One of the best design firms in the world is sharing it’s technical tricks for free online. Art School will barely exist as we know it in 10 years. Oh and currently for profit, online art education is worth ~$2B/year.

QVC is the second most profitable channel on television with revenue in excess of $5B. YouTube is now offering a tech platform that will let tens of thousands of bands (and other folks in the future) create their own QVC/HSN channels.

With increasing access to machines that can produce production quality goods at quantities of 1 we are going to see more high quality product satire like these cereal box mock ups.

Combat robotics seem like the natural evolution of UFC and NASCAR, but are currently limited to the world of fantasy at this point (Unless you count the BattleBots that look like toasters). However, this behind the scenes feature from the movie Real Steel talks about how the robots are made for the silver screen.

Penny Arcade is a blog/web comic for obsessive video gamers whose senses of humor tend towards the caustic. So when you see an earnest post about kids and technology you know it has to be interesting.

Gabe, one of the authors tells a story about his son’s obsession with the game Minecraft. If you aren’t familiar with the game, Minecraft is basically a multiplayer game of digital LEGOs. You make things and avoid some nebulous bad guys, but it is fundamentally a digital sandbox.

His son plays for hours a day and he is considering putting limits on the play as good parenting manuals would suggest. But he can’t, because the things his son are making are too cool. Not only is he building things in the game, but his son (Age 7) wanted to make a video of himself making things in the game so he built a “tripod” out of Legos, with an ultimate aim of sharing it online. So this 7 year old who has never read the Cognitive Surplus, thought about participatory media, or had any exposure to notions of a post TV landscape spends his time:

1. Playing a game that’s primary goal is building original structures

2. Documenting his creative process via video

3. Fashioning real world objects to meet his needs

4. Sharing his creations via the web.

If little Gabe isn’t an outlier we could be on the brink of a new wave of creativity. Of course, this should be tempered with a bit of reality. One of the smartest guys in tech pointed out that MySpace profiles tricked out with custom HTML/CSS portended the same thing, but ultimately fizzled. I’m still optimistic that this is for real and exciting days are ahead.

Customization is a semi-hot area in the world of technology. Analyst firms and eminent news magazines write about 3D printing. The most important tech writer in the world is releasing a book detailing the industrial revolution brought forth by the web and custom manufacturing tools.

However, the coverage of this area of tech usually focuses on what will be possible in the future or gimmicky applications of the technology in the present (e.g. custom chocolate bar or dress shirt companies) and not quiet, but large applications.

Custom coinage is an area that is seemingly boring, but based on the number of ads on a Google search for “Custom Coins” is fairly lucrative. The manufacturers of these coins use CNC tools and CAD software to create short runs of metal coins cost effectively (You can get 100 custom designed coins for ~$3.50 each).

Companies like CoinsForAnything.com offer a wide variety of designs and manufacturing possibilities. You can commission coins to celebrate everything from yuppie coffee to military operations and get really nice looking products for low cost.

Part of the reason why these coins and companies that make them fly under the radar is that they aren’t serving traditionally techie audiences. There are corporate customers, but a huge portion of the business on these sites is for “Challenge Coins” a very cool sounding military tradition to help soldiers identify themselves on the battlefield or in a bar.

These coins are finding increasingly cool civilian uses as well. The Monterey Company touts their GeoCaching GeoCoins which are used in web/GPS based scavenger hunts. Coins are struck, inscribed with serial numbers and intrepid game players hide them in remote locations sharing virtual treasure hunts with other players world wide. It seems like a combination of LARPing and the pirate life, but shows how customization is being used to aid an existing market, rather than trying to create one.

These companies aren’t sexy, aren’t usually blogged about, but they are generating more revenue than most of the non-printing customization companies I’m aware of.

Wood Joint Cad Data

Hobbyist woodworking is a $1B+ market and has a lot of technical folks involved in the craft. Flexible stream has released CAD files for 50 kinds of wooden joints to help these crafters make better projects. This is an area of mass customization that could really take off especially compared to 3D printing.

3D Printing Named as Top Trend

3D printing takes the #1 spot in ad agency’s JWT 100 predictions for 2011. The honor is due to alphabetical organization not status, but it is another big endorsement for the technology. Now the market just needs to materialize.

ThinkGeek Makes iCade Real

ThinkGeek announced that last years April Fool’s Day product announcement the iCade, is now a real product, shipping soon. The biggest part of this announcement in my mind is the API so you can make your own retro game. This is still a gag gift (though one that will be in every start ups lunch room), but the idea of physical products and apps with API’s will be a big theme in 2011

WiThings Blood Pressure Cuff

Speaking of apps and products, French company WiThings is expanding beyond their WiFi scale with a BP cuff and baby monitor. Their products are expensive, but gorgeous and will fit in nicely with the iBGStar in the mHealth world.

3D Printed Flute

This fully functional 3D printed flute has been making the blog/Twitter rounds, but Josh over at SolidSmack deserves credit for creating the best collection of images/videos.

