3D Artist magazine has announced a creature creation competition to win a 3D printer, and a new crowd of designers from the visual artistry side of 3D are arriving!  3D Artist also provided a link to a tutorial for preparing your models for 3D printing which covers manifold geometry and the practice of shelling to save print material (not quite as important on printers with material as cheap as coils of $43 a kg ABS), as well as a link to the skeinforge home page.

Some more help for those of you going for maximum printability:

* Avoid “overhangs” of greater than 45 degrees (except when you can get away with them)

* Learn a bit of Noodlemancy (although with modern extruders small details aren’t quite as tough)

* Learn from the masters

* Make sure you’ve got STLs, any helpful model files or documentation you can think of added in!

How easy it is to print your model won’t just be important in the contest (it will) but it’ll also play into whether you start seeing your model pop up on desks, shelves, and dashboards around the world after you upload it!

First and perhaps most importantly, the phrase “3D Printing Troubadours” is wonderful.

Second, this is the sort of inventive approach to available technology that changes the fundamental mechanics of the world.  How clever is it to drive around with a 3D printer, actually running in the back seat of your hybrid electric car, selling your prints and telling the story of 3D printing?  Awesomely, that’s how clever.

This is a project I can’t wait to see more of.

Dave Monachello writes:

I was wondering if anyone that uses thingiverse is making anything to burningman? A makerbot seems like the perfect tool for the kind of giveawys us burners make to gift while on the playa. Plus there is a large percentage of burners that are from SF and Silicon Valley so I figured there must be some intersection no? Let me know if we can get the question out there.

Good question!  Anyone got projects they’d like to brag about?

Really neat GE tie-in stuff, huh?  I’m really excited to see if Thingiverse becomes one of those places everyone “needs to have a strategy for”.  Of course in the mean time it’s just fun seeing Thingiverse be a platform for cute social media.

Am I being overly dramatic?  Maybe.  But for a moment look at what that is.  The above is an exhibit where people discover a cluster of technological marvels they might never have even known existed, and getting to make something wonderful to take home with them.

The DIY geek goodies on this one are pretty much off the charts: Blender.  Arduino.  Digital Sculpt Interface.  Makerbot.  On about the cheapest table imaginable.

Via Blender.org.

It’s a great time to be enthusiastic about space, and a quick tour of thingiverse will bring you science and science fiction alike in generous supply!

Right now in my tab of the Space Month Pages, the first two entries neatly span the pragmatic (a tidy, quick-print rocket that takes standard engines) and the bizarre (a skull tie fighter!) and the list goes on and on.  Also, this Cylon Raider is freaking terrifying.

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

If you’ve got some rocket engines lying around, there’s still plenty of time to print out and fire off one of these babies!

Take note of the generous helping of cautions Tom has included with this one though!  A lot of things can go wrong with this or any other rocket launch!  Have a great holiday, US makers!

The Creative Commons announced the Open Attribute project yesterday:

Open Attribute, “a suite of tools that makes it ridiculously simple for anyone to copy and paste the correct attribution for any CC licensed work,” launched today with browser add-ons for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. The add-ons “query the metadata around a CC-licensed object and produce a properly formatted attribution that users can copy and paste wherever they need to.”

…

Open Attribute uses CC REL metadata found in the pages to generate the attribution metadata. You might remember that we developed a guide with real examples to make CC REL metadata much easier to implement: CC REL by Example contains example HTML pages, as well as explanations and links to more information. If you’re curious to see how Open Attribute pulls the metadata, the guide includes a specific section on Attributing Reuses.

As you can see from the image above, Thingiverse already includes license information on the page for each Thing. That means that these add-ons already work for any Creative Commons licensed Things on Thingiverse!

We look forward to seeing more cool stuff from the Open Attribute project.

MakerBot is going to be in the best art show of the 21st century. It’s called Bits ‘N Pieces and it’ll be at Material Connexion starting on Thursday. I think that this show is the perfect show for citizens of the Thingiverse to check out!

DATES: November 4 – December 4, 2009
HOURS: Monday – Friday, 9am – 6pm
LOCATION: Material ConneXion 60 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10010 T. 212-842-2050
NEAREST SUBWAYS: #6 at 28th and Park / NRW at 28th and Broadway.

Bits ‘n Pieces is a traveling exhibition of work by international designers, architects, computer scientists, and material and technology researchers. It will showcase projects still in their development stage, as well as furniture, architecture, jewelry, graphic design and products that anticipate the next phase of the digital revolution, focusing on how society is imbued with, shaped by and shapes technology. This new era will be marked by increased awareness about, and accessibility of, continuously advancing technologies and materials and the changes that we will be making in our lives through them will be not just formal but structural, not merely aesthetic but substantive, changing how we actually think about, design and build our objects and space. What will life look like based on changes that are sometimes visible to the public and sometimes invisible?

Read on for the conceptual essay. (It’s good) » Continue reading “MakerBot in the Bits ‘n Pieces show at Material Connexion”