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!
A sphericon is a shape that you get by: (1) rotating a symmetric polygon about a mirror axis to get a solid of revolution, (2) cutting the solid into two equal pieces, and (3) putting the pieces back together differently. With a lathe or a 3D printing machine, it is easy to make many kinds of sphericons, with different starting polygons. Here is one based on a star.
I’m absolutely amazed by Markus Kayser’s Solar Sinter Project, a 3D printer that uses the sun for power and sand as its raw material: In a world increasingly concerned with questions of energy production and raw material shortages, this project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance. In this […]
The folks over at Teague labs have built a fun Arduino based generative music maker with a unique minimalist keyed user interface called Muze. Instead of directly manipulating instruments, you use a color coded knob to tune or influence multiple aspects of the score Muse plays at once. If you’d like to play along, you […]
Our friends at RadioShack talked to some DIY dads and their kids at Maker Faire Bay Area about making together. Here they talk to Jim and his son Schuyler, the kid 3D printing evangelist. You may remember Schuyler from his adorable Ignite presentation.
Executed by vrogy, from Thingiverse user dino-girl’s “spiderasaur” plans. We have featured vrogy’s work many times beofre; check the links below for some of my personal faves.
Keith of Keith’s Electronics Blog added a fan to his printer to regulate how the fabjects cooled and shrank during the print process. I connected a spare DC fan to my bench power supply, set it just outside the CupCake’s build chamber, and dialed it down until it barely spun. Holy schmoly! The left cap […]
Thingiverse user lalbritton created this Ideal Harmonic Transformer: Was “Analog Sine/Cosine Calculating Machine”, but then I found the actual name for this device, which I really like. It is a thing to hold, enjoy turning the crank, and look at. If you can’t find your calculator, and need to know the sine or cosine of […]
