The best time of year to be a maker
We’ve already covered some scary stuff this month, with posts about Personal Factory Projects for Halloween, the 123D Halloween Challenge, and the Crania Anatomica Filigre KickStarter project.
But with my favourite horror film festival about to start I’m in the mood to wring a little more out of the subject by having a look at some recent ghoulish additions to Thingiverse:
Halloween fridge magnets
These designs by David Shaw (aka daviddotshaw) have a recessed hole in the back to hold a 10mm magnet, and are small enough to print a few of them at once.
Download from Thingiverse: Ghost, Bat, Pumpkin
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Posted in 3D Printing, Derek Quenneville, Downloadable by Derek Quenneville | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing
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Print your own beefy construction set.
There’s a brand of industrial Erector Set called 80-20. It’s all based off of extruded aluminum beams with a specific T-slot on each face of the rectangular extrusion. Systems like the Shop-Bot and Lasersaur are based off that very mechanic. So, it stands to reason that some clever person would think to print their own, and Thingiverse user Luis has done just that. You can download and print your own here.
via MAKE
Posted in Downloadable, Matthew Borgatti by Matthew Borgatti | Comments are off for this post
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Physical and digital products combined
The Rev–>Table from Supermechanical comes with the digital file for the design of the table built in. A QR code containing the DXF files for the table is laser-etched into an aluminum plate embedded in the tabletop.
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Posted in Digital Fabrication, Downloadable, Furniture + Lighting, Taylor Gilbert by Taylor Gilbert | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Routing
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A very userful abbreviation.
You may not realise this, but PET is one of the most ubiqutous plastics around. Chances are you’ve got it within arm’s reach. I’m talking about plastic bottles. PETG is essentially the same polymer, but with a lower melting point, and it’s extruded in sheet form for commercial applications.
PETG has none of the glamour of acrylic. It doesn’t come in bright colours, it doesn’t feel substantial, the engraving quality on it isn’t amazing. So why bother? PETG is very impact resistant. Unlike acrylic, it won’t snap or shatter if you drop it. You can heat form it, you can cold bend it, you can rivet it and most relevantly, of course, you can laser cut it. It is available in conveniently thinner-than-acrylic thicknesses of 0.5mm and upwards. PETG is also recyclable, so it’s better than a Hummer. Although that’s not saying much.
So what’s it good for?
The combination of flexibility and durability makes thin PETG a suitable choice for packaging such as the box above from Chris Lee. Joe used this material to design and make a surface protector for a turntable, keeping it free from dirt and scratches. Clear acrylic would be a less suitable choice for this application because it’s brittle. Thin PETG is a great material for stencils because its transparency helps with the registration. It is also a perfect choice for flexi-rulers, such as the surfboard-shaping template above from YakasDesign. It should be noted that engraving somewhat compromises the structural integrity of the material, and that needs to be taken into consideration during the design stage.
Josh Reuss designed very useful bookmarks for people who still prefer to read on paper. These tiny but mighty corner tags will keep books free from unsightly pig’s ears. The files for these are free to download, so you can make your own with Personal Factory. These are little, so lots will fit on a P1, and you can make a corner tag for everyone in you book club! Another free PETG download is a vary-form garment ruler. This is a standard version, but it can be easily customised to create a ruler for specific proportions that are not catered to by generic pattern drafting equipment. The engraving can be filled in to make the markings more visible.
PETG is available from Ponoko NZ, Ponoko US and Formulor.
Posted in Downloadable, Laser Cutting, Materials Catalog, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting
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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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Prolific digifabbing is contageous
Jacob Roberts is probably familiar to many of you. He’s one of the guys behind the weekly FabBlab broadcasts, a show exclusively for Ponoko that’s broadcast live from PBCastTV and then uploaded to the Ponoko Youtube channel.
FabBlab shows off the kinds of things you can make with Personal Factory, and Jacob is utterly mad about making stuff.
