I know. I KNOW. You’ve got your desktop segmented alphabetically using a number substitution cypher based on an obsession with cigars made between the years of 1928 and A.I.G.F. You don’t need any more organization. Oh, but YOU DO, because when you see this desktop organizer, you’ll toss your codekey for stacks of 3D printed…
When you’ve got five kinds of soup stored away in your desk drawer for safe keeping, along with that box of emergency chocolate chips, only the most advanced form of security will do. Facial recognition and eye scan technology wasn’t around in 2000 BCE, but they did have a type of pin lock that isn’t…
It may be a few weeks since you’ve had that dream of attaching articulating arms of grapplers, lights and small laser cannons to your upper torso, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start today. “The hardest part is starting your transformation into a cyborg. Scalpel!” is what my old business partner use to say. That’s…
As 3D professionals, we require a certain level of ambiance in our office space. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when they step inside an engineer’s cubicle and it suddenly feels like a 1920’s lounge complete with stage, singer and the smell of old reference books and even older whiskey. Lamps are an important part of this.…
I’m pretty sure if we ran a survey right now, all the answers would be BIONIC HAND. Even if the question asks whether your favorite color is red or gravy, the answer would be BIONIC HAND. That’s because bionic hand is not only the coolest color, it’s also the coolest body upgrade… ya know, outside a…
Valentine’s Day is only six months away, so this is super relevant. Actually, Cardiovascular Surgeon appreciation day is a lot closer and our 3D model this week works just as well for that, Valentine’s Day and even for serenading your co-workers, singing ‘Nothing Compares 2U’ WHICH Sinead OConnor just so happened to release the official…
There’s one question I often ponder. What could I stick on a rabbit to make it look more like a robot? You too? Oh, I agree, a bear… yeah, a bear could be robotically accessorized really well, granted he’s not eating you instead. Maybe you don’t have an animal to stick robot part on, so…
Ask anyone with a wood shop or a giant bowl of grapes and they’ll tell you, you just can’t have too many clamps. It’s not possible. You could have ten clamps–not enough. A thousand clamps–nope. A million clamps–WEAK, you need more. Jacob Stanton, aka jakejake, the gentleman who gave us the Squishy Turtle model, has…
I know if you could–if you had two rings of light that fit under each arm–you would run down the hall screaming, “I will bake all the muffins with my light orbs!” And when someone points out they’re rings and not orbs, you will raise your arms and blast them with magnificent halos of bright…
After last week’s model, we’re being extra picky not to print crap, and what could be less craptastic than a foldable mobile phone stand? Quite a lot actually, so don’t answer that. Still, we’re quite enamored with the design of this credit card size implement of mobile phone accessorizing bliss. Clement created this simple design…
I’m scared to look back in our ‘Model of the Week’ archive. Wait a minute! I know for certain that (almost) all of the 3D prints we feature are in the upper echelon of the most useful things for human beings EVER. For the one (or two) that slipped by, the proper shaming will ensue.…
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you probably don’t have much LEGO paraphernalia in your bathroom… unless your a LEGO minifig yourself or have five children under the age of ten. If that’s the case you have LEGOs everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Scratch, aka The Scratch, knows the human race lacks the proper implements to…
We’re keeping the theme of cars following last week’s Hot Rod model with a project that will be a tad simpler but just as fun. I think everyone from 2 to 200 likes a pull-back car. HOURS of fun to be had just pulling back a car, getting yelled at by someone because you’ve pulled…
Have a hot rod project car out in the garage? Yes? No? What’s that? It’s more a pile of hot rod parts you say? If you look at my garage in the dark and squint hard enough, all of those boxes look vaugly like a hot rod… kinda. A hot rod is #3 on my…
Ya know, there’s nothing that quite matches the craftsmanship of a traditional violin… except for a weird ass instrument that is 3D printed and sounds just like a traditional violin. Thingiverse user Sun Gear (I only now a few people named Sun Gear–His father is a music teacher named Keith Engle, so we’ll call him…
If any of your hobbies involve turtles and/or squishing things with your fingers while giggling like a schoolchild hopped up on oatmeal pies, you’re going to love our model this week. Jacob Stanton, also known as ‘jakejake’, has created a small turtle toy that squishes down and bounces around on its springy little legs. They’re…
