Inventables
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Carvey's desktop carving machine lets anyone be an industrial designer
We love desktop 3D printers, except that it's hard to do anything useful with the flimsy, thermoplastic results. However, the folks at Inventables want to change that with Carvey, a home-based CNC machine that etches your designs on wood or brass. Since there are plenty of digital carving machines out there already, the team differentiated Carvey by claiming that you can go from initial sketches to a final product in under five minutes. As such, it includes the company's Easel design software, which runs in a computer web browser (you can also use any CAD and machine control software).
We carved a custom bottle opener with the free Easel web app
Inventables' Shapeoko 2 desktop computer controlled (CNC) milling machine just got a whole lot more attractive. The company's new Easel tool is a free design and fabrication web app designed for the $650 open-source kit, which launched last October. The new duo will enable you to design objects in 2D with a real-time 3D preview, then "print" your creation using a USB-equipped CNC milling machine (such as the Shapeoko) with wood, plastic or soft metal. Best of all, Inventables has whipped up an interface so straightforward even an Engadget editor could figure it out. Creating designs, such as the bottle opener we tossed together is a simple drag and drop affair, and requires no prior experience. While you should be able to design basic objects in less than five minutes, assembling a Shapeoko can take considerably more time. Fortunately, Zach Kaplan happened to have one ready to go, so we caught up with the Inventables CEO to try out the new cloud-based design tool here at SXSW.
Transparent Toaster gives you clear view of bread's crispiness
You know, it'd be quite nice for toaster manufacturers to actually grab hold of one of the numerous concepts floating around out there and give the tried and true machine a facelift, but until then, conceptualizers are keepin' the ideas a-coming. On deck is the Transparent Toaster, which hopes to utilize clear panes of "heating glass" that allow you to clearly see precisely how burnt your bread is becoming. Of course, we'd certainly hope some sort of self-cleaning apparatus would be added if this thing were to go commercial, but it ain't a half bad idea as it is.[Via ShinyShiny]
