It might be tough for me to sell you an inch-thick cross-section of Douglas Fir for $125. But if I encased it in acrylic and placed a live colony of termites in there, maybe you'd give it a second look.

That's the hope of the folks behind the Termitat, a desktop termite habitat that's a twist on the ho-hum ant colony. Twenty of these little bastards will go to town on that Doug Fir, spending three years or more munching it into their new nest while you watch. All you have to do is add water every once in a while. And once they get through all of the wood, you can ship it back to get a new piece of wood installed "and even a new colony if needed."

I'll give you $20 to set this as your Tinder profile pic

The termites can't get out, and even if they could, they'd leave your house alone; these are dampwood termites, and it's the drywood termites that destroy foundations and lives.

Not only do you get to watch the termites devour wood, but you can also watch them commit class warfare and murder/cannibalism. To explain:

Termitats are set up using a small group of worker termites and possibly a soldier (if one is available in the original larger supply colony). Soldiers are dependent on workers for their food; they are unable to obtain their own cellulose meals due to their jaws being suitable solely for defense of the colony. Usually a new colony in the wild will only begin to produce soldiers after the colony achieves sufficient numbers to be able to feed extra mouths. Even in a mature wild colony, there will only be about 5 soldiers for every 100 workers.

In a small starter Termitat colony that has a soldier included, it is common for the colony to consume the soldier and therefore save the colony's energy. Soldier production may be deferred to a later date. The colony will consume the protein packed body of the soldier (nothing is wasted!) and place the inedible jaws and head in an area used for the colony's debris. If this is the case with your colony, be patient, as a new soldier will appear in due time as your colony builds up its population.

There are two models of Termitat, both with 9" diameters. The $125 Tripod model is 11" tall, while the $150 Tower model is 14" tall.

Our idea for a future product expansion, influenced by our New York City roots: The Cockroachitat.

The Kimono Armchair is a piece of furniture that explores the formal essence of the traditional Japanese clothing.

The fluency of the kimono's textile, the horizontal panel that wraps around the torso and the covering of the human body are all aspects considered when aiming to reach a specific grade of mimesis—halfway between immediate evidence and excessive distance.

Different production techniques gather to result in a coherent, elegant and harmonized lounge seat that aims to pay tribute to the kimono.

Goddard entered into a partnership with Hill-Rom and Allen Medical to design and develop a next generation operating table specifically for spine procedures. The process began with our team working closely with Allen Medical’s to evaluate the current approaches and procedures used by surgeons in the Operating Room (OR). We participated in ongoing patient cases to observe how the existing tables were being used and interviewed surgeons and physicians’ assistants to better understand the use case. Through this process, we uncovered a number of areas that would require a great deal of attention in order to improve patient safety and the usability of the OR system.

The Core77 team spends time combing through the news so you don't have to. Here's a weekly roundup of our favorite finds from the World Wide Web:

"The search for the flavor of a beloved childhood medicine." 

y focusing on user empathy, one designer is able to get to the soul of a common household appliance, the toaster.

An argument (somewhat) against the 10,000-hour rule.

Insert casual inspirational cheese video.

"Apple's diseconomies of scale and the next iPhone."

Today, MIT Media Lab is exploring and celebrating defiance as a catalyst for positive change.

An exhibition of couture creations designed for Snoopy.

Wicked Mount Fuji flipbook.

How ancient marble sculptures are provoking a conversation about race within the art historian community. 

"Why don't we just make everything out of recycled plastic?"

When texting on-the-go goes from funny to dangerous.

Sketchers dress shoe vs. adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Beluga. Discuss.

Google's next design project? Artificial Intelligence.

"Cape Cod Potato Chips strike again."

Michael Phelps vs... shark? What's fascinating is the monofin he used as a handicap.

History of chess set design aesthetics. Hint: neoclassical architecture plays a big role in the traditional sets we know and love.

Relatable.

