Win a multi-color pack of Sugru rubber for your DIY projects & repairs! January 3

blog giveaway ends 25 January

What is Sugru?

Sugru is a super cool, air-curable rubber that you can use to improve, repair, or prototype all kinds of stuff.

It was developed over seven years by a group of product designers and material scientists lead by Jane who started the project while working on an MA in Product Design at RCA in London.

(You should really check out the Sugru story; there are photos of formulation experiments & application tests, the tales of funding struggles, and a new year’s resolution that ultimately lead to success.)

The end result is a simple, useful material chock full of great properties:
• electrically insulating so “it’s amazing for cable repairs”
• waterproof and flexible so it’s great to have along on outdoor excursions
• stable from -60°C/140°F to 180°C/360°F
• curable at air temperature so you don’t have to heat it
• is removable (with a little effort)
• sticks to almost anything & remains flexible when cured = perfect for prototypes

Update: This contest is closed. Thank you all for your comments.
And congratulations to Matthew C, Matthew P-F, Bob, Curtis W. and Stefania M.!! Enjoy your Sugru!

How to enter:

So now that you have an idea of what Sugru can do, we’d like to know…

How would you use Sugru in a Ponoko project? Tell us in the comments how you would use Sugru to enhance something you made with Ponoko’s laser cutting, cnc routing, or 3D printing service.

(more…)

Posted in Contests + Competitions, Materials by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

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NEW material: laser-cuttable cardstock in 3 colors! December 20

cardstock comes to Ponoko US = a whole new range of things to make!

Awhile back we gave our most frequent customers the chance to tell us what new material they wanted to see in the Ponoko materials catalog, and we promised to add the top two materials by the end of the year.

We brought on matte black silicone rubber last month, and today we’re announcing CARDSTOCK!

We even let our top users vote on what colors they most wanted, so we’ve got black, ivory, and red.

The cardstock laser engraves really well. It looks awesome, to be honest. And one trick you can do is use a medium vector engraving line to create perfect fold lines. Because it’s paper, its 100% recyclable and can be easily joined with glue or tape.

And you can buy a sample of our new cardstock materials for $2.50 each.

(more…)

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

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Molding precise parts with Sugru December 14

3d printed mold takes Sugru hack to the next level

If you don’t know about Sugru yet, you’ve got to check it out. The super easy silicone rubber hacking tool has generated quite an active user base, with outcomes usually following a distinctive hand-made aesthetic.

Until now.

Sugru hacking guru Carson used a Polyjet 3d printer to create a mold to replace the broken plug on his earphones. As you can see from the image above, the outcome has a high level of precision that really pushes Sugru into a whole new realm.

Don’t let the success of this example daunt you – although Carson had access to a high resolution printer and the CAD skills to go along with his technology, it still took a little good old ingenuity to keep everything running smoothly:

“Needed some mold-release chemicals to allow the parts to come out of the mold, like greasing a cupcake tin. Didn’t have any mold-release handy so I used olive oil.”

It will be exciting to see what happens when more Sugru fans incorporate DIY digital manufacturing into their workflow.

Via Sugru

Posted in 3D Printing, Guy Blashki, Maker Movement, Materials, Technology by Guy Blashki | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing

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Melamine Whiteboard for a White Winter December 12

You can even get some of it for free

If you’re in an office environment, you probably see melamine whiteboard every day.  It’s a very common material for shelving inside cabinets.  Your bathroom cabinet is also likely to be made from this stuff.  Whiteboard, and no, not the type you find in a classroom, is MDF that’s been coated with a thin, durable veneer of melamine.  The veneer is cleaner-friendly, and unlike uncoated MDF, it is moisture resistant.  Laser cutting whiteboard provides a very useful bonus: the heat from the laser seals the edges, making them more hard wearing.  Provided, the carbonised surface is not sanded off, the laser cut edge is considerably less susceptible to absorbing moisture than a conventionally cut one.

I have a whiteboard version of the madebydan coffee table that’s at least four years old.  It’s practically never free of clutter, it is frequently used as a step ladder (sorry, Dan), a crafting surface, drinks are spilled on it, food gets dropped on it.  Right now I have my feet on it.  Yet, after a quick wipe with a damp sponge, it’s nicely white again.

