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Mar 18 2016

We Made a Tweet Printer with Raspberry Pi!

Our latest fun nerdy endeavor is afoot. A tweet printer! Tweet at #FabLabEP and follow us on Twitter @FabLabEP for a chance to

win a Raspberry Pi Zero.

“Raspberry Pi Zero, made in Wales and priced at just $5. Zero is a full-fledged member of the Raspberry Pi family, featuring:

A Broadcom BCM2835 application processor
- 1GHz ARM11 core (40% faster than Raspberry Pi 1)
512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM
A micro-SD card slot
A mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output
Micro-USB sockets for data and power
An unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header
- Identical pinout to Model A+/B+/2B
An unpopulated composite video header
Our smallest ever form factor, at 65mm x 30mm x 5mm

Raspberry Pi Zero runs Raspbian and all your favourite applications, including Scratch, Minecraft and Sonic Pi. It is available today in the UK from our friends at The Pi Hut and Pimoroni, and in the US from Adafruit and in-store at your local branch of Micro Center. We’ve built several tens of thousands of units so far, and are building more, but we expect demand to outstrip supply for the next little while.” (from RaspberryPi.org)

Jan 05 2016

ZooM: 3-D Printed Lampshades by Michiel Cornelissen

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?

Feb 16 2014

Bio-inspired Design: Nervous System’s Cellular Lamp

For lovers of organic biomimetic designs, you will be pleased to know that there is an open-source printable lamp that is a shelled torus divid into “cells” thus “cellular” from Nervous System. Check out our previous post about their awesome customizable, 3D printed jewelry.

This is a very challenging item to 3D print because of its numerous overhangs and bridges as well as its complex design makes splicing the model tricky in the software. We are happy to announce that, after several failed attempts and half-prints, Fab Lab El Paso now has its own Cellular Lamp printed on the Kossel Mini 3D Printer—and it’s a beauty!

You can print your own at the Fab Lab. However, depending on your budget, the best way to find the right size and design is to use Nervous System’s own interactive page where you can customize sizes and play with the cellular parameters.

Feb 06 2014

Stay in Control with MaKey MaKey Inventor Kit

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Banana spacebar? Alphabet soup keyboard? Super Mario Brothers Play-Doh controller?

No, we haven’t lost our minds (yet). Welcome to the quirky, marvelous, inventible world of MaKey MaKey, where with just alligator clips, USB connector, and a circuit board, you can turn anything—no, seriously, anything—into a controller or keyboard.

If you are the unimaginative type, you might not be immediately impressed. So here’s some videos for uninteresting people like you to get you inspired and overcome your life-long ailment of being a boring person. Then you can be awesome like the team members behind MaKey Makey, who generously agreed to sponsor the first fabrication workshop at Fab Lab El Paso!

Stay tuned for more information on the date, time, and reservation process for the event.

For electronic music fans and/or vegetable+fruit lovers out there, watch this.

In the meantime, feel free to dream up new, creative, and wholly unnecessary ways to make controls, keys, and buttons for the purpose of making pew-pew sounds, playing a musical masterpiece, breaking the high score on a favorite game, or whatever else you can think of.

Have fun and don’t forget to share your ideas with us!

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Jan 31 2014

Digital Hunting with UK 3D Designer Dot San

These trophy head mounts, designed by Dot San from the UK, feature animal heads deconstructed to just their wireframe representations. They are then 3D printed to size by Shapeways and ready to be displayed by the rugged technocrat—or just anyone who appreciates ingenious, humane, digitally revolutionary design.

We had the pleasure of being in contact with the head designer of Dot San, Vijay P. who generously agreed to support our non-profit organization. We will be displaying some of his works at our fabrication space, so come hang out at our digital hunting lodge and think about what you want to design and 3D print.

Please check out Dot San store if you are interested!