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!
Thingiverse user lory90sw assembled a full set of Mendel parts that fits on a single 20cm x 20cm Mendel build platform. It accomplishes this by stacking up parts, using breakaway support material to keep them from all sticking together. [Via the Thingiverse blog]
A work-in-progress from Thingiverse user searchresults. Each block has twelve 3mm supermagnets installed around its six edges, their polarities alternating so they will click together.
Photographs of Michael Hansmeyer’s latest work in computational architecture could easily be mistaken for a computer rendering. Weighing about 2,000 pounds, Michael’s take on the classic Doric column is composed of between 8 to 16 million polygons created by repeatedly applying a smoothing algorithm to an existing column model. Surpassing the upper limit of most 3D printing facilities, Michael decided use a laser cutter to cut out around 2700 1mm think sections, which are then stacked one on top of the other.
Bullet casing, shell casing, cartridge case, pan pipes, flute.
I love the work Marius Watz has been producing as MakerBot artist-in-residence. I love even more the idea of a maker business being able to afford to sponsor an A-I-R! I wonder if, one day, we’ll see successful maker organizations like hackerspaces routinely sponsoring their own artist? I am very excited to be the first […]
Interesting item from Dallas’s Southern Methodist University, where paleontologist Thomas L. Adams and co-workers Christopher Strganac, Michael J. Polcyn, and Louis L. Jacobs have used a laser 3D scanner to produce a high-resolution model of a large outdoor dinosaur track which is a landmark in downtown Glen Rose, Texas. Exposed to the elements in the town square, the track is (very slowly) eroding, and the team’s freely downloadable 3D model is intended to both preserve it for posterity and to facilitate its study by fossil buffs all over the world. Their results are published online in Paleontologica Electronica. [Thanks, Alan Dove!]
Mark Ganter and his team at the University of Washington Mechanical Engineering Department’s Solheim Rapid Prototyping Laboratory just cut the time it takes to make a RepRap Prusa Mendel 3D printer. Instead of the usual week it takes to output all of the printable parts that comprise a Prusa Mendel, Ganter and students, Scott Tandoi and Travis Nicholes, created a set of silicon RTV molds to produce the parts in a mere fraction of the time.
