When the The Apple LaserWriter first hit the mass market in 1985, the desktop publishing revolution was born. With a starting price of $6995 the unit weighed a hefty 77 lb (35kg) and was 11.5 x 18.5 x 16.2 inches the first desktop printer was not the lightweight, disposable peripheral printers have become today, in every classroom, business and home.

23 years later and Desktop Factory, (previously mentioned on Ponoko Blog) are about to launch us into the 3rd dimension of desktop printing with their 125ci 3D Printer for under U$5000. The unit weighing around 90 lb (40kg) and 25 x 20 x 20 is only marginally bigger than the first Apple LaserWriter, and allowing for inflation, considerably cheaper.

Desktop Factory CEO Cathy Lewis will be one of the speakers at the First Annual MIT Smart Customization Seminar to be held on November 10th at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA.

Cathy has been generous enough to grant us an interview to discuss her views on the future of 3D printing and her part in bringing 3D printing to every classroom, business and home.

Stay Tuned

Posted in 3D Printing, Digital Fabrication, Duann Scott, Technology by Duann | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Routing

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Leading up to the First Annual MIT Smart Customization Seminar I will be doing a series of interviews with leaders in the field of mass customization including Monika Desai of Sole Envie.

Sole Envie is an online social shopping community and e-commerce site that provides women with the unique opportunity to co-design and purchase their own, one of a kind, customized fashion shoes and expresses their personal style. Aimed at being a truly collaborative brand, Sole Envie will develop a fashion savvy community of users that invites them to express themselves by sharing their design, ideas and inspirations with each other.

The site is not yet fully launched and functional as a shoe customization site, you can at least whet your appetite with the Sole Envie Shoe Blog.

Stay tuned for the upcoming interview with Monika Desai and more mass customization intelligentsia from the First Annual MIT Smart Customization Seminar.

Posted in Design, Duann Scott, Fashion + Textiles, Mass Customization by Duann | Comments are off for this post

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Current Artist-In-Residence and Head of Sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Fine Art is Heather McGill. Heather has an extensive resume of grants, awards and exhibitions both nationally and internationally. The most recent is the 40th Anniversary Art on Paper 2008, a biennial group show at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC. The exhibition runs from October 19, 2008 — January 25, 20009.

Earlier works from McGill include intricately laser-cut paper designs depicting arrangements of animals, vernacular landscape and pop-culture silhouettes connected to form the overall composition.

Posted in Art, Design, Events, Kristen Turner, Laser Cutting by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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‘Frozen’, an exhibition of sound-data visualization and the vision of Marius Watz, was held concomitant with the ‘5 Days Off’ electronic music festival in Amsterdam this past summer. Artists created two and three-dimensional forms based on audioworks by Frans de Waard and Alexander Rishaug. The art was more like mappings of the music rather than interpretations. Custom software was used to analyze the song structure, and various rapid-prototyping techniques including laser-cutting and CNC as well as digital printing were used to create the pieces.

Reflections is a collaborative work from Andreas Nicolas Fischer (previously mentioned on Ponoko) and Benjamin Maus. On his website, Fischer explains:

Reflection is characterized by 12 musical motives, which appear in an almost linear succession. To show the individual makeup of the motives, they were divided into the smallest distinctive parts and analyzed with custom software. A FFT frequency spectrum analysis was performed on these audio clips. The resulting intensity values were arranged in a coordinate system consisting of frequency and time. Higher intensity values for a given frequency at a given time resulted in an elevation of the generated mesh.

This effectively produced a heightfield representing the spectral structure of the music. Further optimizations like adaptive filtering and logarithmic scaling of the values were performed to better represent the human way of hearing and to enhance details.

Below: ‘Binaural’ by Daniel Widrig and Shajay Booshan

Below: ‘Sound Structure’ by Leander Herzog

below: print by Marius Watz

View more photos from Frozen at flickr

via infosthetics and designboom

Posted in 3D Printing, Art, CNC Routing, Design, Events, Kristen Turner, Laser Cutting, Technology by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Routing

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Wired recently published an excellent article on Open Source Hardware entitle “Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work?”

It’s a great summary of the current situation, and writer Clive Thompson cites the likes of Arduino, Adafruit, NYCresistor and Instructables as he recounts our journey from the gestation of Linux to the popularity of Netgear’s open source routers. Particularly, Thompson focuses on an interview with Arduino creators Gianluca Martino, Massimo Banzi, and David Cuartielles, and there are some interesting insights into the genesis of that project and where their business advantage actually lies:

“Because you’re the inventor, though, the community of users will inevitably congregate around you, much as Torvalds was the hub for Linux. You will always be the first to hear about cool improvements or innovative uses for your device. That knowledge becomes your most valuable asset, which you can sell to anyone.”

Arduino creator, Massimo Banzi of Tinker.it by Matt Biddulph

My favourite quote however comes from MIT professor, Eric von Hippel:

“In a sense, hardware is becoming much more like software, up to the point where you actually fabricate an object,” von Hippel says. “That’s why you’re starting to see open source techniques in hardware. Design is largely going to shift out from manufacturers to the communities.”

