WoodMarvels Blog

I’m in between several consecutive projects for other people at the moment so decided to take a breather and design my own thing again – this time tackle laser engraving! Challenge #1: Interlocking Parts Though I’ve been designing now for several years, I remember it took me a solid YEAR before I was able to successfully visualize and “easily” build interlocking models with very few errors in the files. The challenge is endless with interlocking parts because all the parts [...]

As WoodMarvels.com keeps growing in offerings, streamlining the site becomes all the more difficult but essential towards the continued success of the site. Along that stream of thought, I’ve created a new category called “Shop Essentials” which I hope to expand in the future. The goal of this category are products or services that a shop would need from day 1 to be successful. They need a commercial production license, vector engraving graphics and of course, first two volumes of [...]

If you attended the Bay Area Maker Faire over the past few days and visited the Ponoko booth, you saw some WoodMarvels.com models there. You can see more pictures of the Ponoko booth at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ponoko Thanks Ponoko! A very special thanks goes to Ponoko for cutting, assembling and showing my models at their booth. I continue to learn many things from them while dealing with their staff with everything from 2D engraving to 3D printing for the sister site, 3DMarvels.com. [...]

I’ve completed the update of the backend powering WoodMarvels.com and many customers got subscription / canceled subscription notices by mistake… just ignore it. The newsletter system was broken among a few other items that were causing some site wide issues which are now resolved. About a month ago, I had to upgrade the server so this was the final step to bring everything up to par to keep the site fast and responsive – as traffic and orders have increased [...]

This has been a very long time coming but I’ve decided to launch Commercial Production Licenses on WoodMarvels.com after several long discussions with shop owners around the world. This Commercial Production License would entitle a shop owner to buy the files, cut and resell physical kits (mine and those of our other designers). It’s quite hard to make things affordable and profitable for all involved so we’ll see how it goes and feel free to send me your feedback! You [...]

I’ve been blogging my experiences with WoodMarvels.com since the very beginning (Official Launch was October 19th, 2007). Back then, I had a clear vision that each and every product on the site needed to have a 3D animation showcasing how things went together… this was part marketing, part education. I had several e-mails since I launch the site from people saying why I bother making these animations… why not just make things cheaper instead! Well, almost since I started the [...]

Most of the time I design directly from something that I have planned in my head but for the recent trophy, I had to do a few sketches to mesh-out some ideas. Sketching is quicker than building the model in 3D and helps to see what’s possible and what isn’t in very short order. My first idea was to make a general “sciences” themed trophy, as you can see from this sketch, it would have been far more ambitious than [...]

I read an interview with Derek with mentions of David, co-founders of Ponoko and his vision of the future is very similar to mine fundamentally with a few notable exceptions. He really believes and pushes the concept of “open source” where people share designs and resources for the common good… this is a nice idea but I feel like I’m Bill Gates about 30 years ago telling programmers to stop giving stuff away and start selling it. I think, like [...]

I designed this for Trotec Australia’s trophy show and originally had planned on making the back identical to the front… until I realized later in the design process that the “1″ would have been reversed. I had to make a decision, either insert two or three extra “widths” worth of numbers to achieve my original intent or just updated the back so that the front is one way and the back another. As most trophies are placed against a wall [...]

I wrote about this trophy making an appearance at the Sydney 2011 VIIE Show and now you can buy the plans or physical kit to make your very own! This is a very decent size that’s over 30cm square! You can get it now at WoodMarvels.com under Category / Trophies in DXF, EPS, PDF (blueprints and assembly instructions) or physical laser cut kit! Physics Trophy: 3D Assembly Animation (720HD)