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Two thousand and twelve was 3D printing’s breakout year. While still the realm of early adopters, the 3D printing genie is clearly out of the bottle. I checked in with several consumer-class 3D printer companies to see how 2012 went down and to get their thoughts on 2013 and beyond. Everyone I spoke with was extremely bullish about the future of 3D printing and some were already rolling out new models.
Got a great invention the world needs to get their hands on? Engadget is offering a hardware talent show of sorts called Insert Coin to help choose tech’s next great gadget. The winner will be chosen by a panel of judges at Expand in San Francisco March 17 and will walk with a $20,000 cash prize and a guaranteed Engadget review. Submissions will be accepted up until Feb. 8 so get busy.
Lean, or “just-in-time” manufacturing can save companies money. But can it help cool a warming planet? Elroy’s Rob Honeycutt says yes.
As the cliche goes, when one door closes another opens. On the economic front, there have been a lot of closing doors as businesses contract, outsource staff, and shed employees. Welcome to the new normal. So where are the open doors? For makers, there are many and arguably more than ever before.
Since leaving MakerBot, company co-founder Zach “Hoeken” Smith now calls Shenzhen, China home where he says he loves the maker culture and the city’s easy access to electronics and expertise. The weather is a lot better than Brooklyn, too. Zach recently met a local maker named Mr. Chen whom he says has achieved the life many makers are working toward: “self sufficiency, low volume in-house manufacturing, and sustainable living.”
For the upcoming MAKE Volume 33, David Merrill contributed an article called Going Pro, about how makers are turning hand-soldered prototypes into real consumer electronics. He’s here in the Gaming Showcase section at CES showing off Sifteo Cubes, an interactive gaming platform that uses small cubes with embedded sensors and LCD screens. As the co-founder […]
In the business of producing kits, like the new Digi-Comp II, it’s all in the details. Evil Mad Scientist leaves nothing out, especially in the two CNC cutting processes; everything from the layouts of the large playfields on the router table to the careful nesting of flip-flops in the laser are given extreme attention, to minimize machine downtime and human intervention. Their most recent blog post is a comprehensive walkthrough of the manufacturing process, from sheets of plywood to the boxed product.
