Using open source 3D printers to promote sustainable development.

Queen’s University in Canada is sponsoring a competition for the best sustainable technologies printable on an open source 3D printer. What does that mean? I don’t really know. The competition has been left open for anything you can imagine that fits “sustainable technologies that fit human development needs.” The only firm requirement appears to be that it is printable on an open source 3D printer, such as a RepRap.

The contest closes February 1st 2012 and winners will be announced February 15th. First prize wins $1000 (Canadian dollars so around $968 USD right now), second prize wins $250, and 3 runners up receive a mention as runners up. To enter, upload your design to Thingiverse with the tag “QAS Contest.”

For more information, there is a detailed pdf on their site.

Via BoingBoing

Posted in 3D Printing, Contests + Competitions, Open Source, Taylor Gilbert by Taylor Gilbert | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing

Related posts:

1. 

   Printable upgrades for your MakerBot
2. 

   3D printable clock
3. 

   Why open design is a ruthless ideal
4. 

   3D printable laser cutter

Carve a digital jack-o-lantern.

Autodesk is running a Halloween challenge to promote its new free 3D modeling software 123D. The video above is a short tutorial to introduce you to the software and to show you how to “carve” a jack-o-lantern in 123D.

Digital pumpkins in three shapes are available for download from their site to get you started. Anyone who uploads their digital jack-o-lantern to the 123D gallery before October 31 will get a free 123D t-shirt.

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

Related posts:

1. 

   More features for the QR_STENCILER

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

Related posts:

1. 

   Second Generation Open Source Laser Cutter
2. 

   Cut 1mm Plastic With a 1 Watt Laser
3. 

   Urban Redecorating
4. The simplest article of clothing is tran

   Surprisingly beautiful laser cut t-shirts

contest closes 31 August

This month the Ponoko blog is teaming up with MAKE to hook you up with some hard copy Make: magazines, plus one super lucky winner will also get an Arduino starter kit.

We’re giving away a year’s subscription to Make: magazine to four winners. And one grand prize winner will get the subscription plus a Getting Started with Arduino Kit v2.0 from The Maker Shed store!

How to enter

---

To enter, just tell us the coolest thing you ever made and leave a link for us to see a photo. It can be anything: a robot, a scarf, a table, a delicious chocolate cake — anything as long as YOU made it!

We’re not here to judge your projects, we just want you to share. So we’ll be picking the winners randomly.

Update: Please just one entry per person. Thanks.
Update 2: Don’t forget to leave a link to a photo of what you made!

Contest closes Wednesday 31 August at 10pm pacific time.

Prizes

---

• Grand Prize: 1 winner will receive a one year subscription to Make: magazine plus Getting Started with Arduino Kit v2.0 (over $100 value)
• Four winners will each receive a one year subscription to Make: magazine

(more…)

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

Related posts:

Design contest with new brushed metallic materials

Our Germany-based digital making partner Formulor has recently added two posh new materials to their materials catalog:
• brushed gold cover acrylic with black core
• brushed silver cover acrylic with black core

Each of these brushed metallics has a black core which creates awesome contrast for heavy raster engraving.

Use one of these new materials, and your design might be made for free.

Email Formulor a photo of your design using either brushed gold or brushed silver by 31 August, and you’ll be entered to win a full refund on that order.

The folks at Formulor will choose 2 winners, one for each material.

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

Related posts:

1. 

   How to reduce burn marks on acrylic
2. 

   We Love Red TINT Acrylic
3. 

   New fingerprint resistant acrylic materials
4. 

   How to make snug joints in Acrylic.

some online education for you, son

Just a reminder that we’re giving away 5 one-month, premium subscriptions to the fabulous library of software training videos at lynda.com

Score one of these subscriptions and have software mastery at your fingertips. Learn Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, Google SketchUp, AutoCAD, Blender, 3ds Max, Maya, Rhino, ZBrush, Flash, In-Design, etc etc

Already a design pro? There’s tons of other stuff to learn: different computer programming languages, content management systems, and more.

lynda.com has over 1,000 top quality video courses for over 100 softwares.

So enter now ’cause this giveaway ends June 30th!

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

Related posts:

100 softwares, 1066 courses, 63,528 tutorials

Update: Congratulations to Deborah, Joel, Nic, Sam, and Summer!

We hope you enjoy your premium 1 month subscription to lynda.com and become design software gurus!

This month the Ponoko blog is partnering with lynda.com to give 5 winners a free, 1 month premium subscription to the lynda.com Online Training Library.

If you’re not familiar with lynda.com, its a virtual mecca for online learning of software. They’ve got top-notch courses — uncountable hours really — of video training on a 100 different softwares.

Course subjects include 3D, Animation, Audio, Business, Design, Development, Home Computing, Photography, Video, Web + Interactive.

But we think all you makers out there will really like the 3D & Design stuff.

There are courses on 3ds Max, AutoCAD, Blender, CorelDRAW, Freehand, SketchUp, Illustrator, Maya, Rhino, ZBrush and more.

