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Here’s something our guys at Ponoko wanted to share with users - to show a laser-cutter in action. See the previous post with the Christmas ornaments? Here’s a short video of the laser cutter working on the Christmas bells:
via Umamiblog
From these free .eps files:
To these funky Christmas ornaments:
Calling all craftsters! We’ve got a cool Instructable up on making laser-cut decorations.
Using his free downloadable .eps files from Ponoko our very own Dan the Man and his formidable collaborators have put up an Instructable on How to Make Laser-Cut Holiday Decorations. How much easier can it get? This clear step-by-step guide is aimed at novice makers - no experience with laser-cutting or vector art software is required. You just need a steady hand and a computer. It also provides a nice overview of how to use Ponoko, like uploading files and templates, and getting started with Inkscape.
While this may not make it since we’ve got less than a week to go ’til Christmas, it never hurts to be prepared for next year and have your tree looking as cool as you want it to!
This may not be something you want to hear right now in the midst of your Christmas shopping and spreading of holiday cheer, but it’s a well-worth story everyone should hear about. This 20-minute video reveals the downward spiral of over-consumption and rampant consumerism that many of us don’t want to know about (kind of like not wanting to know how that juicy steak got on your plate). From extraction, production, distribution, consumption, to disposal, Annie Leonard tracks how our stuff gets made to where it eventually ends up buried in landfills - where 99% of all products manufactured end after only six months of use.
It’s a very harsh look at how we buy, use and discard, usually without much thought to the impact of our actions. Many will agree and some may question her facts. Either way, it’s a compelling story and something we all need to think about and perhaps take steps to stop perpetuating this “linear system in a finite planet”.
So, how does Ponoko fit into this system of pushing goods through as quickly as possible to end up in a landfill? Well, sure we do make “stuff”, but how our stuff is produced and distributed is quite different than those that are mass produced. The chapter on “Production” is a dismal look at reality - that cool toy you bought for your kid most likely contributed to toxic pollution and was made by third world low-paid workers in dire conditions. The chapter on “Distribution” is just as dismal - because she points out all the externalized costs that the final happy customer never sees. To get something so cheap from a super mart, you’ve got to wonder how it’s possible that it comes so cheaply.
These sorts of environmental costs have always been one of the issues Dave and Derek (our co-founders) have been concerned with and an underlying motivator for coming up with the concept of Ponoko. Things like just-in-time manufacturing and distributed creativity (dispersing design and localizing manufacturing) are points of intervention they’ve taken as an alternative to what’s happening now in the materials economy.
See for yourself and watch the Story of Stuff. After you’ve watched the intro, you can click on the chapters underneath to continue watching.
To get the full scoop, go to www.storyofstuff.com. Get on there, get informed, and decide for yourself what you’ll do the next time to go to the mall.
8 important consumer trends for 2008 – No 7: MIY – Make It Yourself
(from trendwatching.com December 2007 Monthly Trend Briefing)
There really has been an impetus towards MIY and DIY this year. A few months ago Forbes listed the Ten Industrial Design Trends You Can’t Ignore - among them the DIY/MIY movement, and loosely related “personalization” where consumers are “involved” in the design process. Trendwatching.com made their list of 8 important consumer trends to watch for next year, and again, MIY is on it. They talk about “Generation C”, which means Content created digitally. Now mainstream in the form of music, movies, blogs, etc., it’s moving towards designs and physical goods.
From Trendwatching.com:
So what’s next for GENERATION C? With (in particular younger) consumers having come to expect to be able to create anything they want as long as it is digital, and to customize and personalize many physical goods, the next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well. In fact, expect MIY | MAKE IT YOURSELF (and then SIY | SELL IT YOURSELF) ventures to become increasingly sophisticated in the next 12 months.
As part of this MIY movement, we don’t see this as a fleeting trend, but as a fundamental paradigm shift to how we make, use and buy things. I think the Make-It-Yourself movement is very much linked with other shifts towards sustainable design and consumption, a return to crafts and appreciation for uniqueness and individualization, and filling the needs of many long-tail consumers. I think this trend will most definitely prevail beyond 2008 and become a major part of the status quo.
One of the more interesting points for me is how younger consumers find this so natural. Their upbringing means that they don’t see this as “craft”. They expect to be able to customize their clothes and make their own digital content. They believe they should be able to do it with products as well. Many of these younger consumers are also very entrepreneurial minded. The popular media has idolized entrepreneurs in the last ten years, and in particular “style entrepreneurs”, people like P Diddy, Snoop Dog, 50 Cent, Beyonce and Jay Z, who have built empires based on their personal style. Young consumers have quickly grasped that the Internet can provide a platform for them to spread their personal style and uniqueness for fun and profit. With the move to products I really don’t see this trend going away because of the combination of fun, accessibility and entrepreneurial activity makes it such a potent mix.
