Ever so recently, a number of awesome infographics on 3D printing, and fabrication in general, have appeared on the Interwebs. You probably haven’t seen or heard enough about 3D Printing, so we’d like to share them with you so it’s firmly ingrained into your brain tissues. What’s 3D printing? – Still have no clue about…
I know you have dreams. Not the one where you’re falling and wake up floating, then realize you’re just falling the wrong way and then you wake up. Not that one. The dream I speak of is the one where you go to New York City, set up a giant platform at the Jacob K.…
Not all of us are able to build wild contraptions that strap to our backs and allow us to shoot plastic out the tips of our fingers. That’s why there are places like CloudFab who will take on the task for you. However, instead of depending on a couple three-jointed appendages for plastic forming, they’ve…
You remember, as a child, when you would take your little brother’s head, cover it with mud and hope he would lay still long enough for it to dry so you could crack it open and see if he was an alien? Well, nice try, but your childish antics have got nothin’ on what a…
I’m serious as printed Nutella when I say this. You’re about to get silly thoughts in your head. Silly thoughts about fabbing up this type of trinket or that type of trinket, in a really different way than ever before. CloudFab is set to provide you with more options for your sly design fabrication needs.…
How many times do you see a product design and think, “How could this possibly be manufactured at a reasonable cost?” The ‘YellowClip’ Clothesline Clip designed by Paul Sandip is just one of those designs that brings up such questions. It’s curvy, it doesn’t rust, it’s available in a variety of colors and it looks…
On a slow, muggy night I’ll sit back, pop open a can of high density polyethylene and take a look at all the activity happening in the world of 3D fabrication. It’s invigorating. I highly recommend it. Recently, on such a night, I came across two bits of info from my two favorite fab sites,…
You may like to argue about whether or not 3D Printers will go mainstream, but one thing is for sure, you can get started pretty easy, pretty soon and do it on the cheap. Prepare your fingers for nicks, scraps and beautiful droplets of layered ABS plastic. Next week, Makerbot will start shipping their Cupcake…
OOOOOhhhhh, it is ON. SolidSmack has been challenged… and when I say challenged, I mean we are pickin’ fights with anything or anyone. Mr. Joseph ‘Mass Customization’ Flaherty over at Replicator Blog recently wrote about Why 3D Printers Won’t Go Mainstream. That’s just yelling to have an opposing view thrown at it. So that’s what…
After seeing the Herman Miller Embody Chair for the first time, I became a wee bit obsessed with what went into the design. With the design and development ranging over years of the incredible experience of Jeff Weber and Bill Stumpf, the process had to be something to talk about. Turns out it was. I…
Exactly how rockin’ would you be with your own guitar? Not as rockin’ as you would be with a sweet, custom manufactured axe made to your exact style and specifications. Amit Zoran, from the MIT Ambient Intelligence Group, has been fiddling with the concept of Rapid Prototyping acoustical instruments. But are the materials that rapid…
Imagine for a moment – taking a sip of coffee, scalding your mouth, then slamming your fist upon the keyboard that sends your final SolidWorks generated 3D model to a 3D printer sitting right next to you. The print heads go to work as your brand new 3D desktop printer creates a high-resolution, fully cured,…
Ready. Aim. Rapid-prototype your freagin’ cool idea before someone else does. That’s exactly what Stu Fingerhut did with his gun rack organizer, fully-loaded to help you clean-up that mess gathering on your entryway table. The Process? Modeled in SolidWorks, rendered in PhotoWorks, and manufactured via Ponoko. It’s the steps that a lot of designers and…
Is all 2D stuff LAME? Absolutely not. Ponoko just blew that outta the water (thanks, SolidSmack is down -1% 3D) by bringing you PhotoMake to draw something cool, take a snapshot or a scan, upload, choose material… wif, bam, boom… instant lazer cut bliss from the masters of think, make, sell. Even though this is…
Interested in making something via the Ponoko rapid prototyping design site, but not quite sure about how to go about it? You’re in luck, they’ve just release a new service called Ponoko ID that allows you to request a design. You list a price, its sent to some designer and after one has picked it,…