And each course has free tutorials, (10% of the entire library is free actually.) so you can get an idea of what that course offers and decide if you want to subscribe.

A subscription gives you access to the entire lynda.com library. A premium subscription — which is what we’re giving away — gives you full access plus the actual files used in the exercises.

Other cool features of lynda.com are new releases every week and searchable closed captions for several of the videos.

Win a free, 1 month premium subscription and jump into your own software summer school with lynda.com. Just leave a comment stating:

1. What software listed at lynda.com you are most excited about learning
2. What you would make with Personal Factory using your new software skills

The contest closes at 10pm pacific on Friday, July 29. 5 winners will be chosen at random from qualifying comments and notified the first week of August.

And if you’re new to Ponoko and Personal Factory, here’s the run down. Or you can sign up for a free Personal Factory account and we’ll send you a nice ‘n neat orientation email about how we turn your design files into real, super awesome stuff.

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

Related posts:

contest closes June 30 at 10pm pacific

You’ve got just 2 days left to enter our June giveaway sponsored by digital fabric printers Spoonflower!

You could win a free yard of fabric printed with your own design.

---

How to Enter: leave a qualifying comment at the original contest announcement by June 30, 10pm pacific.

For your comment to qualify, you must:

1. Tell us how you would combine Spoonflower printed fabric with a Personal Factory project

2. specify which Spoonflower fabric from you would use*

3. specify which Personal Factory digital making method you would use**

Winner selection & Prizes: People from Ponoko and Spoonflower will pick their favorite 5 ideas to each win a free yard of digitally printed fabric in any fabric they choose.

Ideas & Inspiration: check out what ideas other people have entered and take a look at our latest Maker Story interview with Andy and Becka Rahn.

Click HERE to enter & get full contest details!

---

*Spoonflower fabrics include:
quilting weight cotton, organic cotton sateen, organic cotton interlock knit, upholstery weight cotton twill, linen-cotton canvas, silk crepe de chine, cotton voile

**Personal Factory digital making methods include:
3D printing, CNC routing, laser cutting

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

Related posts:

Contest ends June 30th

UPDATE: Thanks so much for entering our Sponnflower fabric giveaway. The contest is now closed and winners will be notified and announced very soon!

This month the Ponoko blog has partnered with digi fabric printers Spoonflower to give away a free yard of printed fabric to 5 winners.

Spoonflower lets you upload your own design, choose a fabric, and get your design professionally printed on to fabric.

They’ve been digitally printing fabric for the masses since 2008, and the Spoonflower marketplace is the largest collection of independent fabric designs in the world.

Spoonflower can digitally print on 7 different kinds of fabric, and winners of our blog giveaway can choose whichever fabric they like.

How would you use digitally printed fabric from Spoonflower in a Personal Factory project?

How to enter:
To enter the giveaway, leave a comment telling us how you would use digitally printed fabric from Spoonflower in a Personal Factory project.

Think about how you would combine your own textile design with your own design for 3D printing; CNC routing; or laser cutting. Or all three!

(more…)

Posted in Contests + Competitions, Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

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

Related posts:

1. 

   Custom Fabric Printing from Spoonflower
2. 

   Custom Fabric Printing from Spoonflower
3. 

   Custom Fabric Printing from Spoonflower
4. 

   Custom Fabric Printing from Spoonflower

Rich Decibels introduces himself by giving away a monstrous little laser-cut amp.


Hi, I’m Rich, the latest addition to the Ponoko blog team. And I’m going to be writing weekly articles about how digital fabrication is being used by electronics hobbyists.

I got started with DIY electronics about 5 years ago when I wanted a Smokey amplifier but couldn’t find a local stockist. The Smokey is a little battery-powered practice guitar amplifier that is built into a cigarette pack. It’s tiny and lo-fi but the distorted tone is actually quite awesome if you happen to play blues or rock ‘n’ roll.

I did a little research online and found that the Smokey amp was built around a common “LM386” chip. With only 5 components, the circuit is super simple to put together; the hard bit was coming up with a suitable enclosure.

Over the years I’ve come to find that this problem is common to many electronics projects: wiring the circuitry is easy but finding or building a good enclosure is expensive and time-consuming.

In this instance I settled on a Chelsea Golden Syrup tin. While this functions well and the kitschy aesthetic works, it was a lucky find – the inside diameter of the lid just happened to match the speaker I had on hand.

To introduce myself to the Ponoko community I thought I’d try to design a laser cut enclosure for a more repeatable solution.

(more…)

Posted in Contests + Competitions, Electronics + Robotics, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories, Rich Decibels by Rich Decibels | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

Related posts:

1. 

   Monster Monster Lasercut Laptop Stand
2. Rich Decibels takes you through the desi

   Sinister Tone Generator
3. 

   Hopeful Monster, a Pendant Lamp
4. 

   Making Enclosures for Electronics with Ponoko