Paper Bits

Twitter just notified me that someone posted a Fetus with Text Tag to Thingiverse.

Adds the ability to add text to your fetus. Personalize it with a name, or scale it to make it the real life size with the date underneath!

Just what I’ve always wanted.

BLDGBLOG: Air Hive

[H]ives of 3D-printed sand as a way of generating thermally advantageous microclimates in the city

BLDGBLOG: Spatial Gameplay in Full-Court 3D

Of course, there’s open disbelief that Japan can actually deliver on this promise—it is proposing something based on technology that does not quite exist yet, on the optimistic assumption that all technical problems will be worked out in 12 years’ time.

But the idea of real-time, life-size event-holograms being beamed around the world as a spatial replacement for TV imagery is stunning.

Z Axis Extender Kit for Makerbot Cupcake by Zydac - Thingiverse

Here we have a hardware upgrade that significantly modifies the capabilities of an open-source robotic 3D printer. Which is designed to be printed on that printer. And is uploaded to a social-software site for sharing fabricatable designs, forking them, and resubmitting improvements.

Let’s say that again: this is a downloadable hardware upgrade for an affordable robot that can fabricate its own components. Which I am linking to, because it’s been shared on a kind of Flickr for fabricatable objects.

If that isn’t mind-blowing, I don’t think I can unpack it in a way that catalogs why it’s amazing.

Announcing Personal Factory 4 (now with 3D printing) «  New from Ponoko

Ponoko now does 3d printing as well as laser cutting. Fantastic.

BLDGBLOG: Printheads in Space

Here is today’s mad utopian vision: build space stations by launching automated fabricators into orbit.

A seemingly website-less company called Made in Space “wants to launch 3-D printers into orbit and use them to make parts for spacecraft and space stations, which would be assembled in zero gravity.” They would do this using “thin layers of ‘feedstock,’ which can be metal, plastic or a variety of other materials.” Even better, when parts break down, they’d simply be recycled back into future printed components: “Rather than shuttling a replacement part from Earth to a space station, 3-D printers aboard the station could simply crank out whatever’s needed. And the broken part could be recycled into feedstock.”

My inner twelve year old just exploded in joy. I don’t care if it’s feasible, I want my orbital makerbot constructing space seraglios.

If you’re very nice, I might even let you aboard.