Digital Fabrication

Digital fabrication tools have revolutionized the way designers, engineers, and artisans express their creativity. With the right resources, you can learn to use these powerful instruments in no time! Whether it’s 3D printing or laser cutting that interests you, these articles will provide useful tutorials and inspiration for makers of all levels. Discover how digital fabrication can open up new possibilities so that your craftsmanship is truly extraordinary!

Top 3D Services: Part 1

Top 3D Services: Part 1

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)

Continue Reading Eric Weinhoffer34
Busy Retiree’s Filament Extruder Wins Fabrication Competition

Busy Retiree’s Filament Extruder Wins Fabrication Competition

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.

Continue Reading Dale Dougherty14
Making Digital Art Real

Making Digital Art Real

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.

Continue Reading Eric Weinhoffer6
Ping Fu Stands Her Ground

Ping Fu Stands Her Ground

Last month I wrote about Bend Not Break, a memoir written by Ping Fu. Fu is the founder of Geomagic and now chief strategy officer at 3D Systems. In her book, Fu wrote about her life as a young girl in China and her experiences living under Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She described being forcibly removed from her family by the Red Guard at 8 years old and spending the next ten years living with her younger sister in a government dormitory under brutal conditions before ultimately emigrating to the U.S. For me, it was a harrowing, but ultimately uplifting story about overcoming adversity.

But that’s not how many people reacted to the book.

Continue Reading Stett Holbrook48