Hasta La Ideas

We were pretty impressed with Amanda Ghassaei’s 3D-printed records, but apparently the Tech Editor at Instructables isn’t content to blow our minds with her digital fabrication prowess just once. As of this weekend, she’s back with a veritable encore: a Laser Cut Record.

Although all the documentation for that project is available here, and the 3D models can be printed through an online fabrication service, I felt like the barrier to entry was still way too high. With this project I wanted to try to extend the idea of digitally fabricated records to use relatively common and affordable machines and materials so that (hopefully) more people can participate and actually find some value in all this documentation I’ve been writing.

As with the 3D-printed vinyl, the laser cut record is hardly high-fidelity… but that’s not the point. The point is, it’s really f’in cool.

(more…)

The shape of a 3D printer is easy to envision: “Form follows function” dictates that they all have rigid parts aligned in the X-, Y- and Z-axes that the print head will travel along. But a fellow named Jon Wise is tinkering with an alternate design that uses radial arms rather than a grid-based Cartesian system of plotting, making his mock-up look less like a box and more like a drawing machine.

“Standard 3D printers require significant mechanical structure to provide movement on the three axes,” writes Wise. “This alternative design uses radial arms with a minimum of mechanical engineering.” If 3D printers were all designed this way, assuming the pieces had the appropriate rigidity, they could use less materials in their construction and, through clever design, be made more portable. Sure there’d be more calculations required for plotting, but Wise farms that out to the diminutive, inexpensive Raspberry Pi computer board:

This brains-over-brawn approach is intriguing. It would be neat if it not only folded up, but if there were little laser sensors hooked up to a processor that could constantly make microadjustments to the stepper motors to compensate for slop in the parts. If even a clumsy craftsperson could slap one of these together, and a computer brain did the heavy lifting in terms of calculations, it could open up a lot of possibilities for bringing precision production to areas where precision is in short supply.

(more…)

“We’ve visited various makerspaces,” write Adam Brandejs and Drew Cox, “and we were surprised to find a lot of people that had bought 3D printers didn’t really know what to do with them.” Jeez Louise, I can tell you what to do with them! Assuming affordability, I’d use a 3D printer to create precisely-sized tool cutouts as custom drawer inserts, to organize my hand tools; I’d make a nozzle adapter to turn a Shop Vac into a micro-vac for cleaning inside dusty machines; I’d make cases to carry irregularly-shaped objects.

All of those things require CAD files of the objects they’ll carry and fit into, and that’s where Brandejs and Cox come in. They’re the multitalented desigers/programmers behind Matterform, a Toronto-based startup trying to get an affordable 3D scanner on the market. By making it easier to get input data, they’re thinking, a barrier to 3D printing will be lowered.

Matterform has spent a year working on the prototype for their Photo 3D Scanner, and it looks pretty sweet:

Next step? Getting the thing funded so it can go into production. The Photon is currently up on Indiegogo, and while the $349 Early Backers price is sold out, there’s still plenty of slots left to claim a first-batch unit at $399.

At press time the Photon was up to $61,541 of an $81,000 target, and with 30 days left to pledge, it looks like this thing will happen.

(more…)

You’ve heard of MakerBot, Cubify and Solidoodle. And if someone finds out you’re into ID and asks “Hey, what do one of those 3D printers go for?” you can spit out a ballpark figure, and maybe some basic stats.

But there are tons of other 3D printers available on the consumer market, and plenty of questions you might not have the answers handy to: Which can I most easily buy if I’m in India, the Netherlands, or Taiwan? What are the build envelopes and prices? Which use fused filament fabrication, which go with fused deposition modeling? Are there affordable ones that do stereolithography?

To answer these questions and more, the good folks over at 3Ders.org have put together a handy database listing over 100 different types of 3D printers with their relevant stats, countries of origin, current stock availability, and prices (the lowest-priced DIY machine starts at US $189, while the high end of the consumer market goes into five figures). Anyone across the globe who’s looking to get into 3D printing will find it a handy place to start narrowing options.

Here’s something we’re curious about—in a year’s time, do you reckon this list will be longer, or shorter?

(more…)

Illinois-based Superior Joining Technologies is “a Woman-Owned Business,” as they proudly point out; for several years they’ve also been the owners of an incredibly bad-ass machine called the Trulaser Cell 7040, a 5000-watt beast manufactured by Germany’s Trumpf.

The Trulaser 7000 series are multi-axis laser cutting and laser welding machines that run off of CAD file input. What can these machines do with metal? A better question is what can’t they do. Observe their sheer majesty:

By the bye, while I rate this video highly for the machine’s kick-assery, I still think the cat guy would’ve made this video awesome.

(more…)