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 Twin Cities’ communal workshop, the Hack Factory, bought a MakerBot CupCake 3D printer. Working for about six hours, some of my cohorts assembled the X and Y stages and partially installed the assembly in the body. With any luck we’ll be printing this time next week. We’re all excited to finally have a 3D […]
Interesting concept from Thingiverse user 12meyer. All kinds of potential problems here, so this is more of the “way to think outside the box” kind of shout-out than the “where can I invest in your start-up” kind. One can, of course, dim fluorescent bulbs electrically, but it turns out to be kind of a PITA. The idea here is to exploit the spiral shape of the bulb itself to make an opaque cover that screws on or off to block more or less light, respectively.
Thingiverse user kongorilla designed this kicking stereoscopic viewer as his entry for the Makerbot Giveaway.
Don’t forget, tonight at 11:59 PDT is the deadline for entering the MAKE/MakerBot CupCake CNC kit giveaway! Design an object and upload it to Thingiverse, then post a link to it at the giveaway landing page. One lucky entrant will receive a Deluxe CupCake kit, and several others will receive some nifty gear as well!
Up until I saw this entry I felt a little bad about not having time to draw up my MakerBot contest entry in Blender… but after seeing industrial designer Joel Miller’s entry, well, I still wish I had entered but any illusions about winning are long gone. Wow! Brilliant job. What’s cooler than transformers? A […]
Interesting dissection of a sphere from Thingiverse user VeryWetPaint. This “hemi-demi-sphere” is also cleverly designed to present the best-finished surface from the printer on the outside of the assembled sphere.
I’ve been hiring Angus Hines of Carrolton, VA, for a couple of months now for all my contract laser-cutting, and I can’t say enough good things about him. But, heck, I’ve never met him, so let’s focus on the empirical: Angus consistently quotes me about half what the big-laser cutters want to charge on the same jobs. (Hopefully he knows that, and I haven’t just shot myself in the foot by pointing it out.) Seriously, Angus himself says, “one of my goals is to help bring the price of DIY tech down to a more reasonable level.”
Now Angus is offering a kit of all the acrylic parts for the open-source Fab@Home Model 2 3D printer at about 75% of what the Fab@Home preferred vendors are charging. [Thanks, Angus!]
