Noah Blog

First Prototype done!
And its mother tested

no glue. robot made. rocking chair.

Redeye an on-demand 3D print company owned by Stratasys.  I researched their instant-quote system as documented below

First I uploaded an .stl model of little squid:

Then I selected material and color from their convenient interface:

And walla:  I got a quote back:

My little Squid will cost $379 in white ABS

Here is a handy materials comparison sheet:

Wiki on Fused Deposition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_Deposition_Modeling

Video on Fused Depostion:

Fused deposition refers to an additive, layering method of digital manufacturing. MakerBot, RepRap and Fab@Home are the three most popular examples of this technology in use at the DIY level. Stratasys leads the field at the Commercial level.

In brief, these machines heat up plastic to a viscous state and then lay it down, layer upon layer to build your form in 3D.  Usually a support structure is built out of removable material to allow for complex shapes that cannot be built entirely top-down.

Commercial FDM

Stratasys

Good quick video from Stratasys:

• .stl file format
• Production Grade Plastics
• Cost savings on smaller runs as compared to injection molding
• Materials selection/comparison: HERE.  

DIY FDM

Fab@Home

RepRap:

MakerBot:

All three of these projects are open source platforms that aim to bring affordable small-scale computer-aided manufacturing to market.

Makerbot Pricing:

Thing-o-matic bot kit is $1225 and comes as a DIY kit of parts. a 5lb spool of appropriate ABS plastic runs $65 on MakerBots site.

[[www.Thingiverse.com]] is a site for uploading, downloading and sharing CAM designs. It is focused around the MakerBots but is meant to be for all CAM models.

here is a nice movie on MakerBot:

Doing my first few runs on the CNC machine

Alias CAM

The new Fe Wearables site is now up here:

www.fe-wearables.com

e-commerce options are working and the pieces ship within 5 days.

Billow

Trestle

The Fe Wearables project has come a long way in the last two months. The piece are being produced in a job shop in the Garment District. after multiple iterations and a whole bunch of re-working of the making process over the last many weeks,both pieces are now successfully being produced in larger runs. New magnets with plastic encasing are used on the Billow and 3″ wooden dowel pins have replaced my hand-made wooden rods in the Trestle. (oh yeah there are new names for the pieces too).

experimenting with magnet shape for the Trestle

The Shop

5000 wooden dowel pins

Pattern Making for the Billow

Simon putting the last stitch into the first successful Billow prototype

I’ve been trying out VectorWorks this week. Its a mac-native drafting program that is a nice alternative to the spotty mac version of Rhino 3D thats currently available. Here is a 2D sketch I did of an cut-angle guide for a band saw:
cut_angle