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!
Erin “RobotGrrl” Kennedy has introduced the Buddy 4000 robot chassis. It’s an open source, 3D-printable robot: Buddy 4000 was created to look like a modern version of the old ‘tin toy’ robots. We put much effort into the design of the ‘bot, so hopefully it meets this goal. It took a while to finish this […]
Why pay more for colored prints when you can use off-the-shelf dyes to make them any color you want? Atlanta-based designer Colleen Jordan walks us through the simple process of dying 3D Printed parts from Shapeways, or a similar service, in just a few steps.
Daniel Hutchinson of Alpharetta, GA, is the front man for Atlanta-based HYREL 3D, a startup launched in November through a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. The idea behind their HighlY-RELiable 3D printer design is to provide an open-platform fused-filament system that does not cost as much as “industrial” machines, but requires less assembly and maintenance time than kit-based machines.
Some months ago I finished an original Space Invaders restoration project, but as you can see on the picture on the left, it was a little big for my daughter. So the other day I stumbled across a cheap 5.5 inch CRT black and white TV and I decided to make a “mini-me” version for her.
Kamela Portuges and Lee Armstrong have been making puppets and performing together for over 25 years. Armstrong, who’d gotten her big puppetry break on Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock, met talented sculptor Portuges at a puppet festival; the two soon combined their talents to create their Sonoma, Calif., studio, Images In Motion. Since then, they’ve been steadily producing TV shows, commercials, and live performances, as well as lending their expertise to major studios and toy companies. Video and slideshow after the jump.
The Inside 3D Printing Conference in NYC gave us a clear look at the business side of 3D printing. Usual suspects, like 3D Systems, MakerBot and Stratasys, attended in full force. So did some up-and-comers like FormLabs, ZoomRP, Sculpteo, Mbot, and MakerGear. Shapeways (based in New York) was noticeably absent, though CEO Peter Weijmarshausen gave a keynote speech and announced that the company would receive $30 million in new investments.
Kansas City programmer Michael Overstreet wanted his own high-performance humanoid robot to experiment with, but was deterred by the $12,000 pricetag of an off-the-shelf DARwin-OP. Though a significant fraction of the cost is tied up in the top-of-the-line servo actuators the design requires to perform at spec, Michael believed he could build his own “clone” of the fully open-source design, at substantial savings, by 3D printing as many pieces as he could in fused filament, on home equipment.
