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 molds for casting monolithic button arrays of any size

Printable molds for casting monolithic button arrays of any size

Josef Průša saw last week’s post about choosing a silicone for casting soft button arrays and pointed me to his printable mold for such arrays on Thingiverse. The model was produced in Clifford Wolf’s awesome OpenSCAD 3D modeling package, and the .scad script is available for download with the Thing. It has been parametrized to produce molds of button arrays having any number of rows and columns–all you have to do is change two values. The individual buttons are sized to match the SparkFun 2×2 button pad used on the monome, and also include backside recesses for LEDs.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan
Halloween contest on Thingiverse

Halloween contest on Thingiverse

MakerBot Industries is sponsoring a contest: the coolest 3d-printable design wins a spool of glow-in-the-dark ABS: The temperature is dropping, and so are the leaves. That can only mean one thing – Halloween is ominously looming. To get you in the spirit of the season, we want you to design Halloween things – anything ghoulish, […]

Continue Reading John Baichtal
Giant fluid dynamics sculpture made of robot-glued plastic balls

Giant fluid dynamics sculpture made of robot-glued plastic balls

Um, wow. Geometric death frequency-141, as its called, was created by Czech artist Federico Díaz. It consists of 420,000 plastic spheres, each of which appears to be about 1.5″ in diameter, glued together by industrial robot arms. The subject is a simulated liquid splashing inside an imaginary 50x20x20 foot box. Reportedly, Díaz wrote the software to perform the simulation himself, and the software to drive the assembly process, as well. More details over at designboom. [via Gizmodo]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan2