Our first San Francisco meetup for 2011 will be at the new TechShop facility near the downtown area. It will be a perfect introduction to both Ponoko and TechShop’s open-access public workshop.
Come along to meet other makers and get your digital fabrication questions answered by the Ponoko SF team – including Ponoko CEO David ten Have.
Community member Kate Compton (inventor of the stereoscopic laser-cut ForeSight) will be providing an end-to-end demo of the creation and making of a laser-cut design. After the design file is generated on the spot, you’ll be able to see it actually being made on one of TechShop’s laser-cutters. Kate is a wealth of information and you can also ask her about her neat design techniques in Illustrator…
As always we’ll have material samples and some cool Ponoko projects to check out. Alongside that Ponoko staffer Josh Reuss has been testing out different stains on wood samples, which will be on hand for your purusal.
If you’ve got any projects to show off, don’t hesitate to bring them along – and let us know if you’ve got any questions.
Posted in Events, Ponoko News by Josh Judkins | Comments are off for this post
Many thanks to everyone who have sent messages. Ponoko HQ is located about 400km north of Christchurch – our team is safe and as far as we can tell our families and friends are also safe.
We know how much you love getting your latest Ponoko project, peeling back that protective layer, and pushing your laser cut pieces out of that P2 sheet.
We want to bring you and that moment closer together; so we’ve added *more laser power*!
Making turnaround times for laser cutting now average: 25% faster for free accounts and 35% faster for Prime accounts
Everyone’s order is unique, so exact making times will vary.
To get your Ponoko order as fast as humanly/robotically possible, think about upgrading to a Prime account.
With Prime, you get the fastest turn around times, cheaper making costs, and discounted shipping.
Another glimpse of our 3d printed future:
YOU are the shape of things to come
Every now and then, we come across scientists determined to use digital manufacturing technologies to make better humans. Or at least, to make humans better.
Over at Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Laboratory they take this pursuit very seriously. Instead of the regular printed output being made from plastics, these guys have been exploring the potential for the machines we know and love to print in biological material.
The above clip shows an ear being printed, and among other tests under way at Cornell are the manufacture of heart valves and intervertibral discs.
It’s still early days for the printed human, but progress moves quickly when the guys in white coats tackle a problem head-on.
So what’s the prediction for you and me? Apparently within 20 years, this technology will be mainstream. Keep your ears peeled…
Watz is well known for his visualizations of software processes, usually in the form of colorful geometric abstractions for print imagery or screen based media.
In the past few years, Watz has explored the potential of digital fabrication in rendering computational patterns, most notably in his laser cut plywood series based on Processing.
His residency at MakerBot will allow him to continue this path toward a more sculptural approach.
With unlimited plastic and 2 months access to the BotFarm, Watz plans to produce models for his upcoming exhibition in Oslo, release an open source Processing library for 3D modeling, and upload a series of models to Thingiverse.
The Laser Cutter Roundup — a weekly dose of laser-cut love: #17
Hey, Sam here. I’m back collecting this week’s posts from The Laser Cutter!
This was a pretty slow week – I found myself in bed Monday, Tuesday, and a good part of Wednesday with the flu. Above is a tetrahedron construction from Brian Zeng.
Retro gaming is well and truly a passion for Danish maker Rasmus Sørensen. For some time, he has been building MAME cabinets… and his latest project has been receiving well-deserved acclaim far and wide.
The Nanocade is a “micro bar-top” unit specially designed to house a small computer or netbook with a 10 inch screen. Load up the system with your favourite ROMS, and you’ll soon be blazing away in authentic pixellated glory.
Rasmus is a learn-by-doing kind of guy, and he’s known for sharing his process with the retro gaming scene. Not only is the Nanocade available to purchase from the Ponoko Showroom, today we also feature a special interview to discover some of the mysteries behind this micro marvel. (more…)
We just added 4 new delicious flavors of leather to the USA catalog, Dark Brown, Auburn, Tan and Black. They are 2.5mm/0.098″ in thickness and are vegetable tanned meaning no chemicals were harmed in the making of this leather.
Great for making belts, picture frames, hand bags, book binding, carving, stamping.
Hint – Laser cutting holes in your pattern and pieces can be stitched neatly by hand.
Recently, I had a stall at a local market, where I was selling my jewellery. The day was long, the crowds were small, and there was lots of time to kill. Of course, I got chatting to my stallholder neighbour Dael who makes carry bags and purses from used plastic bread bags. Appropriately, her stall is titled “breadbags”. The idea is amazing! She collects plastic bread bags from various brands of bread, cuts them into sheets and fuses them together in four layers to create a durable multi-coloured surface. These are then sewn to make practical and long-lasting carry bags of various sizes. I’m kicking myself for not taking photos of these.
Interestingly, Dael called her popular bags “recycled”, which I believe, completely undermines her design intent. Recycling is essentially downcycling, in most cases. It is taking something that had value and fabricating it into something of lesser value, using a lot of energy in the process. Recycling implies devaluing. “Breadbags” have more value than “bread bags”, so they are upcycled products.
The lifespan of a bread bag is negligible. It’s a short trip from the bakery to the landfill, via the supermarket and your pantry. I reuse bread bags for carrying lunches, etc, until they get grubby and find themselves in confines of a rubbish bin next to all the fragrant chicken skins, filthy clingwrap and all the other torn up, squashed packaging that cannot be recycled. Ok, so in my house the life of a bread bag is a few weeks instead of a few days. It hardly makes a difference.
Gilbert Riedelbauch is the Design Arts coordinator and Head of Foundation Studies at the Australian National University School of Art, so as you’d imagine he knows a thing or two about digital fabrication technologies. In fact, Gilbert has been using digital technologies since the mid 90’s together with his craft/design practice. His current focus is on creating light objects that feature various materials and use a range of fabrication processes, such as rapid prototyping and laser cutting.
Gilbert found out about Ponoko from a colleague and has been fabricating his designs using the Ponoko system since 2009. Having worked in 3D as a silversmith and as a designer, he was very interested in creating 3D forms out of flat lasercut sheets or flexible material.
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Ponoko San Francisco Meetup
