3D printers allow hackers and makers alike to create something from nothing. They're an incredible technology that lets you build protective cases and covers for gear such as a wardriving phone and Raspberry Pi-Hole. 3D printers can even help you out in a bind when something breaks, and it's impossible to get the part, since you can just print one out yourself.
Three-dimensional printing is one of the many wonders of modern technology. It's the first step towards real life Star Trek replicators and Timeline-esque teleportation chambers. While we aren't at the level of reconstructing strands of DNA, it's already possible to make tons of fun and useful designs on a 3D printer.
The first item of business is that our very own William Finucane of Mad Science has written an article explaining exactly how the 3D printing process works, which may help some of you to better conceptualize how your builds will come to life in the 3D world!
The possibilities are endless for 3D printing. With your very own 3D printer, you can make spare parts, circuit boards, inflatable balloons, duplicate keys, Minecraft cities, and even tiny replicas of your face. From a more artsy standpoint, you can make complex sculptures, like this cool mathematical sculpture of thirty interwoven hexagons by Francesco De Comite:
We've seen a number of unique mashups of augmented reality with other bleeding edge technologies, but somehow it took until 2018 for someone to come up with a now obvious complement to AR: 3D printing.
While graffiti may never be fully accepted by the masses, it has already become a very large medium for creative artists across the globe, who make mundane and austere cityscapes a little more interesting for the rest of us. Walking past this Banksy stencil on my way to class (at UCLA) made my day. Art like this can cause people to stop and appreciate the otherwise boring and blank walls that surround the city. It can stir up artistic feelings, pensive thoughts, and other emotions stored insi...
This is a nice project that you can continue to work on and modify as you learn more Arduino projects. The Instructable linked below goes through the complete build for the Bluetooth-enabled robot seen in the first half of the video.
Last year, Todd Blatt ran a Kickstarter campaign to make 3D-printed accessories for Google Glass, and has turned it into a company: GlassKap.
With all the hype around Magic Leap's recent launch, it's easy to forget that augmented reality hardware is still very much in its infancy. While we marvel at what is available now, researchers are still finding ways to design and produce more sophisticated components for next-generation wearables.
You already know that 3D-printing technology is swiftly evolving—it's been used to print balloon animals, bikinis, and house keys, and there's even an affordable home version of the printer, as well as one you can 3D print.
3D printers have been surging in popularity for both professional and personal applications, and now OLO is on the verge of making 3D printing practical wherever you go. Their eponymous 3D printer is battery-powered and uses the light from your smartphone's screen to create 3D objects out of special "daylight" resins.
3D printing has been around for a while, but until recently it was used mostly for prototyping and research. Now, with technological advancements, it seems like everyone is using 3D printers, from crime scene investigators to garage hobbyists and hackers. Below are some of the most innovative uses people have come up with so far.
Automated tattoos are now a reality, with 3D printers being hacked into tattoo machines. Multiple people have posted videos of their 3D printer that can "print" tattoos, with one of the more impressive ones shown in the two videos below.
Even though the Kinect has been on the market for over a year, Microsoft's motion sensing device is far from old news. In fact, Microsoft announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that the Kinect for Windows hardware and accompanying software is finally arriving at the start of February. There's even an Amazon page for it already.
For the hefty price of $200 and up, you can be the proud owner of the world's first 3D printed bikini. And not just the first bikini, but reportedly the first functional and affordable item of ready-to-wear 3D printed clothing on the market. Created by Continuum Fashion, the N12 3D printed bikini is revolutionary because it addresses the technical challenge of creating flexible "textiles" with 3D printed material. The bikini is made of a material called Nylon 12, which is entirely waterproof.
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been widely used by the military for surveillance and reconnaissance missions—even armed combat. But there are other beneficial applications of an unmanned aircraft, such as search and rescue operations, scientific exploration, locating mineral deposits, transporting goods and even filming bikini models. But drone development can be pretty pricey, unless you just happen to have a 3D printer...
Aside from food, oxygen, sunlight and water, there are other necessities that humans arguably need today to survive—clothing, love and shelter among them. Almost everyone wears clothes, needs somebody (or something) to love and a place to call home. And what's the one thing that connects all three? Something we all have? Keys.
Architect Enrico Dini is an innovator in the world of 3D printing. Dini is racing to produce the first marketable printer that can print full scale structures on site. Development has been seven years in the making (which has left him nearly bankrupt, and cost him his marriage).
With the advent of 3D printers, advancements in the technology allow some truly amazing possibilities. Just a handful of examples include printable architecture, Anish Kapoor's sculptures; even Boeing uses some printed parts in the manufacturing of their airplanes.
When you're just a child, there's nothing better than a clown and a few balloon animals to make your birthday party one to remember. There's just something unforgettable about experiencing a balloon twisting in action—the contortion of the balloon, that rubber smell, and the inevitable high-pitched squeakiness that fills the room until a bunny or giraffe appears.
When turning your 3D model into a 3D print, Maya requires some extra editing before you end up with a printable piece: the wall thickness needs to be checked, the model needs to be watertight, and your final printing size needs to be defined. To make your life easier, Autodesk Maya expert Russ Ogi has put together a step-by-step tutorial about how to make your Maya 3D model printable. See more at: 3D Printing with Maya: Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Turn Your 3D Model into a 3D Print.
