Great Name Cute Product

The Modular Robot Coaster/Trivet by Museum of Robots are super cute interlocking pieces of robot that work alone as coasters and together as a trivet. Available from their Ponoko Showroom in either Sky Blue+Cloud White Acrylic (6.0 mm thick) or Dark+Light stained Rimu wood (7.0 mm thick) and each set of 6 come boxed in a metal tin.

Museum of Robots also have some really beautiful homewares available from their own site including a robot cowboy series. sweet.


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What you need to do right now

Attention US Ponoko users
With our new San Francisco making hub up and humming, we have begun a globally distributed fabrication network connected to the Internet by our online making system.

As a result, there are 2 important changes:

1) Some of the materials in the NZ catalog will not appear in the US catalog (this is the nature of localization).

2) The price to ship stuff from the New Zealand hub to the USA will increase to true market rate after the end of August 2009.

For example: Colour Rimu Veneer MDF is available in NZ, but not the USA. And the cost to ship it from NZ to the USA will increase by about 7 times (yes, that’s how much we’ve been subsidizing your shipping rate!!!)

Why the changes?
While we continue to grow the USA materials catalog at a rapid pace, not all the NZ materials are available there right now and some will never be available. This is because some of them can not be sourced in the USA (particularly in the case of materials like native timbers).

What you need to do right now
Check your NZ made products, particularly those you are selling in your Showroom, and ensure they can use materials available in the US catalog. Remember to check the material type, color and thickness.

When you find the US replacement material you MAY need to re-design your product to be made in America using materials available in the US catalog. If so, then add to the name of your new design “USA” (and  add to the name of your original design “NZ”).

But if your product’s NZ material is not available in the US catalog, then you’re going to face the true (higher) shipping cost from the NZ hub.

But here’s how to beat the shipping price hike:

1. Make an order from the NZ hub before the end of this month using the NZ materials and the current subsidized shipping rates. You might like to stock up;
2. Search locally in the US for a material to replace the NZ material, then do a ‘Materials Request’ (Prime members only) to make your design at the US hub; or
3. Edit your Showroom item description to state that your product is only available to be shipped locally from the NZ hub.

If you’re paralyzed with excitement and not sure what to do with your Showroom listing just yet, then we recommend  you remove it from ‘product for sale’ and list it as a ‘design for sale’. This way you continue to commercialize your creativity but without the fulfillment hassles and costs.

Of course if you have any questions or ideas please do not hesitate to give us a shout … service [at] ponoko [dot] com.

Collaborations Between Artists, Designers, and Industry That Re-Imagine Ceramics for the 21st Century at the Museum of Arts and Design, NYC.
Spanish Lace by Edyta Cieloch

Object Factory illustrates how artists and designers in the 21st century are re-imagining the possibilities of this most traditional of mediums through collaborations with industry that enhance and sometimes subvert the industrial process. The exhibition also examines the unexpected uses of ceramics as kitchen appliances, knives, and even digital electronics, made possible by new technologies.
Ornamental Inheritance by Jo Meesters
“Object Factory explores a material that has been central to the Museum’s mission since our inception and is a timely survey of contemporary ceramic production and design,” said Holly Hotchner, the Museum’s Nanette L. Laitman Director. “The exhibition examines the creative collaboration between artists, designers and industry today and showcases new trends, techniques and development in the field.”

Object Factory is composed of three interrelated sections: Reinventing Tradition, Industrial Interference & High Tech Design. Check out the full exhibition of amazing ceramics here.

Guest-curated by internationally recognized artist and designer Marek Cecula, with the assistance of Dagmara Kopola, Object Factory features more than 200 objects from eighteen countries, including works by Swedish artist Kjell Rylander, American jeweler and designer Ted Muehling, Dutch designers Hella Jongerius and Jurgen Bey, and Russian American designer Constantin Boym among others. Manufacturers represented in the exhibition include Bernardaud, Nymphenburg, Rosenthal, and Royal Tichelaar Makkum.

It is only a matter of time before we see Australian ceramicists such as Kirsten Coelho and Bruce Nuske added to the list.

Jetsons Cuisine

Nico Kläber from Köln International School of Design, Germany is one of the 8 finalists in the Electrolux Design Lab ’09 with his Moléculaire taking 3D printing into the world of gastronomy.

Moléculaire is influenced by chefs that scientifically and painstakingly experiment with food and food states to surprise and provoke fresh ideas in cooking. Kläber recognizes that this approach, as it currently exists, requires great skill, time and knowledge. The Moléculaire simplifies the process and acts as a computer numerical control (CNC) food printer for both professional and domestic kitchens. It autonomously prepares basic and otherwise difficult to create two and three dimensional parts of meals. It works with a layer by layer printing process using small particles from diverse ingredients. This provides simplicity, accuracy, repeatability and, of course, great tasting food!

