Witness the true power of the Dark Side of the Force with this Darth Vader mailbox. It’s the perfect place for the delivery of the Death Star plans after recovering them from the Rebels.
Sensemonkeyboy helped build this dastardly mailbox for a friend. It features a Darth Vader helmet door and a lightsaber flag, which makes it look really ominous when there’s outgoing mail.
Would the mailman even have the guts to deliver bills or junkmail to you in this mailbox?
[via Obvious Winner]
There’s so much good stuff on Etsy, but there’s also a mountain of crap on Etsy. You’ve probably laughed about that on Regretsy. But a great site called A Cut Above the Resty cuts out all the DIY trash and shows you the best of the online marketplace.
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Eyebrows in the way? Singe them off with Adafruit’s DIY flame organ, debuting just in time for the holiday weekend. If fireworks aren’t enough to put the sizzle in your Independence Day party, all you need to light up your very own MIDI instrument are a few relays, solenoid valves, a digital music workstation (Adafruit recommends Livid Instruments’ BASE paired with Ableton Live and Pure Data) and a blatant disregard for your own mortality. The official tutorial is still in the works, but you can watch the flame organ blaze with a patriotic tune after the break. If you’re brave — or foolish — enough to attempt to build one of your own, just promise us that you won’t drink and DIY.
Source: Adafruit
Spa wraps are expensive. Now you can get an easy face wrap treatment at home (or away from home) for under $10 with Forever Young Hydrating Facial Wraps.
As children, these artists were clearly never told not to play with their food. Apparently, they ran out of canvas and tradional sculpting material, so they used whatever they could get their hands on. Namely, bananas.
We’ve already seen some innovative ways to make action figures via 3D printing. But ModiBot might be the best and most practical 3D printed action figure yet. Instead of letting you design and print an action figure from scratch or order a 3D printed action figure of an existing character, ModiBot meets you halfway. Its a skeletal action figure with swappable parts and accessories.
The base ModiBot action figure is a stick figure with lots of slots and holes. The idea is to get a bare ModiBot and then mix and match it with 3D printed parts and accessories. Because all of this is stored in digital files waiting to be printed, it’s practically impossible for them to be sold out. Dynamo Development Labs, the company behind ModiBot, won’t have to deal with unsold stock either; they just have to print on demand. This means that it should be easy to replace any missing or broken parts. If you know how to make a 3D model, you can design the parts and accessories yourself. So you’re going to go from this:
To this:
And that’s just the beginning. Again, it’s not just the accessories that are interchangeable; the skeleton’s parts itself can be swapped. For example, there’s a dinosaur ModiBot skeleton, so you can assemble a half-man, half-dino ModiBot.
Pledge at least $15 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a ModiBot kit. When 3D printers become widely available and 3D modeling software becomes dead simple to use, ModiBot will be immortal. People will be making parts on their own and lots of third-party vendors will sell their own ModiBot-compatible goods.
You know what ModiBot is like? LEGO. If you think about it, LEGO’s minifigs are strangely unlike the rest of its toys: minifigs are barely customizable or interchangeable. ModiBot is more LEGO-like than LEGO’s own action figures. So I wouldn’t be surprised if LEGO imitates or buys out ModiBot in the future. I am also surprised that ModiBot hasn’t teamed up with Rob Schrab yet.
[via 3ders]
Given that I have no talent in woodworking, I suspect Handibot may – dare I say it? – come in handy. The device is a motorized CNC machine – they’re calling it a Universal Digital Power Tool (UDPT) – for wood. It can cut, machine, drill, and carve. Built by the guys who built the ShopBot, a similarly complex CNC system for woodworking.
The Handibot is basically a 3D cutter. It can create precise cuts in wood or even create complex carvings for molding or decorations. In short, it’s a pocket carpenter.
The product also uses a mobile app to allow users to create various cuts including holes and mortises. You can also download designs from the Internet, creating a sort of reverse Thingiverse.
You can get a Handibot for a $2,700 pledge and they will offer additional bits and accessories that can turn it into a fully-functional shop robot. It’s a lot of money but it’s a pretty complex bit of gadgetry and ShopBot is a solid outfit. They’re looking for a $127,000 goal with $86,000 already raised.
While CNC routers are part-digital by their nature, they haven’t really kept up with the times: they’re often fixed in place and don’t easily adapt to unique tasks. ShopBot Tools hopes to modernize these machines by crowdfunding its Handibot Smart Tool. The device is portable and cuts 3D shapes out of many flat surfaces, but its specialty is the accessible, app-driven control that the fundraising will support. Builders can give the Handibot a wide range of instructions through apps on PCs or (eventually) mobile devices, whether they need a few simple holes or large, ornate patterns. Those pledging support will need to spend at least $1,995 to get a Handibot this September, assuming ShopBot reaches its $125,000 goal; still, it may be worth the cost for any workshop enthusiast who feels limited by existing tools.
Filed under: Household
Source: Kickstarter
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