FreeFormFab

First Eindhoven FabLab Workshop

Studio:ludens and Little Mountain -two companies from the creative sector of Eindhoven- are strong believers of the power of the FabLab concept. They decided to test hands-on what the benefits of such a place would be for the creative business of Eindhoven and so the first FabLab workshop in Eindhoven was born.

On the 27th of March, they put together a one-day FabLab at their own office. Sponsored by Trotec, Kubra an EZtronics they created a complete workshop with a lasercutter, hand tools, a large variety of raw materials and a bunch of of the newest electronic kits. Mixed teams of design professionals and design students (both Design Academy & Industrial Design) were challenged to create a new USB concept and deliver a working prototype at the end of the day.

The results were highly impressive: combining their variety of skills in an act of strong teamwork, the participants turned their ideas into reality. Through an iterative process the initial concepts were refined step by step. In the end, three visually and technically attractive working prototypes of the designs were presented. Studio:ludens and Little Mountain believe that this workshop demonstrated some of the potential benefits for the creative community of Eindhoven:

• Increase personal interaction between design students from different areas.
• Create fruitful links between the professional creative industry and creative students.
• Unleash the true potential of creatives by providing them easy access to Rapid-Manfacturing technologies.

Feel free to read the in-depth review (with many pictures!) of the whole day at Blog Ludens.

Co-Creatie Community Mobiliteit

C,mm,n (spreek uit als common) is een open source community voor duurzame individuele mobiliteit. C,mm,n zet in op elektrisch rijden en ontwikkelt een nieuw soort auto. Maar c,mm,n is meer dan alleen een voertuig: het biedt een oplossing voor mobiliteit in de toekomst. C,mm,n werkt open source: de c,mm,nity is open voor iedereen. Een ontmoetingsplek voor mensen die creatief, intelligent en ondernemend met mobiliteit omgaan en willen bijdragen aan een betere wereld. De blauwdruk van de c,mm,n auto is publiek beschikbaar onder een open source licentie. Zo werken over de hele wereld mensen aan de ontwikkeling van duurzame mobiliteit voor de toekomst.

C,mm,n is een open-source community voor duurzame individuele mobiliteit. Met de c,mm,nity wordt een nieuw soort auto en een nieuw mobiliteitsconcept ontwikkeld. C,mm,n biedt een oplossing voor mobiliteit in de toekomst. De c,mm,nity is een groeiende gemeenschap; momenteel zijn meer dan 800 mensen betrokken bij c,mm,n, waarvan circa 80 actief een bijdrage leveren. Wil je ook meedenken over duurzame mobiliteitsoplossingen? Of helpen bij het ontwerpen van de c,mm,n? Op dit moment wordt binnen de c,mm,nity hard gewerkt aan:

• uitrolstrategie ‘1 miljoen electrische auto’s in 2020′
• oplaadpunten voor snelladen
• oplaadpunten voor optimaal laden
• interieur design
• bodemplaat/ophanging
• aandrijflijn
• intelligente systemen/rijsimulator
• digiquette

Source: C,mm,n

Rapid Manufacturing & Mass Customization 2009 Event

Last year Mikrocentrum introduced a new, international event: Rapid Manufacturing & Mass Customization. The event was co-organised by Rein van der Mast and covered both topics as well as how to apply these in an industrial environment. We are proud to announce the 2009 edition tittled: Rapid Manufacturing & Mass Customization. The event will take place November 17, 2009. Its location is still undecided, however we are expecting to find an interesting place in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands. This also means we can better accommodate our international audience, amongst which are Dutch, German and Belgian guests. 

If you have any topics you think would be interesting for the visitors please let us know. This year we will include open innovation because it can be linked to both of our main topics. We will focus primarily on applications instead of research. You can contact Mikrocentrum by e-mail or by phone +31402969934

Source: Mikrocentrum

Google I/O Developer Conference 2009

Sign up to attend Google’s largest developer event of the year, Google I/O, happening May 27th-28th at Moscone West in San Francisco. Over the two days, thousands of developers will come together to learn about the latest advancements in Android, App Engine, Chrome, Google Web Toolkit, AJAX APIs, OpenSocial and more. It’s a great opportunity to meet and talk with fellow developers and the engineers behind Google’s developer products. To learn more and register, visit the Google I/O website. Early registration ends May fitst.

Ministerie Economische Zaken: Innovatie 2.0

Het ministerie van Economische Zaken gaat bij het maken van innovatiebeleid experimenteren met co-creatie en crowdsourcing (persbericht). Het plan om via internet bouwstenen voor het beleid te vragen, ontstond tijdens de Innovation Lecture in november 2008 (met oa Charles Leadbeater).

