Since we’re talking about puzzles and games, I thought it was worth pointing out Lee Krasnow. Lee is a puzzle-maker from San Francisco, and creates some awesomely perplexing objects! There is a great interview with him over at makezine, in which he talks the viewer through some of his puzzles and introduces us to his method of working.
Lee Krasnow (above, makezine) and one of his puzzles, 2-in-1 (below, pwdbp.com)
Perhaps the most incredible thing is that Lee’s tool of choice is a table-saw. Using a jig of his own design, he manages to cut highly precise and tiny parts – he has posted an instructable describing how to make some jigs and ten of his puzzles here. It’s daunting, but highly inspiring stuff and makes me think that there’s no reason why a laser-cut puzzle should be just a 2D affair.
In fact my favourite Ponoko project of late has been Carbon by ckharnett (a recent product of the week) – a game-like geometric construction of simply hexagons, pentagons and triangular connectors. The constructions possible with this system are endless!
The Mimaki Tx2-1600 is just one of the many digital textile printers on the market, but the one I have had the most experience with. Before I get into how it works, here’s a very brief description and history of textile printing from The Colour Museum.
Basically, the image must be divided by color, and every part of the image that is a particular color will be burned into a screen. This must be done for each color to be printed. For those of you in the graphic design field, it can be compared to a separate screen created for each spot color. Thus for every color in a textile, the amount of labor and cost go up - which can be a big limitation for independent designers.
Inkjet printing brought the ability to put a color image on paper to the masses, and the same is happening with digital fabric printing. In the case of fabric, the printing is done with dyes not inks. And because the image is comprised of pixels, there is no limit to the amount of color. It is essentially CMYK, four color process with capabilities for four extra colors.
Before printing the printer must be set up and tested. There are two different sides of dye cartridge slots. This is because fiber reactive dyes are best for cellulosic or plant based fibers such as cotton, rayon, linen or hemp. Acid dyes are best for protein based fibers like wool and silk and for synthetic fibers like nylon and polyester. Plastic gallon containers hold the excess dye from the printing process.
Next, the fabric bolt is put onto the printer. Specially coated and paper-backed fabric that comes on a roll is first placed at the foot of the printer between two plastic ends that support the roll. In order to make sure that the fabric is aligned evenly, the edge of the paper lines up with a triangle on the printer. There is a laser that detects the edge of the fabric and keeps it aligned throughout the printing. This laser is adjusted by a switch on a box attached to the bottom of the printer. The fabric is then carefully pulled in an over-under fashion through 3 cylinders to maintain the tension and then fed through the top and clamped down.
We all know that at the grass roots is where the innovation in design often happens. Small agile firms, independent designers and ad hoc collectives are the breeding ground for ingenuity. But if you ever wonder what the academics think of all this and you are not sure of the validity of Wikipedia, check out The International Journal of Design “The International Journal of Design is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields. It aims to provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas and findings from researchers across different cultures and encourages research on the impact of cultural factors on design theory and practice. It also seeks to promote the transfer of knowledge between professionals in academia and industry by emphasizing research in which results are of interest or applicable to design practices.”
Most other peer reviewed journals require a subscription, or are available on a pay per article status. So make the most of the opportunity of open information. Another option is Google Scholar, but again many of the links to research texts require an ‘account’
Not breaking news necessarily, but Vert Design’s flat pack mallet is a wonderful example of creating functional three dimensional objects from a single sheet of wood. The design is minimal, using only one board of plywood with little waste, with some very cunning fittings. If you’ve been puzzling over how to fit some troublesome pieces together, you might want to give this design a look. If you’re just interested in tenderizing, for $40 USD and requiring no adhesives, you can construct a fully-functional mallet and hit things to your heart’s content. Incidentally, if you’re looking for more inspiration, they also make a functional windvane toy with–in my opinion–a very clever rotating joint and a spectacular example of flat pack ingenuity. (more…)
As per usual the Dutch are at the forefront of design, shunning DIY for DDIY, Don’t Do It Yourself.
