9 months for a slice of toast

Thomas Thwaites, a design student at the Royal College of Art in London has made a toaster - literally from the ground up. Thomas Thwaites has travelled to mines across the country to get the raw materials for his toaster. Processing these raw materials at home, (for example he smelted iron ore with a leafblower and in a microwave).

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Ever wanted to access your 3D models on your iPhone, take a photograph of your surroundings, then place the 3D model in the photo? No, well at least now the option is on the horizon.

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CNC Magic by Stanislav Katz

Not much information out there on the work of Latvian designers Katz except for some great pictures on the process of making the 4 Vase Cabinet posted on the Contemporist.

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Rethinking furniture joinery with exposed mechanical fasteners.

German designer Philippe Krzyzek has just released some of his interesting furniture at the 2009 DMY Design Festival in Berlin. What instantly sprang to my attention was his exposed use of metal fasteners to hold what looks like CNC timber panels together. So often with flat pack furniture designs we see the peices slot together (which makes sense) but is becoming a little predictable, even when using digital joints (previously featured).
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Virtualizing the business of Interior Design.

Myself and several other design enthusiasts joined in the twitter campaign to raise awareness for Chicago’s NeoCon 2009 now in its 41st year. Driving the campaign is the Manhattan based start-up Designer Pages. Designer Pages has set out to bring the Interior Design industry into the world of Web 2.0 by creating a user-generated platform for sourcing and sharing the multitudes of products all over the world that are available to interior designers and architects. (Ponoko users can submit their designs too where they could be viewed and speced by thousands of interior designers and architects.) Their service allows designers to streamline their product catalogs, create virtual inspiration and presentation boards, and eventually to export all of this information to PDF in order to share with clients and coworkers.

The DP team has been networking with industry professionals to demonstrate the advantages of submitting their product lines to the site and digitizing their product catalogs.  They are also helping these companies become more familiar with social media tools like twitter. Anyone wearing a tweet printed black t-shirt can help exhibitors and attendees join the twitter conversation about NeoCon. As an incentive, they have been raffling off two red 8gig ipod nanos every day to twitter users including the #NeoCon09 hashtag. I was lucky enough to win the very first one. The twitter feed is broadcast live on five giant screens throughout the Merchandise Mart, so it’s a great way to draw attention to a particular product or booth.

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Innovative use of CNC ‘digital joints’.

Panels 02 & 03 by Paris based sebastien wierinck will be shown at salone Satellite with the 101pct Designed in Brussels selection. The interesting thing about this work that sets it apart from much of the flat pack furniture in the field is the use of CNC specific construction joints, rather than emulating standard joinery or basic slots.
As CNC cabinetry becomes more accessible we will see some otherwise impossible (or at least really really difficult) digital wood joints being shared on the web.
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Have you heard of NeoCon yet? Well, contrary to what the name might make you think, it is not a convention for the next wave of Conservatives. (No fun.) NeoCon is an annual exposition of the latest design for interiors: furniture, flooring, tile, wall papers, fun, etc. Yours truly will be tearing up the floor every day of the expo with an eye out for products related to mass-customization, laser-cutting inspiration, and of course, rapid manufacturing.

While at NeoCon, I will be part of a twitter campaign initiative between the Merchandise Mart and Designer Pages. Designer Pages was created to provide a virtual platform and resource for design; they currently have over 50,000 member submitted products. (Register and submit your designs here.) You can browse and buy, save to your favorites, or check out staff picks and curated collections like Inhabitat’s Green Design Collection.

In efforts to raise awareness of the NeoCon event, the social media loving team behind Designer Pages has implemented a pretty impressive twitter bombing campaign—a good kind of bombing,  like glitter bombing—which includes raffling off two ipod nanos every day. Every tweet you send is another chance to win, just be sure to include the hashtag #Neocon09.  For three days, myself and several other twitterers will be walking the floor an introducing exhibitors and attendees at the show to twitter. You can follow all of the action here. And if you’re at the show, Designer Pages will help you start a twitter account from their beautiful 7th floor booth 3094. Plus, you can follow the communal buzz with a glance at any of the five giant screens installed at the Merchandise Mart.

Once the show closes for the evening, I’ll be back to post the highlights of my favorite Ponoko-pertaining products.

By Algorithmic Artisans NERVOUS SYSTEM

Inspired by the complex forms of radiolarians (amoeboid protozoa that produce intricate mineral skeletons), where intricate pattern is integral to structure, these shapes derive from a simulation of spring meshes which form mirrored catenoid surfaces. Nervous System have created interactive software to morph, twist, and subdivide each design, transforming a simple mesh to a complex patterned structure.

The final design is built up layer by layer in durable nylon plastic using Selective Laser Sintering, a kind of 3D printing. These forms would be impossible to create by traditional manufacturing methods. The process imparts the pieces with a coral-like texture, while the slight flexibility of nylon and airy design.
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Cool application ideation tool.

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From render to reality in a mouse click (and possibly 1000 hours of hard work)


A recent post on the Shapeways community forum by a “junior member” has some amazing photos of the process of building a micro helicopter using parts printed using Shapeways 3D printing services.
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