Design Do’s of I Do’s February 15

Bespoke stationary and gifts for weddings

I’ve been to a few weddings now, most of which have fallen into at least a “tolerable” category.  You can always tell when it’s two designers getting married because when you’re not surrounded by decorations that scream “catalogue stock” at you.  Luckily, for the majority of the couples, there are countless services that provide custom wedding designs.  One such is Luxecuts™ from Kate Miller Events, which moves away from traditional print media, and instead specialises in wedding ornaments crafted from more solid materials.

Luxecuts products are fabricated using Ponoko Personal Factory and range from place cards to cake toppers, signage, table numbers and whatever else the couple may request.  The Sacramento design boutique still prints some of the décor on paper, but the popularity of the more lasting mementos is gaining prominence.  Prior to the availability of Ponoko’s on demand fabrication service, moving away from standard printing wasn’t an option for the company.The ornaments are laser cut and engraved from a wide range of materials, such as wood veneers, bamboo, metal and acrylic in various colors.  The designs are inspired by textures and fonts, which become the starting point for a collection of elements.  Once the final designs are cut, little finishing is required to create the end product.  The final touches vary from the occasional painting or staining or adding a ribbon.

Challenges?

The challenge of working with scripted and glyph-heavy fonts when stenciling – it’s truly become an art working with the complicated paths.

Tips?

Don’t let your use of making be limited to products already in use – reinvent and improve!

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

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Gilded Butterflies February 9

Winged pendants with a unique twistOn the Ponoko NZ HQ glory wall is an old article about a very talented New Zealand jeweller and sculptor Lisa Black.  It’s up there because she lists Ponoko as one of her favourite things, and for extra brownie points, we love her work.  In a slightly embarrassing light bulb moment, I discovered that Lisa uses Personal Factory to make ornate parts for her Gilded Butterflies collection of jewellery.  The dots should have been joined considerably earlier.

Gilded Butterlies is a joint project between the Auckland artist and a graphic designer Dan Gordon.  They create beautifully detailed hinged pendants with real butterfly wings, which are mounted on bamboo and then sealed with a protective layer of resin.  For a number of years they have been using Personal Factory on regular basis to laser cut the bamboo wings and the brass hinges.  It was the discovery of the online fabrication service that inspired them to create this line of jewellery.  Initially Lisa came up with the butterfly concept, and the company spent years relentlessly testing a variety of prototypes and assembly processes.  These are still continuously evolving.

The total process, from design to fabrication to assembly is very involved.  The assembly is particularly delicate, and Lisa devotes hours to put together each piece of jewellery: prepping the wings, applying resin, waiting for it to cure and finishing the bamboo with linseed oil to enhance the grain and ensure durability.  The butterfly wings are sourced from different farms and suppliers.Dan Gordon emphasises that their design consideration isn’t purely aesthetic:

I think people want unique, genuine artifacts in their lives, which translates to using natural and raw materials. Sustainability is paramount as well. Butterflies are a fantastically renewable source, and farming them for research, education and collection ensures many species survival, we are still picky about the ones we chose though.

A few more words from Dan after the jump:

Have you been surprised by anything in the PF process: One big positive is that there are no surprises with your orders. You are totally responsible for your designs and you can make the smallest iterations without incurring incurring any extra time or setup costs.

Do you have any tips for other makers? Our strategy is basically “Make unique things, build good relationships” and it seems to be working out ok.

Wooden materials have grain, with the bamboo it’s a very pronounced straight grain. If you are making something with multiple parts it’s worth bearing in mind that if you rotate your designs to fit more pieces into the template, the direction of the grain won’t match the other pieces. It might not matter depending on what you are making, but for us with two symmetrical wings, inconsistent direction of the grain is really obvious and a bit of a deal-breaker.

Posted in Jewellery, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Graphic Solutions February 1

Making for business and leisureAt some point towards the end of last year, I was walking through town, and a rather distinctive shop front caught my attention.  The bold window graphics looked very familiar, and after a couple of moments the light bulb in my head switched on when I realised that the Graphic Solutions signage is made with Ponoko Personal Factory.  Like seeing a friend’s product in a design magazine, it was one of those little proud moments.

