Hasta La Gadget!

While we’re on the subject of ice and architecture, it’s worth taking a quick look back at the incredible body of architectural research produced at McGill University exploring how designers and engineers can build full-scale, elaborate structures using nothing but frozen water. They call this "computer assisted ice construction," or the "robot-assisted rapid prototyping" of frozen environments.

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Sometimes the stuff cluttering your desk and bookshelves just needs a little something extra. But what is it that’s missing? Well I’ll tell you. You need to put some feet on it.

Yes, thanks to the marvels of 3D printing technology, you can now add little feet to pretty much anything, thanks to Little Feet for Everything. These silly accessories are made from ceramics cast from 3D printed molds. They’re perfect for adding a base to all sorts of inanimate objects. Just put some sticky dots on them, and they’ll hold in place.

And these little feet don’t just come in human form, nope. There’s also an option for chicken feet – which reminds me of the time I went to a Chinese dim sum meal where they spoke very little English and when I asked for chicken, they presented me a plateful of delightful chicken feet to suck on. No thanks.

So what are you waiting for? Get your hands on some feet over on Shapeways now. The human feet go for about $20(USD), while the chicken feet sell for about $18.

Now all you need is some googly eyes, and you’ll be all set.

While Apple definitely made it easier to access the calculator in iOS7, you still might find yourself without a way to do math on your smartphone. Maybe the battery ran out, or maybe you’ve found a way to make the Calculator app crash. Either way, you need a “Plan B” for your maths. I present the solution to this challenging equation – the Abacus iPhone case.

This 3D printed case designed by Joaquin Baldwin provides a fully-functional abacus on the back of your iPhone, letting you work math problems without even slightly draining your battery. And as an added bonus, you’ll get tiny Apple logos in place of traditional abacus beads.

The Abacus case is available in iPhone 5/5S and 4/4S variants over on Shapeways for $24(USD). While I’ll have to dust off my abacus-using skills, I guess it beats using Chisanbop.

The letterpress was a huge leap forward for mass communication when Johannes Gutenberg perfected the moveable type machine way back in the 1450s. These days, it’s considered a specialty craft. But this tiny letterpress is thoroughly modern: It’s assembled with parts printed on a standard 3D printer. Whoa.

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Formlabs, an MIT Media Labs spin-out and maker of the high resolution Form 1 3D printer – which came up on Kickstarter (where it pulled in nearly $3 million in crowdfunding) – has closed a $19 million Series A, led by DFJ Growth. Pitango Venture Capital and Innovation Endeavors also participated in the round, along with “many returning angel investors”.

The funding round gives Formlabs considerable runway to keep building out a business, a few months after rival desktop 3D printer maker Makerbot was acquired by 3D industrial printing and manufacturing company Stratasys for $403 million. Makerbot now operates as a subsidiary of Stratasys.

Formlabs, which was founded in 2011, said it will be using the funding to expand its R&D, grow its global customer support and servicing, and develop new materials to print with. Software development is another focus: Formlabs said today it plans to launch version 1.0 of its PreForm 3D model-to-3D-print software soon.

Expansion is also on the cards for its own production facility, with the 3D printer maker in the midst of moving into an 11,000 square­foot facility in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Formlabs previously raised $1.8 million in seed funding, before taking its prototype to Kickstarter and pulling in enough cash to go into production. One year after its Kickstarter campaign, it said it has shipped more than 900 of its 3D printers to backers around the world, and is approaching fulfillment of all the original Kickstarter campaign rewards.

As interest in additive manufacturing builds, more startups are pushing in to attack the 3D printer space from various different angles and price-points. Many of these newcomers taking their printer prototypes to crowdfunding sites are looking to offer a cheaper desktop 3D printer, and/or simplify the 3D print experience, to make it more consumer friendly.

At present Formlabs is unashamedly high end with its pricing – costing more than Makerbot’s Replicator ($2,199) for instance. The $3,299 Form 1′s relatively high price-tag (for a desktop 3D printer) is justified by Formlabs’ focus on high resolution printing.

The Form 1 works by shining a laser onto a metal surface through a layer of resin, using a process called photopolymerization. This results in higher print precision, meaning 3D printed objects can have finer detail.

While Formlabs’ resin-based approach is not cheap, it is serving what is likely to be a growing demand for high quality 3D prints as more lower cost machines enter the market, littering it with lower resolution and therefore poorer quality 3D prints.

Asked if it plans to expand into cheaper tiered segments of the desktop 3D printer market in future, the company told TechCrunch: “We’re focusing on making the Form 1 the best possible desktop printer out there, right now. We’ll definitely be exploring more of the market as we grow, but we’re keeping our focus on what we do best right now. I wouldn’t rule anything out.”