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3D Signage ala Ponoko
I always love to see the diversity of designs that are realized via Ponoko’s services, especially when the designers/users share their experiences on site such as Make, Instructables or on their own blogs.
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Or How To Steampunk
Those of you who read the previous post on the Ponoko Blog that showcased Cerrious Design’s rusty Steampunk USB drive may be curious as to how he achieved the effect. Dylan of Cerrious Design has been generous enough to share his technique.
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I am not sure how Dylan Johnson aka cerriousdesign has done it, but he is using Ponoko processes to make a rusty, steampunk inspired USB drive….
Laser cut pieces and a nifty rusted technique make this handmade USB drive a definite eye catcher. USB drive lights up with a dull orange glow and flashes when the drive is being used giving it a even stranger feel and look.
according to Wikipedia, Steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical “steampunk” style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.
Dylan is an Industrial Design student at Metropolitan Stage College of Denver which makes this a pretty impressive project/product..
Includes a 4Gig Sandisk retractable USB Drive. FREE SHIPPING! all for $40……bargain
Made with Ponoko by Peppersprouts/Upstate Fancy
Started in 2008 by graphic designer and all around crafty girl Jen Pepper, Peppersprouts is her Etsy and Ponoko stores, selling her sweet designs.
Home Sweet Home Wood Coasters
The hand drawn houses have been etched on the surface of the Rimu wood then hand rubbed with tung oil to protect them. A sweet little set of 4 would make a perfect gift.
Also available are her Silhouetted Wood Coasters from her Ponoko Store which like the previous would work just as well as wall art as functional coasters.
Nice
Roy Sablosky’s Bamboo Fruit Bowl is made of 20 layers of laser-cut bamboo tied together with copper wire.
The design is an entry for the “Epilog Challenge“. It is a “green” product in that the design makes minimal use of materials.
The finished bowl is about 33 cm (13 inches) across and 10 cm (4 inches) high. It is made of 20 layers of bamboo, each 5.5 mm (0.22 inches) thick. Each ring has four 1 mm holes through it. I use the holes to tie the rings together with 20-gauge copper wire.
The bowl is not for sale in the Ponoko Showroom but you can see how to make your own on the Instructables website.
Oh yeah, don’t forget the Instructables Epilog Challenge, where you can WIN A LASER CUTTER, also sponsored by Ponoko….
Good Luck Roy.
Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg would not have launched their new product at Tokyo Design Week last year if they had not discovered Ponoko. But see how a couple of former MIT students have turned science into highly sought after designer products with their mega-successful design company, Nervous System.
Following on from a previous post where we used Kiki Brown Bear’s flatware as an example of how to oven form acrylic. Another Philly based student, Wes Thomas has just posted his Phillyware flatware for sale in the Ponoko Showroom.
It is also great to see Wes sharing his processes, both design and production on his online design journal (read blog), with some great detail pics and thoughts.
Owner and designer of New Zealand based Pollen, Adam Ellis recently received some high-profile product placement. The Endoplasm Planter was featured prominently in the relaxation lounge for the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series regatta.
Product development firm Locus Research partnered with Coast to design the sailors’ lounge and VIP room for the luxury label. They had this to say about selecting Adam’s planters:
These unique products designed by Adam Ellis bring the outside in with a stylistic take on the role of plants in our environment. We will soon be sporting some of these beauties in the studio.
But you don’t have to be BFFs with Marc Jacobs or own a yacht to have your own hanging gardens. The Endoplasm Planter is available in the Ponoko showroom. And if you’re a designer that wants to elevate and expand the reach of your designs, consider Ponoko Prime.
Jeweler and sculptor Megan Auman recently posted a great little video on her blog of her receiving and opening her very first Ponoko design.
Her first experiment with Ponoko was to create a laser cut cardboard coffee cup cozy so she could carry her steaming hot latte with style.
Almost as interesting as her great design was the fact that she opened it with a video camera rolling, capturing her excitement of anticipation and honest disappointment when she realized she had not taken material thickness into account in her design.
To over come this, with minor modifications to the design she was able to get her coffee cup cozy to function, and share her solution with the viewers of her video. What she was also sharing was a valuable lesson for all of us to check designs as thoroughly as possible and treat each design as a prototype and an iteration of producing a refined object. In industry designers and engineers make multiple mock-ups and prototypes (both physical and virtual) before going into production.
So I will share another lesson I learnt regarding checking designs.
I was working on an exhibition for a local brewery (Coopers) and part of the interpretive display included an array of old cooperage tools pinned off of a wall. Because each of the tools was a different size, hand made, and heavily worn, each of the clasps for the tools had to be custom made. I measured each tool carefully, made 3D CAD models of them, and then modeled up 36 (or so) custom clamps to fit.
I produced a cutting file and sent the file to a water-jet cutter to cut the clamps out of 10mm stainless steel.
All was well then the client asked for some additional tools to be mounted, so I modified the file to suit and ‘quickly’ sent it back to the cutters (without double checking file).
A week later when the courier returned with the $800 worth of cut stainless steel my stomach sank when I saw what should have been about 2 foot by 1 foot arrive at exactly half that size.
In my rush I had exported the cutting file at half scale, with no dimensions and that is what I received.
I triple checked and re-exported the file (with dimensions) which all worked fine.
Now I have a $800 stainless steel trivet, perfect for my stove top espresso machine to sit on
Brianna Privett over at the illustrator’s blog Illustration Friday has posted a great account of her experience with Ponoko - most interestingly, her inspiration came from a public domain book, Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places by Frederick William Fairholt. Her showroom pitches her jewellery and other bits and bobs thus:
“Designs from public domain literary works - key fobs from the Wizard of Oz, ring designs from a Victorian anthropology collection, an early Celtic buckle, hair sticks from feather engravings from a book on birdwatching from 1881.”
The designs are available for free at her showroom here. A great synergy of public domain artwork and digital manufacturing, thus creating public domain objects!