Last night dozens of Chicagoans congregated at ThoughtWorks’ headquarters to revel in the growing connectivity in the community over 3D printing technologies. Dutch-based 3D Hubs gave us the excuse to celebrate, announcing that their Chicago operations were officially under way. The online network that connects owners of 3D means of production with those who want to use them worldwide joined forces with the popular Chicago Hardware Startup Meetup and Catalyze Chicago for the night that featured live demos with local Isis3D and ProofX. Speakers provided real world applications including JP Brown on 3D scanning and printing at the Field Museum, and Mike Vasquez, a materials engineer in sports technology.
…I had originally stumbled upon 3D Hubs in February in search of a last minute printer for some seasonal hearts I set my sights on printing and stringing on pimp gold chains for an upcoming art sale at Revolution Brewery. The week before, I visited one of the gurus at Pumping Station 1 to execute my first 3D printing project, a design I found on Thingiverse. It was a pretty empowering experience that left me wanting more, and I was happy to locate one of the twelve Chicago hubs, a civil engineer named Anthony who owned a couple of machines. A couple days later, we met at a Starbucks in Wicker Park where Anthony handed off a satchel of plastic hearts and we geeked out over printers. I’m planning on getting my little brother in San Diego a PrintrBot Simple so he can open his own hub….
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey