to make it easier for everyone to get around. Over the weekend, the company released it’s new ADAPTIV footwear – a conceptual project that allows the footwear designs to rapidly adapt shape…
Dutch Supermarket chain Albert Hejin (AH XL) have taken it upon themselves to create a user-facing kiosk and a customized chocolate 3D printer to allow customers to make cake designs on the fly. The Dutch always strike me as one of the few countries that like living on the bleeding edge of the Future. Don’t worry…
For those Fablabs, Design Studios and active hobbyists, filament buying becomes a part of the rite of being there. Instead of having to rely on timing orders right or hitting up the hobby shop to make sure you have enough filament and tools, there’s Protocrate. Described as a “part-Filament of the Month club, part-DIY project…
It’s one of the most unusual things that Autodesk has ever done – a software company making hardware products – and now you can get your hands on it. Precise, Sleek and Open-Source, the Ember was created to be a 3D Printer for everyone so anyone can easily physicalize models via Autodesk’s very own Spark Platform and…
For those living in the Northern Hemisphere, we are currently encased in the harsh grip of Winter and thus, bound to the grueling duty of snow-shoveling. The natural inclination is to say, “how can I build an awesome robot to do this instead?” Well, Ryan ‘Moo Spyker’ of the famously frozen St. Paul, MN, has been building…
Hold onto your hats! The Hasso-Plattner-Institut, near Berlin, Germany, has just released ‘a simple self-contained appliance that allows teleporting inanimate physical objects across distance’ by the name of Scotty (as in, “Beam me up”). Starting with a few Makerbot Replicators, they added a 3-axis milling machine, a camera, an encryption/tranmission system to enable teleportation of objects. Unlike…
In the annals of getting-things-made, there have been two distinct approaches that have become apparent in the past two years. One is the classic Shapeways/Ponoko approach (or B2C), which depends on a company owning digital fabrication machines and putting all of the models on one build plate and shipping it to you and/or having a…
Today on Indiegogo 3DRacers launched their new RC racecar package. Using an online editor, you can create your own design and add features to make your racecar to crush all competition. Edit, download, print and assemble. Using a smartphone app, you can take your racecar round the track like the Stig that you are. Silent and unknown to the…
At only 12.7 MB, this new CAD package packs a punch! Although it may come with a bit of a steep learning curve, Monolith enables users to vary the quantity of multiple materials on a voxel-by-voxel basis. New 3D Printing technologies – such as those seen in Stratasys’ Objet multi-material 3D printers – allow the…
Like most other things these days, digital fabrication is disconnecting from your computer and leaving it for the Cloud. The concept of it is fairly simple: connect a dongle to your 3D Printer and enable the user to control it using an online platform for printing, content creation and sharing, among others. This is exactly…
As MakerBot announced that they were unrolling new features and products into their expanding ecosystem during CES 2015, one of the biggest gaping holes in their platform was making the entire 3D printing experience more social. Between the legions of new 3D printing enthusiasts to existing user groups and Makerspaces, the social activity has been…
For those that grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s, it’s likely that some of the best weekends-ever consisted of epic Nerf soft-dart Blaster fights and fort-building. Unlike LEGOs, the soft darts didn’t hurt if you stepped on one and the combination of building strategic forts for protection certainly led to at least some…
Does anybody know anything about handrail clamps? PDM/Engineering Community GrabCAD just announced that they are doing a Design Challenge with NASA, asking the World to come up with a Handrail Clamp Assembly that will be 3D Printed on the ISS for use. Yes! The challenge is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (well, hopefully not) to bust out…
Morphi is a free iPad app that allows users to quickly design and print items using touch alone; targeting younger people to inspire interest in design for all things 3D and artists/designers interested in taking a new approach. Back in June 2014, we covered their first release and we’re fairly impressed with Morphi’s powerful set of…
For anybody who has been wanting to get the most out of their 3D scanner or smartphone 3D scanning app, then the MODO for Repotology series from industrial design training site cadjunkie is just for you. For the low price of $39 ($14 for cadjunkie Premium members), this downloadable video series includes everything you need…
We’ve been hearing quite a bit about Simplify3D, a complete software package for slicing 3D models for printing. With features like simulated slicing (to see where printing might be a problem), Mesh-repair, oodles of pre-configured settings for different machines, tutorials and a very active community, hobbyists and prosumers can count on Simplify3D for an easier…
Although we’ve seen and heard a lot about what Autodesk’s Pier 9 workshop is capable of producing, we’ve been yet to see a whole lot of what has actually been done there. If these sculptures from John Edmark, one of Pier 9’s Artists-in-Residence are any indication, it looks like they’re up to a whole lot…
It’s been almost a year since we’ve heard from Greg Mark, founder of MarkForged and creator of the Mark One carbon fiber 3D printer. When we ran into him at SolidWorks World 2014 last year, his 3D printer was the talk of the show and had SolidWorks executives including Gian Paolo Bassi talking about the…
Senvol has been a company on our radar for the past two years. Started by Wharton grads Zach Simkins and Annie Wang, Senvol’s original intention was to help companies find uses for 3D Printing outside of just rapid prototyping, identifying uses like producing discontinued OEM parts or finding parts that could be more cheaply manufactured…
Since unveiling the Strati, their crowdsource-designed 3D printed car, Local Motors has been visiting everybody from MakerFaires to the Today Show and has been open about putting the car, which can be printed in 44 hours, into production later this year. While most would probably expect the Phoenix, Arizona-based company to unveil something on an…
Rather than unveiling any new hardware last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015) in Las Vegas, MakerBot quietly announced a wide array of ecosystem updates to make their platform more useful to a wider variety of users. Considering that their range of existing FDM 3D printer models are still among the most technologically…
Although they’ve been on the market for awhile as a 3D printer manufacturer now, MakerBot has been up to a lot more than just creating glorified hot glue guns that create colorful vases and toys. In addition to their recent partnerships with global brands including Sesame Street, Hello Kitty, Martha Stewart and more recently, Hoover…
Electronics 3D Printing, which combines your standard Additive Manufacturing and elements of PCB prototyping, came one step closer to your cluttered desktop. Voxel8 just released to CES 2015 an amazing video demonstrating their first commercial product, showing off how it can 3D Print plastic and conductive ink traces, allowing anyone to create a completely integrated product.…
As if the LEGO Architecture Studio couldn’t get any cooler, a clever hack was unveiled last week that could let designers and architects translate their build objects into 3D data for idea generation and literal rapid prototyping with LEGO models. Although most professional designers and engineers will probably want to spend their time jumping straight…
When NASA emailed a ratchet wrench file to International Space Station commander Barry Wilmore on December 19th, it marked the first time a file could be 3D modeled on earth and sent up to space for manufacturing. While it isn’t the first time an object has been printed in space (there have been over 20…
As convenient as it is for rapid prototyping purposes, 3D printing as a method of final manufacturing can be a bit of eyesore, depending on your tastes. However, when done right and put into context, the use of additive manufacturing to create everyday items can also create some attractive objects that are worthy of a…
When it comes to partnering up with existing brands to enable users to create 3D printable products and accessories within their own homes, MakerBot has been on the forefront of showing us what that future might look like. Between their partnerships with brands such as Sesame Street, Hello Kitty and even Martha Stewart, their MakerBot…
They say vinyl produces the best sounding reproduction of music. It’s a big debate that seems to run in circles again and again. Get it? Well we can settle one question I’ve always had: I can burn a CD, and I can make a tape. But why can’t I make my own Vinyl records? Well look…
Removing 3D Prints. It ain’t easy. FDM 3D Printing requires that the first layers adhere to something, but of course, that something has to be not coated with superglue. Because nothing says “I suck at this” than giving your Girlfriend a bracelet that is either broken or firmly attached to the printbed. For this reason, there is the…
Out in Calverton, NY, placed at the very end of Long Island, Graphene 3D Labs have been working on a rather novel idea. A 3D Printed Battery. Unlike about 4/5th of innovations that have headlines like ‘3D Printed [insert common household item that could be cheaply injection molded anyways], this one has much more interesting…
Although 3D printer sales have grown exponentially in the past few years, the cost of purchasing a desktop 3D printer hasn’t changed drastically enough for a new generation of ‘non-prosumers’ to wholeheartedly adopt the technology yet. While on-demand services such as Shapeways promise the same results (or better), the lack of instant gratification leaves much…
It’s no secret that Luxion has been teaming up with everybody from software companies to material manufacturers left and right these days. Regardless of what program you use, chances are there’s some sort of a KeyShot plug-in, LiveLink, or Direct Import option for that. Now you can add one more to the pile. Yesterday, it…
