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!
Austrian Kinect hacker Sebastian Pirch from 3rD-EYE in Salzburg has built a 3D modeling system using a Microsoft Kinect controller and an Arduino. Using a pair of custom soft circuit gloves to provide a mouse click, Sebastian is able to model objects in mid air, in 3D, using gestures captured by the Kinect, which are then rendered with an LCD projector. It’s a little crude now, but he’ll probably be designing flying armored suits by this time next year.
MakerBot Industries blogger MakerBlock is working on a clockwork spider, and went the route of designing his own gears. He’s sharing his observations of designing and printing his own clockwork parts on the MakerBot blog. Here’s a sample: Don’t make parts too thin. The parts I printed tended to be designed too thin. If you […]
Bart Bakker of Utrecht, Netherlands sent us these images and a link to a short piece about his mini home fab lab. He built it for around US$4K. The lab consists of an A4 Laser Cutter, a vintage Ultimaker 3D-printer, a Mantis CNC mill, and a CraftRobo vinyl/papercutter. Bart built the Ultimaker and the Mantis […]
Turns out it’s also possible to drill hexagonal hole using a very similar tool based on the Reuleaux pentagon. The video immediately above, again from jacquesmaurel, shows a tool he describes as a “Vika attachment,” mounted in a lathe, boring an hexagonal hole in a piece of stock. The video below, part of the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, illustrates the process.
Thingiverse user BenJackson designed a bracket and two gears that allow you to add numeric ontrol capability to your Etch-A-Sketch. What can I say? I’ve never been able to draw anything with an Etch-a-Sketch. I won this one in a Christmas gift exchange some years ago and hung onto it with the idea that someday […]
The claim of penetrating a razor-blade impresses me, although I note the only metal penetration in the video is thin aluminum, which has been painted, possibly so that it will absorb more light energy. There’s also some cool shots capturing the pulsed-laser’s plasma ball in midair.
Eureka Magazine has a profile of this sweet ride, the whole thing “printed” from laser-sintered nylon powder. The ‘Airbike’ is made of nylon but, according to EADS, is strong enough to replace steel or aluminium and requires no conventional maintenance or assembly. It is ‘grown’ from powder, allowing complete sections to be built as one […]