The Flemish cultural institute Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, in conjunction with the Victorian Circus Festival have organized the Don’t Do It Yourself Festival for designers to meet and network to help solve each others ideas.
Admittedly I can not read Dutch well so this information is supplied courtesy of GUERRILLA-INNOVATION.COM, but don’t let that stop you from checking out the DDIY site as some of the participants are posting in english too.
For more on crowdsourcing check out Jeff Howe’s blog where he is releasing chapters of his forthcoming book, and defines crowdsourcing as:
“The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.”
For another online collaboration portal take a look at Shapeshifters.
billed as a place to connect with creatives from around the world, Shapeshifters allows users to: introduce suppliers you would like to recommend inspire by sharing cross-cultural observations interact with new partners, clients and co-creators
While I’ve written quite a bit about Inkscape recently, that’s not to say that Illustrator isn’t popular around here in our Ponoko office! We want to make sure that users and those thinking about Ponoko can find the help they need in getting technical issues sorted out in making their designs and uploading them onto Ponoko. Here are some useful links - user communities and tutorials on everything Illustrator (in no particular order):
Illustrator User Group Forum - Join other Illustrator aficionados in this lively discussion forum hosted by Digital Media Net.
Illustrator World — This is a community site devoted to Adobe® Illustrator® software and vector graphics. View and share Illustrator artwork with other users, read and contribute to forums, access tips and techniques, and participate in design contests.
DeZine Zone Tutorials - Look to the left side menu and see the Illustrator tutorials for Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced
N.Design Studio - Design blog by a designer who shares his passion in Illustrator tutorials intended for intermediate users.
I know there’s a slew of them out there - some better than others. And since Illustrator integrated a search function with del.icio.us, it should be easier to find the right contextual resources you need — so if you know of any more sites or recommend any particular one, please feel free to add them in the comments - thanks!
Once you get going on Illustrator, go ahead and download your Ponoko Starter Kit in Illustrator for the Ponoko making guide and templates. If you still have questions or want to share some newfound knowledge, check out our Forum to discuss with other Illustrator/Ponoko users.
**Remember we’re running a contest this month for file uploads, so if you create your designs and add them to MyPonoko, you might have a good chance to win $250 worth of fun designing and making with Ponoko.**
Here at Ponoko we know that there are SO many of you who are really excited about designing your own products. But there are some hurdles to get over, and the first that usually stumps people is actually getting your design into a form that can be made into something real. For those of you with design skills and experience using Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw it’s not such an issue. But for all you newbies the team here at Ponoko are studiously working on more How-To’s to help you expand your creativity.
One tool we are going to put a lot of focus on is Inkscape since it has some neat features for you new Designers that I know you’ll like. I know I do. The most obvious are:
B: It runs on Mac OSX and Windows. In fact I run it on both and it seems to be identical even.
and C: It’s FREE.
In my opinion, software is created to do something for me. Whether it’s sending an email or creating beautiful and unique jewellery NOT take hours of my time before I can even get a result from it. So normally when I get a new software package to use, I try to just do what I want rather than completely read the manual. While I’m sure that’s a bit frustrating for software developers who are probably shouting, “Read THE MANUAL Steven!!!” at their screens right now, I think a lot of people do this.
So if you are that way inclined and would like to get a quick win with Inkscape my very first suggestion is that you try tracing an image using the video at the bottom of this post. It is included in the Instructable that Dan and John created. Using the videos, the Making Guide in the Inkscape Starter Kit, and a lot of playing around my son and I were able to design our first piece of jewellery on Ponoko earlier this week. It took us quite a bit of time to get the image where we wanted it (mostly because of my lack of experience with Inkscape) and to then get it into the .eps version for Ponoko, but we did get there eventually. And it was very satisfying when we finally uploaded the completed .eps file to MyPonoko - a bit like having our first baby.