He has used his Personal Factory to create objects ranging from quirky to practical. These include rubberband guns, cardboard shelves, camera holsters, and a back-light sign to name a few.
Some of the objects are laser cut, some are 3D printed and some are a combination of both and include electronic parts. Jacob promises that it won’t be long till we see something CNC’d in his showroom.
A 3D printing enthusiast, Jacob built his own 3D printer which he uses to make odds and ends. It was through the DIY 3D printing community that he learnt about Ponoko. Once he looked into Personal Factory, he was hooked. We are more than happy that he is comfortable with this addiction!
For Jacob, Personal Factory has replaced the traditional making method of printing out templates, tracing them and cutting material with a band saw. His list of creations is truly impressive. What’s more impressive is that all of his design files are available for free from his showroom and come with video instructions via his weekly Ponoko blog posts.
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Posted in 3D Printing, Downloadable, Electronics + Robotics, Functional Art + Objects, Furniture + Lighting, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories, Toys + Games, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting
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Brown students design a chair cut from a single 2 x 4.
Ok, so this project doesn’t absolutely require the intimate mechanical precision that comes standard with CNC tools, but provides a wonderful example of how you can make the most of your cuts by having them do double duty.
This project, by Ian Gonsher and Jake Geller, shows off just how much you can get out of a single piece of material. This project has some especially useful concepts for anyone wanting to squeeze every last ounce of value out of their laser cutting. If you take a close look, you can see how a single cut (accounting for the kerf of a bandsaw) will cut out the left hand side of one part and the right hand side of another simultaneously. This is an essential design skill for cramming a large number of parts on a single sheet like the folks over at Wood Marvels manage in every design.
You can download the design here, and find a bit more info on the project here.
Posted in Downloadable, Furniture + Lighting, Matthew Borgatti by Matthew Borgatti | Comments are off for this post
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You may recall my post a few weeks ago about Nirav Patel’s incredible physical keygen project. Well, he’s stepped it up to high security compatible keys in his latest hack.
After spending some time with Schuyler Towne of Open Locksport he discovered his parametric 3d printing process could be applied to more esoteric and high security locks, like the disc detainer lock pictured above.
If you feel like fooling around with some lock picking yourself you could download Nirav’s files off of Thingiverse and get cracking.
Posted in 3D Printing, Design, Digital Fabrication, Downloadable, Functional Art + Objects, Matthew Borgatti by Matthew Borgatti | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Routing
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One project thats pushing the design boundaries of the humble coffee cup…
On my weekly web trawl for cool 3D print projects and news, I found this interesting project. One coffee cup a day by design agency cunicode.
Too often product designers take their work too seriously (with the likes of Philippe Starck, Droog Design, etc as notable exceptions) So I find the sense of humour and creativity embodied in this project quite refreshing. Some cups are more conceptual than others and there is definitely varying levels of usability, but overall it makes a great set. I particularly like the faceted low res polygon cup. cunicode has also provided Rhinocerous3D and 3DS Max template files for you to customise and upload your own coffee cups. More images after the jump (more…)
Posted in 3D Printing, Art, David McGahan, Design, Downloadable, Functional Art + Objects by David McGahan | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing
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My introduction to OpenSCAD through a quick, practical project
My friend Alex came to me with a project last week. His Logitech WingMan Rumble Pad gamepad was missing an analog stick and could I possibly print a replacement? (Answer: yes!)
It came up when talking with Andrew Plumb – if you’ve got something small and measurable to do, OpenSCAD is a great way to go. It lets you precisely script 3D primitives into position to make cool stuff. And of course it exports to STL format, perfect for your home 3D printer or your Personal Factory!
First I’ll show what the printing process on my MakerBot Cupcake was like, then I’ll walk through making a similar stick in OpenSCAD. Here’s gamepad as I received it: (more…)
Posted in 3D Printing, 3D Printing Tutorial, Derek Quenneville, Downloadable, Software, Toys + Games by Derek Quenneville | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing
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