Now where did I put my travel soldering iron?…

Update: Team Faberdashery are back, and orders are being dispatched from today onwards.

Our Thingsmith interviews spotlight the designer/makers that are playing an important role in the 3D printing revolution. In this series we hope to explore what motivates and inspires some of our favorite Thingsmiths.

Richard Horne (RichRap) has established himself as a stalwart of the RepRap community. He is well-known on Thingiverse for his fantastic experimental prints and willingness to take on big printing challenges. An expert in the art of multi-coloured printing, Richard  has produced some iconic pieces including the fantastic striped Stegosaurus – sliced. Richard continues to push the boundaries of 3D printing with his most recent experiments into edible prints and ceramics.

1. Tell us about the creation you are most proud of and what inspired it?

My simple filament joiner and layer selective coloured printing. I was clearing out some old things from my childhood and found my old scraperfoils. I really loved these, you carve away the black surface guidelines to expose a chalk image giving you a picture and a somewhat rudimentary textured 3D effect. I then used pen inks on the chalk to make my birds, lions etc. come to life with colour. When I found these old images, I made a link with the plain coloured 3D prints I had seen and thought about adding colour using layers to make them more interesting, I then had to spend 6 months building my RepStrap before I could try it out.

I tend to evolve ideas and designs as I work on them; I’m not a fan of planning and designing everything before starting something practical, I like to see what influences me and experiment. I’m also a big fan of simple paper pads – I make so many notes and sketches and have lots of them for all sorts of jobs and projects, from home DIY to 3D printing, and more recently my love of blogging continues to compliment my note pads that I use every day. And of course my very favorite tool is now my 3D printer!

I’m always delighted to see so many new people every day on the forum and Thingiverse doing amazing things and getting involved, improving and building on this technology so everyone can benefit.

Other than a real life star trek replicator I’m fascinated with both the extremely small and very large-scale 3D printing fabrication – from the ultra-fine microscopic layers and extreme high resolution to the really massive, complex impossible looking printed sculptures, houses, bridges etc. it’s going to be amazing watching all this unfold. I would love to be even more involved. I’m looking into food printing at the moment and it will need some community help to make it amazing, it’s much harder than I thought!

5. At Faberdashery Towers we are fuelled by Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. What’s your tinkering tipple of choice?

Normally Vanilla Green Tea and maybe a festive Gingerbread latte or two.

6. Just one last question. As an expert in multicoloured printing we thought it only right to ask what would be your ‘limited edition’ filament colour?

Oh that’s really easy – a complete set of chocolate coloured filaments from creamy white chocolate to 100% Cocoa, it’s my one weakness.

Mmm… That gives us an idea… 

Photo credit: RichRap.

Last year musician and performer Onyx Ashanti created a new type of musical performance “prosthesis” called a beatjazz controller. This is a 3 way wireless sensor network used to make beatjazz, an improvisational music form. Think of it as a saxophone for cyborgs. Onyx uses this one-of-a-kind musical instrument to deliver live, improvised electronic musical performances.

The first prototype for the controller was cardboard and Onyx’s demo perfomance with it at TED was featured on MAKE last year.  Now Onyx has moved it into the next level of awesome by 3d printing the hand units in Faberdashery Robot Silver. The results look fantastic!

Onyx says: ‘I discovered 3d printing a while back but only just purchased an eMAKER Huxley in November and spent January teaching myself CAD.’

‘One of the goals of the project is to make it open source (which it is already) and downloadable.  In the vein of the reprap, approximately 80% of the system is printable, making it downloadable as well.  This goal feeds the ultimate goal of the system whixch is to re-engineer music performance.’

We can’t wait to see the new units in action and are sure this will inspire a whole new wave of future-looking cyber-awesome musical creations! To keep up to date with the project check out Onyx’s blog.

Photo credit: Onyx Ashanti

Credits: tekeian, videan42, bryanbrutherford, guru, relet, polymaker

Catch you in the New Year!

There’s a mysterious glow around Faberdashery Towers… is it just the full moon?… or something altogether more sinister, like our ultra eerie Glowbug Yellow glow-in-the-dark filament.

