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  It seems there are new mobile phones every day, but exactly where do these new designs come from? The SolidWorks APAC Blog posts an interesting article and video of how Sony Ericcson design engineers come up with unique designs. Evidently 3D printing permits the designers to punch out a physical prototype very early in… Continue reading Sony Ericsson’s 3D Printing Habits

   Keith’s Electronics Blog has a series of posts on the development of an “LED Puck”. What does it do? Special Purpose Lighting: Power goes out and you need to enough light to shut down the UPS-protected computers? LED puck. Camping and you need to find your gear inside your tent? Puck. Kidnapped and locked… Continue reading Keith Prints a Puck

Two recent articles show the potential for custom designed objects in competitive racing. BMW’s F1 team uses several rapid prototyping techniques to create the unique parts used in their Formula One race cars. A series of videos shows many of the techniques, resulting ultimately in the curing of strong carbon-fibre parts placed on the vehicles.… Continue reading 3D Printing Wins the Race(s)

Last week we posted the inside details of how the popular movie Coraline was produced. The makers of the film shunned conventional CGI techniques and went with a traditional stop-motion approach with a twist: many model components were produced on an Objet Connex500 3D printer. This enabled them to make many, many more custom components… Continue reading More’a Coraline

We’ve all struggled with a roll of packing tape, trying frantically to find the edge of the tape. Finally we realize we need one of those tape dispensers, you know the kind – they look like a pistol and can swiftly tape up anything placed within arm’s length. We’ve seen many different designs for such… Continue reading Tape Wrangling

The catch: it’s a home for a hermit crab. Yes, 3D printing has produced pre-fab replacement homes for “needy hermit crabs”. It’s actually not a laughing matter, as hermit crabs habitually reside in leftover shells from other creatures, discarding and replacing them as the crab grows in size. The problem these days is that there… Continue reading Entire House Produced on 3D Printer

How mainstream is this? Late night host Jay Leno, one of the world’s most notable car fanatics. As the owner of very large number of vehicles, he has a problem that anyone with a collection of old things may have: “I can’t get a replacement part!” In a video on Jay Leno’s Garage, Jay describes… Continue reading Jay Leno Wants A 3D Printer!

You might think you can’t seriously print an entire boat with current 3D printing tech, but Robotboat thinks otherwise. Their ingenious plan: print miniature robotically controlled boats! Robotboat is a startup company intending on producing “advanced robotic boats for the global oceanographic surveillance market”. They intend on using 3D printing to rapidly produce unique hull… Continue reading 3D Printing on the High Seas

We’ve seen examples of interesting uses previously, and here’s another one. Four sculptors were to build exhibits for the Digital Stone Exhibition in China. The purpose of the exhibition was to demonstrate the links between the 21st century digital world and traditional stone carving techniques. Western artists first produced some 20 3D models, “Digitally Sculpting”.… Continue reading Digital Stone Rises in China

GooCart reports on a musical adventure involving his ’98 R8 honeyburst guitar and 3D printing. Evidently the pick guard did not fit, so he “scanned the ’53 GT guard into my 3d software and modified it for the R8, then I used our 3d printer for this cutting template”. The new part (pictured) will be… Continue reading Guitar Technology Fabbed

Madox has done the impossible – building a real Stargate in less than two hours! Heh, it’s not a *real* Stargate, but it is a true 3D object you can hold in your hand. And the iris does open and close, mostly. What’s this all about? Engineer Madox observed the recent 66% off materials cost… Continue reading Two Hours to Stargate!

MadeByDan reports on his first experience using 3D print technology. Ironically, it was not jewelry that came out of the printer, but instead o a simple platter. We expect that he’ll soon be printing jewelry models too. He used Shapeways, a popular 3D print service. Here’s the part we found most interesting: I thought it… Continue reading A Jeweler’s First Time