MakerBot Industries

Matthew Borgatti put together this awesome time lapse video of MakerBots crunching out art over at Ponoko.

I attended the modeLabInteractive Parametrics seminar a month or so ago (check out our previous post on it here) and had the chance to film some Makerbots hard at work. I’ve got to thank Bre Pettis for providing Makerbot troubleshooting, Marius Watz for teaching, modeLab for hosting, and Kidd Video for the music.\

Lots of colored plastic, lots of colored LEDs, and lots of awesome!

Trimensional, an iPhone app for creating 3D scans, was just released!

The latest version of Trimensional, the 3D scanner for iPhone, has just been released.  For the first time ever, you can scan an object using your iPhone and immediately export a printable STL file via email. Within seconds, you’ll go from 3D scanning to 3D printing with no manual clean-up required.

Trimensional even has built-in methods to smooth the geometry of your scan and to ensure the exported model is made watertight by placing a closed rectangular back on the scan.  Enjoy!

What would you print if your iPhone could scan ANYTHING?

Trimensional

Cloud Options

Whatever your preferences and skill level, there’s now an online CAD program for you!  There have been several really amazing online CAD programs released in the last seven or so months. ¹  There’s Tony Buser’s CloudSCAD, 3DTin.com, and just today TinkerCAD just entered open Beta.  Interestingly, I don’t see these three CAD programs as competitors.  If 3D design were building blocks, 3DTin.com would be the Duplo – quick, intuitive, and easy to use with the trade-off being limited resolution.  CloudSCAD is the web based version of my favorite modeling program, the open-source OpenSCAD.  I’ve only used TinkerCAD a little, but it’s looking very promising so far as a full-fledged solid CAD program that lives in your browser.

FireFox users, be warned!  FireFox is kinda fussy about WebGL.  If you’re having problems getting FireFox to run TinkerCAD, give this page a shot.

1. Photo courtesy of Kevin Dooley [↩]

What do you do when there are ongoing traffic projects in your toy car cityscape?  Well, now you can print out some cones to put out.  For safety.

Thingiverse user jag really hits the nail on the head with this one — this is just the thing to print in Safety Orange Filament.  (Also available in 1.75mm thickness!)  Thank you for adding this indispensable object to Thingiverse.

Traffic Cone by jag

I needed something to print with my lovely new safety orange filament. So, what better thing than a traffic cone?

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