Rewind: 15 mind-blowing machines from 2015

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… that are NOT your typical 3D printer.

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Although 3D printers have received most of the buzz in recent months, these next-gen machines are doing much more than just spitting out ABS and PLA objects. In fact, you can expect to find one of the following 15 gadgets on your workbench, desktop, kitchen counter or inside your man cave in the not too distant future.

Glowforge

A big hit at this year’s World Maker Faire, the Glowforge is a revolutionary 3D laser printer that uses subtractive technology rather than additive methods. With one press of a button, the device cuts and engraves a variety of materials — including wood, fabric, leather, paper, cardboard, food and acrylic — instead of constructing items layer by layer. During its crowdfunding campaign, the team impressively garnered a record-setting $27M in 30 days.

X-Carve

With X-Carve, Inventables offers several new elements to the 3D carving kit concept which they’ve been associated with over the past few years. This customizable piece of equipment is ideal for the workshop, and can create precision parts from plastic, wood and metal. It comes in two sizes, 500mm and 1000mm rails, which provide a 12″ x 12″ and a 31″ x 31″ work area, respectively.

Prometheus

Zippy Robotics’ Prometheus is a milling machine that rapidly produces prototype PCBs from your desk in minutes, so you no longer have to wait weeks for a delivery truck. It works by carving through the copper layer of a standard copper-clad board (FR-4 or FR-1), as well as drilling holes and routing the shape of the board itself if it needs to fit a specific enclosure. Prometheus boasts an extremely low runout error that cuts traces down to .007 inches in diameter, meaning you can design with pretty much any surface mount component.

Voltera V-One

Born out of their own frustrations with traditional fabrication processes, Voltera has come up with a unique way to reduce development time from months to days. Winner of both TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield and the 2015 James Dyson Award, the V-One can print out circuit boards, dispense solder paste and reflow.

Voxel8

Voxel8, in partnership with Autodesk, introduced the world’s first 3D printer for electronics ranging from fully-functional drones to hearing aids. Designers and engineers will now be able to actualize three-dimensional parts with embedded circuitry for the first time.

The PancakeBot

A perfect example of an idea that has gone from the ‘MakerSpace to MarketPlace,’ the PanakeBot is exactly what it sounds like: an automated appliance that can whip up pancakes in virtually any shape you can imagine.

G3DP

A team of MIT researchers has opened up a new frontier in 3D printing: the ability to build optically transparent glass objects. The G3DP consists of two heated chambers. The upper chamber is a crucible kiln that operates at a temperature of around 1900°F, and funnels the molten material through an alumina-zircon-silica nozzle, while the bottom chamber works to anneal the structures.

BoXZY

There are 3D printers. There are engravers. There are CNC mills. However, BoXZY is different — it’s all three. Hoping to usher in a new age of ‘modular manufacturing,’ this triple-threat mini FabLab empowers Makers to alternate between the tools with quick-change heads. Oh, and did we mention that Justin and Joel Johnson raised more than $1.1M on Kickstarter?

Pico

Instead of having to run out to your local package store or brewery, Pico allows you to craft fresh, personalized beer right from home. One notable feature of the coffeemaker-sized appliance is its new PicoPak system, which includes conveniently pre-packaged ingredient combinations.

FarmBot

A finalist in this year’s Hackaday Prize, FarmBot is an open source CNC farming machine capable of weeding, seeding, feeding and watering crops. What’s more, its web-based application lets growers graphically design their farm or garden to meet desired specifications. This makes the process as simple as playing a game of FarmVille.

Ripple Maker

The Ripple Maker leverages 3D printing and inkjet technologies to adorn the top of your morning latte with complex artwork that could take the form of someone’s name, their face, or even a personalized message to the customer behind you. The unit itself is rather small, measuring just 8.5″ by 10.5″, and connects via Wi-Fi to a library of designs. Users have the option to choose from a menu of themes and text to stamp onto the milky foam canvas with natural coffee extract.

Bistrobot

Bistrobot wants you to bid farewell to long lines and wrong orders, and say hello to an automated assembly line that can make peanut butter sandwiches on white bread with your choice of honey, blackberry jam, sweet chili, chocolate sauce and Nutella.

Electroloom

What if you could design ready-to-wear garments straight from your desktop? Thanks to Electroloom, you can. The team’s electrospinning process makes it possible for anyone with a small bit of CAD ability to create seamless fabric items on demand.

Circular Knitic

The artist duo of Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet has devised an open source, automated circular knitter dubbed Circular Knitic. In true Maker fashion, the idea was brought to life with 3D printing, laser cutting, MakerBeam and Arduino.

Bartesian

Like a Keurig for cocktails, the Bartesian is a capsule-based gadget that enables anyone to expertly fix their favorite alcoholic beverages in a matter of seconds.

Shapeoko 3

The Shapeoko 3 is an affordable, heavy duty, three-axis CNC machine designed to “do real work, out of real materials.”

Evo-One

Geared towards everyone from the DIY community to the industrial-savvy crowd, Evo-One is a sleek desktop CNC mill that can engrave, carve and cut complex shapes with incredible accuracy.

Maker mods a Wii remote into an autofocus laser

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While it may not be a Glowforge, this Wiimote hack is pretty slick. 

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Chances are that it’s been quite a while since the last time you played Mario tennis or went bowling on your Nintendo Wii. But as we’ve seen with other obsolete devices, there’s no reason to throw it away! In fact, the Wiimote’s unique design lends itself to several innovative projects, like one from Maker Martin Raynsford who has retrofitted the handheld controller into a fully-functional laser cutter.

Raynsford and the Just Add Sharks crew were inspired by the newly-revealed Glowforge 3D laser printer’s ability to autofocus as the head travels along complex curves during cuts and engraves. And so, they employed the Wiimote’s built-in infrared camera to refocus the laser based on the height of the material.

“The hardware automatically identifies these points and feeds back XY positions through a Bluetoth connection. The cutting laser on a laser cutter is an infrared beam, as it cuts through the surface of the material there is a moment where it is reflected off the material and the Wiimote is able to detect the location of the cut,” Raynsford writes. “The location data is fed back to a laptop and by comparing this point against the initial ‘in focus’ point we’re able to detect if the Z-axis needs to move up or down and by how much.”

The optical camera is calibrated to a ‘zero’ point the first time it sees the laser cut. The offset between the current dot position and the zero position is then converted into Z-height adjustments. A laptop sends the data to an Arduino Nano (ATmega328) that is connected between the laser cutter’s on-board controller and the Z-axis stepper motor driver. This gives it the ability to remain in focus throughout the duration of a cut.

“Our laser cutter moves the whole bed up and down to adjust the focal height. There is a lot of mass to move and it gains momentum so it isn’t able to adjust the Z-axis as fast as required. This is why it’s so noisy as it tries to keep up with the requested position,” Raynsford adds.

It should be noted, however, that there are a few drawbacks in the DIY laser cutter when compared to more professional-grade units. For one, the remote’s camera is only able to detect light sources 60 times a second, thereby causing a bit of a lag in the time that it changes height and the actual movement. What’s more, an increased mass on the cutting head prevents the machine from reaching its top speed of 50mm/second, and even if it could, the response time from the system would not be fast enough to cope with changes that quickly.

Conversely, the good news is that many of us have a Nintendo Wii collecting dust somewhere. The project itself was written using C# and Brian Peeks Wiimote Lib, which made hooking up the Wiimote as simple as a few lines of code. Perhaps this will offer a second lease on life for the gaming console!

Intrigued? See it in action above, or check out the Maker’s project page here.