One of the difficulties in making personal fabrication a reality is the difficulty of most CAD packages. Learning how to use a program like SolidWorks takes 2,000+ hours, or a year of 40 hour weeks. That will slow down adoption, not to mention the need to understand material properties and engineering principles. A couple new products are attempting to make the learning curve a little shallower by building some aesthetic algorithms into their software.

Beautiful Modeler for iPad

“Beautiful Modeler” is an iPad/desktop hybrid app. You touch a series of dots on the iPad screen and as you drag them along the surface, the physical model on a desktop deforms in response. It is a very neat, “Minority Report” style interface.

Once your model is complete you can export the file to .STL format it and send it to a 3D printer. The main weakness of the systems is that unless you are a digital Michaelangelo you end up with something like this:

If you are curious it is a “lamp“. Technically interesting, but aesthetically lacking and functionally suspect.

Slicer for Google SketchUp

Slicer is a simple plug in for Google SketchUp that takes a 3D model and turns it into thin sheet data. This is a very helpful tool if you are trying to turn 3D data into 2D parts. For instance if you want to make ribs for the hull of a boat, or some kind of flat pack furniture with organic curves. The downside to this software is that it presupposes a significant level of skill with a 3D modeling package. Thanks to @DrWave for the link!

Ultimately, to make great 3D objects you are going to need to invest time becoming a great digital sculptor or an amazing technical developer. Tools like these are interesting shortcuts for niche applications, but lack the depth to replace bespoke solutions and designs. If you want to get a sense for how difficult developing truly entry level CAD systems can be read Chris Hecker’s “Liner Notes” on the technical development of the game Spore. The Spore Creature Creator was an amazing feat of software engineering that allowed anything you created to come alive. It cost $20MM to develop and still flopped so even if you have the technical skills and funding, market risk still exists. Getting there will be a challenge, but we do it will be an interesting time for creativity.

Modernist design brought the term “Truth to Materials” into the lexicon of designers. It means that the true nature of a material should be celebrated not hidden or doctored. If you are building a structure out of concrete, don’t mold it to look like bricks, but rather accentuate its innate attributes. This thinking can lead to design icons, like the Eames DCM chair (right) which uses industrial materials and process in a way that doesn’t attempt to mask either. Compare that to the more traditional chair on the left and “Truth to Materials” becomes clear.

Photo Credits: http://bit.ly/bXmyT8 & http://bit.ly/bMaYVe

The evolution of 3D printing has not been in the modernist tradition. 3D printers are evaluated and purchased largely on their ability to simulate the output of other machines, namely injection molding. The engineers who buy and use them want to replicate traditional plastic molding processes as closely as possible and aren’t so interested in the disruptive potential of “Direct Digital Manufacturing“. They see 3D printing as “Rapid Prototyping”, a way to shorten the product development cycle, not a way to rethink the manufacturing process.

A new project highlighted on the Freedom of Creation blog aims to change this. In conjunction with the London School of Fashion, FOC is creating garments that are produced in final form straight from the 3D Printer. Designers have been making fashion items and jewelry with 3D printers for some time, but they are usually constructed from multiple parts in multiple materials. These garments are different.

Just as industrial materials ushered in the modernist/minimal age, 3D printers promise a new future. The black dress below hints at the future of where design will go:

Intrinsic features - Look at how the two lapels join at the navel. There are no seams or means of joining the parts. The plunging neckline and materials are joined without the intervention of human hands. This is going to allow design features that would  too time consuming or not within the potential of the material now.

No waste - In fashion based industries there is a lot of waste. Major clothing stores scrap 40% of their inventory. Even more is lost in manufacturing where the pieces used to construct the clothing are cut from larger pieces of fabric.

New Materials - Comments about these clothes on other sites have derided plastic as a clothing material probably not considering the lycra and polyester clothing they already own. The gauge of chain mail on exhibit is probably too extreme, but what if it was 4X smaller? It is light, breathes well, could hang in interesting ways. Perhaps not in clothing, but upholstery? In any case it shows that old materials will be reimagined in exciting ways.

I don’t think fuchsia plastic chain mail is going to replace the inventory of Banana Republic any time soon, but this project is exciting. These are high quality visualizations of whats to come in fashion and other product categories.

ZCorp’s New Technology

ZCorp is the only 3D printing company that can produce models in full color. It is a great strength, but also a terrible weakness because their build material is plaster based, brittle, and not usable in more mechanically rigorous applications. ZCorp has acquired a technology that remedies that weakness. The ZBuilder Ultra is their new prototyping machine, an SLA based system, provides impressive technical specifications and has an an impressive aesthetic befitting an advanced technology. See a finished piece emerge from a bath of build material at the 1:06 mark and the “Tron” like build process at the 1:50 mark.

Open Source 3D Printers at MakerFaire

While I was at MakerFaire it was impressive to see how much energy there was around Open Source 3D printing. The MakerBot was the belle of the ball, but the Fab@Home, RepRap, and other Open Source projects were well represented as well. It is exciting to see is the improving quality of the models that are being created. With more designers all design problems are shallow. Complex transformers, interesting puzzles, and multi-material builds show how much opportunity there is even in affordable platforms.

