Calling All Makers, Performers, Presenters
Did you know there are lots of different ways to participate in the 2013 Maker Faire Bay Area? Let me count the ways.
Did you know there are lots of different ways to participate in the 2013 Maker Faire Bay Area? Let me count the ways.
MakerBot announced today it’s developing the Digitizer, a long-in-the-works desktop 3D scanner that will complement its line of 3D printers. MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis made the announcement at Austin’s SXSW Interactive.
For being just one year old, Raspberry Pi has had quite an impact on the maker and education community. The cheap, easy-to-use Linux computer pops in the darndest places and we expect to see a lot more of the Pi in the years to come as more makers create new applications for it. To celebrate Raspberry Pi’s first birthday, element 14 has a month-long roster of activities surrounding Raspberry Pi’s first anniversary.
It’s been three weeks since we launched the Scout pre-order site to the world. Scout is a hassle-free, do-it-yourself home security system. You can check it out here: www.scoutalarm.com. As we mentioned in our last post, we “rolled our own” crowdfunding site. Following in the footsteps of Lockitron, and having forked their Self Starter project, we made the decision to forgo Kickstarter. If you haven’t read Part I of this post, you can check it out here.
Scout is currently ahead of pace to hit our campaign goal. We’ve learned a lot in the last two weeks and wanted to build on the first post. Once the press hits start to dry up, you have to get creative. (Read: Hustle like crazy.) Some of the things we’ve learned, we wish we would have learned BEFORE the campaign started. Our hope is that this post better prepares the next startup to follow in our path.
Everyone’s favorite engineer Mehdi Sadaghdar is back with a tongue curling look at what current hurt more…AC or DC?
Let’s be honest, 3D CAD (computer aided design) is challenging to learn. Training your brain to manipulate and visualize parts in three dimensions is a learned skill. So where do you start? Thankfully, there’s a multitude of free tools available for everyone to try their hand at 3D design. And many of them don’t even require a download anymore. A simple web app will get you pretty far.
I’ve compiled the best resources I know of for dealing with 3D parts and I will list them here in two parts. This week I’m going to focus on 3D part creation and slicing, the two first steps in printing out a part on a 3D printer. Everything listed is free to use (at least to a certain extent)
Jude Pullen created this cool solder buddy, which consists of a length of solder fed through an old brake cable by a servo. A button near the business end, with a Sugru grip, activates the servo by using the solder itself, as well as the metal windings of the brake cable to complete the circuit. […]