News

Violet the Train
People refer to 3D printing as ‘mass customization’.  You have the combination of an automated production capability in the 3D printer without the high up front tooling costs that typically result in mass production of a generic product.  You can take a base design, modify it so that it suits your needs exactly and then print it out without a ton of manual labor.   Here’s a great example of that concept at work. Read more...
Lehigh Maker Faire Model Attribution
We made and displayed a lot of different models at the Lehigh Maker Faire on April 26th.  Here is the information on each model.  Read more...
3D Printed Props for the Haunted Barn n Trail
We’ve agreed to sponsor the Haunted Barn n Trail attraction in Camden Wyoming, Delaware.  What ‘sponsoring’ means in this case is that we will be making them a whole bunch of cool stuff!   As we make things, I plan on posting them here.  So far, I’ve only run a few things as demonstration of what it is that I do.   The first item is a small plaque that was generated as a relief from an image. Read more...
Who says that nothing's free?
We’re running a contest on our Facebook page.  Once we hit 150 likes, we will be making the winner’s idea for free!  Of course if you come up with an idea that you just can’t stand waiting until the contest ends to see if you’ve won, we can make it for you earlier.  Read more...
Build Your Own 3D Printer
One of the cooler concepts of home based 3D printing is that it originated out of a movement with a philosophy that these would be self replicating machines.  You find someone to build the plastic parts for you, purchase the metal parts (screws, rods, bearings, etc) and electronics, put it all together and you’re all set.  Once you’ve done this, you can print off parts for someone else to build their own printer or for you to build a second printer, etc.  This is the RepRap project.  If you’re technically... Read more...
3D Object from a 2D picture
A few weeks ago, my wife and daughters were out of town.  I missed them a little so I decided to try to figure out how to turn one of their pictures into a 3D object on my Makerbot Replicator printer.   I stumbled across a cool program called PhotoToMesh.  This program converts 2D pictures into 3D surface mesh files, which can then be printed. Read more...
A Very Mechanical Part
So far, I have posted examples of more ‘artsy’ type things I have done.  Today I am going to go with something that is a pretty drastic departure. The object is a bearing made of gears.  Each gear is a herringbone gear.  For those of you that are not into mechanical things, this means that the gear looks like a tractor tire.  The use of the herringbone gears gives the bearing very good thrust load capability(when you push against the face of the center or outer gears while the others... Read more...
A Copy of a Physical Object
Recently, I purchased a 3D scanner.  The scanners that we all know convert two dimensional objects like paper, photos, or maybe if you’re feeling a little ‘cheeky’, a 2D representation of a 3D object like your…  hand, into a computer readable file.  You can then take that file and do all kinds of things with it.  Drop it into animations, change it, resize it, print it on a 3D printer. Read more...