If you liked the idea of cutting duplicate keys from a personal 3D printer, then you might be interested to know that researchers at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria have successfully designed the smallest 3D printer to date. The prototype device is smaller than a shoebox and weighs only 3.3 pounds. It uses stereolithography compared to the RepRap's extruding molten plastic, and it's not a self-replicating machine and costs a bit more, at nearly $1,800 each. But compare that to ...
Mad Science has entered the automatic pet feeder project as an instructable in the Make It Real challenge. Nine of the winners will receive their own 3D printer! If you are now imagining all the cool stuff we could do for Mad Science with a 3D printer, please share your ideas and vote for the entry here.
What could you do with two of you? Or, two cats, or two cars, or two of anything? Cloning, it's the way of the future and this tutorial shows you how to clone and print a 3D model of virtually anything. Using Anim8or and Pepakura Designer you can model your face and print it up to create a 3D mask. Two for the road I say! (Or would that be four?)
Want to see your Minecraft creations in real physical form outside of your server? Mineways is a free program for Linux or Windows users that renders all of your Minecraft builds into full color 3D model files. Those files can then be sculpted using your own 3D printer (if you have one), or uploaded to Shapeways, a company that will print your 3D models creations in colored plastic, which you can then purchase or sell in their online gallery.
Since the early genesis of the brilliant Microsoft Kinect hack, inventive applications have been popping up nonstop. One of the most fascinating projects to surface recently falls within the realm of 3D printing. "Fabricate Yourself"—a hack presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference in January—allows users to pose in front of an Xbox Kinect, which then converts a captured image into a 3D printable file. What does this mean exactly? Think Han Solo trapped in carbon...
There are plenty of cutting edge apps out there, and endless innovations in the field of 3D printing. But to combine the two—and make it available to the common consumer—is unprecedented.
This video shows us how to create an amazing 3D design using a single sheet of paper. You will need: cutter printed template of the 3D design. Procedure: Download the template using this link. Print the template. Cut all the solid lines on the template. Fold all the broken lines on the template as shown. Arrange the paper in such a way that it looks like the 3D design shown on the video. Follow these steps and you will have your very own amazing 3D paper design!
Steal someone else's fingerprints, use identity thief powders, & photograph the prints. Print the 3d prints & adhere to your fingers!
Watch this video to learn how to make a stunning diamond topped 3d card from a single sheet of A4 paper! 1. You'll need one A4 sheet of paper and some printed papers to decorate. 2. Score at 10. 5cm across length and 10. 5cm from one end. 3. Crease both scores in the same direction (mountain folds). 4. Turn card over mark 13cm from top on centre line an 17. 5cm from top on both edges. 5. Score from central 13cm mark to 17. 5cm mark on each edge. All printed papers used in this tutorial are av...
Pixel Perfect is the "perfect" show to help you with your Photoshop skills. Be amazed and learn as master digital artist Bert Monroy takes a stylus and a digital pad and treats it as Monet and Picasso do with oil and canvas. Learn the tips and tricks you need to whip those digital pictures into shape with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. In this episode, Ben shows you how to apply light sources to 3D projects in Photoshop.
Last year, the Washington Post's Ashley Halsey wrote an article on what really happens to your luggage at airports. In it, they unwittingly published a photo of the master keys the TSA uses for TSA-approved baggage locks. Now, thanks to that picture and a French lock-picking enthusiast, anyone with a 3D printer can make their own master keys to unlock any TSA-recognized locks.
An easy way to make your own 3D glasses using a printed template, two plastic transparent sheets, and paper glue. You can download the template here.
At IFA in Berlin today, Sony introduced the latest models of the Xperia line, with new features in tow that should appeal to creators of augmented and virtual reality content.
If you've ever taken a university course with an awesome professor, you're more than likely acquainted with the precious and all-glorious cheat sheet. Like the midterm, the professor usually allows a one-sided cheat sheet for the most important exam of the class—the dreaded final. I should work on my final, but I'd rather just sit here and be a douchebag.
Check out this free Windows utility that allows you to print files directly from the file system by dragging and dropping them onto an icon conveniently placed on your desktop.
How do you make a plastic bottle sit on top of a Rubik's Cube without a Rubik's Cube? It may seem like a brain teaser, but it's more like something you would see in an Escher drawing. An optical illusion. A three-dimensional world trapped in a two-dimensional image, which is exactly what's going on in this Rubik's Cube illusion.
Need to print something but you're on the go and only have your smartphone or iPad with you? No worries! This tutorial shows you how to use a little app called Dropbox to print to your home printer anywhere, anytime, with any mobile device. Print THAT!
In this video the instructor shows how to user printer options in Microsoft Word 2007. To do this go to the Microsoft button and click it. Form the drop down menu select the print option. Now you are presented with the three options of Print, Quick Print and Print Preview. Print is used to directly send documents to the printer by selecting the necessary settings. Quick Print is used to quickly send the documents to the printer using the default settings. Print preview is a useful way of seei...
Cyanotype, often referred to as sun prints, uses chemicals and UV light to make blue prints. Learn more about cyanotype in this free photography video about how to make cyanotype prints.
