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Monday

May172010

DeviceKnit Discovers Good Uses

Monday, May 17, 2010 |

We were approached by John Ganotis, developer of DeviceKnit, a unique way to think about gadgets. Here's how it works, according to John:

We've been describing it as a "cookbook for gadgets." In its first, simplest form its all about sharing applications for different electronics and gadgets people have. Users submit "implementations" as responses to a goal. An implementation consists of the hardware and software someone uses to solve a problem.

You then keep an inventory of the hardware/devices you own in the system, and it helps you discover new applications for what you own already. We are crowdsourcing a database of the devices people can use in these implementations and iterating on a connection engine we've built, so that over time we will be able to model how different devices connect and are compatible, and for what uses.

John adds that want to open everyone's eyes to what can and cannot be done with devices. A side effect for gadget manufacturers is to learn of the crazy things people do with their products.

DeviceKnit does not immediately have much to do with 3D printing, but we felt that: a) Fabbaloo readers would be interested, and b) we suspect there is a way to use this paradigm in the 3D printing world. Imagine if the same process was applied to 3D models instead of electronic gear? What uses would a design have? How many uses could a design have? What else could it be combined with to make something greater?

DeviceKnit is not open for business yet, but John reports they'll probably "roll out our private beta in a month or so".

Via DeviceKnit

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Friday

May072010

A 3D Idea: Printing The City

Friday, May 7, 2010 |

We've been fascinated by a video of Google's new feature for their popular Google Earth product: 3D imagery. You might be surprised to realize that the image above is NOT a photograph of New York City, but was from a new version of Google Earth that incorporates street view images and superimposes them on 3D building representations. The result, as you'll see in the video below, is startling.

This gave us an idea we'd like to pass on to Google. As everyone knows, Google already has the largest repository of 3D models through its Sketchup community and Google 3D Warehouse. But we're thinking the repository idea could also apply to Google Earth.

Some of you may have used Google Earth to print useful 2D maps, but what if you could print 3D maps? In other words, specify a geographical area, hit print and select the "3D Option", which would produce a .STL or other 3D format file suitable for printing, complete with textures? If that were so, 3D printers around the world could pump out tiny models of The Pyramids, Times Square, Venice and other notable places.

We wouldn't be surprised if this is already possible through public data interfaces, but it would be a big step if Google added this feature directly into Google Earth.

Just watch out for that Google Street View car; if you see it whizzing by, you might end up in a 3D print somewhere.

Via YouTube

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Monday

Mar152010

OpenStructures

Monday, March 15, 2010 |

As the world slowly fills with advanced personal and commercial manufacturing equipment, we're starting to see the emergence of systems to make the resulting manufactured objects fit together in organized ways. Projects such as SKDB and MakerBeam hope to help us locate and assemble independently designed objects.

Another project in this area is OpenStructures:

The OS (OpenStructures) project explores the possibility of a modular construction model where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid. It initiates a kind of collaborative Meccano to which everybody can contribute parts, components and structures.

The concept is a simple 4x4cm grid into which "parts" are mapped. The parts can then be assembled into "components", which in turn are combined into "structures" and "superstructures".

It's not just a concept; OpenStructures has in fact already established a database of Parts, Components and Structures. Their database permits sophisticated searches as well as designer contributions with the opportunity for sales of physical items. You can download the 3D file, of course. There's even a QRCode for each item.

While the service seems oriented around the physical aspects, the 3D designs are what interest us, and the concept of combining objects together to make more complex structures.

Will OpenStructures succeed? Is it better than SKDB or other initiatives? Time will tell.

Via OpenStructures

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Thursday

Jan212010

Inventables - The Material and Technology Marketplace

Thursday, January 21, 2010 |

Tipster Zach points us at a new service: Inventables. Here's the premise:

Inventables exists to make it easy for vendors of materials and technologies to get an initial introduction to potential buyers. These buyers (engineers, designers, marketers) browse our online marketplace with the hope to find and work with vendors that manufacture materials and technologies ranging from water dissolvable labels to scented plastic. Microsoft X-Box, PING Golf Clubs, and Kraft Foods are examples of buyer companies using the marketplace. Dupont, 3M, and Eastman are examples of companies participating as vendors.