This is interesting and not a very big stretch from the Jetsons or Star Trek concepts but at least Electrolux are giving it a nod along with the Teleport Fridge by Dulyawat Wongnawa and the Naturewash by Zhenpeng Li.
Not sure the folks at the Slow Food Movement would think much of the Moléculaire with the implied haste and separation of food from nature and seasonal freshness.

Watch the Henrik Otto, Senior VP of Global Design (with a megalomanic title) at Electrolux talk it up…

via Yanko Design

Launching October 2009, UCODO is an online platform for the “Mass Customization” of lifestyle products using Rapid Manufacturing and Laser Sintering Technologies.

More exciting news on the Mass Customization front is UCODO a new London based company set up to democratize the personalization of everyday products. .

UCODO stands for ‘User Co-Designed Objects’, bringing about the notion of ODOs (‘Original Design Objects’) and CODOs (‘Co-Designed Objects’)

Developed using Digital Forming, mentioned in a previous Ponoko blog post, UCODOâ„¢ presents the consumer with the ability to view and personalise products they are about to buy in 3D.
Customers can choose from a variety of products, such as sunglasses, jewellery, pens, clocks, vases, and lamps, and can rotate the product within a virtual 3D space. The products can then be modified in real time – stretched, twisted, embossed, assembled – all with the simple movement of the mouse. Customers can adjust the form, colour and material of their chosen product, then save designs in an online library, and purchase when ready for delivery within 2 weeks.

Curious?

mass customization via laser-sintering at Science Museum, London

OMI.MGX by Assa Ashuach for .MGX by Materialise

It is awesome to see more and more businesses and opportunities opening up to normalize mass customization. The greater the public awareness that these technologies are becoming available, the less people will accept mass produced, disposable products.

Rapid Manufacturing and Digital Forming technologies are showcased in a free event called “Create and Make – Print in 3D” from 25 to 27 August, 2009, at the Science Museum, London.

From chairs and lamps to pens and lemon squeezers, 3D printers can make almost anything. See one of these incredible machines in action and get hands on with 3D printed products. Chat to scientists and designers about how 3D printing is going to change manufacturing forever.

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ILUMY launches Milk or Sugar, a database of websites where you can customize and order products online.

Via the website, visitors can create their customized Sleeping bag, Samurai sword, Bicycle, Dress, Drums, Shoes, Skate board, Scrabble board, Watch, Machine parts, Perfume, Lingerie, Wallpaper or Lego model, and much more.

Reviews of a built to order Fire extinguisher, Guitar, Radio controlled car, Protein shakes, Robot, Canoe and many more products are in progress. The site will publish new vendor reviews daily.

At Milk Or Sugar, visitors can check pricing, shipping destinations, payment options and the number of basic models for each vendor. The site only publishes products that can actually be completely ordered, paid and shipped online. So car or kitchen configurators are, for now, excluded.

Stefan Hoevenaar of MilkOrSugar: “We researched perhaps all websites that offer customized physical products. In many categories, affordable quality products can now be customized, ordered and shipped to your home. The range of things that can be customized is widening rapidly. New manufacturers appear almost every day.”

ILUMY is an Amsterdam based agency of designers and entrepreneurs who have now beat me to achieve part of my own PhD Research. Take it as a cautionary tale that as soon as you have an idea, realize it as quickly as possible or someone else is sure to do it. Really exciting to see this portal go live and help people find mass customizable products… Now let’s watch it grow…

acrila, design of contemporary furniture where the form, the image, the transparency and the light play subtly.

acrila, is a french based manufacturer and line of furniture made of, well, acrylic.
It is interesting to see the broad range of products they have produced and although there are so many there seems to be no real house style, there are a few fresh and interesting designs. Although I am not sure what kind of magic they use to make this odd guitar lamp stand up??

via Design Milk

Create the Next Community Designed Flash Drive

Mimobot partnered with Infectious to come up with a plan to find the next design for a mimobot. Grand prize winner gets $1,000 and produced as a future run of MIMOBOT designer USB flash drives! Check out previous designs to get an idea of what is hot on the Mimobot.

Infectious make and sell product skins designed by an online artist community in 3 simple steps…
1. Artists submit designs
2. Everybody votes
3. Winners become Infectious product

Products to be skun, include iPhone, iPod, laptops, skateboards, cars and entire rooms….

Via Josh Spear