FAN2 Highlights: Insane Rice Mosaic and Metal Casting

11151047_10152783864746771_1735793744275709047_n — Low temp metal coin casting by Jason Wang.

Members of many of the 20 Makerspaces in Taipei gathered at FAN2 (for the FabLab Asia Network conference) for a week of making, workshops, talks, and community building leading up to Maker Faire Taipei.

Fablity Scooter

While attending Fab10 in Barcelona, Kuramoto Yoshisuke was inspired by the Fab Car (a collaboration between Open Source Vehicle and several fab labs) and decided to create his own “Fability Scooter” designed to be fabricated on the ShopBot (slideshow below from Izumi Aizu).

11312773_10155528345920408_1833037836801612781_o — Fablity Scooter creator Kuramoto Yoshisuke with Ted Hung, organizer of FAN2 and founder of FabLab Taipei.
Photo by Peichin Lin.

Metal Casting Using Lasercut Molds

Jason Wong of FabLab Taipei ran a unique workshop in which participants used deeply engraved, two-part lasercut wooden molds to make metal coins. Although it’s missing a few images at the moment, he’s documented his experiments with “Cerrotru”, a low melting metal pewter alloy composed of (42% Tin, 58% Bismuth) and a very low melting temperature of 281°F/138°C.

JasonMetalCoins — The FAN2 coin on the left was cast using laser cut wooden molds.

Insanely Detailed Rice Mosaic

FabLab Saigon presented FabLab Taipei with a beautifully crafted and framed “thank you” grain picture. As far as I can tell, there was no “machine augmentation here, it was all done by hand. It must have taken untold hours to plan and arrange each particle of rice.

Rice grain mosaic a present from FabLab Saigon, to FabLab Taipei at FAN2.

Taiwanese Full Color Powder Printer

The Tdot full color powder printer claims to be able to print at 1200dpi using a continuous ink supply system and composite powder material, binder and infiltrant to create full-color 3D prints. There is currently no price on the website and the printer is not yet available for sale. When I inquired at FAN2, I was told that the display models were prototypes, but the final cost would be around 10k. I assume that the power remover chamber is extra, but I did not confirm.

Tdot 10k inkjet powder binding 3D printer with the cover on.

Full color Tdot prints.
Photo by Kazuhiro Jinnouchi.

Full color powder prints from the Taiwanese Tdot printer.
Photo by Kazuhiro Jinnouchi.

Tdot 10k inkjet powder binding 3D printer with the cover off.

Another view of the Tdot 10k inkjet power binding 3D printer with the cover off.

One more view of the Tdot 10k inkjet powder binding 3D printer with the cover off.

A Small Sampling of other FAN2 Projects

There were so many amazing things going on at FAN2, everyone was getting ready to show off their stuff at Maker Faire Taipei and as the week went on, the pace picked up!