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!
Using projected light from four different directions, an app called Trimensional, from Georgia Tech researcher Grant Schindler, will assemble a 3D scan using an iPhone 4’s built-in camera. Once you’ve captured a desirable visage you can optionally memorialize said countenance by outputting a watertight file and sending it to your favorite 3D printer.
If you’d like to try your hand at turning on a lathe, but don’t want to shell out for a machine, how about printing your own EZLathe? Paul writes:
So I’ve built a complete mini lathe system I’m calling the EZLathe… Fully 3D Printable except a small motor, and a couple pieces of cheap electronics. And able to do small wood turning jobs, or small pieces of pretty much anything.
Add a few stepper motors and a controller, and before you know it you’ve got a nifty little cnc lathe.
The new curtain at the Oslo Opera House was commissioned from LA-based artist Pae White. It was reportedly created using a CNC loom weaving three different kinds of fabric to render a raster image of a scanned piece of crumpled aluminum foil. [via CRAFT]
Recently, we’ve been messing about with motors and gears at Pemtech. Students in one of my classes are building an underwater ROV, and we don’t have any decent propellers. Rather than shop for them, we’re fabbing our own with the laser cutter and Makerbot. Earlier this week, Jett worked out the proper dimensions to fit a plate to a motor shaft. He did this by measuring out a range of holes and then cutting them in quarter inch acrlyic. Once they came out of the laser, he tried pushing the motor into each of the holes until he found the ‘goldilocks fit.’ Once we had a plate, he used the same process to cut a series of holes in the plate that could be threaded with M3 screws. This setup allows us to attach anything to a motor.
Last night I was out on an adventure. In the morning, the shower curtain fell down because the pole was a bit too short. After I pulled the paper towel tube shim out, I tried to twist the rod to lengthen it. Since it was maxed out, it needed a little something special to help make ends meet.
When I went downstairs, I took a few extra steps out to the car, got the Makerbot and returned to fire up the computer with Sketchup. It took two iterations to get the dimensions right. The new part came out sized to fit over the end of the curtain rod and take up a bit of the gap.
NASA’s Amazing Space project has a monthly Tactile Astronomy feature that provides public-domain files for printing “feelable” versions of Hubble’s deep space photographs on special printers:
I love this Möbius Gear design, made by Aaron Hoover for a Procedural Solid Modeling class back in 2009. It looks impossible at first glance, but the trick is that the inside gear is actually made from a flexible material, so it can deform as it spins around the fixed outer gear. There’s also a […]