In de pilot-periode wordt voor drie beleidsonderwerpen input gevraagd: Cultuur en economie, de overheid als innovatieve klant en verruimen definitie speur- en ontwikkelingswerk WBSO (inmiddels gestart). Aanmelden bij de LinkedIn-groep Innovatie 2.0

Source: Upstream

Businessweek: The Lesson of Coraline

Coraline, the animated fantasy movie directed by Henry Selick Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and others), has brought in almost $40 million since it opened last week – not bad for an animated feature. With a toddler at home, I don’t get to the theater very often, but this week I did get to see the innovative technology behind the movie: Objet Geometries Connex500. And if the Connex doesn’t count as a disruptive technology yet, it will soon.

The Connex500 is a 3-D printer. It can take an object designed in any CAD software or, in the case of Coraline, an animation program, and “print” a physical copy. Very simply, the software slices the design into microns-thick layers, and gives the printer a footprint for each, so that it can build a model one layer at a time. Because the Connex has multiple printer heads, it can build an object out of any of Objet’s eight basic plastic materials (shown, left) – which range from rigid to flexible, and include clear, white, and black options – or combine them to create an infinite number of composites. Those material options, along with the micron-measured detail, is helping change how companies think about 3-D printing.

Source and more: Objet
Thanks to Shimrit

Sabine E. Wildevuur: Invisible Vision

Sabine E. Wildevuur asks: Could Science learn from the Arts. My answer as a historian is that science since the Renaissance has constantly exploited techniques of visual representation forged in the arts. It continues to do so even when its practitioners are blithely unaware of the legacy. Every image that portrays something in space as a three-dimensional object illuminated from a specific light source ultimately depends of the visual revolution wrought by Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Leonardo and other pioneers of Renaissance naturalism. The systematic rendering of something in plan and elevation depends upon techniques devised by Renaissance architects. It also seems likely that the first methodical use of sections, particularly solid sections, first occurred in the work of architects and designers in the circle of Leonardo.

Sabine E. Wildevuur: Invisible Vision
Uitgever: Bohn, Stafleu Van Loghum

Source: Waag

Laser-cut Grip Tape Inlay for a Longboard

The latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Laser-cut Grip Tape Inlay for a Longboard brought the largest number of entries in the history of the 1HDC, with participants uploading an incredible array of grip tape graphic designs. Huge thanks to our sponsors on this challenge: Ponoko and Bustin Boards, who have been extremely generous with their offerings. It was a really tough call for the judges. See winners

Source: Core 77

David Buckley: The History of Robots

David Buckley has been producing robots and animatronic systems for over a quarter century and building robots for much longer, here are some details about some of the projects he was involved in, and robots he has built. For reports on past robot meetings see Robotsystems. All new robots are of course photographed digitally, but he has  a great number of slides and prints of my robots and others at various exhibitions including The First Personal Robot Exposition and Congress in 1984 (be part of the beginning) which he started to scan and put on his site.

Source: David Buckley

Aaron Koblin: Bicycle Built for Two Thousand

Aaron Koblin laat door middel van de videoclip Bicycle Built for Two Thousand een visuele interpretatie van de data zien. Hij gebruikte daarvoor de song Daisy Bell uit 1892. Eerder maakte hij de videoclip bij Radiohead’s House of Cards en projecten als Ten Thousand Cents, een 100 dollar biljet getekend door duizenden deelnemers, en het eveneens via Mechanical Turrk gemaakte Sheep Market met duizenden naar links kijkende schapen. Crowdsourcing op zijn best.

Source: Bright

ShapeWays Photoshaper turns Photo into 3D object

Shapeways provides users a set of toolkits that allows them to create 3D objects without any CAD or programming skills. The compagny has introduced their so called Photoshaper, a service that allows anyone to turn digital photographs into 3D printed objects.

Users can logon to Shapeways, upload any photo and order their creations directly. Now you not only can see your girl friend in your wallet when you are on a business trip, but touch her in 3D. With Photoshaper Shapeways redefines online consumerism with direct access to individually customized products that were never available before.

Based on the contrast of the picture (light and dark) the Shapeways Photoshaper automatically creates a depth-layered 3D object that can be printed by Shapeways with the latest in 3D printing technology. The 3D photo will be produced and delivered globally within 10 days and costs between 40-50 USD, including shipping. For best results use a 1.5 megapixel or better picture. The size of the 3D photo is 13 cm to 9 cm, landscape and portrait.

