Open Source Objects and Furniture

Having access to a CNC router, LASER cutter, 3D printer, and CNC plasma cutter has changed how I see the manufactured landscape.  I don't automtically assume that I must buy the things I want because it is now an option to fabricate them all.  The decision, instead, is whether it's worth my time to engineer the item from scratch, build it, and then ultimately have the design languish on my hard drive.

I want a marketplace for machine-ready designs: an iTunes Music Store for objects.  I recently purchased an assortment of IKEA's iconic Billy bookshelves knowing full-well how trivial it would be for the ShopBot to cut them out.  I would have been far happier had I been able to download a toolpath from some sort of ShopBot App Store or Ikea's Build-Yourself Store, thrown in a piece of veneered particle board, and not had to drive three hours each way.

There are services and communities that are close to working as a repository of manufacturables but they're not quite there yet. There isn't one that has it all.  Part of that is the industry (few standards, wildly different tooling options, etc.) but perhaps a bigger part is that the culture.  Many of us want to buy things.  I like the mall and I'm in the revolution!

One operation that's in the revolution yet doesn't eschew commercial interests is Ronen Kadushin.  Kadushin's furniture sells in galleries and boutiques (at gallery and boutique prices, mind you) but that doesn't mean you can't have one.  Kadushin's designs are all available for free under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial/Share-Alike license!

The Bird Table (left) can be made in minutes on an CNC router out of 12mm Birch plywood.  Why don't you go make one now?

The only thing missing is the centralized store for dowloading (buying?) the designs.  When you build that, let me know.

Comments

[Bill Young]

Have you looked at 100kGarages recently and the new projects section (http://projects.100kgarages.com)? It's just getting started so is somewhat rough around the edges, but there are several things in there that might be interesting to you.

Bill

[Brian]

Have you come accross skdb yet? It sounds like it would interest you. A recent article here.

a quote from the article

"The SKDB project is like apt-get, but for real stuff. In the SKDB project, hardware specifications are organized into packages. Packages are a standard and consistent way for programs to find data. They can contain the following:

* CAD files,
* CAM parameters,
* computer-readable descriptions of product specifications,
* product-specific code,
* instructions for assembly and construction, and
* a bill of materials.
"