What do you do with your pennies? Do I even need to ask? Look, I know everyone loves blasting a few penny out their nose, but like your grade school financial planner told you, “Your nose is gushing blood! You should be saving those pennies!” Maybe saving pennies would be easier if we could do…
There are cities inside the massive head of a rotted out celestial being (name it!) but cities inside the partial shell of a small planet? …I dunno, I can’t think of one of those. Maybe that’s why our model of the week is so cool. Jukka Seppänen recalls a concept drawing of a city inside…
You know what your party DOESN’T have. The ambiance created by a bubble-pooting Deadpool. Yes, folks, this will likely go down in SolidSmack history as either the height or depth of our weekly model feature, but hey, where else can you learn about the coolest design, latest tech AND how to make a Deadpool model…
The Alien Facehugger. It seems innocent enough… You know, after it chases you down, wraps its legs around your face, paralyzes you for a few days and falls dead off your swollen gnoggin–after that. We won’t go into the details of what happens next. What’s that? You’ve not seen any of the Alien movies? FOR SHAME.…
You can stop looking for the endangered animal you want to 3D print, because I found it for you. It’s a Pangolin. “A pango-what?” A pangolin. It’s a small, nocturnal mammal covered in protective scales and native to parts of Africa, China, India and Malaysia. Not only is this a 3D printed pangolin, it’s a 3D…
Like most somewhat avid outdoorsmen, I’ve gone rappelling once or thrice. After ending upside-down thinking I saw mountain lion preparing to devour me, I did the only thing you can do in that situation… scream while trying to cut yourself free from the carabiner holding you safely 50 feet over jagged rocks. Now, I’m not…
Glory be! I’ve always said I wanted a baby quadruped of my very own. Those gang members with knives laughed, but I still kept saying it. After I got them all shirts with a cute baby quadruped graphic on it, they stopped trying to cut me. Just goes to show you Huey Lewis & the…
It’s embarrassing isn’t it? When you get caught in the garage with all the tires off, halfway between blowtorching the lower panels and wrapping tank tread around your freshly welded drive sprocket. Just tell your spouse the smell will dissipate over time. Then, quickly show them RC Speed Tank this to distract them. Sven Drechsel…
Who needs a creepy, baby tree creature sidekick on their desktop? Oh yeah! I see those hands going up. I do too, but not just any creepy, baby tree creature. I needs me a BABY GROOT up in har! Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is hittin’ theaters May 5th, so that gives you plenty of…
You know when you’re comfy as a lark in your castle and all of a sudden AN ARMY OF THE UNDEAD ATTACK. I agree, kids in this generation just don’t know how to defend against an occurrence of that sort. Your not gonna text your way out of that one! Oh, yeah, get a selfie…
Remember when life was nothing but eating large amounts of pasta and disassembling engines? Yeah, that was the best! Especially the time you shot noodles out your nose and into the crankcase – that squirrel didn’t even know what was coming. Ah, simpler times perhaps. Though some would question their ability to launch noodles from…
Who needs a rocket engine? WHO DOESN’T?! And a 3D model of a rocket engine? Well, just think of the possibilities… You could place it randomly in the model of your new product and have a good laugh when everyone starts questioning it during a design review. You could 3D print it, set it on…
Mathieu Stern is a photographer, and also a collector of old, cheap and weird camera lenses. So, it makes sense that he would set out to create his own 3D printed camera lens, and you know what? “What?” Well, it takes a dang good photo. Check THESE out. Mathieu says, “I never really learned how…
Think about it. What are you suppose to do with your fingers when you’re not CAD’ing about or peeling through the pages on SolidSmack? You could eat… or make stuff… or give your co-worker a very awkward massage, OR you could fidget. Fidget, fidGET, FIDGET. I’m a pen spinner myself, but Francesco Pantaleone has just…
Well, THIS is timely. Why it wasn’t but four days ago that Simon, Adam and I were talking about how many tiny, 3D printed, low poly pumpkins we could hold in our mouth and still discernibly say ‘low poly pumpkin’– think ‘chubby bunny’ but with 3D printed pumpkins instead of marshmallows. Sadly, our guesses were…
I once went for a jog. True story. It was a bit challenging holding a cheeseburger and attempting to eat it whilst trotting down the roadside, especially in the incredible jogging shorts I was wearing. While that image sinks in, just imagine yourself in the same situation and how nice it would be to have…