The site operates like a search engine. A large, friendly search box appears immediately, where you can quickly type in your materials search term, like "Rubber", "Polyether-Block-Amide Thermoplastic" or "Lego". Each material has a page describing its primary and secondary applications.

Materials vendors can register with Inventables and create a profile that describes their specific product. Then:

When a potential customer is interested in your product, they make direct inquiries. Inventables will email you the pre-qualified lead. You decide it’s value and only pay for leads that you choose to connect to.

That's correct: you can contact the vendor of the material right from the search result page.

Inventables seems to have an enormous variety of materials available, including several relevant to 3D printing:

Printing 3D Flexible Parts
One-Off, 3D Decoration
3D Lamination Stamping
A variety of Thermoplastics

Inventables is an interesting approach to materials marketing, and their site design is highly functional. You might want to check them out!

Via Inventables (Hat tip to Zach)

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Wednesday

Jan202010

Welcome to The Product Bay

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 |

The Pirate Bay may be fading away, eaten slowly by corporate legal teams, but their inspiration carries on - and not only for bigtime entertainment media. We've just bumped into "The Product Bay", whose intention seems similar to the Pirates. They "want to take all of this to the next level … for real life objects".

Other than intentions, there's not much at the site as of this writing. However, there are some fascinating comments:

Reading this made me horny. Oh my!
Can’t wait to get the torrent for a Masserati…
I knew this would happen…

We did, too. We're wondering when they'll take the next step and what the reaction of manufacturers might be.

Via The Product Bay (Hat tip to Bryan)

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Tuesday

Jan122010

The Blueprints

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 |

The Blueprints is:

a website dedicated to collecting 3/4/5-view drawings, templates and blueprints for as many objects as possible. Ranging from humans to tanks and cars to mobile phones, the goal is to provide reference material for 3D modelers, scale modelers, replica builders etc.

That's right - a very large repository (37,000+) of vector drawings mostly of cars. And tanks.

The drawings are stored in Illustrator, DPS, PDF and SVG formats. Nope, they are not 3D models - but they could be of great use to 3D modellers who need to create 3D designs. Of cars. Oh, to be fair, while the site seems to have drawings of practically every vehicle ever made or imagined, it does have airplanes, humans and a few other types available. The FAQ also states you can potentially sell 3D models there, too - but we had a difficult time finding any. But there's plenty of cars!

The site operates as a clearing house - you can place your drawings for sale, and The Blueprints will skim 35% off of any purchases made. Registration is free, however.

Via The Blueprints (Hat tip to Kerry)

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Thursday

Dec172009

Let's Download Some Hardware!

Thursday, December 17, 2009 |

Bryan Bishop and Ben Lipkowitz talk about their new open source venture: SKDB. What is it? It's a open source hardware distribution framework that takes cues from the highly successful software world.

The software world was held back for decades by centrally controlled proprietary paradigms, but blossomed when open source principles took hold. Today we see open source software dominating almost all aspects of software, and software designers often spend their time designing higher-level systems by using open source software as building blocks.

That success was most visibly demonstrated by Debian, a project to produce a specific distribution of the Linux operating system. One of Debian's key features was a means to quickly obtain software or software upgrades very easily by using the APT-GET command. The command pulls down not only the software you requested, but all related items it depends on. This approach was used by Ubuntu, who produce one of the most popular operating systems on the planet.

Bishop and Lipkowitz believe the same approach could break open the 3D fabbing market by making it terrifically easy for makers to access high quality conglomerations of models. The software makers went farther than just using software, however, as they built more complex software on top of simpler components distributed via APT-GET. The same forms of assembly are used to produce 3D objects, and thus the theory is that similar product complexity can be achieved.

Via Youtube (part 1), YouTube (part 2), YouTube (Part 3), Slides here and the SKDB site (Hat tip to Bryan)