Easily make circuit boards, jewelry, and other detailed objects with this new desktop CNC.
There are a lot of options for CNC mills right now (and I mean a lot), but it’s rare to see one with the precision necessary to mill a custom circuit board. Finding one at a reasonable cost is simply unheard of.
The Othermill from Otherfab fills that need nicely. With it you can quickly and easily mill any circuit board your heart desires. Now all of your projects can have circuits seamlessly integrated into the design. Since it is compatible with any 1/8″ bit (like a dremel), it can also be used for a variety of other applications from jewelry to precisely machined mechanical parts.
Two photographs combined to model the path of a lightning strike
A chance encounter made possible by the informational maelstrom otherwise know as Reddit has resulted in this dynamic reconstruction of a lightning strike.
The animated image above is a render produced in Blender, and you can see how it all came together in a brief but informative post over on Richard Wheeler’s Calculated Images blog. In short, two separate photographers happened to snap pictures of the same bolt of lightning from slightly different positions. Richard then took these pictures and applied them in a similar manner to the way a stereoscopic image is resolved. (more…)
A new approach to digital interaction through . . . plants?
Using a single wire placed in the soil, Botanicus Interacticus transforms a living plant into a sophisticated interface. Unlike earlier methods that only identify contact, Botanicus Interacticus uses Touché sensing technology to allow for a range of precise and engaging interactions.
Botanicus Interacticus enables us to use gestures as sliding the fingers on the stem of the orchid, detecting touch and grasp locations of a bamboo, tracking proximity between a human and a plant, and estimating the amount of touch contact leading to a rich amount of interaction possibilities.
Botanicus Interacticus is being developed at Disney Research by Ivan Poupyrev in collaboration with Philipp Schoessler, Jonas Loh/Studio NAND, and Munehiko Sato. Be sure to watch the two videos after the jump to learn about the project. (more…)
We’ve encountered Amanda Ghassaei and her digitally fabricated records before, when she 3D printed some rockin’ tracks that were playable on a standard turntable. This time around, she has turned her talents towards exploring the potential of laser cutting to get her groove on.
The visual impact of this laser cut timber is stunning, but how does a record cut from Maple actually sound? As you’ll hear when you click through to the video after the break, we aren’t really talking hi-fidelity… however as an experimentation it is very interesting indeed. (more…)
Bring your work to life with digital tableware and animal bones!
Sourcing high resolution models for design work (and 3D printing) can be difficult and expensive. There are a fair number of free community 3D models on the web, but many are low quality or have restrictions against commercial use.
That’s where Forme It, a new service that sells high resolution 3D models, comes in.
Forme It’s library of 3D models is broken down into three main areas: Reference, Classic, and Modern. Reference contains models of the natural world, sorted into animal, plant, and mineral. Classic is for functional designs, currently holding a variety of tableware. And Modern at present has a few patterns to texture items with.
To help people actually use the content that they buy, Forme It has started a series of long-form YouTube tutorials. The idea is show one of the available designs used in a practical way, like this tree bark scan made into a container using Blender: (more…)
D-Shape Concrete printing awarded first place in Waterfront Construction Competition.
When Hurricane Sandy blasted some 565 miles of coastline across NYC, seawalls and other coastal features received quite a battering. Seeking out novel approaches to repairing and redeveloping these damaged areas, the NYCEDC competition “Change the Course” has awarded a $50,000 first prize to concrete 3D printer D-Shape.
The D-Shape proposal is to scan damaged infrastructure, design and fabricate encasements and extensions to the existing surfaces and then fabricate them off-site. (more…)
Consumer hardware and open source software help build a $3500 satellite.
NASA recently put three nanosatellites powered by Google HTC Nexus One smartphones into orbit. Dubbed PhoneSats, they are about the size of a coffee mug. The satellites are intended to demonstrate how the rapidly decreasing cost and increasing power of off the shelf hardware and open source software can be used for a new generation of accessible, low-cost space research. (more…)
The Blender 2.67 release includes a feature packed 3D printing toolbox
Blender has long supported the .STL file format used to export for 3D print and it is very welcome news that there will be additional support within the software to help modelers. As a popular, free and open source 3D modeling software package, these new features will greatly help save users’ time in finding issues with their models.
The new toolbox looks set to have features useful for printing models both with online services such as Ponoko, and also with RepRap or Makerbot kitset 3D printers. Models for 3D printing need to be perfectly watertight, so all their edges need to meet to enclose a volume. For most users this can cause issues from time to time, trying to find where a tiny hole might exist. (more…)
The MIT Hobby Shop was founded 75 years ago by a group of students who wanted to make things, who wanted to bring their ideas into the real world. The Shop has changed considerably over the years, but it still relies heavily on peer-to-peer teaching and an interdepartmental approach.
In the 1937-38 academic year, Vannevar Bush, then Vice President of MIT, granted a group of 16 MIT students permission to use a room in the basement of building 2. With equipment they found around the Institute they set up a wood and metal shop in the 16-foot by 22-foot area. The club members chose the name “Hobby Shop” based on their belief in the philosophy that the well rounded individual pursued interests outside their profession – hobbies.
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