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!
Gavilan of On Shoulders is building an excellent looking 3d-printable dogbot, using openSCAD. But the awesomeness doesn’t stop there: He’s also producing a TV show about his projects, such as how to mill PCBs and print your own 3d printers. Well done! [via MakerBot]
Yesterday, we introduced the Syntheos grblShield, an Arduino Shield, created by MAKE contributors Riley Porter and Alden Hart, that allows you to control three stepper motors and run grbl, the motion-control language, for CNC operation. To show the grblShield in action (two motors of it anyway), Riley decided to try his hand at our Drawbot […]
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.
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!]
