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!
To showcase NASA’s new initiatives in Advanced Manufacturing, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden toured the National Center for Advanced Manufacturing Rapid Prototyping Facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL.
MakerBot announced today it’s developing the Digitizer, a long-in-the-works desktop 3D scanner that will complement its line of 3D printers. MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis made the announcement at Austin’s SXSW Interactive.
Let’s be honest, 3D CAD (computer aided design) is challenging to learn. Training your brain to manipulate and visualize parts in three dimensions is a learned skill. So where do you start? Thankfully, there’s a multitude of free tools available for everyone to try their hand at 3D design. And many of them don’t even require a download anymore. A simple web app will get you pretty far.
I’ve compiled the best resources I know of for dealing with 3D parts and I will list them here in two parts. This week I’m going to focus on 3D part creation and slicing, the two first steps in printing out a part on a 3D printer. Everything listed is free to use (at least to a certain extent)
Create awesome, sweet Escher cookies using 3D printed rollers with MC Escher art on them.
Last year, at Maker Faire in San Mateo, we launched a global competition to find ways to reduce the cost of producing parts on a 3D printer that uses plastic filament as its feedstock.
3D printing holds great promise for prototyping and small-volume production, but it has the potential for high volume production as well. Over time, the software interfaces that control these machines will improve, the number of files available for printing will increase exponentially, and the precision of the machines will be indistinguishable from parts made on an injection molding machine. However, to become competitive with conventional manufacturing processes, the unit cost of each part produced by 3D printers must be reduced.
Low-cost 3D printing, including Up! Plus, Makerbot’s Replicator II, Cubify, Printrbot, Solidoodle, and the Ultimaker, range in price from $399-$2200. These machines require extruded plastic filament that costs about $40-$54 per kg. This is between 5-10 times the cost of the raw resin pellets.
3D printing service provider Sculpteo and game developer Infinite Dreams today announced a partnership that will allow users to turn digitally rendered pots into the real thing.
Infinite Dreams’ popular “Let’s Create! Pottery” app lets users shape, fire, and paint a piece of pottery in a virtual environment. The new relationship with Sculpteo brings the experience into the physical world by allowing users to purchase full color, printed versions of their pottery directly from the app.
Check out Matt Stultz’ experiments with HIPS (High Impact Poly Styrene), which can be printed along with ABS and dissolved away with Limonene, letting you make complicated models and parts.
