Imagine. Innovate. Invent.
The pentagonal lampshade by Michiel Cornelissen is kind of like flexible textile. ZooM is made up of hundreds of small, interlocking elements that join together to form spirals. The lamp is manufactured flat and assembled. You easily pull up on the center and the cone-like shade takes form. Pop in a simple cord and bulb socket and you have a functional lamp. Who doesn’t love flexible joints 3-D printed in place?
‘Design nori’ is a series of intricately laser-cut seaweed for rolling sushi. Each sheet of five designs – ‘sakura’ (‘cherry blossoms’), ‘mizutama’ (‘water drops’), ‘asanoha’ (‘hemp’), ‘kikkou’ (‘turtle shell’), and ‘kumikkou’ (‘tortoise shell’) – is based on an element of Japanese history or symbology, meant to bring beauty, good fortune, growth, happiness, and longevity.
Because of the precision required in the cutting process, the seaweed itself is a thicker variety from the Sanriku region
of Miyagi. It’s thicker, so it won’t crumble under the laser-cutting, has a nice luster, and doesn’t stick to other ingredients.
Get inspired for lasercut edibles, everybody!
Maharishi, a UK-based upcycling designer label featuring “pacifist military designs” featured a collection of shirts made on a laser-cutter—and they look bad. ass. Since its founding in 1994, maharishi has been recognized for its ability to combine technical military design with hand-crafted techniques. Sweats and shirts are embellished through laser cutting machines typically used for industrial manufacturing applications. Check out the micro-hole pattern collection that imprints a subtle impressionist design onto the fabric. The collection features lasered graphic designs in the form of DPM patterns on the crewneck sweatshirt, Dragon Bonsai Forest lasercut detailing on the shoulders of a poplin military shirt, and a laser skull design on organic jersey tees.
You can use the Full Spectrum Laser Cutter to design your own laser-cut apparel at the Fab Lab. Stayed tuned for our first laser-cut T-shirt design contest!
Since everything’s bigger in Texas, we wanted to share with you some on-going projects in architectural 3-D printing with the endgame of printing habitable spaces for people.
First up is Enrico Dini, the slightly crazed-looking man behind Monolite UK, a company that hopes to start producing and selling 3D printers under the name D-Shape. Dini’s printers aren’t for printing small objects though — they’re for printing large sculptural structures.
D-Shape’s printers use a special inorganic binder and ordinary sand (ahem, that’s something El Paso has a lot of!) as the only raw materials. The non-epoxy binder is composed of two parts — sand is mixed with a solid catalyst, and the mixture is then exposed to a liquid binding agent. Check out the video to learn more about the print mechanism.
Next up is the first projected 3-D printed house that is being built in Amsterdam called The Canal House by Dutch architecture studio DUS Architects. They will print the whole building on site using recycled plastic, polypropylene and bioplastics. So, meet the Kamer Maker (Dutch for room maker). The Kamer Maker is basically a huge 3D printer inside a shipping container where they will print everything starting from the facade, then room by room, bit by bit.
The building site at the Buiksloter-canal will be an event space and all building pieces will be exhibited before they get used. The opening weekend of the Canal House is March 1.
KamerMaker Printing from 3D Print Canal House on Vimeo.
And saving the best for last! Dr. Behrokh Koshnevis, a professor of USC, invented a fabrication technology called Contour Crafting. This technology has great potential for automating the construction of whole structures as well as . Using this process, not only can you print houses, but you can embedded in the print of each house all the conduits for electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning. The potential applications of this technology are far reaching including but not limited to applications in emergency, low-income, and commercial housing. It’s still in the rough and developing but the possibilities are amazing and will completely revolutionize architecture and construction.
Check out the most-funded sculptural object in Kickstarter’s history, Joshua Harker’s intricately detailed skull is created with a powerful, high-precision 3D printer, which allows for an advanced engineering not possible in more traditional methods. However, if you wanted to design and print a less detailed 3D skull, we can help you make your own at the Fab Lab!