3D Printing & Imaging

If you’re a maker, 3d printing is an incredibly useful tool to have in your arsenal. Not only can it help bring your projects to life faster, but it can also offer unique results that would be difficult (or impossible!) to achieve with traditional methods. In these blog posts, we’ll provide you with some essential information and tips regarding 3D printing for makers—including the basics of how to get started, plus creative tutorials for spicing up your projects. Whether you’re already familiar with 3d printing or are just starting out, these resources will help take your game-making skills even further!

Printable molds for casting monolithic button arrays of any size

Printable molds for casting monolithic button arrays of any size

Josef Průša saw last week’s post about choosing a silicone for casting soft button arrays and pointed me to his printable mold for such arrays on Thingiverse. The model was produced in Clifford Wolf’s awesome OpenSCAD 3D modeling package, and the .scad script is available for download with the Thing. It has been parametrized to produce molds of button arrays having any number of rows and columns–all you have to do is change two values. The individual buttons are sized to match the SparkFun 2×2 button pad used on the monome, and also include backside recesses for LEDs.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan
Halloween contest on Thingiverse

Halloween contest on Thingiverse

MakerBot Industries is sponsoring a contest: the coolest 3d-printable design wins a spool of glow-in-the-dark ABS: The temperature is dropping, and so are the leaves. That can only mean one thing – Halloween is ominously looming. To get you in the spirit of the season, we want you to design Halloween things – anything ghoulish, […]

Continue Reading John Baichtal
Giant fluid dynamics sculpture made of robot-glued plastic balls

Giant fluid dynamics sculpture made of robot-glued plastic balls

Um, wow. Geometric death frequency-141, as its called, was created by Czech artist Federico Díaz. It consists of 420,000 plastic spheres, each of which appears to be about 1.5″ in diameter, glued together by industrial robot arms. The subject is a simulated liquid splashing inside an imaginary 50x20x20 foot box. Reportedly, Díaz wrote the software to perform the simulation himself, and the software to drive the assembly process, as well. More details over at designboom. [via Gizmodo]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan2