Thursday, July 28, 2011

Dig up a plastic fork

More on the intersection of Minecraft and 3D printers.

Minecraft.Print()

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Printing a [Model] Building

Metalab - Architecture Modeling with the RepRap from Christian Benke

This doesn't look like it's a reprap to me, or at least not a standard one. Am I wrong?

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Copyright City

Imagine a city where everything is available for free and no one has to work. If you want to throw a party every day, just go get the stuff you need and make it happen. The catch? To live in the city, you sign over all your intellectual property rights to whatever entity runs the city. Your art, writing, music, or whatever is marketed to the rest of the world and that money pays for the needs of the city.


Would this work as a real city? No, probably not without careful selection of the inhabitants. But with only minor variations, this exact scenario plays out every day, in a wide swath of industries.


What does it take for living in Copyright City to be a good deal?

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Sketch Chair well on their way



As of this Writing, they have raised $12,455 of their $18,000 Kickstarter goal.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Meshmixer

Meshmixer is a program that lets you easily piece together 3D models from existing designs.

In addition to 'simple' editing tools that let you sculpt a mesh like clay, it also helps you cut objects apart and seamlessly recombine them in creative ways.

Follow the link above for a video, and don't miss the gallery.

Monday, February 14, 2011

The Economist Covers 3D Printers

3D printing: The printed world
"The printing of parts and products has the potential to transform manufacturing because it lowers the costs and risks. No longer does a producer have to make thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of items to recover his fixed costs. In a world where economies of scale do not matter any more, mass-manufacturing identical items may not be necessary or appropriate, especially as 3D printing allows for a great deal of customisation. Indeed, in the future some see consumers downloading products as they do digital music and printing them out at home, or at a local 3D production centre, having tweaked the designs to their own tastes. That is probably a faraway dream. Nevertheless, a new industrial revolution may be on the way."

Not so far away I hope.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Trimensional


A 3D scanner iPhone App from Trimensional could kick demand for 3D printing in to high gear.

Given technologies like this, people with little to no 3D model making ability will be able to create copies of any distinct object or part.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

On Accessibility

"There are tens of millions of people that because of their background are not getting the same internet experience that literate engineers and college students are getting. Everybody that makes a site that you think of as being crap and noise isn't trying to pollute the internet. Especially as programmers, we need to realize that the web is used by folks who couldn't plough through Wikipedia articles even if they wanted to.

Instead of adding HTML 5 and new apps, maybe we should be doing something more for those folks, you think?"