Source: Mass Customization

Sabin+Jones: LabStudio

In 2007 Jenny E. Sabin and Peter Lloyd Jones initiated LabStudio, a hybrid research and design unit based within the Institute for Medicine & Engineering, the School of Design and the Nonlinear Systems Organization at The University of Pennsylvania.

Within the Sabin+Jones LabStudio, architects, mathematicians, materials scientists and cell biologists are actively collaborating to develop, analyze and abstract dynamic, biological systems through the generation and design of new tools. These new approaches for modeling complexity and visualizing large datasets are subsequently applied to both architectural and biomedical research and design. The real and virtual world that LabStudio occupies has already offered radical new insights into generative and ecological design within architecture, and it is providing new ways of seeing and measuring how dynamic living systems are formed and operate during development and in disease.

Overall, the Mission of LabStudio is to produce new modes of thinking, working and creating in design and biomedicine through the modeling of dynamic, multi-dimensional systems with experiments in biology, applied mathematics, fabrication and material construction.

Source: Sabin+Jones

Utopian Practices: Art, Science and Design REunited

Waag Society, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Virtual Knowledge Studio and The Arts & Genomics Centre of Leiden University have organised the conference Utopian Practices: Science, Art & Design REunited. The Conference takes place in De Balie Amsterdam on March 20th from 09.00-16.30 hrs.

Art, science and design were once closely tied to one another, but in the modern age technological specialisation and other divisions brought about a fragmentation of these fields. Increasingly, however, we have begun noticing a number of cross-pollinations between fine arts, applied arts and the sciences. During the conference Utopian Practices: Science, Art & Design REunited, a number of pioneers in this issue will present some surprising connections between the various disciplines like Susan Kennard, Executive Director of the new media institute BANFF in Canada will talk about the unique way that BANFF brings together researchers, artists and designers. Professor Emeritus Martin Kemp from Oxford University will discuss the similarities between artists and scientists based on what he calls ‘structural intuition’. And artist Beatriz da Costa will tell us how difficult it is to break down the barriers between art and science based on the question ‘when does Art become Science?’

Utopian Practices is the official opening for a programme dealing with the daily practice of art, science and design organised by Waag Society, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Virtual Knowledge Studio and The Arts & Genomics Centre at Leiden University.

Source and Program: De Balie

The Future of Shopping: Custom Everything

The monthly business magazine Condé Nast Portfolio explores what the future holds for shopping now that retailers are hurting and consumers are expected to keep spending tight for 2009. Portfolio.com takes a look at the phenomenon of mass customization -a way of making standard consumer products as customizable as a Facebook page. And Wired.com dives into the DIY subculture, and meets a group of hobbyists who are starting to hack furniture and product design like it was all just Unix code.

Portfolio’s Perspective: Custom Everything
 by Sara Clemence


What happens when you can design your physical world as easily as you can reformat your blog? Bespoke products have always been available to anyone willing and able to pay the price, whether for an individually tailored suit or a customized car. In recent years, one of the big shifts in retail has been giving customers the ability to design their own versions of premium products—like wedding rings, pricey handbags, and Nikes—at prices that are comparable to the regular versions. Now, without most of us realizing it, we’re on the cusp of another big change. Thanks to market demands and developments in technology, we’re going to be living in a user-generated world, where everything we use can (and will) be customizable. It’s already happening, in ways both obvious and not.

Wired’s Perspective: In-Home Manufacturing
 by Jennifer Kahn


Some are already designing a future where physical objects can be downloaded,  just as software is today. As computer-aided design has become more accessible, the tools for fabrication have also become cheaper. New desktop 3D printers now cost 5,000 USD, while the price of a water-jet cutter, capable of slicing any material, from glass to marble, to tolerances of a hundredth of an inch, has fallen by half. If everyone has access to computer-controlled machine tools and advanced 3D printers, why ship an item from manufacturing plant to customer? Why not just fabricate the object near home, on demand?

Source: Putting People First

SIGGRAPH 2009: The Gallery

The SIGGRAPH 2009 Design & Computation Gallery (4-8 August 2009 New Orleans) explores non-linear and biological processes in design and digital fabrication through selected works of art, architecture, and design. The work’s inherently generative nature encourages many lines of investigation along two main paths:

• Generative design - algorythm and process, explorations of phase space and path-dependent emergent phenomena, form-making versus form-finding, and iterative design such as simulation, analysis, and optimization.
• Digital fabrication - the interplay between digital representation and the crafting of physical objects; formation of structures by aggregation, weaving, and layered manufacturing; and exploitation of organic and composite material properties.

Source: Siggraph