Our hosting provider is experiencing problems with the hosting center that houses our main servers. This means that our main website will be unstable until they get the problem fixed. We’re really sorry about this, but at this point we can only sit and wait. We will provide an update as we get more information.
UPDATE
Things don’t seem to be getting better. Our provider has now said that they will be abandoning their data center and will be moving the hardware to a new facility. This move is due to start at 10am CST Dec 1 (so in about 8 hours … but where we are in the queue is anyone’s guess). I suspect we will be down for 2 or so hours. I will provide more info as it comes to hand.
UPDATE 2
Our provider has gone silent on us… so there is no new news. The site is working fine at present. I will provide more info as it comes to hand. At this point it’s back to business as usual.
UPDATE 3
You can’t upload files (eps files or images) at present. It is a network issue and we have raised a ticket with our hosting provider. I will provide updates as they come to hand. Sorry.
Exciting stuff! Our story of personal manufacturing, in line with technologists and authors Neil Gershenfeld’s views on bits into atoms and Don Norman’s views on user-centered design, crowdsourcing and automation, are featured in this week’s Economist technology monitor.
(via Wired: 10″x10″x12″ 3D printer at Frog Design)
3D printers have been hitting the headlines again. This time, Wired spoke with Joe Hebenstreit from Frog Design in Palo Alto, CA and Scott Summit of SummitID in San Francisco about the changing role of the 3D printer. It’s no longer just for prototypes. With advanced capabilities in using different materials, speed and size, they’re being used more and more for finished products.
A while back I wrote about Janne Kyttanen from Freedom of Creation (FOC), whose digital designs are available on his website. Once ordered, the product is printed out and shipped to the customer - very much a “just-in-time” manufacturing/fulfillment cycle. Something we believe is a good model.
Everyone has their own needs, and as you can see below, Nathan Strang has got very cocky with his first Ponoko driven creation. Thanks for sharing Nate.
Instructables is always a very cool place to get your DIY and craft fix if you’re itching to make something. Ponoko Design and Laser Cutter Guru Dan Emery decided to share his design of a Japanese-inspired lantern style lamp that was laser cut via Ponoko. The final lamp above is made from laser etched acrylic (with a personalized pattern) with a hardwood base and top. The design is very simple, no glue or screws are needed as everything fits together with the precision only laser cutting can give you. If you’re interested in making a lamp like this with your own pattern engraving and colors, check out Dan’s Instructables as well as his free .eps files from his Ponoko showroom. Now get going! You can sign up for MyPonoko to upload your own inspired lamp designs.
If you follow this blog or follow the whole electronics DIY maker movement, you’re probably familiar with RepRap.org. This is an open source project with the goal of creating a self-replicating rapid prototyper (3D printer). Over at Bre Pettis’s I Make Things (also at Makezine Blog), you’ll find the first in a series of Makezine Weekend Project video tutorial on how to make a RepRap robot. This week they’re working on the electronics part of the RepRap robot, like the stepper boards, motor controller board, and arduinos. After watching the video, you can download their PDFcast for more details and links. In upcoming weekend project videos they’ll be working on the hardware and software. So stay tuned!
Not only are we making the rounds in the english media, but we’ve also been featured in the german language media via Heise Online, publisher of C’t, a computer technology magazine that has the highest circulation in Europe, iX, a magazine that focuses on UNIX/Linux related issues, the German edition of Technology Review, and online magazine Telepolis.
For our local community - from TheNewDowse in Wellington:
Organised by TheNewDowse, the Deane Award for Decorative Arts & Design, is a project-based award established to support the creation and display of innovative new work within an exhibition context. The inaugural recipient of the Deane Award was jeweller Alan Preston. This year we would like to invite practitioners in the fields of furniture and/or product design to submit a proposal. Applications can be submitted by individuals, collectives or companies.
The recipient will receive $10,000 towards the realisation of their project.
Applications are due by 30 January 2008.
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
TheNewDowse is about stimulating creativity.
This relates to our roles in supporting fresh creative practice as well as providing our audiences with accessible and inspiring experiences that stimulate their creativity. Decorative arts and design is a key focus of our collections and exhibition programme.
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:-
The degree to which the receipt of the Deane Awardwill contribute to the significant development, (technically and/or conceptually) of the maker’s practice
The suitability of work(s) for TheNewDowse collection
The ability of the resulting exhibition to engage audiences
Proven ability to execute the proposed work, within the agreed time frame (to be negotiated).
For full details, terms and conditions, check here.
(David ten Have and Derek Elley, Photo by Peter DaSilva for the New York Times)
We’re really excited with the string of news stories featuring Ponoko, with the New York Times being the latest. John Biggs reports on the DIY Tech movement that’s been making strides recently and the rise of the “at-home creators” and makers. With a growing community of makers from Makezine, online DIY stores such as adafruit.com and open-source software media player chumby.com that center on personalization, more and more resources are cropping up (also see earlier post on open-source hardware Bug Labs) for people to build their own creations - right from the internal electronics to the individualized outer shell - like steampunk creations from datamancer.net. Read NYT’s full story here.
Thanks to Ponoko user Sue for steering me this way to this cool online vectorization tool that changes bitmaps into vectors. VectorMagic, the result of a research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a free online auto-tracer, converting bitmap images into vector art:
This tool can trace logos and photos, which could be incorporated into your 3D designs either as etchings/engravings, cut-outs or the actual shape. It’s received some pretty positive reviews from users familiar with comparable tools like Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace and Inkscape’s Trace Bitmap. It seems to be quite easy to use, especially for those not so adept with graphic software. Bittbox gives it two thumbs up and shows some examples of images that have been vectorized. As does JTB World Blog and Geekfindr. Check it out and have a look at their samples and comparisons with the other tools.
