3D printing

Meet the Shoe that Represents the Future of Fashion and 3D Printing

Right now, 3D-printed fashion is mired in novelty—each piece seems to scream hey, look what’s possible with this craaaazy technology. Someday, printed garments might be commonplace, but that day just isn’t here yet. However, that doesn’t mean savvy designers, like London-based Earl Stewart, shouldn’t tinker with different techniques to see what sticks. In fact, that’s…

11 Spectacular 3D Printer Failures

Just because you have a 3D printer doesn’t mean you’re going to make anything remarkable. It doesn’t even mean you’re going to wind up with what you set out to produce. Believe it or not, 3D printing requires some skill. And when you don’t have it, things go delightfully askew. While there are plenty of…

Shapeways Now Lets You 3D Print With Soft, Squishy Plastic

Are you ready for an influx of 3D printed sandal and slip-on shoe designs? Shapeways, your one stop shop for 3D printing when you don’t want to shell out for a printer of your own, is now offering a new material called Elasto Plastic, a flexible off-white elastomer. It’s soft and squishy, but still returns…

How New York Could Save Its Collapsing Harbors

New York is forever on the verge of some kind of collapse. We worry about the next big storm. Or a the next economic downturn. Or just a good ol’ rat tsunami. But last year, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (or NYCEDC) called our attention to a very immediate—and underreported—crisis: The decay of…

Navy Wants Aircraft Carriers to Manufacture Weapons On the Go

These days, the mention of 3D-printed weapons conjures up visions of people printing AK-47s in their garages (ok, that might just be me). But a recent story in the Armed Forces Journal brings word of a more systematic implementation of 3D-printed warfare. According to one Lieutenant Commander Michael Llenza, the Navy’s future lies in converting…

A Homeland Security intelligence bulletin has warned that it could be “impossible” to stop 3D-printed guns from being made. Astute, guys. Very, very astute.

How a 3D Printer Saved This Baby’s Life

Six weeks after he was born, Kaiba Gionfriddo began to experience severe breathing difficulties, the result of a rare obstruction in his lungs called bronchial malacia. In desperation, doctors attempted a technique never tried before on a human: they 3D-printed a splint from biological material. Before they could do such a thing, however, the University…

How a 3D Printer Helped a Child Breathe Again

When Kaiba Gionfriddo was born, his parents never expected to have to look on, helpless, as his windpipe collapsed daily and stopped him from breathing. They were desperate—so when a team of researchers suggested that a 3D printer could help, they leapt at the chance. So a team from the University of Michigan set about…

The Newest 3D-Printed Gun Is Far More Dangerous For Much Cheaper

After the stir several weeks ago, buzz surrounding Defense Distributed’s 3D-printed gun has begun to (somewhat) die down. This is probably due in part to Kim Dotcom’s removal of the gun’s blueprint from Mega and the fact that, frankly, the gun itself isn’t much of an immediate threat. But as one potential threat dissipates, just…

Why 3D Printing Is Overhyped (I Should Know, I Do It For a Living)

Everyone’s now aware of 3D printing — they’ve read about it in the papers, on blogs or seen it on TV. The mentality now seems to be that, in the future, we’ll be able to download our products or make them ourselves with CAD programs, apps and 3D scanners, then just print them out, either…

Disney World Will Slap Your Head On a Stormtrooper Now

Last summer guests at Disney’s Hollywood Studios had the opportunity to get a miniature version of themselves frozen in carbonite thanks to the magic of 3D printing. And this year that one-of-a-kind souvenir will be available again, with the addition of a Stormtrooper option if you like what the Empire has been doing in that…

Watch this robotic worm assemble itself. Oh, and it was 3D printed.

Sure, this adorable little inchworm robot looks cute. But just wait for the day when more sophisticated versions start printing and assembling themselves from scratch — and all without human oversight. We’ve seen self-assembling robots before, but not one that came out of a 3D printer. This printed inchworm robot was developed by Samuel Felton…

100,000 People Already Downloaded 3D-Printed Gun Plans. So What?

In just two days, blueprints for the world’s first (almost) entirely 3D printed gun have made their way onto the hard drives of over 100,000 potential quick-draws around the world. And the idea of this many people gaining non-regulated access to lethal weapons this quickly should be sending us into a mass, hysterical moral panic,…

Typographical Chess Lets Novices Easily Recognize Each Piece

If you grew up playing checkers, transitioning to chess and keeping track of which piece is which and what moves where can be tricky. So to smooth out the learning curve, OneSavesSolutions created this 3D printed Typographical Chess Set with the name of each piece integrated into its design. It unfortunately doesn’t provide hints on…

Criminals Can Now Make Unregistered Guns With One Mouse Click

This can make the entire gun control debate pointless: student/inventor Cody Wilson has successfully designed and tested a pistol that can be easily downloaded through the internet and made into reality using a cheap 3D plastic printer by anyone. One push of a button and bang, you are done. It’s called The Liberator and it…

You can now 3D-print a fully operational handgun

A plastic gun made on a 3D printer has been successfully fired. What’s more, its developer has released the blueprints online, meaning anyone with the right 3D printer can create a gun of their own, right in their living room. Say hello to the dark side of the maker movement. This past weekend (May 4),…

The World’s First Entirely 3D-Printed Gun Fires Its First Shot

Just days after revealing that he was working on a 100-per-cent 3D-printed weapon, Cody Wilson appears to have successfully test-fired the Liberator pistol, a gun made entirely out of plastic. Great. The Liberator is a fairly wonky-looking pistol, constructed entirely out of plastic — the only metal working component is the firing pin, which is…

The World’s First Entirely 3D Printed Gun

If you think that piece of plastic above is just a toy, you’d be wrong. It’s an actual gun. That fires standard handgun bullets. That’s 3D printed. Yes, printed. It’s the first entirely 3D printed gun, previous 3D printed weapons have just been specific parts. Welcome to the future. The 3D printed gun, called ‘The…

We’ve Figured Out How To Make Robot Birds Fly, Up Next: Humans?

Mankind is decades away from taking to the skies in an Iron Man-like suit, but now that researchers at the University of Maryland have cracked the secret to building robot birds that can dive and swoop like the real thing, maybe those crazy human wing designs of yesteryear are worth trying again? Research on what…

Wood, Salt, and Wonder: The Renewable Future of 3D Printing

Weapons. Toys. Entire skulls. There’s no limit to the objects we can 3D print these days, but the materials themselves haven’t evolved as quickly—we’re still stuck in a world of plastic, steel, and ceramic. That’s all about to change, thanks to the work of a small Oakland fabrication studio called Emerging Objects. Emerging Objects is…