I have an obsession with graffiti. And dishes. And New York. New York Delft by lovegrove&repucci is making me very happy. These high art tablesettings are surpisingly affordable, at least when compared to other high art tablesettings! The classic tradition of Dutch Delft craftsmanship hits the streets of New York City. Presenting the ‘New York […]
Sketchup is an easy-to-learn program for 3D modeling. While it gives you an easy way to design creatively, it is a bit more challening to design accurately. If you are going to make physical models of your designs, you will need to make them small enough to fit on the tool that will make the part. You can send the 3D models to a number of toos, including the ShopBot, CNC Mill and MakerBot, among others.
If you follow these pretty easy steps, you can get yourself and your students into the habit of designing accurately dimensioned objects. Here is a set of screenshots and a sample file that show the steps of this process.
Stephanie the Multi-Tasking Mama is guest blogging on Crafty Chica, where she shows us how to convert a photo of a beloved pet into a fabric portrait suitable for a stocking or even framing!
By Jennifer Perkins For baby’s first Christmas you have to do something extra special. I had visions of pictures sitting on Santa’s lap, but alas with a serious crowd aversion and a touch of Swine Flu paranoia I skipped the mall. Instead I decided to deck my daughter Tallulah out in her Christmas duds and […]
In my Principles of Technology class, we’re using Sketchup to design the parts we will make for the Mendocino Motor. Though we’ll fabricate the parts with hand and power tools, you can also use Sketchup to make the files needed to cut parts on a mill, Makerbot, Shopbot or other CNC tools.
The Mendocino Motor project appears in the Teachers’ Pet Projects section on
in MAKE, Volume 20, page 79.
Here are some techniques to design parts for the motor:
First get familiar with the Sketchup interface. This is pretty easy, the software is rather intuitive. A good place to start is by making whole shapes with the rectangle and circle tools. Draw a shape, then use the Push/Pull tool to extrude it up or down. You can make a shape on the side of another shape, then pull it out or push it in. Make some shapes. Mouse over the tool icons and you should see the name of the tool in a popup.
By Christine Koh Coming from a family of seven kids (+ spouses and partners), it was a blissful day when my siblings and I decided to stop exchanging holiday gifts amongst our generation, instead focusing on time spent together and only gifting the wee generation and elders. And while it’s wonderful to be relieved of […]
These Fill In the Blank Cards let you make a custom message by punching out the perforated dots in a pattern of your choice. [via Teagan Tall]
