3D Printing & Imaging

If you’re a maker, 3d printing is an incredibly useful tool to have in your arsenal. Not only can it help bring your projects to life faster, but it can also offer unique results that would be difficult (or impossible!) to achieve with traditional methods. In these blog posts, we’ll provide you with some essential information and tips regarding 3D printing for makers—including the basics of how to get started, plus creative tutorials for spicing up your projects. Whether you’re already familiar with 3d printing or are just starting out, these resources will help take your game-making skills even further!

Generative Construction Toy

Generative Construction Toy

Brown University Engineering and Visual Arts lecturer Ian Gonsher’s Generative Construction Toy is a set of snap together shapes that you can cut out on a laser cutter and use as building blocks to design and build compound three dimensional objects. It’s like an evolving desktop fab version of tinker toys or LEGO, but more organic. What’s most interesting about the GCT is that you are encouraged to modify and create your own shapes through an iterative process of design and play.

Continue Reading Adam Flaherty6

Make Ideas Real with SketchUp

There are a lot of makers who really like SketchUp’s approach to 3D modeling. Personally, I think it’s a great way to get kids hooked on the idea of designing physical shapes that they may or may not fabricate with the laser cutter or 3D printer. While it may take a bit to get the hang of scale and accuracy, once you have these habits, your designs are repeatable with a variety of CNC tools and many different materials.

By looking about on Thingiverse and in the MAKE Flickr pool, you can see that Sketchup is a fairly popular tool for many of us who like to bring our ideas onto this side of the computer screen. The Make Ideas Real with SketchUp project is looking for examples of things that have been designed with SketchUp and brought into the world. The folks at SketchUp are gathering stories with the Make Ideas Real project about how people are using the program to design the things they make.

Continue Reading Chris Connors18
LeBigRep, a Giant 3D Printer

LeBigRep, a Giant 3D Printer

LeBigRep is a monster RepRap capable of building within a 1-meter cube. Inspired by the RepRap Project, the idea arose of having a machine which could actually produce objects exceeding the dimension of objects produced by desktop fabbing devices as the RepRap, Makerbot, etc. Imagine printing furniture, sculptures and other life size structures and experimenting […]

Continue Reading John Baichtal18