Here are some simple points that we came up with during the process that I think might make it easer for you to get the results you want without spending the same amount of time that I did. (Thank goodness for school holidays).
1. Choose a simple image! It can be tempting to want to trace something complicated but it can be depressing if it takes too long to get a first result. Especially if working with kids. Following the video below will really help. Please note the video pauses after about 10 seconds you just need to press play again to get it started. I find it’s easier just dragging the video slider to the point I’m working on so I can focus on that point in the process.
2. In the Ponoko starter kit it mentions that you MUST have your lines a certain color and stroke width so that the laser cutter knows to Cut, Raster or Engrave. But, I suggest you don’t do this UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE FINISHED YOUR DRAWING AND FITTED IT TO THE INKSCAPE STARTER KIT TEMPLATE. We started changing the lines as we worked but discovered after much drawing that the line widths we’re seemingly changing automatically. VERY FRUSTRATING! But when we left it to the end it was actually very easy to select and change the lines as a group. Knowing this would have saved us a lot of time. John and Dan created another video below that is very helpful with this and I suggest you watch that too.
3. Another reason NOT to change the lines for the Laser Cutter while you are working on your drawing is that they become so darn small that you need to use the magnifying tool to see them and then you can’t see the whole picture. You can avoid this by just drawing in a stroke width you like and changing them all at the end for the Laser.
4. When converting you lines to the right color and width for the Ponoko Laser you’ll need to set the RGBA values in the “Fill and Stroke” window. Within the Starter Kit it currently mentions only the RGB values. This only gets confusing if like me you start setting the A to 0 when thinking it’s the B. This causes your lines to disappear (and your kids to scream). You need to keep the A at 255 (as shown in the video above and image below).
With this much information you should be really dangerous now. Especially if creating customized jewellery, stencils, holiday decorations or any other 2d object is your first goal! Dan is putting together a new Instructable on a piece of jewellery he’s made and we’ll have that up for you to look at very soon.
Here’s an interesting question we get asked: How can Ponoko be useful for traditional craftsmen? High-end woodworkers who work with rare and expensive hardwoods, carving every niche and curve by hand?
I know at first it seems almost contradictory: laser-cutting versus hand-carved. But the reality is, templates are incredibly useful for the craftsman. And Ponoko can be useful for laser-cutting precision templates. Designer Jeffrey McGrew of BecauseWeCan.org, a design-build studio in the Bay Area said that they get a lot of craftspeople and high-end woodworkers asking them to make templates all the time. Router templates, clamping/gluing templates, carving templates, layout templates, that sort of thing.
For craftsmen who don’t have the means to laser-cut their templates, Ponoko is a great option to try, especially out of inexpensive thin material like MDF.
(David ten Have and Derek Elley, Photo by Peter DaSilva for the New York Times)
We’re really excited with the string of news stories featuring Ponoko, with the New York Times being the latest. John Biggs reports on the DIY Tech movement that’s been making strides recently and the rise of the “at-home creators” and makers. With a growing community of makers from Makezine, online DIY stores such as adafruit.com and open-source software media player chumby.com that center on personalization, more and more resources are cropping up (also see earlier post on open-source hardware Bug Labs) for people to build their own creations - right from the internal electronics to the individualized outer shell - like steampunk creations from datamancer.net. Read NYT’s full story here.
Thanks to Ponoko user Sue for steering me this way to this cool online vectorization tool that changes bitmaps into vectors. VectorMagic, the result of a research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a free online auto-tracer, converting bitmap images into vector art:
This tool can trace logos and photos, which could be incorporated into your 3D designs either as etchings/engravings, cut-outs or the actual shape. It’s received some pretty positive reviews from users familiar with comparable tools like Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace and Inkscape’s Trace Bitmap. It seems to be quite easy to use, especially for those not so adept with graphic software. Bittbox gives it two thumbs up and shows some examples of images that have been vectorized. As does JTB World Blog and Geekfindr. Check it out and have a look at their samples and comparisons with the other tools.
