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!

Design a 3D-printable mousetrap

Design a 3D-printable mousetrap

Cathal Garvey’s proposing a mousetrap design challenge: I have a problem. There lives in my house a tiny mouse, and as I am friend to all animals I wish him no harm. The live mousetrap I tried didn’t work: crafty mouse escaped it repeatedly. I also invented a few wacky methods involving pitfalls, narrow bottles […]

Dremel attachment for MakerBot

Dremel attachment for MakerBot

The correct name for the MakerBot 3D printer is the Cupcake CNC, suggesting that all sorts of attachments could be substituted for the usual plastruder — in this case, Andrew “Clothbot” Plumb created an assembly out of some makerbotted connectors and a length of MakerBeam, allowing the mounting of the business end of a Dremel […]

Thirty-pencil icosahedral lampshade

Thirty-pencil icosahedral lampshade

Michiel Cornelissen is offering a kit which consists of a dozen 3D-printed, five-sided connectors. Add thirty hexagonal pencils and build an icosahedron! Cornelissen describes the kit as building a lampshade but that seems kinda iffy to me — it’s not like it would shade anything. But if you ask me, you never need an excuse […]

Math Monday: Sierpinski tetrahedron

Math Monday: Sierpinski tetrahedron

Sierpinski tetrahedron By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics A classic 3D fractal is the Sierpinski tetrahedron, which is a tetrahedron of tetrahedra of tetrahedra, etc. This fifth-order model is about 8.5 inches along its edges. It is made from nylon by selective laser sintering. If you have access to additive fabrication machines, you […]