Digital fabrication tools have revolutionized the way designers, engineers, and artisans express their creativity. With the right resources, you can learn to use these powerful instruments in no time! Whether it’s 3D printing or laser cutting that interests you, these articles will provide useful tutorials and inspiration for makers of all levels. Discover how digital fabrication can open up new possibilities so that your craftsmanship is truly extraordinary!
Basically, microscale 3D printing the same way a popup book creates a three-dimensional shape. The Harvard Monolithic Bee is a millimeter-scale flapping wing robotic insect produced using Printed Circuit MEMS (PC-MEMS) techniques. This video describes the manufacturing process, including pop-up book inspired assembly. [via Ponoko]
From Dutch designer Wouter Scheublin, who made a big splash in 2010 with his Walking Table. This pull-back-to-wind Toy Car, machined in stainless steel and bronze, with matching walnut box, was produced in a limited edition of twenty, and is still available in laser-sintered nylon, though it isn’t cheap. [Thanks, Billy Baque!] More:Seriously Overengineered MousetrapVery, […]
It’s Thing #16909 from faberdasher, directly enlarged from Thing #12208 by emmett (who is also a central node in the Thingiverse cube gears phenomenon). All of these complex bevel-geared kinetic sculptures can be traced back to the mechanical papercraft of Haruki Nakamura, which was, I believe, first adapted for fused-filament printing in Thing #4683 by […]
The Convenient Typer is a hacked typewriter that uses 3d printed mechanisms to type a single phrase: “It is as it is.” Created by artist Max Lupo, this self-referential machine uses modern means to re-imagine an antiquated form of technology.
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr Pool, John Biehler’s excellent photo of a tiny prototype fused-filament 3D printer designed and built by Fraser Valley RepRap User Group member “Brad,” aka Sublime. Brad’s posted a detailed description on one of his personal blogs and on the RepRap wiki, but hasn’t published the physibles yet. The “vitamins” ( […]
Kiwi programmer and farmer John Hart of Lifeboat Farm has been experimenting with using his RepRap to produce mechanical pest control devices so he can leave off the chemical pesticides. Shown above, fused-filament butterfly decoys, spotted with a marker and mounted on stalks of plastic filament in the garden: The stalks are quite flexible so […]
MIT Media Labbers Amit Zoran and Joe Paradiso have created a handheld, digitally-controlled milling device that attempts to combine the benefits of CAD and freehand fabrication.
