Cathe of Just Something I Made shares how she turned fabulous vintage glass peanut butter jars into cute twine dispensers. Even if you can’t find vintage jars like hers, the technique would work on just about any metal-lidded jar.
The folks at Ardic Technologies in Istanbul seem to have developed a prototype for the ultimate tablet user experience. Isnโt this what we all secretly wish our handsets and tablets would do out of the box? Didnโt you expect youโd be able to smoothly transition from mobile device to a massive touchscreen effortlessly, like ten years ago? In any case, if Ardic can get their device to market, theyโll have one of the nicer presentation tools out there. I imagine this would go well with some of the newer apps from Adobe and Autodesk.
Decent mobile tools for creative professionals are slowly starting to appear. Graphics powerhouse Adobe recently released a set of touch focused apps targeting Android tablets that appear to take advantage of the format. This first group of six tools, called Adobe Touch Apps, include a vector drawing app, raster photo app, color palette explorer app, presentation app, moodboard app, and wireframing app.
There are a lot of makers who really like SketchUp’s approach to 3D modeling. Personally, I think it’s a great way to get kids hooked on the idea of designing physical shapes that they may or may not fabricate with the laser cutter or 3D printer. While it may take a bit to get the hang of scale and accuracy, once you have these habits, your designs are repeatable with a variety of CNC tools and many different materials.
By looking about on Thingiverse and in the MAKE Flickr pool, you can see that Sketchup is a fairly popular tool for many of us who like to bring our ideas onto this side of the computer screen. The Make Ideas Real with SketchUp project is looking for examples of things that have been designed with SketchUp and brought into the world. The folks at SketchUp are gathering stories with the Make Ideas Real project about how people are using the program to design the things they make.
The littleBits kit is like Lego for basic circuits. Each โbitโ is a small circuit board that enables a single electronics component or electronic function, like a potentiometer, light sensor, LED, or motor. The bits snap together magnetically with edge connectors that are color-coded to indicate their general role within a circuit; for example magenta […]
At MAKE Labs we built a squadron of balsa-and-tissue ornithopters for William Gurstelleโs how-to article in MAKE Volume 08. The trickiest part was bending the tiny wire crank that flaps the wings in time. Even with Billโs clear instructions, that little wire was trial-and-error. This kit spares you that error. The pre-bent crank and laser-cut […]
I built this Mousebot with my son, who had just turned 10. At first, I had to show him how to solder and helped him align the sides (not too easy), but by the end he was doing all the work himself and enjoying the โtoughnessโ of the assembly. This kit is simple, but it […]