What an exciting idea: a shifting of design work from the brutal world of commercial manufacture as we know it, to communities of people sharing knowledge. Is it only me who finds the choice a no-brainer? Isn’t this the future we’ve dreamed of making for ourselves?

Thompson writes of the difference that, as he puts them, ‘geeks’ have made to Arduino – it is their dedicated hacking that make Arduino and any successful piece of open hardware, well, successful. We as designers are the geeks of open design – and goodness knows I know a lot of geeky designers. I might go as far as to say that the reason you are reading this blog is that you might be a bit of a laser-cutting/digital manufacturing/design culture geek: design geeks have tools for open design laid out in front of us, and it is we who will shape our future products. We can only look to the open hardware movement as a role model for open design in general, as there really is an increasingly tiny difference. All it takes is some guts. Or some stupidity, if you take heart to Thompson’s final paragraph.

via Wired

Posted in Design, Electronics + Robotics, Hardware, Maker Movement, Open Source, Programming, Roy Shearer, Technology by Roy | Comments are off for this post

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Hopefully not quite as freaky as the headless dog robot currently giving me nightmares is The Sharp Bot by AZEITRON-DESIGNS is capable of real-time analog-to-digital distance detection and phototrophic light detection aka “attraction to light”. Utilizing 3 Sharp GP2D12 Infrared Sensors it can detect objects as close as 1cm by method of triangulation.

By using triangulation to detect the distance a small linear CCD array detector is positioned 3/4 of an inch away from an IR emitter and is used to compute the distance and/or presence of the IR reflection in the field of view. If the IR light reflects off an object, it returns to the detector and creates a triangle between the point of reflection, the emitter, and the detector. The angles in this triangle vary based on the distance to the object, and from those angles, the distance to the object can be calculated.
This method of ranging is almost immune to interference from ambient light and offers amazing indifference to the color of object being detected.
Also dual on-board CDS (Cadmium Sulfate) photocells are placed front left/right. For detecting light Sharp Bot uses photocells arranged in series with a 4.7kΩ resistor as part of a potential divider with the ADC measuring the voltage across the photocell which allows the robot to follow a flashlight in hand or find the nearest light source (eg. lamp, sunlight) even when it’s path is littered with objects! Can run even quicker with lights-out. Great speed, awesome detection, dazzling light effects, single cell powered, long running times and full auto-protection circuitry make for one intelligently advanced robot.

Can be programmed to detect objects very closely or from a distance. You can specify a pre-programmed distance if you prefer.

Robot shown in Blue PVC Plastic but can be built in your choice of Clear or Bronze Lexan which is the ultimate in durability.

Interesting use of Ponoko for robot makers like those on Big Blue Saw.

You can also check out the (OAWR) Obstacle Avoiding Walking Robot by Clement Fletcher

Posted in Design, Duann Scott, Electronics + Robotics, Toys + Games by Duann | Comments are off for this post

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Ok, with the U.S. election looming I don’t really want to get too political but nbcloset has pumped out a few lapel pins for the Obama supporters in the Ponoko electorate.

Obama hope pin is laser cut & etched from fiber board. Lapel pin measures 1-1/2″. for $18 big ones, nice.

To keep the whole dealo bipartisan, although not through ponoko via nb or cbtcloset but at Etsy store DIY or DIE you can pick up your heroine, Palin lapel pin, or McCain necklace, or forget the election and support pacifist peace with a ghandi earring from DIY or DIE……

Here in Australia we were all wooed by Kevin 07 campaign, can’t go past a rhyming campaign…
so what rhymes with Obama, or McCain???

Posted in Design, Duann Scott, Jewellery, Laser Cutting by Duann | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Along with the giant Halloween challenge via Ponoko core77, instructables and etsetera comes the 3DVIA Halloween challenge

3DVIA Users: How to participate in this challenge:
1. Be a Registered User of 3DVIA
3DVIA accounts are free, sign up here

2. Upload Your “Jack-o-Lantern” Model by Wednesday October 29th
Starting on October 17th and running through October 29th 2008, upload your best Jack-o-Lantern to 3DVIA. Only new to 3DVIA and original work will be considered, 1 submission per user, NO team entries.

3. Tag Your 3D Model “3DVIAChallenge7″
Tag your model with the keyword 3DVIAChallenge7 – you must use this exact tag to enter.

1. Voting on this challenge will take place on October 30th.
All entries will be judged between October 29th and October 30th. Judging will be done by our 3 Judges in 3 categories. The 3 Categories are:

Artistic Design- Eye catching design, the coolness of the model.
Technical Accuracy – Mechanical or realistic accuracy and detail
Modeling Efficiency – Polygonal construction, modeling skill.