3D Printing Iron Man

Objet 3D printers are capable of extraordinarily detailed output. Film and game studios are using their technology in the visualization processes, for example, when they are designing the newest armor for Iron Man or Master Chief.

Casting Pewter in a 3D Printed Mold

3D printing is an exciting technology with a lot of energy being expanded by manufacturers in the category. However, there is also a tremendously innovative community of users. Case in point this metal smith using 3D printed molds as a way to cast pewter.

3D Printing a Fossil

One of the first examples of a 3D printer in pop culture was in the completely terrible 3rd installment of the Jurassic Park series. A character 3D prints a velociraptor’s voice chamber and plays a critical role at the climax of the film. Science fiction in 2001 is reality in 2010. Now, a small Canadian natural history museum is using 3D printers to produce replicas of dinosaur fossils. At the time of this post they have yet to splice any DNA and Wayne Knight is still safely in Los Angeles.

The world of mass customization is expanding so quickly there is enough link worthy content for TWO consecutive Link-O-Rama posts!

Virtual Pottery Wheel

Patrick Swayze made pottery wheels sexy for the first time since the bronze age. It can’t be a coincidence that the year he passes brings us the coolest innovation in pottery since the time of Caesar. A laser scanner tracks the hand movements of a user and outputs digital data in the form of a spun pot. The digital data is then transferred to a 3D printer and the virtual data is made real.

Intro to 3D Scanning

RepRap and the State of Open Source 3D Printing

The great Erik de Bruijn provides an overview of where open source 3D printing stands now, what developments have been made recently, and more importantly where its going. 49 slides to enlightenment.

University of Arizona student Matt Bunting talks about building a hexapod robot using 3D printing technology. The robot is cool, but more importantly this video demonstrates one of the major use cases for current gen 3D printers, namely the acceleration of STEM education.

Computer driven sewing machines already exist, but none do what this concept rendering proposes. The best machines today use a “Spot” approach: a spool of specifically colored thread is installed on a machine and it fills and area of an embroidery. This machine would employ a “process” approach where four colors of thread would overlap to create multiple other colors. A concept like this would certainly be difficult to execute, given the thickness of thread layers, but it is an interesting illustration of how much innovation is possible within customization tools.

Crowdsourcing design. Many scoff at the notion that a well produced, feature length film could ever be produced by a distributed team. The producers of Iron Sky, a pulpy mash up of UFO and WWII genres, are demolishing that notion. The production design looks excellent, much better than many “Real” Hollywood studios and is being pulled together by a widely dispersed group of amateur film makers.

Quirky is a “social product design company” that is doing for consumer products what Iron Sky is doing for film. They solicit design ideas from their audience, presell the concepts, and have a team of industrial designers create mockups and final designs. Quirky was recently funded by VC’s and their model has a lot of exciting potential, especially if they can maintain the vow to release a new product every week. The Cloak is one of their first products, a neat iPad case/display.

Chris Anderson’s Wired Cover Story brought the notion of bits and atoms to the masses, but it is a concept that has been driving businesses for a long time. Arts and Craft supplies are a $30B industry. Crafting toys make up another $2B market. While start up companies get press, mainstream behemoths like Disney have figured out how to print money with creative playthings like this “Make your own” vinyl art toy.

Many mass customization businesses are started with a “Wouldn’t it be cool if ?” statement. Dozens of entrepreneurs saw advances in web based software and imagined a future where you could design custom dress shirts or sneakers online. So far, there hasn’t been a breakaway hit ala Google of Facebook that has led to a massive financial gain.

A smaller group of companies looked at things another way.  They asked “What are big, lucrative markets that operate inefficiently because of manufacturing constraints?”. They then proceeded to use custom manufacturing technology to address these massive, “hair on fire” problems, and are starting to build successful companies on those insights.

Amfit produces a suite of CAD/CAM technologies that allow podiatrists to produce orthopedic inserts for their patients in a traditional office.

These machines can scan foot imprints made in foam or can capture data via a pin like “interface”…

This is converted into CAD data…

A foam “Blank” is inserted into a small mill…

Which drives a CNC mill that carves the custom foam insert…

The insert is then given a little finishing…

Covered in a top layer of foam…

And presented as a final product, equal to or better than anything Dr. Scholl’s could provide…

There isn’t a market less “sexy” than podiatry, but it is a large and rewarding opportunity for those willing to consider it.

Broken teeth are another market that doesn’t have the glamor of custom apparel. 3M’s Lava division has built a large business fixing that problem, while not fashionable, creates a great sense of urgency in its customers. Their system scans teeth, recreates broken teeth with a custom CAD packeage, and creates 3D printouts of the repaired teeth that can be turned into crowns and other dental repairs.

These businesses aren’t fun, but they have potential for scale and are the best bets for a massive success in mass customization in the near term.