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!
The spray arm on Daryll Strauss’ Frigidaire dishwasher ceased to function properly one day, so rather than call in for a repair technician to come fix his ailing appliance, he decided to attempt to fix it himself. He tried ordering a replacement, but ended up receiving the wrong part. That’s when he decided to fabricate his own replacement on a MakerBot.
You’re at home or on the job, and something breaks. Maybe it’s the knob on your stove. Sure, you could spend an hour on the computer clicking on sites, or listening to hold music on the phone. But rather than buy a replacement, maybe it would be cooler just to print one? Here are some […]
My pal Angus Hines cut these interlocking wooden puzzle pieces from finish-grade oak plywood using his ShopBot, and installed them in a hallway of his Carrollton, Virginia home. The finish is Varathane High Traffic polyurethane. There are more pictures in this Flickr set. If you’re interested in the idea, feel free to contact Angus directly. I’m sure he’d be glad to cut you some puzzle flooring or other custom parquetry at his usual bargain prices. [Thanks, Angus!]
The generative designers at Nervous System just blew me away for the 105th time with their Reaction Lamp: We created the lamp in Processing and it was 3d printed using Selective Laser Sintering in nylon plastic. We varied the material thickness to create an intricate effect when illuminated.
You printed some fabjects with your 3D printer, now what? Ph.D student Jon Hiller and professor Hod Lipson of the Cornell Computational Synthesis Laboratory created this concept for an automated voxel factory. Imagine a desktop fabricator capable of making perfectly repeatable, arbitrary, multi material 3D objects with microscale precision. The objects would be composed of […]
Interested in CNC routing, and want to get in on the action?
In this, the final in our series of “Letters,” Shawn Wallace, member of AS220, the Providence, RI community arts and technology space, shares his experiences with the Fab Academy, a distributed learning collaborative, built on the infrastructure of the Fab Lab network. (Links to all of Shawn’s inspiring “Letters” are available at the end of […]
