available at Ponoko US

We’ve got 3 updates to the Ponoko US materials catalog. Up first, a new thickest thickness of 6mm/0.236″ in Green Acrylic.

Next, a super useful and versatile new thinnest thickness of 1.5mm/0.06″ in Clear Acrylic. Great for use as a protective layer.

Last but definitely not least, we’ve now got Polarizing Film! This light grey laminate material of .8mm/0.03″ has a tinted polarizing layer and glossy finish. It’s typically used in making sunglasses and LCD screens.

Wanna know how polarization works? Check out this cute Polarization 101.

And keep your eye on the blog next week for a material related announcement we think you’ll really like!

Posted in Materials, Materials Catalog by Ponoko Team | Comments are off for this post

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dayglo design options from Deutschland

The folks at Formulor have been busy! The Makerplatz festival in Berlin, the world’s longest marble run, cute lasercut tape-cutting freebies, and now…

4 new fluorescent acrylics added to their materials catalog!
Say guten tag to fluorescent yellow, red, blue, and green.

Fluorescent acrylic absorbs light through its surface and emits it through its edges, creating a super cool effect especially mixed with engraving.

Posted in Materials, Materials Catalog by Ponoko Team | Comments are off for this post

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and the Italian words for the colors sound really pretty

Vectorealism, our Italian based laser-cutting hub, has announced the introduction of felt to their materials catalog!

Their felt is a blend of cotton, synthetic, and wool fibers dyed in 6 rich, graphic colors — Arancione, Azzuro, Giallo, Grigio chiaro, Marrone, and Verde chiaro. And the addition of the synthetic fibers eliminates the burnt edge and leaves a glossy finish!

To celebrate, Vectorealism is providing FREE *worldwide* shipping on every felt-only order placed before October 11, midnight CET.

How’s that for warm fuzzies?
Full details here.

Orders can use any size or color felt, but must only use felt. Only one order per customer.
Free shipping provided via refund of shipping costs.

Posted in Materials, Materials Catalog by Ponoko Team | Comments are off for this post

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making, crafting, gardening, street art, sewing, hacking & more

Makerplatz, a festival of making, collaboration, and co-production, commenced yesterday in Berlin and runs through tomorrow, October 1.

Most of the workshops and activities take place tomorrow, include making a chair from a shipping pallet, playing nice games in public spaces, laser graffiti, political birdhouses, design thinking for start-ups, and more.

If you’re interested in the Basics of Soldering, be sure to register for that one.

Our friends at Formulor, our Berlin based laser-cutting hub, will also be cutting the winning design idea from yesterday’s digital design demo.

And the New Zealand/Germany connection doesn’t end there. Outdoor-only performers Charity Children, a duo from NZ, will be playing at the Potato Harvest Festival.

The Google translated description of the Potato Harvest hilariously reads:

Despite a season that was once again extremely unfavorable for the cultivation of potatoes, of course, we will celebrate again our now traditional potato harvest. Supported by Leif cook our food the tubers will miss this time a Nordic touch. As usual are rare and ancient varieties like the Red Emma, Blue Swede, Aeggeblomme, etc. Vitelotte fried, baked, boiled, mashed and otherwise got small.

So if you’re in Berlin, be sure to spend your Saturday at Makerplatz makin’ stuff, canning potatoes, and squeezing your own lemonade.

Posted in Events, Kristen Turner by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

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Instructable from Mark Brian Wagner

I came across a cool laser-cut electronics project this week: the gear clock. Maker Brian Wagner has put together a thorough Instructable so you can make your own. He’s using an Arduino-clone to send a ‘tick’ signal to the two motors, and a little add-on module called the ChronoDot to keep the clock really accurate.

It’s a great Instructable because he goes into detail about how to create gears in Inkscape, along with his experience driving the hobby laser cutter at his local hackerspace in Louisville.

Posted in Downloadable, Electronics + Robotics, Functional Art + Objects, Laser Cutting, Rich Decibels by Rich Decibels | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Who wouldn’t want a free laser cutter?

The fantastic maker tutorial website Instructables is running a competition to win a Zing laser cutter from Epilog. Prizes for runners-up include a MIG welder, a band saw, and a bench drill press. The competition ends November 14th. How to enter:

Post an Instructable that shows off your amazing skills and creativity, and proves that you’ll make good use of an Epilog Zing laser cutter. Document your project with lots of great photos, and provide clear instructions so others can learn from your work. And be sure to tell us what you’ll do with the Zing if you win!

Posted in Contests + Competitions, Taylor Gilbert by Taylor Gilbert | Comments are off for this post

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3D printed and Lasercut projects in Atlanta galleries

Kevin Byrd is a seasoned digifabber and has been using Ponoko Personal Factory before the US hub even opened!  Kevin’s formal design education means that 3D printing, CNC routing and laser cutting are established core tools in his design process.  His latest projects with Personal Factory incorporate laser cutting and 3D printing and are an engaging mix of practical and conceptual explorations of form and function.

The Femur Table was designed for The Southern Design Concern exhibition titled “Fixed”, which as the name suggests, centered around repaired objects, where ‘repair’ is a production method, extending beyond its essential notion that focuses on literal or aesthetic implications.

My concept was to fix a table leg by replacing it with a leg bone. With the proliferation of 3D printing technologies, in the near future we may see dentists fabricating teeth or doctors creating organs on-demand. So I wanted to show that through the piece itself. I kept the polygon angularity of the bone maintained as a signifier of the modeling process.

(more…)

Posted in 3D Printing, Art, Functional Art + Objects, Furniture + Lighting, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post

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

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Improved servos, greater control and (most importantly) more annoying

Javier Lander sent in this update to his annoying IKEA lamp that we recently featured. As the above video demonstrates, the Arduino equipped IKEA hack is more animated and indeed more annoying than ever before.

Also known as the SM-1 Project over at ArduinoArts, the lamp now boasts improved servo control, a manual mode using a 3-axis accelerometer and even lights in the base for some extra bling.

Clearly still a work in progress, Javier is dreaming big here with a growing list of upcoming improvements. Head over to the source to see just how annoying this lamp is going to get, along with some great photos of all the components that make the magic happen.

Via ArduinoArts

Posted in Electronics + Robotics, Furniture + Lighting, Guy Blashki, Hardware, Maker Movement by Guy Blashki | Comments are off for this post

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Spaceships created with just a word

Ponoko forum readers may remember my tutorial for  ShipWright, the Blender addon that assembles spaceships from the Shipyard project. Although ShipWright was really cool, the setup process was a bit cumbersome, especially for new Blender users.

Now there’s a faster way: Dolf Veenvliet (aka macouno) has created a service called ShapeWright that uses WebGL to to generate the same spaceship models right there in your web browser. (more…)

Posted in 3D Printing, Derek Quenneville by Derek Quenneville | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing

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Thingiverse user DrWeidinger shows off some attractive toys.

Here’s an elegant little FDM printed toy featuring magnetic spheres for fastenings. Just pop any of the many brands of popular ball magnet toys (you know the ones) into the specially shaped housings in the printed parts and assemble them into nifty shapes.

Since the spheres rotate freely in their housings they can spin to face the optimal direction for maximum holding force. Neat!

Download it on Thingiverse. Thanks, Dr. Weidinger.

Posted in 3D Printing, Matthew Borgatti, Toys + Games by Matthew Borgatti | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing

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