Hasta La Ideas

Baby steps, as the saying goes. This week saw one of the wackier 3D-printing news items in recent memory: Expecting parents now have the option to celebrate gestation with a life-size model of their progeny in utero. 3D Babies uses ultrasound data to generate a fetus figurine, a kind of memento partum: “Your 3D Baby will be a treasured family remembrance of your pregnancy and new baby.”

If we’re a decade out from the first generation of Facebook babies—a generation that has had its entire life documented, from delivery to present-day, in digital media—just give it a few more years for kids to be embarrassed by that weird ABS curio next to the baby pictures on the mantle… or stranger yet, a sculpture of a certain enfant célèbre (pardon my French), North West herself. If the availability of Kanye & Kim’s kid is where it gets into possible hoax territory, let’s just say it was kind of a stillborn idea from the start, elevating helicopter parenthood into something rather creepier.

(more…)

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts · Furniture, Pt. 1 · Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire · Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future · Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood

When it comes to boundary-pushing research, MIT Media Lab is no slouch. This year their Mediated Matter Group stunned with their Silk Pavilion, which harnessed architecture, design and biomimicry with digital fabrication in an unusual way: The two-part structure was begun using CNC-deposited silk fibers laid out by an algorithm, then actual silkworms themselves were used to fill in the gaps with their own material, behaving as “biological printers.”

Across MIT’s campus, meanwhile, Skylar Tibbits and his Self-Assembly Lab are themselves adding a new dimension to 3D printing: Time. Tibbits and his team’s research into how 3D-printed objects can be induced into changing their form over time has yielded what they’re calling 4D printing. One of their goals, as the organization’s name suggests, will be to create self-assembling objects and structures.

Jake Evill isn’t from MIT, but rather Victoria University of Wellington, and the freshly-minted ID grad has been experimenting with 3D-Printed Exoskeletal Casts. Protective, lightweight, breathable, and fully customizable to the user, Evill’s concept makes itchy plaster casts look as primitive as leeching people for blood.

(more…)

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts · Furniture, Pt. 1 · Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire · Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future · Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood

For the story of digital fabrication in 2013, it hasn’t just been the rise of the machines; we’ve also seen developments in materials, processes and business.

Materialise’s TPU-92A-1

For starters, Belgian digital fabrication company Materialise released TPU 92A-1, a new material for laser sintering. Durable yet elastic, the new stuff is a counterintuitive blend of flexible, durable, abrasion- and tear-resistant, and when sintered into a matrix-like form, has impressive shape memory. A certain fashion designer has taken to the material with a vengeance, but we’ll get around to actual applications in the next entry.

Shapeways’ Brass and Gold

On a more conventional front, Materialise competitor Shapeways brings two classic elements into their materials stable: gold and brass, now available through a combination of 3D printing, casting and old-fashioned hand polishing (and electroplating, in the case of gold). And unlike TPU 92A-1, which seems to be available only to industrial customers, anyone using Shapeways’ services can order the stuff.

LAYWOO-D3 Wooden 3D Printing Filament

From Germany came LAYWOO-D3, a 3D-printing filament made from 40% recycled wood bound together by polymer. Advertised as “cherry,” the stuff reportedly looks like wood, smells like wood, and can be sanded, worked and painted like wood once it’s out of the printer.

Modern Meadow 3D Printed Meat

A material for 3D printing that none of you may be clamoring for is… meat. Andras Forgacs and his Modern Meadow company are seeking to produce meat-based protein for human consumption by bioengineering the stuff and having it spit out of a printer; for the sake of—I dunno, authenticity?—they’ll reportedly keep the meat animal-specific, “Pig stays pig. Cow stays cow. Etc.” to “ensure purity.” Mmmmmmm. [retch]

(more…)

Another piece of software we got a good look at at this year’s Autodesk University is Autodesk 360. The company has created a Facebook-like interface for projects and design teams; collaborators log on to a cleanly-designed dashboard page containing “all of the data, projects, people, tasks, discussions, activities, issues and alerts that are associated with design or architecture projects that they are working on.”

Clicking on a project, for instance, is like clicking on someone’s Facebook wall; you get a linear view of all developments concerning that project, with your fellow collaborators’ updates taking the place of comments. People can upload relevant files as updates, and anyone with access can view any file, regardless of whether it’s an Autodesk format or not. (This includes non-design data, like spreadsheets and such.) And yes, Autodesk 360 can also be used from your phone or tablet, just as with Facebook.

While we were treated to an on-stage, well-explained visual presentation of how it all works, we realize text is not the best way to drive home how this software would impact your workflow. Thankfully, Autodesk has made available the videos they used for their presentation. These are hot off the presses so they haven’t added the voiceover yet, but we’ll provide the relevant text:

Projects at the Center

In Autodesk 360 users can see all the projects they are working on in one place. Because customers work on lots of projects, they can pin or unpin them, to indicate which ones are most important.

(more…)

While “We Are Makers” was the first documentary looking at the burgeoning Maker Movement, it certainly won’t be the last. As of this week, we know what the next one will be: The team behind 2011’s Design & Thinking doc are gearing up for their next effort, Maker, whose successful Kickstarting period ends today.

The paltry $15,000 budget belies what we’re hoping will be a meaty flick on the movement, this one feature-length and interviewing more than two dozen folks ranging from Chris Anderson to Autodesk CEO Carl Bass to Local Motors designer Jacob Ferguson.

“Maker” delves deep into [the] ecosystem of design and manufacturing in the Internet era. The film explores the ideas, tools, and personalities that are driving the Maker Movement – and returns with a timely snapshot of one of the transforming influences of the current age.

Due to budget constraints the doc will only examine the Maker Movement in America, though the finished film will screen in over 40 countries worldwide. And while most of the shooting has already been completed, postproduction is expected to be time-consuming, with a projected launch of sometime “before May of 2014.” In the meantime, you’ll have to sate yourself with the trailer:

Hit the jump for the rather impressive list of subjects they’ve already managed to lense:

(more…)