Nuff said. (via Pop Chart Lab)

Hot Tip: Check out more blazin' hot Internet finds on our Twitter and Instagram pages.

Most of you have heard of SIGGRAPH, but if you haven't it's "the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques." This year's conference starts at the end of the month, and this teaser video shows you some of the astonishing CG advancements that will be presented at the show:

Shop Stuff

Shop Shelves

This video of Jimmy DiResta and an assistant knocking out a series of shop shelves, in Jimmy's new shop, is the epitome of a hyperefficient workflow:

"Finally Got the Workshop Under Control."

Now fully relocated to the countryside, Matthias Wandel gives us a tour of his massive new shop:

DIY Table Saw Cabinet

Has everyone moved to a new shop? Here Izzy Swan shows us, in his new shop, how he made a portable knockdown table saw cabinet:

Cross-Cut Sled Slot Repair

If the slot on your cross-cut sled has become widened due to mishap, you're no longer getting the zero-clearance benefit it provides. Here the Wood Whisperer shows you how to fix that:

Objects & Furniture

How to Make a Guitar Case

Bob Clagett uses plywood, upholstery foam, velvet and vinyl to create this protective carrying case for his guitar:

Making a Workbench Desk

Linn from Darbin Orvar tackles a big job this week, creating a two-part solid wood countertop and starting from rough lumber:

Tomato Trellises

This is almost like a design school assignment. Frank Howarth must prototype a reasonably sturdy structure out of minimal materials, then reproduce the design in a batch:

"New Handles for My Leatherman"

Declaring Leatherman's Crater her new favorite knife, Laura Kampf sets about creating her own custom handle for it:

2x12 Bench

Ben Uyeda upcycles a 2x12 into a bench with the help of a buying/selling app for makers:

Designing and Building My First Coffee Table

Chris Salomone steps up his game, designing and building his own piece for the first time. And it's a beaut!

This small Danish Modern mid century cupboard Measures 27.5" wide x 15.5" deep x 28" tall.

This piece features two teak sliding doors which open to two bays- one with an adjustable shelf.

The mahogany case is mounted on tall base with a canted bookshelf.

The model that you see here has been refinished.

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These "Mid Century Modern Find of the Week" posts are provided courtesy of Mid Century Møbler, which specializes in importing vintage Danish Modern and authentic Mid Century furniture from the 1950s and 1960s.

New Jersey based studio is growing and we are looking for an exceptional full-time, Junior Packaging Graphic Designer. As a part of our team, you will collaborate on all phases of the design process. We are a leader in consumer electronics with over 60 years experience. We need a Graphic Designer with BA, BS or BFA in Graphic Design/Visual Communication who would be responsible for creating packaging concepts, comps and artwork

Looking for a gift for the tool user who has everything—and I mean everything—how about an Urushi Ratchet Handle? For a mere $2,000-$4,000 you can get one of the handful of these things made each year.

Urushi is obtained from the sap of the lacquer tree and is so central to the art of Japanese lacquer work that the term Urushi is used to refer to both the material and the art. Applied in multiple thin layers, Urushi produces a semi-transparent finish with incredible depth and radiance.

Somehow or another someone decided it would be a good idea to apply this kind of finish to ratchet handles.

If you're going to put that much effort into ornamentation than you'd better darn well start with a superior tool. And they did, by using the award winning NBR390 from Nepros, a Japanese manufacturer of high-end hand tools.

Yanagi

Genji Guruma

Old Turtle

I have no idea who buys Urushi ratchets. Odds are they're collectors with more money than they know what to do with. 

Part of me is annoyed by the idea of taking a perfectly good tool and turning it into something so valuable it can't possibly be used for its intended purpose.

But then I console myself with the thought that perhaps some of these might become retirement gifts for mechanics who spent their careers using ratchets. If that happens, I hope they resist the urge to try them out.

