Take your 3D model and make it real in a new and amazing way. The Autodesk® 123D™ Make Technology Preview turns any 3D model into a pattern of flat parts that can be cut and assembled into an artful creation. The Autodesk® 123D™ Make Technology Preview is currently available only for Mac OS X. The preview software will expire on 1/31/12.
A not-so-little slice of genius from Instructables user DracoGT. The legs and frame are PVC pipe and fittings, painted black. The eye is an inkjet printer transparency illuminated with an LED Tap Light. And the body, of course, is the predominant seasonal gourd, artfully cut to suggest armor plate.
Gorillapods are pretty versatile tripods.You can find them for between $20-$50 depending on the size or build one for a few dollars in parts. Wanna know what’s even cooler than a Gorillapod? A Gorillapod on wheels. Yep, just bolt on some inline skate wheels and your fancy new tripod is now a hybrid tripod dolly.
MAKE contributor Jeffrey McGrew, of the brilliant design duo (w/ Jillian Northrup) Because We Can, was involved in building part of Jon Sarriugarte/Kyrsten Mate’s serpent art cars for this year’s Burning Man. Jeffrey and Jillian built the amazing Viking ship-inspired tails.
According to Instructables user nsnip, they’re made from Baltic birch! To make this board, he cut the rounded ends off stacks of sticks with a table saw, laminated them stick-by-stick in five layers with alternating grain directions, and glued the whole thing together in an improvised vacuum press made from a clothes storage bag. Impressive, meticulous craftsmanship.
I was delighted to see the positive reaction to my latest video, Shrinkify Your Arduino Projects, which is based on a tutorial by MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech Group. Their tutorial walks you through the process of not only using the Arduino as a programmer for 8-pin ATtiny chips, but also how to use Arduino code and the Arduino IDE to program them. In order to make this process easier, Randy Sarafan created an Arduino shield for programming these diminutive chips. Head over to his Instructable to get the board and learn to build your own!
From Instructables user The Papier Boy. Complete with freaking-out R2 unit! “The spinning droid was constructed of Styrofoam and painted to look like R2-D2. I used one of my daughter’s old toys to create the motion. The toy had a gear on it that spun when a button was pushed. I cut the toy in half (it was too big) and mounted the toy to the underside of the body and glued the droid head onto the gear. To control the spinning I used an old NES controller. ..”
