FreeFormFab

Digital Forming

Digital Forming is a new London based company set up to democratise the personalisation of everyday products. As customers gradually demand greater freedom of choice, designers and brands are faced with new challenges in product diversity, responding through innovative product assembly strategies, 2D interactive pattern modification and coloring of predefined shapes.

Digital forming novel technology offers the modification of products material behaviors, colour and form. Digital Forming, a team of young designers and software developers in London, has devised a software program that will allow anyone to do just that with basic objects like bowls, vases, pens and lemon squeezers. You call up a digital model of the product on a computer, and tweak the colors, finish or form, just like a professional designer. There’s no risk of damaging it by doing something silly, because the original designer will have specified the degree to which it can be changed.

See also: User Co-Designed Objects (UCODO)

From the 50’s: Mold-A-Rama (MAR)

Mold-A-Rama was developed in the mid-1950’s by Tike Miller of Phoenix. He licensed the invention to the Automatic Retailers Association, which installed and serviced Mold-A-Rama machines, reaching a height of over 200 machines around the country. The ARA decided to drop Mold-A-Ramas after eight years, but an employee, Roy Ward, negotiated to buy them out. By 1967, he and a few other independent operators owned all the machines. Ward decided to retire in 1969, and sold his business to Bill Jones, who now owns and operates 70 machines. Besides the Chicago locations, Jones has machines—mostly in zoos—in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin. The other major operator is based in Florida.

When you operate a Mold-A-Rama, polyethelene plastic at 250 degrees is pumped through a pipe at the bottom of the mold. A second pipe then blows cold air to force the plastic into the crevices of the mold. The plastic hoses which give the machine that cool techno-Frankenstein look, pump automotive antifreeze to cool the mold quickly.

Flickr
Moldaramaville

Source: Mold-A-Rama