Taki

Ruffled arabesque

Zuiyun Cloud

We modern-day consumers have inconsistent aesthetic choices that affect certain factory lines in odd ways. For instance, we want our cars, smartphones and appliances to look brand new, but a subset of us want our jeans and furniture to look old and beat-up. This latter preference has resulted in some bizarre additions to the end of the production line for jeans. Take a look:

Adding these functionally-unnecessary extra steps to the production process of course help drive up the price. It seems absurd. Would you pay extra for a car or bicycle to help cover the wages of a guy being paid to whip them with a chain as they come off of the assembly line?

Vatn was my senior design project at SCAD that was extended after graduation in order to build functional proof of concept prototypes.

The Octaspring, a European patented innovation, developed out of the necessity to create a better sleeping surface, is the first and only of its kind, foam spring technologies with the support capabilities of a traditional spring, but made entirely of pressure-relieving foam. Pressure-relieving and open to air flow, each Octaspring features eight reinforcements

We've seen "car vending machines" before in the U.S. and China, but now a dealership in moneyed Singapore has one-upped both of them. Autobahn Motors, which sells Porsches, Bentleys, Ferraris, Mercedeses, Lamborghinis, McLarens, etc., stores their inventory in this rather ostentatious automated structure:

"We needed to meet our requirement of storing a lot of cars," Gary Hong, Autobahn Motors General Manager, told Reuters. "At the same time, we wanted to be creative and innovative." As for how the 60-car structure operates:

Customers on the ground floor choose from a touchscreen display which car they wish to see. The car arrives within one to two minutes thanks to an advanced system that manages vehicle retrieval, the company says.

If you want to drool over some of the cars that Autobahn Motors sells, they've got photography and YouTube videos of each of their models here. Here's a sample video:

It's not quite as good as that "Motherlode of Classic Cars on 360 Turntables" goldmine we found (sample below), but the models are more up-to-date.

[Mild spoilers ahead.] We've once again gone through last night's "Game of Thrones," lightening shots to catch invisible details. The show is broadcast to be so visually dark that it's often impossible to see what's happening on-screen.

As an example, when Euron Greyjoy's ship finally shows up, what I could see on my screen did not compare with the menace communicated by the same shot that I lightened:

So what else did you miss? For one thing, whatever interior decorator Daenarys hired for Dragonstone should be fired:

"I asked a simple question: Why don't any of these chairs match? Look at the armrests."

"And the backrests are all different. This one behind me has a kind of Arc of Triumph theme."

"You think that's bad? Look at the ugly backrest of my chair."

Speaking of furniture, we see that Ser Jorah Mormont, an anointed (if disgraced) knight, only rates a twin bed and a lame octagonal stool….

"Thank you for asking, but no, it's not comfortable at all."

…whereas Grey Worm, an orphaned Unsullied, not only gets a fancy chair…

"Please don't tell the others that I sleep in quilted pajamas."

…but also gets a full-size bed:

"Did you bring that Brian McKnight CD, by the way?"

Meanwhile, while sailing the Sea of Dorne, the Sand Sisters get hammocks belowdecks, and are sensibly alternating directions in order to facilitate conversation.

"I mean, it's comfortable for like, the first few minutes, but my chiropractor says it's not good for us."

While it's not really "furniture," over at Winterfell we see that they have these outdoor braziers that kind of look like wastebaskets. What's with the spiky protrusions up top, do you reckon that's the designer's way of saying "Hey don't put your hand here, this thing is dangerous"?

"For the last time, no, I don't want to gather around the fire and sing 'doo-wop.'"

Oddly enough the indoor braziers at Winterfell don't have the user-unfriendly spikes, but have four rings by which these can presumably be carried.

"I've already explained myself, Lord Glover. There's no need to light the overhead candles when there's this much sunlight pouring in. Winterfell is, and shall always be, CO2 negative."

The overhead chandeliers back at Dragonstone, meanwhile, have a rather user-unfriendly feature: Downward-pointing metal spikes, just above head level.

"All I'm saying is, it wouldn't kill you to cover the spikes with, like, tennis balls or something. I'm petrified that I'll get too close to the thing and slice my pate open."