I bet it’s been YEARS since you dressed up in a costume. What’s up with that? You’re a creative type, right? Able to model up a doomakahizzy or a shnizzle in five minutes flat, AND look good doing it. You probably have a 3D printer (or access to one) too. Well, we’ve rounded up five…
Here it is October and you haven’t put any thought into a public display of your talent and creativity for that one day a year where dressing a baby like a taco is perfectly fine. FOR SHAME. You’re a creative person. This should be easy. Here are some ideas: a Minotaur with a cupcake addiction,…
You know how it goes. You make one Archimedes screw and it goes missing. You make another Archimedes screw, it goes missing and you discover a small band of pygmy gopher people have been stealing them for their underground rhubarb growing racket. You want to deal with it, but… THEY’RE JUST SO DANG CUTE and…
Why aren’t there more excessively long, undulating-legged centipede style robots?! That’s the question I always ask a packed room at the local retirement village. Sure, they throw mashed potatoes and teeth at me, but late at night, they wonder the same thing as they fall asleep to the sound of sci-fi battle sounds on that…
Store those spare cables in your cheek bags no longer *all SolidSmack readers simultaneously spit cords out of their mouths*, there are other means of keeping those cords, cables and wires organized and out of the way. Sure, you could buy cable wraps, cable ties, or hire a butler to keep all that in order…
One of my 200 dream cars begins with Porsche and ends with 911 GT3 RS. Until I can sell enough plasma to purchase a used one that needs the rusted out floorboard replaced, I’ll settle for the highly prized 1:8 scale LEGO Technic version. And until one of you buy that and ship it to…
You know a mask of light that shoots out 50 million lumens whenever someone looks at you tends to cause temporary blindness and bouts of projectile vomit, so something at your desk that is still 1) eye-catching and 2) unique, is a must. Janis Jakaitis has a solution that will keep your 3D printer busy…
Use to be, for a little ambiance, we just needed a time-travelling legwax salesman to unbutton the top two-buttons of his disco shirt… WAIT a minute, that would be the opposite of ambiance. That would be the 5th most uncomfortable situation imaginable. If you want ambiance, you need to check out this model created by…
I think we can all tear open a bag of chips, pour some Saki and agree that, next to Akira, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) is the absolute best of 20th century Japanese Animation. The last scene where our cyborg heroine, Motoko, battles a massive 6-legged spider tank is some of the best animated carnage…
If you weren’t obsessively clipping your toenails last week and saw the ‘Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion’ by Kokichi Sugihara of Meiji University, Japan, then your brain likely squeezed its way out your ear canal, grabbed your jowls, looked you in the face and said, ‘YOU’RE MAKING MY BRAIN HURT!” (Yes, your brain just told you that…
You remember that dream of your fists being replaced by portals to one world with unlimited meat cannon buffets and the other to a world of candy dinosaur rides? Yeah, this Venus Box is exactly what those portals looked like. What’s even weirder is how you ALL had that same dream and wrote me about…
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?
My parents often joke that there were five things I was holding in my hand at birth. I have no idea why it was only five, or what they all were, but one of them was a crane cabin joystick. That’s right, a joystick you would see in a flippin’ tower crane.
We all know you can’t first become a Jedi Master until you get all whiny about droid maintenance and zapped in the ass a few thousand times by a remote training droid. And yeah, we all know good ol’ uncle Ben gets his chuckles from seeing young Padawans zapped repeatedly by a floating, laser-shooting orb…
If there’s one threat I’ve always given when being kicked repeatedly in the lung sacks, it’s “If you kick me one more time! I will open my steampunk spectacle! After which you will incur the wrath of 5000 hungry steampunk ladybugs! That willst shoot from my steampunk face orb! Engulf your body! And commence dismantling…
You know, Mother’s Day is coming up, and there’s one thing yo’ mamma (or future mamma) really, really wants… You’re not going to guess are you? … No? Ok, it’s a 3D printed self-watering planter. Don’t act like you knew that.
It’s no use. You can’t convince me there’s anything more practical to have on your desktop than a 3D printed SkullBot. Somehow, this bot finagled a human skull to use as it’s body. That makes for one creepy ass blade-wielding machine… or a practical use of spare skulls laying about. Don’t worry, this is just…
I know, the last time you thought ‘fully-animated 2 cylinder 4 stroke engine’ is right before you had one tattooed across your entire back. This one, however, is one you can admire without having to re-break a fused spinal column and has 100% less back hair.