Bokeh-Effector by webghost

For those who didn’t know, such as myself, a “bokeh” effect is the aesthetic quality of the blur in an out-of-focus area in a photograph.  Thingiverse citizen has contributed an attachment for 72mm lenses that will create such bokeh effects.  I would think with a little OpenSCAD magic, one might be able to not only create a parametric derivative of this work, but also create a version that would create blurs and light patterns of nearly any type.

How cool would it be to have a collection of these things?  A lens for dinosaurs, rainbows, unicorns, daleks, fireworks…

Untitled by webghost

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I’ve blogged about Matt Compeau before, the guy making the coral-like prints on his Replicator (speaking of, maybe someone should print this and put it in an aquarium, as my colleague MakerBlock suggested).

His latest post at Emergent Forms shows us how he delivered a “randomized” ceiling for a client.

MakerBotted model of a custom ceiling section, by Matt Compeau

The piece above was printed, presumably on The Replicator, to show how the same section of segmented wood baffles would piece together to give a random looking solution. Each of these represents a 2′x8′ portion of ceiling, and Matt shows how those sections themselves are laid out in a way that will maximize the look of randomness.

Go to the original post to play with the web-based tool he devised to demonstrate the process to the client. Fun stuff.

This post reminds me of Kacie Hultgren, aka PrettySmallThings, in that she and Matt both use their MakerBot Replicators and/or TOM’s to demonstrate final products to clients. Did you see Kacie’s post over the weekend about how to work in scale? It was the first in a series that she’s put together for us, and the next one is pretty tops, too. Look for that on Friday.

Do you use MakerBotted scale models to communicate your ideas? Tell me about it.

In this OpenSCAD tutorial series we’ve covered the basics of the OpenSCAD interface, how to make 2D forms, how to make some basic 3D forms, how to position those forms in 3D space, the different ways to combine forms, how to create mashups of one or more existing STL’s and OpenSCAD forms, how to use modules to reuse your code to make your life easier, how to extrude flat 2D forms into 3D forms, and how to fix design problems.  Although I described a few of the last tutorials as “intermediate” levels, that’s really only because you learned the basics so quickly from the first few tutorials.

Today I’d like to show you how easy it is to make some neat organic looking forms with OpenSCAD.  The secret behind doing so are two functions, “hull” and “minkowski.”  Let’s learn a little bit about what each of these functions do and try out some code.  More, after the break!

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And then there are business cards that turn into rubber band guns.

Built-to-Spec, the company on the business card/firearm (rubberarm?) in the picture, has a page of MakerBot accessories. Looking for an acrylic lasercut casing for your TOM? Look no further.

Marius Watz' lattice structure, using Modelbuilder and The Replicator

Marius is looking for a few extra eyeballs on his Github Modelbuilder repository. Can you help?

He’s been using Modelbuilder to build lattice structures with his Replicator. But oh,

…did I mention I’m actually pretty bad at math? Doing computational geometry for a week straight has made me feel a little smarter, but all that does is make me better equipped to understand how little I really know. I can’t help but feel that CAD professionals would snicker at my minor victories considering that every feature I laboriously implement has been standard issue in every CAD package for over a decade. Still, the satisfaction of doing it yourself and knowing exactly how the code will behave makes it worth the struggle.

Kudos on pushing through to figure it out yourself! Check out Marius’ Flickr page, too. The distorted structures you can see there are pretty awesome.

Ever wondered why the surface of a MakerBotted object has tiny ridges on it? Ever wondered how to smooth those ridges out? Find out how what techniques we’re trying on this week’s episode of MakerBot TV! Make sure to subscribe to the show on YouTube or iTunes.