Current 3DVIA Judges Panel:

Matthew Baron – 3D Enthusiast Judge
Juan del Rio – DCC Judge
Don Swavely – CAD Judge

Each category will receive a value from 1-10 from each Judge. Each model will receive the average value of all the judges votes combined plus the percentage of their community vote multiplied by 10 (ie. if you received 45% of the votes, you would get 4.5).

2. The Winner Will Be Announced on November 3rd
We will post the winner here on November 3rd and announce the next challenge.

check the current entries to see what you are up against and get modeling, quick

Posted in Contests + Competitions, Duann Scott by Duann | Comments are off for this post

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Rapid prototyping is usually a procedure for translating digital construction data into a real 3D form, as quickly as possible and without any intermediary steps. Stereolithography is a commonly used rapid prototyping method. Objects digitally rendered in CAD are “pressed out” of a bath of nylon powder, fluid synthetic resin or wax by means of a laser beam, layer by layer.

Designers and engineers are increasingly making use of the procedure, in order to present their designs as engineered, error-free, high-tech forms. However, the resulting forms are not always completely error-free. If the CAD design is complex or statically unstable, the computer program sometimes automatically builds in small supports or bars. These remain in place until the end of the process as mistakes, and normally they must be removed by hand before the material solidifies.

Normally.These “œmistakes” are precisely what interest the French industrial designer Fred Sionis. He has been working with stereolithography in wax for several years and pushes the technical limitations of rapid prototyping in his experimental CAD constructions. In his Paris studio he creates forms that are just the opposite of the “logical” objects designed by technical engineers. Sionis “presses out” fragile products with a surreal effect that comes with their hyper-tech appearance. Even in photographs the objects give the impression of CAD drawings with their thin supports and skins and lack of color.

At the end of a process representing the cutting edge of current production procedures, he adds something that provided illumination even in antiquity: the wick, the light of the ancients. This outdated light source functions as a contrast to computer-generated structures and unerringly accurate forms.

It is a conceptual challenge to automated production — an existential focal point within an eye-catching accumulation of mistakes.

via XYMARA

Posted in 3D Printing, Digital Fabrication, Duann Scott by Duann | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Routing

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The Final Installment of interview with Industrial Designer Matt Sinclair of We Don’t Do Retro

Do you see the role of the industrial designer fundamentally changing or do you believe it will only be in niche markets where mass customisation processes will need to be incorporated into design practice?

It’s always tempting when imagining the future to think that new technologies will kill off old ways of doing things. But that’s rarely true, and even where it is it takes a long time. There are still a lot of people writing letters, despite e-mail and text messaging. TV didn’t kill radio (and the internet has made it stronger), and industrial farming didn’t kill off organic farming, either in the rich first world or the poor third world. So I would be reluctant to say that all industrial design practice will fundamentally change. But having said that, the job of some designers will be very different to their job today. Some will be niche, designing only for small specialised markets. Some will be designing the platforms that allow consumers to design their own products, deciding which elements of a product can be changed and which are fixed. And some people will practice industrial design even though they may not be trained and it may not be their full time job. Mass production will be around for a long time though, particularly for “low value” items such as packaging, and those objects will likely be designed in a similar way as today.

Do you believe that the future of mass customisation for the consumer market will be primarily to modify/develop product use/function or aesthetics/form?

That’s a really difficult one, and I’m not sure I know the answer. In many ways it’s easier to change the way a physical product looks than the way it functions, because you can visualise a product’s appearance on a computer screen, but you need to use it before you know if the function has improved or deteriorated. Then again there’s a lot of research which suggests consumers place much more value in a product which works exactly as they want, rather than one which looks the way they like. So I could imagine groups or forums or wikis springing up, dedicated to finding the best way to improve a product’s function, posting findings and results and tips for “noobs”, with different solutions solving different needs. But improving function is more likely to be a group undertaking I think, rather than one which individual consumers carry out.

So in the same way that only a minority are actually involved in the coding of Firefox, compared to those who download it (and change its appearance), maybe only a minority actually work on improving the function of a product compared to those who download the CAD file, change the way it looks and print it out. In that sense there might be much more customisation of appearance, but the value that is appeciated the most is in the improved functionality.

Without giving away any IP or compromising your research, what do you see as the future of consumer driven design?

I guess, unhelpfully , I would say there isn’t just one future but a number of different ones. One will be the idea of the corporation or brand encouraging users to design on top of its platform – the NikeID model; another is where consumers run riot doing whatever they can get away with – the MySpace model; and yet another is where consumers collaborate and share skills – the Wikipedia crowd sourcing model. I don’t know which of these will survive or if an entirely new way of working will emerge. I’d say Ponoko is closest to the MySpace approach, and I’d say this is a good thing though others may disagree! Probably my broad statement would be that when you put the means of production in the hands of consumers, they do things which traditional manufacturers cannot even dream of.

Thanks again to Matt, check out his site We Don’t Do Retro for more in-depth discussion around mass customization

Posted in Digital Fabrication, Duann Scott, Interviews, Thoughts + Opinions, Mass Customization, Technology by Duann | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Routing

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