Grunt, squeeze and pop that 3D printed champagne cork. Yesterday, at Autodesk University, the software company that serves manufacturing, architectural and the media and entertainment industries pushed further into additive manufacturing with three announcements. Autodesk has formally launched the Spark Platform, along with a Printer, a Fund and a strategic partnership with 3D print industry…
Presented last month at Autodesk’s Pop-Up Gallery in Paris, LeFabShop’s Open Toy Project is pretty much as close as you can get to playing with your food in every sense of the phrase. Designed by Samuel N. Bernier at a 2013 workshop at Domaine de Boisbuchet, the project came out of a decision to use…
As 3D printing finds its way into solving a myriad of problems ranging from more traditional product development methods to more recent medical applications, there is one trait that leaves much to be desired: the ability to create multiple high-quality prints in a short amount of time. While the recently-announced Multi Jet Fusion Technology from…
One doesn’t normally associate magnets with plastic…unless of course that magnet is embedded somewhere behind the housing. But what if the plastic material itself was magnetic? As they begin unveiling a collection of new 3D printing materials they have been developing over the past few years, Oregon-based ProtoParadigm is launching a series of Kickstarter campaigns…
Partwork publications, which consist of a larger story, guide or project that is broken into digestible magazine-like installments, have been among the best ways to deliver epic stories and more complicated projects for centuries now. Similar to how a boxed set for a television show is initially broken up into weekly episodes, partwork publications can…
Since its big debut on the world stage at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, Chris Elsworthy’s Robox 3D printer and micro-manufacturing platform has been generating a lot of interest in an already-flooded 3D printer market. Yesterday, it was announced that the Kickstarter-backed micro-manufacturing platform is now available to the public for just under $1,550.…
When it comes to adopting new technologies, master homemaker Martha Stewart is up there among the best and most comfortable in not only using the new technologies, but also finding unique ways of using them. Among other methods of adoption, the iconic media personality and lifestyle icon has used a drone to plot out her…
Since opening in the fall of 2013, Autodesk’s Pier 9 has been nothing short of a dream factory where designers and engineers have access to literally every tool possible for cranking out the next great product design or innovation. Located on Pier 9 overlooking the San Francisco Bay, the facility is available to lucky Autodesk…
With products such as GoldieBlocks, LEGO Mindstorms and Arduino making waves in the toy industry and media, it’s easy to forget some of the more simple products that provide the basic foundation for making things…such as construction sets. Aiming to fill this overlooked niche is Ingocraft, a new 3D printing-focused company that offers both a…
Every so often a project comes along on Instructables that really, truly is useful…if for nothing but creating great conversations. The ‘EWaste 60$ 3DPrinter’ from first-time Instructables author mikelllc is one of those projects. To begin with, this is the perfect project for anybody that wants to learn more about how a standard CNC system…
Between the Shapeways-Façade that Hasbro has set up for experimenting with the customized fabrication of My Little Pony dolls to Sesame Street’s decision to grab hands with MakerBot to create extruded yellow ooey-gooey plastic Big Birds, it’s no secret that toy brands and manufacturers are lining up in droves to cash in on this ‘3D…
Let’s be honest here: talking about new 3D printers has become an almost nauseating exercise. From Kickstarter dreams to different sizes of MakerBots, very little has truly changed the game of speed, quality and cost of getting something 3D printed. The Multi Jet Fusion technology announced by HP this morning has not only changed the…
While modern CAD tools have made the product design workflow easier than ever (depending on who you ask), the need for more simple tools including sketchbooks, a favorite pen and even a ball of clay and calipers are still essential tools on a product design or engineer’s desktop. But what if ‘going digital’ didn’t necessarily…
When bringing up the topic of digitally fabricated furniture, it’s difficult to not bring up Joris Laarman’s infamous Bone Chair (which is one part of an entire Bone Furniture collection). The bone structure-inspired chair, which was among the first and most unique experiments in applying digital fabrication techniques to furniture, still sits in museums and…
There is something delightful about the Odin Kickstarter video. I can’t decide if it’s because the project was created by a small family with a bright idea (dog included) or the final scene in the video (you’ll just have to watch to find out). Either way, it’s fun, simple and effective projects like these that…
When your first design objective is ‘It Needs to Look Awesome’, chances are it will probably not only look awesome but BE awesome, too. Such is the case with mechanical designer Pat Starace’s 3D printed Iron Man prosthetic hand. While only one has been made (and requests have been pouring in, apparently), the concept is…