How Many People Will Own 3D Printers?
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?”
3D Printing & Imaging
If you’re a maker, 3d printing is an incredibly useful tool to have in your arsenal. Not only can it help bring your projects to life faster, but it can also offer unique results that would be difficult (or impossible!) to achieve with traditional methods. In these blog posts, we’ll provide you with some essential information and tips regarding 3D printing for makers—including the basics of how to get started, plus creative tutorials for spicing up your projects. Whether you’re already familiar with 3d printing or are just starting out, these resources will help take your game-making skills even further!
3D Printing Game Worlds with Sandboxr
Imagine being about to 3D print customized characters, enemies, and props from your favorite computer games. That’s the idea behind Sandboxr.
Free Alternatives to Tinkercad
Creators of Tinkercad announced earlier this week that they would no longer be developing the popular cloud-based CAD tool. We’re fans of Tinkercad here at Make, having written about and praised it on the blog and in our Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing, so this is sad news. The free version is still available to use between now and the end of April, and paying customers will have access until the end of 2013.
Here are a few other free alternatives to TinkerCAD, starting with what I think is the most beginner-friendly and ending with the least beginner-friendly.
Tinkercad to Close Shop
Tinkercad, an extremely popular web-based 3D modeling tool, announced it will discontinue development and shut down. The company will shift its energies into a new 3D modeling environment and hardware service called Airstone.
Will 3D Printers Save the World?
3D printers have exploded in popularity with promises of reinventing everything from manufacturing to entrepreneurship. While 3D printing has a few detractors and people who point out that it won’t live up to the hype, I believe 3D printing will actually do more than reinvent the way we design and build things. Ultimately, I believe it will dramatically improve lives in 3rd world countries by empowering everyone to improve their own lives.
First 3D Printed Snowboard
The mad snow scientists at California-based Signal Snowboards are at it again. They have a monthly show they put together with Network A, called Every Third Thursday, where they come up with a snowboard concept, regardless of how off the wall, execute it, and ride the board they’ve created. To date, they’ve made a Lego […]
3D-Printed Superhero Figurine Business Cards
When you’re out networking, you could hand someone a plain old flat, rectangular piece of paper with your information printed on it. But wouldn’t it be much more awesome (and memorable) to hand them a 3D-printed figurine of you as a superhero, with your email address on the bottom? That’s what the folks at the Amsterdam interactive design agency Resoluut did. Each employee illustrated a superhero version of themselves and had 20 copies 3D printed, with their email address printed on the underside.