Wellington’s Graphics Solutions co-founder Elizajane started off using Personal Factory for personal projects.  It was a chance discovery by word of mouth as often happens in this part of the world.  The graphic designer already knew about the potential of laser cutting, so she was quite excited to learn just how accessible the service was.  Initially Elizajane experimented with making plywood and felt ornaments, which caught the attention of the Your Home and Garden magazine.  It wasn’t long before the projects became more company focused with commissioned designs for promotional jobs, as well as Graphic Solutions signage and branded gifts from a variety of felts and plywoods.Easy access to digital fabrication has enabled Elizajane to move away from handcrafting and printing and reach a more polished aesthetic with made objects.  Her photography and graphic design background means no shortage of ideas for designs to laser cut.  The 2D graphic nature of her designs means very little hand finishing is required.  The felt parts are aired out, and the plywood parts are given a light sand (it’s incredible how beautifully smooth you can make the ply with just a few scuffs of fine sand paper).  The next challenge is adding an extra dimension to designs with 3D printing.

Words of wisdom from Elizajane after the jump:

(more…)

Posted in Functional Art + Objects, Maker Stories, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post

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10 stories of how people are using Ponoko to make amazing things January 16

Best of the Blog 2011 – Maker Stories

2011 was the year that really started to show the potential of Ponoko as a digital making system available to the designers and makers of the world.

People were using our digital fabrication services — lasercutting, 3D printing, and CNC routing — and turning those results into absolutely fantastic things.

From machines that let regular folks sequence DNA and devices that scramble your brainwaves to works of wearable art and products that embody beauty and function, these are the top 10 Maker Stories of people making amazing things with Ponoko in 2011.

#1 The incredible folding ukulele


Origami master and MIT celeb Brian Chan created this amazing fold-up ukulele. It was a smash-hit holiday gift this season, and Chan is looking into selling the design files as well as the lasercut kits and assembled instruments.

(more…)

Posted in 3D Printing, Kristen Turner, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

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

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Movement through geometry — laser-engraved and hand-inked artwork December 12

Ponoko made projects by Otto Gunther

After a career in the medical IT field, Otto Gunther had decided to dedicate some time to more creative pursuits.

When he first came across Ponoko, Otto started out designing and making a range of lasercut items like jewelry, garden markers, and coasters. “I think making a coaster design is a contractual obligation when signing up for Ponoko,” he joked. (Ponoko does indeed have a step-by-step tutorial that teaches you how to design and make a lasercut coaster.)

“But none of these ended up satisfying my creative itch,” he says. “Without realizing it, I was so focused on trying to come up with something that would be commercially viable, I hadn’t bothered to ask myself what I wanted to be creating. It was when I decided to design for myself instead, that I was inspired to start creating the art that you see today.”

And what we see today is a series of original artworks that takes inspiration from the idea of movement through geometry.

Otto has so far created 3 works entitled “Radial”, “Radiant”, and “Radiate” which are available at his Etsy store ARTbyGUNTHER.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Kristen Turner, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Not Your Usual Clock December 5

The mechanics of time keeping on your wall

Ponoko showroom has seen its fare share of fantastic laser cut clocks: from digi-faces to cutesy animals.  Laser cutting and clock faces are natural process + application companions.  Then came The Timing Chain Clock.  No, time didn’t quite stop for it, but there was a lot of Oooh Aaahh Woww finger pointing and excited Liking.  The man behind this original creation is Henry Stafford from Northern Virginia, and amazingly this design is his first “real project” worthy of an audience.

Complex mechanical systems are very much Henry’s cup of tea since he’s a mechanical engineer by training.  It’s not hard to imagine the intensity of the cogs and cams inside the head when it comes to design tinkering.  And tinkering he did, albeit, as Henry puts it, “poorly”.  He experimented with materials from home improvement stores using hand tools.  The results were perfectly adequate for personal use, but they weren’t refined enough as products.  The clock required precision fabrication methods, and Henry’s search of laser cutting services led him to Ponoko Personal Factory.

