maker

Bringing Schrodinger's cat thought experiment to real life would get you put on PETA's naughty list. Avoid that complication with the Schrodinger's Cat Executive Decision Maker.

No actual cats were harmed in the creation of ThinkGeek's $30 decision maker. What you do get is a plastic device with a sliding door. Ask a yes-or-no question, open the door, and watch as the cat goes into flux. A dead cat means "no." A live cat means "yes." … Read more

I haven't left my office once today without bringing our octopus to show someone.

This thing is fascinating, both in terms of how it came to be, and also for how good it looks. It still has a few wisps of plastic hanging off it. Each eye socket also has a small loop of plastic drooping down from where it meets the head. For those few lines, gravity apparently overcame the adhesion properties of the melted filament.

But I still can't stop marveling at the contours of the design. From the shape of its bulbous head, to the … Read more

This step took longer than I anticipated.

My goal, as stated at the end of our Day Two post, was to leave the office with our final print in progress. We actually got close, but we didn't quite make it.

Matt and I found the hardware side of building our Mosaic 3D printer about as hard as building a DIY desktop. The software side was a little more confusing.

MakerGear offers a walk-through (PDF) pointing you to the various firmware updates, driver software, and necessary applications to connect the printer to your PC, and print an object from an … Read more

Today was surprisingly easy, at least I think.

We started with four steps remaining in terms of hardware assembly. We still have to work out the software and then confirm the thing actually works, but in all we didn't encounter anything more difficult than what you might encounter while building your own PC.

I say I think because I have that familiar nagging doubt that comes with any DIY electronics project. Did we put that jumper in the right spot? Will the software work? How hard will it be to troubleshoot? All of those things will be revealed once … Read more

I hope to review the coming batch of preassembled 3D printers, but first I need to build one.

That's the idea, anyway. Thanks to MakerGear, an expansive online 3D-printing resource, I have a DIY kit for a Mosaic 3D printer. I also have the help of Matt Fitzgerald, an editor on CNET's digital-imaging reviews team. Not only can Matt take a decent picture, I also intend to lean on his mechanical expertise that comes from his hobby restoring motorcycles.

It can't hurt, but you don't need that experience to build a 3D printer. Still, I've never done it. I hope once we get through the building process, I'll have a better idea of what to look for when it comes time to review a premade printer like those announced at CES this year. The goal with this series of posts is to share what we find out.… Read more

How far can you get with a 3D printer and a dream?

CNET photographer Sarah Tew and I took a tour of Quirky's new Manhattan offices this morning. As depicted in her frankly great shots in the slideshow below, we got a firsthand look at the inner workings of a serious, professional product development company.

Normally I don't go in for facility tours. The articles that tend to result from such things too often take the appearance of marketing material. It was the promise of the chance to see how a real design company uses a 3D printer that drew me to accept Quirky's invite.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--If you haven't yet heard about Makerbot, you haven't been paying close enough attention to this year's CES.

The Makerbot Replicator is an open-source, 3D printer that can create just about any plastic object you can imagine. The $1,999 two-color consumer device launched here this week and just this morning, it won a CNET Best of CES award in the Emerging Tech category.

I tracked down Makerbot founder Bre Pettis after the awards show to find out what's next for Makerbot. Here's what he told me about the potential he sees for turning kids on to 3D printing, and a new kind of homemade jelly, just for starters:… Read more

Once upon a time, creating a bootable floppy was high on the list of "things to do when installing Windows." Bootable floppies made system recovery much easier. WinUSB Maker creates a bootable startup disk on any removable USB drive or similar location. It does much more, too, such as creating bootable ISO image, GRLDR, and DOS disks as well as full drive backups. And it's extremely easy to use. You'll need your Windows installation disk or an existing setup disk, ISO image, or folder to use the program, and be sure to use a USB drive … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The profile of 3D printing will rise after this year's CES, and 3D Systems' Cube is partly responsible.

MakerBot's build-it-yourself Thing-O-Matic has claimed most of the consumer attention for 3D printing this past year, and MakerBot's own CES announcement, whatever and whenever that will be, will only spur more coverage. In the meantime, the Cube underscores the idea that 3D printing can be consumer-friendly, and that a growing number of vendors see it as a viable business.

The design of the Cube printer is a contrast to the garage workshop aesthetic of the MakerBot product. Instead of the Thing-O-Matic's exposed circuity and wooden housing, the Cube with its friendly-looking plastic chassis looks more like a sewing machine.

Other than in appearance, the two printers are not that different. Each relies on an attached spool of plastic: ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), the same material from which Legos are made, in the Cube, or ABS and PLA (polylactic acid, like that used for keg cups) in the case of the Thing-O-Matic. The plastic for each is available in assorted colors, and as the video above shows, it offers all kind of output possibilities.… Read more