Make Free — Four Horsemen of the 3D Printing Apocalypse
Pro-regulation hysterics make recourse to the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: child porn, organized crime, terrorists, and pirates.
Digital Fabrication
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!
Printable Tentacle Parts
The printable ball-and-socket unit that makes up this tentacle is really just a prototype in the early development of Thingiverse user Misguided’s not-so-misguided (if we may offer a bit of encouragement) project to develop a printable tentacle actuator. Everything about his description makes me happy, so I’ll just quote it entirely…
How-To: Life-Size Replica Artillery Piece
When I first saw this shot from user eqqman in the MAKE Flickr pool, my thought was, “Oh, look, some tourist photographed a cannon in a park somewhere and tagged it for our pool. How odd.” Reading the fine print, however, tells the story…
Working Iron Man Style Palm Laser Weapon
Yes, OK, I know that the weapons in Iron Man’s palms are technically *repulsor* beams, which, at least as I understand them, are a kind of wholly sci-fictional counterpart to the equally sci-fictional “tractor” beam. But this terrifying device from German laserhacker Patrick Priebe, who previously has produced a handheld Nd-YAG pulse laser that will punch holes in, is “working” in the sense that it is a dangerous, if not deadly, directed energy weapon that you can wear on your palm and use to work great evil…
CNC Bender Ties Knots in Iron Pipe
This Nissin 3D bender is kind of like a PlayDoh Fun Factory, except it squirts out 1.25″ steel pipe instead of soft non-toxic-but-funny-tasting dough. Looks like much of the magic is in the bending-die head.
3D Models from Photographs
Photogrammetry has been with us for as long as we’ve had cameras. Autodesk has taken it to its logical next step with Project Photofly. Using a standard point and shoot camera you can take a series of photos of an object, upload them to the cloud, and get a detailed 3D model back that can be manipulated with standard design software.
Cute, Green, Printable Mars Rover Model
I love Tony Buser’s 3D-printed Mars rover, especially how unrealistically cute he is!