Iron Man 2 suit was 3D printed

Interesting article at CNET that talks about how Legacy Effects used an Objet 3D printer to make an Iron Man suit for use by Robert Downey Jr. in some scenes of the Iron Man 2 movie.

4th Attempt at making a base Part III

Wow, after almost a year, I finally got to working on my 4th experiment of creating a diorama base for the model kits I make. The previous post on this could be found here. I had some free time during the evening and I spent it painting the base with cheap acrylic paints.

MakiBox A6 - $300 3D Printer

Interesting proposition from Hong Kong based Makible, they're looking for funders for the $300 ($350 actually for the base donation) 3D printer that they are developing. You can read more about it here, here's the page where you can fund the project , for the minimum amount of $350 you will receive a Makibox A6 Kit. I'm assuming that shipping cost is not included in that donation?

Curious about Cubify

I was curious about the announcement of 3D systems for Cubify in this article. According to the post its going to directly compete with Makerbot's thingiverse, but it seems that it also has its sight set for Shapeways. Its still in its beta phase however.

Why 3D Printing isn't a fad

Interesting article here from Technology Review about 3D Printing that works to counter this other article. What got me interested however was a link to this other article from that post on how the Warhammer developer issued a DMCA takedown notice on a 3D printing site for sharing 3D plans of its toy designs.

MakerBot Replicator Announced

Saw this via Hackaday. Makerbot announced the release of the Makerbot Replicator. It offers a slightly larger work area than the original Makerbot 3D Printer as well as an option to add a double extrusion head to allow for two colors when printing. Check out the video above for details. Price will be $1749 plus a little bit more if you get the double extruder head.

Autodesk 123D Catch

Announced a few days back was the release of the Beta version of Autodesk 123D Catch. Its a software that will allow you to convert photographs into 3D models. Check out the video above for the intro. It's basically a rebranding of the Photofly project that they announced before.

Steve Neill's The Big E Story: Scratch Build Star Trek Enterprise

Been a fan of professional model maker and special effects artist, Steve Neill's work. More so when he announced last October 2010 that he was going to build a 5.5 ft long Star Trek Enterprise from scratch in his blog. You can read the entire process of how he did it at his blog. Steve Neill is truly a master in the craft of scratch building and model making.

Alternator Vacuum Pump for Degassing Silicon Rubber?

I had my father's truck fixed a few months back because of an oil leak. Upon inspection it was found out that an oil seal was worn and causing the oil to leak from the vacuum pump part of the alternator. While the mechanic was working on that I suddenly had the idea of using the vacuum pump of the alternator to degass resin and the silicon rubber for casting after seeing how powerful the suction was.

Shapeways starts shipping locally in the US

Here's some welcome news from the Shapeways blog for people living in the United States. An announcement that they started shipping locally in the United States from the city of New York. I guess that means that they already have a set of 3D printers there to print out your 3D models The benefit of this is that if you are living in the United States and order to have your 3D model printed out at Shapeways you don't have to pay import duties and extra shipment charges charges.

Design & Build Your Own Model Kit by using a 3D Printer

Been doing some research lately on the internet and I've realized that one can easily jump right into the garage kit business without any sculpting skills. Where you can make your own model kits for sale or personal use using the currently available technologies and services. Definitely you'd need drawing, spatial relation skills as well as a fertile imagination. How is this possible? Well by means of outsourced 3D printing services available right now and a little design skill on your part (well you can outsource that too if you like)

Cheap Stencils

Just happened to be around a school supply shop yesterday and saw these cheap stencils being sold for less than a dollar each. Right then and there I decided to pick 3 of them up. Was hoping to use this for panel lining with the DIY panel scribing tool that I made on future model kits or scratch builds. Not sure however if they are going to work.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to All Dad's and would-be Dad's around the world. May the One God continuously Bless us and Guide us in our task of being stewards of our respective families.

Autodesk 123D Beta

Downloaded the recently released Autodesk 123D software that is a free 3D modelling software from the leader of CAD software, Autodesk.

The Technology of Knuffingen Airport@Miniatur Wunderland

Was watching Gerrit Braun's video diary for Knuffingen Airport and was amazed with the technology behind this display at Miniatur Wunderland. Truly amazing as it is really an exercise in attention to detail. From fully functioning nose wheel to lights and infra red positioning to allow the aircraft to act indepently without any physical wires. What holds it all together is the central software that coordinates all the vehicles and attractions in the display.

Miniatur Wunderland: Knuffingen Airport

Just saw this interesting post at Doug Drexler's blog on the recently opened Knuffingen Airport diorama at Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg Germany. Twin brothers Frederik and Gerrit Braun were the moving force for making this truly amazing interactive diorama display possible.

Photofly: Free Software to Transform Photos into 3-D Models

Just saw this article at Technology Review. In a nutshell, it says that Autodesk will release free software next week, called Photofly, that can convert a set of overlapping photos into its 3D counterpart that can then be outputted to a 3-D printer for printing.

Autodesk says that the Windows based software will upload the photos to a cloud server for processing and then downloads the results. The finished product can then be seen as a wire-frame model or one with a realistic surface color and texture.

Steve Neill's Blog

One of the blogs I like to frequent right now is Steve Neill's blog. Steve Neill is a veteran prop maker and effects artist and I first came to know about him through his postings in therpf forum.

The rise of 3-D printers

Interesting article here at CNNMoney with regards to the increasing popularity of 3D printers and the plans of HP and Google to make it available to the common household.

X-Y Base Part VI

I finished building the Z axis of the frame and attached the mini router but after this step I realized that there is a showstopper problem that has to be resolved. The major problem is that the there is some major play between the arm and the drawer slide whenever a perpendicular force is directed against the Z axis. In short that mini router is going to be pushed back because the arm isn't strong enough to hold back against the force of the work piece pushing against it.