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!

How-To:  Homemade pen plotter with laser attachment

How-To: Homemade pen plotter with laser attachment

Very thorough build notes from Viacheslav Slavinsky, who built a plotter from scratch, then souped it up by adding a 300 mW laser in place of the pen. I was interested to note that while 300 mW isn’t a lot of laser power, apparently it can cut through slightly more than a centimeter of “high density foam.” I’d be curious how it fares against EPS and/or XPS. [via Hack a Day]

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Interview with MakerBot owner Andrew Plumb

Interview with MakerBot owner Andrew Plumb

Andrew Plumb is a really active member of the MakerBot community, and there’s a nice interview with him about his experiences up on the MakerBot blog. I’m writing a piece about MakerBot for Make: 21, and found his story particularly interesting.

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Coiled extension cord lamp

Coiled extension cord lamp

I love this lamp made from its own coiled extension cord by Craighton Berman. He’ll sell you one ready-made with a cord, or just the laser-cut acrylic frame and lamp guts so you can roll your own.

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Homebrew CNC hot wire foam cutter

I keep trying to persuade anyone who will listen that CNC foam cutters are dramatically underrated machines. People look at them and say, “That’s cool and all, but I don’t want styrofoam parts.” To which I reply, “If you have a styrofoam part, you can turn it into cast aluminum with an unbelievably simple garage process.” What’s more, styrofoam is ubiquitous, cheap, and so easy to cut that the CNC robot can be extremely lightweight and inexpensive, as for instance, this one submitted by reader Raul Aguaviva, which is hacked together from a coat hanger and junked scanner parts. Combine one of these with a Gingery-style charcoal foundry and you could conceivably produce a homebrew CNC system, that can produce aluminum parts, for less than $50.

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FreeCAD open source design software

FreeCAD open source design software

I don’t do CAD or 3D printing, but this software at least looks promising from my armchair. It’s an open source CAD/CAE app based on OpenCasCade, QT, and Python. It offers features like macro recording, the ability to run as a server and dynamically load application extensions, and it runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. […]

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