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!
Folks over at House4Hack in Johannesburg are developing an app, called Paint3D, that will allow you to sketch and print directly to a 3D printer from your Android device. Their app allows you to create an extruded polygon mesh that’s then converted to GCode, stored on an SD card, and fed to the printer. Their goal is to create an easy to use 3D tool that does everything from the Android device.
Our favorite “3D printrepreneurs,” Alex and Bilal, continue their technocarnie roadshow and share with MAKE what they’re learning about selling custom 3D printed do-dads to the masses.
Here is a process that would not have occurred to me. Make: Projects user Kiers knew enough about the machines used by eyeglass lens makers to know that they use a “dummy lens” template as a pattern to cut the outer profile of a lens. He found an accommodating online optician willing to use a […]
Basically, microscale 3D printing the same way a popup book creates a three-dimensional shape. The Harvard Monolithic Bee is a millimeter-scale flapping wing robotic insect produced using Printed Circuit MEMS (PC-MEMS) techniques. This video describes the manufacturing process, including pop-up book inspired assembly. [via Ponoko]
From Dutch designer Wouter Scheublin, who made a big splash in 2010 with his Walking Table. This pull-back-to-wind Toy Car, machined in stainless steel and bronze, with matching walnut box, was produced in a limited edition of twenty, and is still available in laser-sintered nylon, though it isn’t cheap. [Thanks, Billy Baque!] More:Seriously Overengineered MousetrapVery, […]
It’s Thing #16909 from faberdasher, directly enlarged from Thing #12208 by emmett (who is also a central node in the Thingiverse cube gears phenomenon). All of these complex bevel-geared kinetic sculptures can be traced back to the mechanical papercraft of Haruki Nakamura, which was, I believe, first adapted for fused-filament printing in Thing #4683 by […]
The Convenient Typer is a hacked typewriter that uses 3d printed mechanisms to type a single phrase: “It is as it is.” Created by artist Max Lupo, this self-referential machine uses modern means to re-imagine an antiquated form of technology.
