Printed Laptop Stand by TheRuttmeister

There are probably about four or five different laptops stands available for download from Thingiverse.  Unlike all of the other lasercut variants,  TheRuttmeister‘s laptop stand is designed for 3D printing!  Don’t get me wrong, those lasercut models are spectacular. ¹  But, there’s just something extra cool about a printable version.  Since it appears to be completely modular you could theoretically create a system that would fit any laptop, not just a small ASUS like TheRuttmeister’s.

What lasercut Things on Thingiverse would you like to see as printable models?

1. The Hokusai wave laptop stand by WillLangford and the Steampunk gear design by ericskiff are my favs. [↩]

Scan of a lighter

While there are already a number of open source scanners out there.  There’s the MakerBot 3D Scanner which uses structured light, the milkscanner which uses a little tub of milk to detect the outline of an object as it sinks into the milk, the chess board and laser level scanner, and now Mark Moissette has invented a way to use his own 3D printer as a limited scanner.

As best as I can understand, he’s using a laser line with some cheap optic electronics to turn his print head into a light emitter and sensor.  Even if the scan area is relatively small and the resolution limited, it’s an incredibly cool idea.  It also sounds like with some know-how, some custom software, and cheap parts (€5.00 or about $6.61) this is a reasonable solution for low resolution scans.