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!
RepRapper Forrest Higgs designed an interlocking beamed structure that could be 3D printed — thus advancing the RepRap’s stated purpose of someday being able to print new RepRaps. Currently much of the support structure cannot be printed. But what if printable girders could be stacked on top of each other? Higgs’ project may not be […]
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 […]
Recently we featured a lively point-counterpoint post featuring Dale Dougherty and Joel Johnson debating the merits of Chris Anderson’s Atoms are the New Bits article in Wired. Now the Thingiverse blog is weighing in with this thoughtful opinion piece by Allan Ecker titled Atoms are not the New Bits. Yet.. What do you think, readers?
I like this nifty, 3D printed Arduino case that I saw on Shapeways. You can have one made in a variety of materials with prices starting at $77.71. Now, that seems pretty expensive for a project case, but it’s much cheaper than I imagine having an injection mold would cost.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