Fab yourself a Spook-tacular Halloween with a glowing Ghost Toy by tc_fea, or  perhaps a screaming skull? We love the idea of giant, luminous creepy crawlies like Antona’s Big Spider and Zomboe’s Snake. Of course prints don’t have to be classically scary… until the lights go out! Glowbug PLA turns the cutesiest of prints into sinister spooky objects, like RichRap’s glowing print of Roy the Bunny. Frankly, we wouldn’t mess with him! So what will you create… Trick or Treat ?

Our Thingsmith interviews spotlight the designer/makers that are playing an important role in the 3D printing revolution. In this series we hope to explore what motivates and inspires some of our favorite Thingsmiths.

Dr Adrian Bowyer needs little introduction. As the creator of the RepRap project he is considered the ‘Godfather’ of fabbing. His academic research at the intersection of biology and engineering led him to the idea of an open-source, self-replicating, 3D printer. Since its advent in 2005, the RepRap project has had phenomenal growth, gained international recognition and been heralded as the invention that will start the second industrial revolution. Adrian is currently a senior lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Bath and a director of RepRap Ltd.

1.     Tell us about the creation you are most proud of and what inspired it?

It’s going to have to be RepRap. It was inspired by the mutualist symbiosis between the flowers and insects. To see me rabbiting on about this nonsense look at this video for example.

My approach is to sit and stare at the ceiling, and my favourite tools are a pencil and piece of paper.

I would not say, as I make it a principle not to comment publically on what other makers do.  Because I created RepRap my comments would carry far more weight than they are worth. (Though I was very proud when my daughter Sally finished building her first RepRap machine the other day.)

I think the widespread uptake of home genetic engineering. Incredibly powerful, incredibly interesting, and maybe incredibly dangerous. [ed. Checkout BioCurious and this Economist article for starters].

From the first shot glass we made using the very first RepRap machine (currently on display in the V&A) I had a dram of Laphroaig, of which I am rather fond.

Cheers!

Photo credit: Adrian Bowyer.

Trimensional is a nifty iPhone app that turns your phone into a 3d scanner. It works by using both the screen and the front-facing camera on your phone to detect patterns of light reflected off a surface to build a 3D model. To get the best results the scan has to be done in a really dark room with the screen brightness turned up to max. The STL file produced could be sent directly to print, however,  we found that a bit of smoothing in Meshlab and cropping in Netfabb Studio gave better results. We shared the files on Thingiverse, and then printed in Faberdashery Buttercream PLA.

Trimensional is a great example of  how easy it’s becoming to capture content in 3D from the world around us. We can see a time in the not-too-distant future, when 3d printing these sorts of mementos will be commonplace. What would you scan for your 3D scrap book of memories?

We’ve been amazed by the response from the community and would like to say a massive Thanks! We love the fantastic stuff that you’ve been printing with Faberdashery PLA. Check out the Cups from NYC Designer, RichRap’s Traditional Fan and Heart Box, Smartroad’s fab Dyson hack and Pia Tubert’s elegant pliers. Many thanks to the blogs that also featured us, including Fabbaloo, SolidSmack, Ponoko and others.

Finally, we have had a new addition to the Faberdashery family – Baby Rose. She is bringing a lot of joy to the Faberdashery household – as well as some sleepless nights .

So thanks all for your support and fabbing love! We’re currently working on extending our range. Watch this space for more news.

Photo credit: RichRap.

Shelter from the blazing sun? No problem! Print out the fantastic Dome Connectors by c60 grab some bamboo, and make yourself a geodesic dome. Next get hydrated with a Bottle by aubenc to collect your water, then swig it in style with Joris’ beautifully faceted low res hi quality cup. You may be stuck on a desert island but there’s no need to eat with fingers. Print yourself the essential Sporknife by freakinhuge and chow down on that mango. Finally, attract the attention of passing boats with Zaggo’s classic Whistle.

Of course, some of us would be happily stuck on a desert island with just a 3D printer . So you could always just while away the time with the awesome Chess set I by cbiffle.

What design files would you 3D print to survive?

Featured image by HeyDanielle (Flickr)