The chandelier's designer has also made no provision for catching dripping wax.

"If you guys are going to the kitchen, can you get me a spatula? I want to clean our War Map Table off."

Yellow candles, by the way, seem to be all that people can get in Westeros.

"I know a great many of you have requested the red candles, but as I've said, the Amazon page for them says 'Out of stock, ships in one to two months.'"

And this episode, we were surprised to see that the Citadel Library has parquet floors. We also get a better look at their storage methodology: Scrolls are stored up top, books down below.

"I'm really in the mood to curl up with a good scroll, but they're too high up and I can't be bothered to fetch the ladder…ah, I guess I'll just look through the books."

And we still can't figure out what those chains on the shelves are for.

"Hmm, 'Fifty Shades of Greyscale'…don't think I've read this one before…."

Meanwhile, over at King's Landing, we get a look at the Anti-Dragon Ballistic Missile that Qyburn has been working on (and which was obviously based on Leonardo da Vinci's Giant Crossbow).

"Are you sure da Vinci hasn't patented this? I don't want, like, any legal hassles."

"I assure you, Your Grace, the machine is combat-ready. The only problem is that it takes three men 45 minutes to load it. Also, we forgot to put wheels on it and now it's too heavy to lift up to get the wheels under there."

In any case, we here at Core77 want to shout-out production designer Deborah Riley and all of the unsung folks in the GoT art department. We know that you guys and gals put in a lot of time to create these sets, and we want you to know that we appreciate it, even if we don't get to see it during the original airings.

(Question for fellow viewers: I am watching the show via my HBO Now subscription, and find the images impossibly dark; for those of you watching it on proper cable, are the images any lighter/more easily discernible?)

We receive a lot of questions about how to reduce the cost of 3D printing. One of the best ways to do this is to ensure your model fits on a smaller build bed to ensure the fastest build time on the cheapest machine available to produce your part.

In this article we'll show you how to cut your STL file for printing using NetFabb basic, a free STL editor, and how to lay out the maximum dimensions based on material to minimize your part cost.

Lets dive in!

Build Bed Dimensions by Material

To optimize your part cost, print in neutral and make sure your model fits in its unique bounding box, which varies by material.

Here are the dimensions for each material's bounding box:

- PLA: 285 x 153 x 155 mm
- ABS: 203 x 203 x 152 mm (more cost effective), 406 x 355 x 406 mm max
- VeroWhite and Transparent: 290 x 190 x 140 mm
- Rubber-like, ABS-Like: 342 x 342 x 200 mm
- Nylon: 340 x 340 x 600 mm
- VisiClear: 295 x 180 x 200 mm

How to Slice Your Part with NetFabb Basic

There are lots of ways to cut your file to optimize for cost. Some people prefer to do it natively in their CAD program, while others choose to do it after they have exported the part as an STL.

If you have already exported your file as an STL, follow the instructions below for how to cut your file:

1. Download Netfabb Basic here

2. Import your STL file into Netfabb

3. On the right hand side, there is a section called "cuts". Choose which axis you'd like to cut you file in by dragging the slider bar.

4. Press 'execute cut' and choose the axis to cut in and press 'cut' one more time

5. You will now have 2 separate STL files. Right click on each file and save them as STL

6. From there, just upload your files to Fictiv and we'll take care of the rest!

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This post is provided by Fictiv, the most efficient manufacturing platform for fabricating parts. Powered by a distributed network of highly vetted vendors, the online interface makes it easy for customers to get instant quotes, review manufacturing feedback, and manage orders—all through a single service.

Over thousands of years, the building science of timber framing developed independently in both Northern Europe and China. But one big difference between the regions is that China, by virtue of its size and geological traits, is prone to devastating earthquakes. Ancient Chinese builders thus needed a way to create wooden structures that could not be shaken apart, and that were not so stiff that its support members would shatter.

