Digital fabrication tools have revolutionized the way designers, engineers, and artisans express their creativity. With the right resources, you can learn to use these powerful instruments in no time! Whether it’s 3D printing or laser cutting that interests you, these articles will provide useful tutorials and inspiration for makers of all levels. Discover how digital fabrication can open up new possibilities so that your craftsmanship is truly extraordinary!
New 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies are allowing us to obliterate old limitations. They’re giving rise to disruptive inventions, unseen production methods and dynamic products. 3D technology is a lot of fun, too. Take foosball. Foosball is fun.
The Photon, an affordable 3D scanner, has already quadrupled its $80,000 Indiegogo goal, with still two weeks to go. Almost as gratifying: the Photon has generated a flurry of proposed uses for the device beyond the original “maker hobbyist” market they were targeting. The Photon is the first product from Toronto-based company Matterform, founded by friends and collaborators Adam Branejs and Drew Cox.
What would your reaction be to moving into an apartment and finding an old broken IKEA lamp? Normally you’d throw it out, but not if you’re Industrial Designer Samuel Bernier. Instead he designed and 3D printed a series of intricate lampshades.
Sketchfab, a website for uploading and sharing 3D models for free, is a great way to easily add an interactive element to your web content. Their model viewer can be embedded in almost any webpage, and they’re adding new features on a fairly regular basis. I caught up with co-founder Alban Denoyel to check in on their progress.
Social Coding company GitHub has released a free, in-browser viewer for STL files in full 3D. In comparison to the iterative, collaborative environments for working on software, hardware has a lot of ground to make up, and GitHub’s doing great work to push things along. I’m eager to see how this grows and how it’s used in comparison to popular services like Thingiverse.
The MakerBot Replicator 2X is now available in the Maker Shed! This model is optimized for ABS printing and has two extruders, opening up a host of printing possibilities. In addition to printing two colors, you can use one extruder to print a support structure for the other, or print two small objects at the same time.
MAKE publisher Dale Dougherty looks at the current state of the 3D printing industry and asks: “How soon do you think we’ll get to one million printers and what will drive those sales?”