Whiteboard products and projects after the jump:

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Posted in Functional Art + Objects, Furniture + Lighting, Laser Cutting, Materials, Materials Catalog, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Awesome laser cut bendy corners December 9

Laser cutting technique for bending plywood

I’m a big fan of UK open-source & DIY company oomlout. I used their work as the basis of my laser cut project box design tutorial back in August.

They’re back again with a new construction technique that I can’t wait to try out. By simply creating a series of alternating slots in a length of plywood, it is possible to create flexible flowing curves: something that has always been challenging with the two-dimensional nature of laser cutting. They have provided their design files in a wide range of different formats so you can start experimenting with curves in your next laser cut project.

Posted in Electronics + Robotics, Laser Cutting Tutorial, Materials, Rich Decibels by Rich Decibels | Comments are off for this post

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Next-generation electronic printing technologies December 2

New techniques for printing antennae, memory chips, transistors, even solar cells
Printed antenna
Hobby 3D printers of the future look set to be pretty exciting, with a whole swathe of new technologies coming on stream. Above is one example: a 3D-printed antenna made from silver ink. The curved surface of the antenna makes it dramatically more efficient than the typical flat antenna you might find in your cellphone.
(more…)

Posted in 3D Printing, Electronics + Robotics, Inventions, Materials, Rich Decibels by Rich Decibels | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing

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3D printing as a record of growth November 21

Sweetest 3D printing so far?

3D printed sugar glasses

Design studio giffin’termeer for the Tokyo Designers Week 2011 have pushed the boundaries of 3D printing. In a novel time-based art approach designers Jess Griffin and Jim Termeer  grew sugar crystals on 3D printed substrates. (more…)

Posted in 3D Printing, Art, David McGahan, Materials by David McGahan | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing

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From 2D to 3D: Just add light November 12

Inkjet printers create light powered hinges

Imagine if you could take an everyday inkjet printer, and use it to create dynamic self-assembling three dimensional structures. Researchers at North Carolina State University have been doing exactly this, and the results have a simple elegance that is really quite mesmerising to behold.

Dr Michael Dickey, one of the authors of the paper “Self-folding of polymer sheets using local light absorption” explains the team’s findings:

This is a novel application of existing materials, and has potential for rapid, high-volume manufacturing processes or packaging applications.

It all happens remarkably quickly. A pre-stressed plastic sheet is run through a standard inkjet printer, where bold black lines are printed onto the material. When exposed to an infrared light source (such as a heat lamp) the darker areas absorb more energy and folds occur without any external mechanical intervention.

Click through for a video to see just how fast this shape-changing occurs. (more…)

Posted in Guy Blashki, Materials, Technology by Guy Blashki | Comments are off for this post

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NEW laser-cutting materials for NZ: 2 new felt colors! October 28

wine + camo

We’ve got 2 new holiday-friendly felt colors in the NZ materials catalog!

Say hello to 3mm 100% wool felt in a luscious grape color we call Bordeaux. (You can buy a sample of Bordeaux felt for $3NZ.)

And give a warm welcome to 3mm 100% wool felt in a mossy green hue we call Camouflage. (You can buy a sample of Camouflage felt for $3NZ)

These colors go great together as subtle, alternative holiday palette to the typical pop-ish cherry red and kelly green.

(more…)

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

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The new Personal Factory material sample store for New Zealand! October 4

Yippee! Material samples for NZ!

The wait is over. You can now buy samples of all 58 (and counting) materials featured in our New Zealand materials catalog!

Today we open the Personal Factory material sample store for New Zealand, a counterpart to our US material sample store launched earlier this year.

In addition to launching our NZ sample store, we’ve also added tons of new samples to the US material sample store since it opened — like CNC mdf and plywood, fingerprint resistant acrylics, 3D printed glazed ceramic, and more.

Pricing at the new NZ material sample store is conveniently in NZ dollars.

Samples start at just $3(NZ) each in NZ and $2.50(US) each in the US!

For NZ orders, domestic shipping starts at $2. International shipping starts at $6.50. Or pick up your samples at our HQ in Wellington and pay $0 shipping!

For US orders, domestic shipping starts at $5. International shipping starts at $15.

P.S. Be sure to check out The New Material Monthly for a look at all the new materials we’ve added each month.

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

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