Still it wasn’t all smooth sailing.  Henry’s first hurdle was learning Inkscape for the first time in order to submit his designs.   Fortunately he found the software tutorials extremely helpful, both inside Inkscape and on Ponoko forums.  The next challenge was sourcing mechanism components, and you can read more about that and Henry’s process after the jump:

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Posted in Functional Art + Objects, Hardware, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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The incredible Folding Ukulele from ‘maker of anything’ Brian Chan November 16

extraordinary project made with Ponoko Personal Factory

Every now and then something shows up in the Showroom that simply astounds everyone of us at Ponoko.

And the Folding Ukulele from artist, craftsman, and origami genius Brian Chan is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.

With his design already drafted, Brian got in touch with Josh, one of our Community Support Managers, to prototype his project using laser-cutting. As you can see, the design is pretty complex, consisting of multiple flat pieces that need to fit together perfectly to create not just a 3D object — but a musical one! Josh’s reaction to project when he saw the plans? 0_0

Get ready to be zero-eyed yourself when you see Brian’s ukulele in all of its foldable and musical glory:

(more…)

Posted in Functional Art + Objects, Inventions, Kristen Turner, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Jewel-inspired CNC Cut Furniture November 3

Digital form generators get behind physical product designsNY designers thefuturefuture jumped on CNC routing as soon as it became a Personal Factory feature.  Their first project is a flat-pack end table.  The duo of Brandt Graves and Carrie McKnelly (also of SoftLab) are very excited about the availability of CNC routing service and the possibilities that it offers to outputting their design skills.  Their next step is combining their experience in design for 3D printing with CNC routing to create products that explore the merging of the two fabbing methods.

Experienced with laser cutting and 3D printing and having access to both technologies, thefuturefuture partners were a little stumped when it came to CNC milling.  Before it was on offer through the Personal Factory, the designers had to rely on favours from friends with access to the machinery, which was an unreliable process that resulted in more frustration that progress.

The end tables are CNC cut from ½” Baltic Birch.  The parts are then thoroughly sanded; top surface painted, sanded and stained.  Post processing is involved and the time it takes has to be taken into account when designing a product for production, especially when there’s a substantial volume of order to fulfil.

Interview with Brandt after the jump:

(more…)

Posted in CNC Routing, Furniture + Lighting, Maker Stories, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: CNC Routing

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200 pages of laser cut patterns! November 2

Wood Marvels volume 3 is out!

If you’re a frequent visitor to the Ponoko Showroom, then chances are you’ve already come across the prolific works of Jon Cantin.

Operating under the banner of WoodMarvels, he has produced hundreds of laser cut designs featuring toys, games, vehicles and more.

WoodMarvels 3: Evolution of Wooden Designs is now available in print and download versions.

What sets this latest publication apart is the format in which the 3d designs appear. Each project includes 3d rendered step-by-step assembly instructions, as well as a pattern on a grid layout. By utilising the grid, Jon incorporates the material thickness – thus giving users a reference point at which they can scale the designs to suit whatever material they wish to work with.

The catalogue of designs is quite broad, from architectural and historical landmarks, creatures and vehicles of all sorts, through to desktop organisers and even a light-table. As is the way with most wooden toys, actual historical or anatomical accuracy is sometimes tweaked in favour of outcomes that simply work better using the technologies and materials at hand. Jon is always careful to ensure that the completed designs look just right.

One thing that is really nice about this publication is that each design can exist as a project in its own right. Along with clearly defined levels of difficulty, this means WoodMarvels Volume 3 is equally suited as an educational tool or as a project book for a hobbyist to work through at home.

Click through for some Q and A with Jon as he reflects on this particular milestone.   (more…)

Posted in Downloadable, Functional Art + Objects, Guy Blashki, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories, Toys + Games by Guy Blashki | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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Precisely-controlled low temperature cooking with Arduino October 28

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.

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

Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting

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