The Skroll is a fun, pocket-sized embossing machine!

An infinitely fun way to make embossed prints or send embossed messages, or even carry around in your pocket to create instant, 3D business cards, the Skroll comes from Stereolab, a company devoted to 3D printers and 3D printing. Designed in-house, the Skroll is small and pocket-friendly, coming even with a hand-crank that folds inwards when not in use. Comprising two inter-changeable rollers, the Skroll lets you emboss (or deboss) patterns, images, or text onto pieces of paper, or even metal. The two rollers contain a positive and a negative of your artwork and are 3D printed, as is the Skroll’s entire assembly. Just simply insert the paper or metal (sheet metal from drinking cans work rather well) into the slot and crank the handle. The material slides into the rollers, being pressed into the shape that’s on the rollers, and finally coming out with a nice three-dimensional piece of art embossed into them. The Skroll comes along with usage instructions in a plain box with the product name embossed on it too! Clever!

Aside from teaching us designers a nifty lesson in embossing techniques, the Skroll is quite fun to use and play with. Not to mention being able to simply stamp your contact details or website/portfolio URL on random pieces of paper or even sheet metal!

Designer: Hlias for Stereolab

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What Is My Purpose? You Bend Pipe Cleaners.

Pipe- and wire-bending machines make it easy to create metal shapes that twist in various ways. Yoshihito Isogawa’s pipe cleaner bending robot works in the same basic way. It just bends those little fuzzy wires instead of tough metal. You just feed a pipe cleaner through this machine, and watch it bend and twist said item.

As shown in the video, it can make wands shaped like stars, hearts, and other shapes. It’s just a matter of programming the shapes into the LEGO Mindstorms controller. I bet some enterprising Etsy shop owner could use this to make a small fortune in the pipe cleaner art market.

Aside from making shapes like this, I have no idea what you would use it for, but it is a fun LEGO machine  – one that may put kindergartners out of business. Sorry kids, a robot took your job too. Better that you learn how harsh the world can be now, so you are prepared when you’re grown up. This will be the first of many robots that will screw you over in life.

[via The Awesomer via Sploid]

Relax and Enjoy This Rube Goldberg Machine

I’ve always wanted to build my own Rube Goldberg machine. Sadly I lack the free time and the expertise, but maybe I could build a 2D version like this one day. Who am I kidding? This thing is way too sophisticated for me.

Check out this minute-and-a-half run of Kaplamino’s ‘Blue Marble’ 2D Rube Goldberg style machine. Another reason I won’t be attempting something like this anytime soon? It took him over 3 months complete this masterpiece, and he estimates more than 500 fails. Yeah, Rube Goldberg machines take a lot of time and work. I’ll just enjoy this one in the video.

Kaplamino always wanted to make a big chain reaction in one take with a 2D style machine and he did an amazing job here. This machine has what is called a “one marble path”. That means you have to follow the same marble for all the tricks. Because everything is in a tilted plane, the hard part was to find different ways of having the marble riding up along the table. Some of the solutions for that were magnets, a falling weight, and a catapult. I find this video super relaxing, especially since I didn’t have to build it.

[via Geekologie via Neatorama]

Gift Wrapping and Christmas Tree Decorating Machines Do The Job Quick

Christmas is a magical time of year. Think about it. Some fat guy rides a sleigh led by reindeer – in the sky no less – lands on your roof, slides down your chimney and delivers you presents. For free! I call that magic! But the truth is that it’s not free. It’s a lot of work preparing for this holiday. Just wrapping the gifts and decorating the tree take quite a bit of time and energy. Luckily, Joseph Herscher of Joseph’s Machines has a solution.


Joe is an inventor of useless machines, but this time his machine is pretty handy. You see, Joe has created a solution to easily wrap presents. His invention uses a some notepads, a drill, a bicycle wheel, a roll of tape, and a length of rope. Seriously, that’s it. This will be a real timesaver at Christmas, or any time you need to wrap gifts – or sandwiches. He also demonstrates how a similar rig can help you quickly decorate your tree next year. Just be warned, things can get a little messy.

It takes a little trial and error, but ultimately, he’s able to decorate an entire tree in about 10 seconds.

[via Laughing Squid]

This Robotic Crab Processing Machine Is the Stuff of Nightmares

Despite what science fiction movies tell us, real world robots aren’t all creepy and trying to murder us. They build cars, assemble electronic gadgets, disarm bombs, and take on tasks humans don’t want to do. But this robot really does want to kill. Fortunately, it only has an appetite for crabs. At least so far.

The nasty looking apparatus you’re looking at is designed to take on the task of separating crabs from their legs and pluck out their meaty insides. The Canadian Center for Fisheries Innovation developed this robot to explore the possibility of using machines to take on a gory task mostly done by humans today.

It’s definitely the stuff of nightmares if you’re a crab or just think crabs are adorable. But if you love the way they taste, then you have no right to complain about the unfeeling torture this thing inflicts on its victims. Fortunately, for the crabs, they’re actually already dead before they go under the spinning blades of this thing.

While I can definitely see the value in these robots with taking on jobs which are getting harder and harder to fill with humans, I’m still concerned that one day our robot overlords will build use machine learning from this project to realize they can build a human-size version.