2012 T-Shirts Now Available

I'm so excited to show you our 2012 Maker Faire North Carolina T-Shirt!  Seth Patrick's totally awesome robot is featured front and back on this gorgeous, vivid 100% cotton natural shirt.

Shirts will be available to pick up at the Maker Faire North Carolina on Saturday, June 16th.  Sizes and quantity are limited so pre-order one to make sure you get your size!

You can buy your shirt with (or without) your tickets on our ticket ordering page.

I... This is Just Awesome

Behold.

We've talked about 3D printing before but this new machine is a first.  The new machine, conceived by Enrico Dini, lays down sand along with an inorganic binder to literally build things out of rock.

The first idea that came to MY mind (and apparently the creator's own) was to use this to pre-fabricate buildings for lunar and Mars colonization.  From what I understand those places have lots of sand.  Hot!

CNC Fooderator Concept Will Not Make you Twinkies Yet

This machine, said to be, a "currently starting" project, is a (much nicer looking) Rep-Rap / MakerBot but for food creation.  The brainchild of MIT visionaries Marcelo Coelho and Amit Zoran, the tool appears to use the same fused layer deposition model that many of the various 3D prototypers out there use but it has a material changer which, other than in the multicolor Z-Corp printers, I believe is unique.

Using CNC tools to affect the food arts is nothing new and has been tried with often entertaining results. Set your Googles or Bings on cupcake cnc, and candyfab, for instance.

"Cornucopia's cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user's favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food."

I've been waiting for robots to make my food for a long time.  Hopefully it will taste better than anything we could possibly imagine and not like extruded food paste leftover from the Mercury project.  As William Gibson said, "the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed."

Sugru Will Make Your Life Complete

Sugru is the thing you've been wanting your whole life but never existed.  Well it didn't exist your whole life, did it?  It just came out last Wednesday!

If you've ever looked starry-eyed upon a brand new virgin packet of Blu-Tack in the store and fantasized about squidging it in your hands and then having it stay in the shape of whatever you designed well then that product is Sugru.  And Sugru comes in four rad colors of silicone-rubber awesomeness!

What's even better about this material is the philosophy behind it: repair, recycle, reuse, and their motto,  "hack things better."  The champion of Sugru, Jane, has hit the ball right out of the park with this stuff.  I've never clicked BUY SOME on a website faster!

Now which fantastic company or individual wants to sponsor the Sugru people to come to Durham in the Spring for the Maker Faire?  They're on Twitter and Facebook too.