In this step-by-step tutorial by Mike Sweeney shows how to design and 3D print your own medal clasps in Carrara Studio using existing photographs as reference material.

Mike writes:

The Médaille Coloniale -- the French Colonial Medal -- is a prime uniform decoration for any good 19th-century soldier. Adding some campaign clasps to a recreationist friend's medal seemed like an excellent project to test out the Shapeways workflow, from reference images to final prop.

This instructable is mostly concerned with the method(s) of working in scale from photograph to final item.

He takes you through the following steps:

• Gathering reference material and processing it in Photoshop.
• Setting up your working size in Carrara Studio.
• Designing the clasps.
• Checking if the model meets the Shapeways design rules.
• Exporting and uploading the model to Shapeways.
• Finishing the printed models.

Nice work Mike! Thanks for taking the time to post this on Instructables.com.

Link: Medal Clasps via Shapeways.

One of the things I simply couldn't wrap my head around is how people design Rubik's cubes mechanisms. Eitan Cher shows us how to do it - it involves some clever Solid Works tricks and a LOT of manual labour.

Eitan writes:

Some of you may have seen the plethora of puzzles that have been uploaded to Shapeways in the past few years by members such as Tom van der Zanden and Oskar van Deventer. Well, I'm one of these twisty-puzzlers, and I've just made a video showing how to do it.

Bored out of my mind in freshman CAD class, I decided to find better things to do with my time, and promptly began to design twisty puzzles. In the 5 minutes that follow, I'll walk you through through the design of my most recent puzzle, the Master Heximate, ending with me holding the finished puzzle in my hands. It goes by kind of fast, but if you've had any experience with CAD you should be able to get the gist of it.



Enjoy!

Eitan is currently finishing up his 3rd year in mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. If anyone out there is looking for an enthusiastic product design intern for the summer, a single email would seriously make Eitan's day. To see some of his other designs, pay a visit to Eitan's shop.