They designed and engineered the solution at least as early as roughly 500 B.C. The builders created a series of brackets known as dougong. 

When interlocked together, these could transfer the incredibly heavy weight of a temple roof to the supporting columns, and they contained so many redundancies that they could not be shaken apart. 

They also, by spreading their tolerances over multiple joints, contained a measure of flexibility that prevented them from cracking and splitting.

Check out the ingenious way that they fit together in the computer animation below:

The craziest part of that system is that the columns are not sunken into the foundation nor moored, but are freestanding, and yet they stayed in place during the shake test.

The video below, which is of a modern-day architect demonstrating dougong with a scale model, is a bit slower but really gives you a good look at the components and how they fit together:

It's crazy to see how wobbly it all looks, but how it all gets locked into place by the immense weight of the roof; and that wobbliness of course affords the flexibility required for the structure to withstand an earthquake without shattering.

Also, this architect must look at people playing Jenga and think "Idiots."

The responsibility of the CAD sculptor lies in translating and defining the design intent of the industrial designer using the CAD software while working with mechanical engineering, manufacturing and tooling requirements. 3D CAD data is used to develop product concepts, detailed appearance models, and renderings as well as production level surfaces used for engineering and tooling.

We all know flexible LED screens are possible, and that someone will eventually come out with a folding smartphone/tablet. The question is, who? Apple? The newly-resurgent, design-focused Microsoft? Judging by the video below, it looks like it may be none other than Lenovo. Take a look at the prototype they revealed last week:

This is exciting because we see a simple, practical application for folding LED screens, rather than an illuminated Wonder-Woman wristband. To have something iPhone-Plus-sized that then doubles itself into a larger screen would provide a welcome marriage of portability and viewability/usability.

One issue the designers are going to have to work out are the fingerprints; with the screen doubled over like that, the right side, or the "rear," is going to be more covered with them than the front. Also: How long do you reckon the screen will last for before all of us are watching movies on it with a dark stripe down the middle?

Children who visit The Warther Museum in Dover, Ohio each get a special gift on their way out: A working pair of wooden pliers, carved from a single block of basswood. The gift is appropriate since the museum houses the work of Ernest "Mooney" Warther, an American master woodcarver.

We're always thrilled to see, for one, how active the Core77 discussion boards can get and secondly, how creative and insightful some of the conversations going on can truly be. There are also always great sketches and challenges to get inspiration from, which is precisely what arose a couple weeks ago when our moderator cwatkinson wrote this:

"Thought this could be a fun [design challenge].

Problem: How do you tell which way a door opens

Challenge: Generate a concept of a door handle/s that clearly communicate to the user if they need to push/pull or either."

Here are some the results of the aforementioned challenge:

Sketch by: yo

"Quick concept.... maybe it flashes when it senses someone is trying to push." — yo

Sketch: Andy MC

"Pull Side:
Hard and sharp edges on the front surface and soft on the rear to promote pulling. Handle shaped like arrow shaped to indicate direction. What if the front was textured to look filthy so that people automatically grab the back surface?

Push Side:
Soft edges all around and nowhere to grip onto. Concaved inwards towards door to indicate pushing direction.

Afterthought: I forgot to add the push/pull text onto it." —Andy MC

"Pull motion to unlock. Not sure if such a planar surface will work well but i think it looks good.." —Rodrigo

Sketch: AV Club

"I didn't spend a ton of time, but this was fun! A slot/thru-hole is routed through the door, and then the "handle" has the grab portion fed through, and then the push aspect is attached to the door. My thought was things that you push and never pull (A Button, generally speaking), and something you pull and never push (A rope, tug-of-war style)." — AV Club

Sketch: KenoLeon 

"Thought of a minimal icon outside for the push side plus a pull handle inside, both covered in copper which is antimicrobial,( skipping the locking hardware), nice challenge." — KenoLeon

Contribute to this design challenge—how would you tackle the "push, pull" dilemma? Add your sketches or comments to the thread below or on the original discussion board post!