Christmas and New Years are fast approaching, and with that so are holiday hours. From Friday December 21st to Monday, January 7th our material suppliers will be closed, which may affect delivery times of products ordered. This will mostly affect plastics only, since we hold all timbers in stock.
Any orders received before the 19th of December should be business as usual but anything after that could be delayed. We apologize for any inconvenience!
More incentive to get going on those holiday creations!!
I’ve been wanting a roomba for quite a while now, but I find this little OAWR much more entertaining. This robot likes to scamper around and tries to avoid things ( or at least walks around or away from them.) Sure, it doesn’t vacuum, but it’s fun to watch and play with. Maker Clement Fletcher also makes a very good point about robot toys: they’re more fun to build yourself than to buy.
His OAWR is made up of a motor, acrylic legs, and “whiskers” to feel out obstacles. While the motor parts can be bought, he gives 3 options on making the legs - either using a scroll saw and drill, using Ponoko (which he used - great choice!), or using a laser-cutter you have access to. Assembled and wired up, here’s the OAWR in action:
To find out how to make it, check his instructable.
You can also check it out in our Ponoko Showroom.
Here goes my shameless plug:
The very first Crunchies Awards is opening up the nominations for 20 categories in recognizing and celebrating web start-ups and innovations for this year. The Crunchies is a collaboration project among GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch.
If you’re keen on Ponoko and the possibilities and opportunities that come from Ponoko, and you love the fact that you can now design, make, and sell your very own things, show how much you love us and send in your nomination(s) here. And hey, if it’s not us you’re nominating, it’s still all good fun! At this very moment there are 22,270 nominations so far! Nominations close midnight PST Wednesday December 12th, so you better get going.. .
The latest issue of Make arrived at my house this week. It’s always exciting when it arrives, it’s one of the few magazines I find you can read over again and find new things in it. One of the first things I noticed was a two page ad for either Knoend Design or Carlo Rossi wine, I can’t tell who it’s for exactly. But it features a couple of really neat products that Knoend have designed. One is called the Lite2Go. A lamp that uses the packaging it’s delivered in to create the lamp itself. Inhabitat wrote extensively about it earlier this year (here). It’s got to be the ultimate in no waste packaging. It’s multi-dimensional too since you can use as a hanging lamp or sitting on a flat suface.
The second product is pretty intriguing, it’s a “Solar Jug Bench” created from two empty wine jugs, a recycled truck bed liner (I can’t see where they used that) and solar powered LED lights. The idea is that you don’t waste those jugs after you’ve finished emptying the contents into yourself this holiday season. I have to say this looks pretty cool and looks like a nice fit for a deck on summer evenings.
Carlo Rossi is hoping that they can convince some other cool designers (or anyone for that matter) to have a go at designing furniture with their jugs. You can check out the details here. It really looks like a fun project, and you can see one very elaborate example below in the Cabernet Couch. They give you the dimensions of the bottles in the design details so don’t worry that you have to go about drinking a years supply of wine over a weekend to start - no matter how tempting it might be to consider it.
After a bit of a hellish week we have finished a move across to a new hosting provider. This was necessary because of the problems we were having with our previous provider. Everything should now be a lot more stable.
For the next 24-36 hours you will see www.ponoko.com redirecting to an IP address. We weren’t able to get a domain name to propagate fast enough. So don’t worry, this is ok.
Here’s an interesting question we get asked: How can Ponoko be useful for traditional craftsmen? High-end woodworkers who work with rare and expensive hardwoods, carving every niche and curve by hand?
I know at first it seems almost contradictory: laser-cutting versus hand-carved. But the reality is, templates are incredibly useful for the craftsman. And Ponoko can be useful for laser-cutting precision templates. Designer Jeffrey McGrew of BecauseWeCan.org, a design-build studio in the Bay Area said that they get a lot of craftspeople and high-end woodworkers asking them to make templates all the time. Router templates, clamping/gluing templates, carving templates, layout templates, that sort of thing.
David Marks, a Master Craftsman and host of Wood Works on DIYnetwork.com gives his point of view on why templates are great. After 30 years of woodworking, he’s got his system down. He doesn’t like wasting expensive hardwood and prefers to work out all the problems beforehand on MDF templates, which are easier to shape, especially with curves in the design.