The NZ sample store is your one-stop-shop for swatches from the Ponoko NZ materials catalog. And just last week we added 2 new felt colors to the NZ catalog: bordeaux and camouflage.
Speaking of felt, we’ve got a *FELT SALE* going on that will make you feel warm and fuzzy all over.
In the meantime, read up on Yana’s material of the month — the very useful PETG.
Posted in Materials Catalog by Ponoko Team | Comments are off for this post
A new addition to Dutch Design Week this year was the first annual 3D Printing Event. This blogger happens to be located in the Netherlands, so of course I went to the event so I can tell all of you about it. (more…)
Arduino. It’s a catchy, funny little word… and the Arduino we have come to know and love has had a wide-ranging impact on the world of DIY electronics.
So where did it all begin?
The five handsome devils pictured above are the guys responsible for this little wonder. Hailing from the town of Ivrea in Northern Italy, Massimo Banzi (that’s him on the right) would relax after a long day teaching at Ivrea’s Interaction Design Institute by heading down to a local watering hole, the Bar di Re Arduino. You can imagine that an enthusiastic and forward-thinking electrical engineer and his buddies would have some pretty interesting conversations when they get together over a few drinks…
Since its launch in 2005, people have used Anduino to do some wonderful things. Reflecting on the past few years, Banzi says that the most important impact of Arduino is the democratization of engineering.
“Fifty years ago, to write software you needed people in white aprons who knew everything about vacuum tubes. We’ve enabled a lot of people to create products themselves.”
There is a fantastic article over at IEEE Spectrum that takes a deeper look into the story of Arduino. It’s interesting reading with many insights from Massimo and his collaborators David Cuartielles, Gianluca Martino, Tom Igoe and David Mellis.
DIY sous vide cooker
Sous-vide cooking is all the rage right now, thanks in part to the rise of “molecular gastronomy” (science in the kitchen). Sous vide is a method that uses a precisely-maintained low temperature water bath to cook a vacuum-sealed portion of food.
Chemical engineer Aaron wanted to give sous-vide cooking a try, but didn’t like the price tag of commercially-available units, so he built his own cooker controller.
He used off-the-shelf electronics and Personal Factory to laser-cut the enclosure to his specifications. His project post goes into great detail, documenting both the build and subsequent experiments with the system: it’s great reading for those of us that like a bit of maths with their hacking.
Did you ever imagine that a 3d printed instrument could sound this incredible?
EOS, a product design/manufacturing company printed a Stradivarius violin a few months back. Here it is, playing “In the Meadow” and sounding pretty fantastic.
The Challenge is meant to solicit designs printable on a Thing-o-Matic that play with existing conventions and personalize/improve them in some way. Objects can be tagged with “NewMuseumChallenge” on Thingiverse without any say from the designer, so it’s not 100% clear what is and isn’t in the contest, but here are three great designs that were so tagged: (more…)
Having snagged himself a shiny new Makerbot, Chris Fenton has been busy printing out all the parts to assemble his very own mechanical computer.
Given that his day job is designing supercomputers, it is no surprise that this mild-mannered electrical engineer is well and truly up to the task.
The components shown ticking along here will eventually become part of a larger project; an extraordinary electro-mechanical device that does a whole lot more than mere counting. So why is he doing this?
Because I have a 3D printer… and I can!
The files should be appearing over on Thingiverse once it is all finished.
Stay tuned…
Making DIY programming more accessible to eager young minds, the latest iteration of Minibloq is now open to the public in its Beta phase.
Minibloq is a graphical programming environment specifically targeted towards helping primary students, kids and beginners learn more about DIY electronics and hardware.
With a drag-and-drop interface and gentle learning curve, the mysteries of Arduino programming unfold and the real-time error checking keeps everything on track. Much thought has gone into the extensive feature list, and it looks as though the application is shaping up well to match, and indeed exceed, expectations from the recent Kickstarter campaign.
A quick video tour through some of the features follows after the break.
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