3D printing

These Intricate Collars Look Like Fish Bones, Are Actually 3D-Printed

These complex collars look like like they’re made from freaky shark jaws or the skeleton of some crazy underwater menace, but they were actually borne directly from a 3D printer. MadLab designer Madeline Gannon did start with an aquatic inspiration, though—the virtual movement of a digital squid. Reverberating Across the Divide began with a 3D…

These Blossoming Flowers Are the First Inflatable 3D-Printed Object

Most objects created by 3D printers are made from hard rigid plastics, but as the hardware is continually being improved, new materials are coming into play. Believe it or not, at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Design, Richard Clarkson has succeeded in 3D printing these flowers from a soft rubber-like material that can actually…

You Can Now Buy a Life-Size, 3D-Printed Replica of Your Unborn Fetus

“Imagine holding your baby before he or she is born.” It might sound like a morbid thought, but the idea behind the line is actually pretty sentimental. Of course, that’s assuming you’d call 3D printing a life-size replica of your unborn fetus sentimental. For $600, though, you can hold a keepsake from that very special…

Purveyor of all things candy, Hershey, just made the delicious announcement that it will be making 3D-printed sweets in the future using machines from 3D Systems. Is your mouth watering?

Photoshop Is Getting Support For 3D Printing

Adobe is updating Photoshop to let you create 3D-printable files within the program. Hooray! The update is available today for free for existing Creative Cloud subscribers, or for $50 for new sign ups. It converts models into STL, OBJ, 3DS, Collada and KMZ files. These files can then be exported to a MakerBot machine, outsourced…

3D-Printed Music Boxes Let You Compose Your Own Tune

When shopping for a music box there’s usually a decent selection of lawsuit-free public domain songs to choose from. But a new online service called Music Drop finally lets anyone compose their own 16-note tune, which is 3D printed alongside these adorable custom hand-cranked music boxes. Composing your masterpiece is as simple as adding dots…

Use sound waves to make personalized jewelry

Go to this website, pick a material, send in an audio file. Get back jewelry in shape of the sound wave you gave them. It’s simple, and oddly beautiful. Bza.biz offers all sorts of materials and sizes for you to choose from. The shapes are made from the arrangement of differently diametered disks to recreate…

How 3D Printing Supercharged Nike’s New Super Bowl Cleat

Almost a full year ago, Nike introduced its first shoe ever built with the help of 3D printing technology. The thing was, that cleat, the Vapor Laser Talon (seen below), was built for an absurdly specific purpose and market—just the 40 yard dash, just for NFL players. Now, though, Nike is bringing what it’s learned…

These 3D-Printed Hubble Images Let Blind People See Outer Space

What does space feel like? I’m not talking about space itself—but rather the images we see in a telescope. Could you render those spectacular images into something that a blind person could experience? That’s exactly what a pair of astronomers are trying to figure out. Carol Christian and Antonella Nota, of the Space Telescope Science…

Beautiful 3D-printed candies look like delicious modern art

3D printers are the new must-have appliance for the modern kitchen. This year’s CES visitors were among the lucky few to taste-test the confectionary wonders of the Chefjet kitchen-ready printer (available for £3,000). From printed sugar cubes to multi-colored candies, these sweets are like delicious modern art. A jet print head is used to spray…

Oh, Right, That’s Why You Should Never Trust Kickstarter

On the left, a promotional image from WobbleWorks!* LLC, creators of the 3Doodler, a pen that lets you print 3D creations as magical as your imagination allows. On the right, an actual 3Doodler creation. Whoooo, boy. It is no doubt possible to make a convincing Eiffel Tower out of thin air with the 3Doodler, but…

MakerBot Mini: A Smaller 3D Printer You Can Maybe Actually Afford

If a tiny workshop has prevented you from adding one of MakerBot’s Replicator 3D printers to your toolkit, today is your lucky day. The company has announced a smaller version of its Replicator 3D printer—aptly called the Replicator Mini—with a smaller footprint, easy one-touch printing, and even a networked camera inside allowing you to remotely…

British Fighter Jets Are Flying With 3D-Printed Parts

BAE Systems, which helps the UK’s RAF put together its aircraft, has revealed that some Tornado fighter jets have been flying with spare parts built using a 3D printer. Flights heading out from BAE’s Warton airfield in the UK have seen Tornado GR4s flying off with 3D printed cockpit radio covers, support struts and power…

3D-Printed Siphon Makes Sharing Drinks Impossibly Easy

Anyone who’s ever emptied a pool or stolen gas from a car’s tank knows how a siphon works, but that doesn’t make this 3D printed Wave toy seem any less magical. Seeing it in action you’d assume there was some kind of sorcery involved here, as one side of the Wave draws liquid to the…

The 38 Most Interesting Designs of 2013

Welcome to the end of another year, people! We made it, and not without a ton of brand new stuff to carry us into 2014 and beyond. We saw lots of beautiful, interesting, and just plain weird things, but here we’ve rounded up the items that stuck with us; not just because of what they…

A 3D Printer That Draws Designs in Jello Shots: Nerd Frats, Rejoice

As soon as mankind fully masters 3D printing, we’ll be able to make anything, in any shape, at any time. We’ll be—for all intents and purposes—gods. But until then, we might as well use the technology to inject even more liquor (in fun shapes!) into Jell-O shots, right? Take that, Alpha Betas. That’s exactly what…

The 3D Printer Who Saved Christmas

What we have here is a warm and fuzzy tale of a man and his gadget. Presents forgotten! Christmas Ruined! Not so fast. Armed with a 3D printer, he manages to stave off being shunned by his family for at least one more year. You may remember Doc North as the guy behind the ReAllocate…

Bot Cameras, Lidar Eyes, and the Driverless Racetrack of the Future

Gizmodo’s coverage of the DARPA Robotics Challenge continues with day two at the Homestead Speedway south of Miami. The weekend has arrived and the crowds are here with their kids, cheering on the bots. Some of our readers have complained that watching this thing over the live feed is kind of like watching paint dry.…

This Nanostructure-Making Method Is Like 3D Printing with Chemistry

Imagine if objects built themselves. You just dump raw material into a bucket, wait ten minutes, and BOOM: it’s a beautiful crystal. Turns out this is actually possible using a process called directed assembly. A team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania recently used this method to build tiny flower-shaped liquid crystals that can…

You Can Now 3D Print a Fully Functional Speaker

There’s no doubt that 3D printing is going to play a huge part in the future of manufacturing, especially now that researchers at Cornell University have managed to print every component of a fully functional speaker—including the cone, the wiring, and even the magnet. Because plastic is used for the speaker cone—which is heavier than…