Remember the Thonet bicycle concept , and how we weren’t sure if the seat-tube-less design would be possible to execute in steambent wood? Seeing as there’s still no word on whether it will become a reality, Japanese design student Yojiro Oshima has done them one better with a prototype of his unconventional bicycle concept. For his degree project at Musahino Art University’s Craft & Industrial Design Department, he has designed and built a Y-Foil/Softride-style frame by hand (it wasn’t based on a chair per se, but I’m seeing a little Wegner myself). The designer recently sent the project to James Thomas of BicycleDesign.net , where Oshima notes : “This proposal is about the shape of the frame and the handle mainly which doesn’t concern what material it’s made out of. The maximum comfort can be put into practice by wood.” Thus, the frame concept also echoes that of the previously-seen (steel) Van Hulsteijn , which is currently in production. A visible seam Regarding the construction and other carpentry/bike nerd concerns, Oshima adds, It is all hand made. The down tube and seat tube are hollowed with plenty of thickness left not to disturb the surface when planed too much. As a result, it weights about 14kg in total. The thickness is uncertain though, I guess it’s about 6-12mm. It is bonded the half and half into one. I was also curious to learn that the trispoke-style wheels were originally known as “baton” wheels—the renderings of the Thonet concept has a set of HED’s top-of-the-line carbon fiber version—and that the clover-like construction is intended to “soften the ride.” Similarly, the cantilevered saddle intended for comfort, while the short stays speak to performance by “assuring the stiffness.” Check out the full-size images at BicycleDesign.net (more…)
Tag: creative-cg
Holy Cow: Christian von Koenigsegg Invents “Free Valve” Engine That Requires No Camshaft
Why won’t the internal combustion engine die? To oversimplify the issue, it’s partly because of its incumbency and partly because it’s very good at what it does. Environmentalists hate it because it’s dirty, and while some engineers pursue alternate energy forms, there are still plenty of smart people tweaking the internal combustion engine to make it less dirty, more efficient, and more powerful. One person in the latter category is Christian von Koenigsegg , the rather brilliant inventor behind the Swedish supercar skunkworks that bears his name. Anyone with a basic understanding of how engines work is bound to be impressed by von Koenigsegg’s latest breakthrough: He’s developed an engine with no cams. With a conventional engine, the valves are driven by cams that are necessarily egg-shaped, with each cam driving its attendant valve stem into its deepest extension at the pointiest part of the egg as the cam rotates on the camshaft. Simple physics dictate this be a gradual process; because of the egg shape the valve gradually opens, maxes out, and gradually closes. If a cam was shaped like an off-center square, for instance, the valve stem would break on the corners. With von Koenigsegg’s radical “Free Valve” engine design, the valves operate independently and electronically to depress/open, while a mechanical spring returns them to the closed position. This means the valves quickly slam open, allowing fuel to flood the combustion chamber, then quickly slam shut. Ditto for the exhaust valves. So fuel is not gradually seeping in and exhaust is not gradually seeping out—it’s going BAM in, BAM out. The benefits? The engine is much smaller, of course, requiring no camshaft or timing belt. On top of that they’re projecting 30% less fuel consumption, 30% more torque, 30% more horsepower, and a staggering 50% less emissions. In the video below, von Koenigsegg walks you through it: (more…)
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Holy Cow: Christian von Koenigsegg Invents “Free Valve” Engine That Requires No Camshaft
The U.S. Mint’s Production Materials Problem: Nickels Cost 11 Cents to Make. Here’s Our Design Solution
It makes such little cents You probably know that the U.S. penny used to be made out of copper, which was once inexpensive. As the cost of copper began to rise, it would have cost more per penny than the penny’s own value, so the U.S. Mint switched over to a zinc alloy. But the price of zinc has been steadily rising since 2005. Which is why U.S. currency is in the absurd situation it is now: A one-cent piece costs about 2.4 cents to make. A penny is 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, and that zinc ain’t cheap. The nickel’s got it even worse. This five-cent coin costs 11.2 cents to manufacture. That’s because 75% of it is zinc and 25% is, well, nickel, another expensive metal. Which means that a nickel costs more to produce than every U.S. bill from a one-dollar bill (5.2 cents) all the way up to a C-note (7.7 cents). The money math starts to make a little more sense when we get to the smaller dime (92% copper, 8% nickel), which rings in at a production cost of 5.7 cents. The quarter, which has the same ingredients as the dime, is only a slighly better bargain at 11.1 cents. Clearly the U.S. Mint needs to start researching cheaper alloys or phasing out the penny and the nickel. It’s true that the math is a little more complicated than it would be for pure product manufacturing; for example, while you’d quickly go broke selling a product for $100 that cost $240 to make, currency is a little trickier. The government has an obligation to produce and circulate currency because it enables commerce, so it’s okay if they lose a little in manufacturing costs, as its citizens will theoretically make it back up by creating wealth. But if we don’t do that fuzzy math and look at it in terms of straight production, in 2012 alone the U.S. government lost $58 million dollars just by making pennies. (more…)
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The U.S. Mint’s Production Materials Problem: Nickels Cost 11 Cents to Make. Here’s Our Design Solution
Lamborghini Succeeds in Creating World’s Most-Difficult-to-Wax Car
They said it couldn’t be done, but Lamborghini has pulled a design coup and successfully created the world’s most-difficult-to-wax car. A cleverly arranged array of fins, vents, humps, angles, and even dangerously sharp edges have been designed to stymie even the most dedicated lackey, who simply will not be able to apply Meguiar’s and wipe it back off in a reasonable amount of time. Mr. Miyagi’s car, this isn’t. That isn’t the only benefit conferred by the contorted shape: Should a cinderblock fall onto the car from above and damage the sheet metal, onlookers will likely not be able to tell where the damage occurred, saving the driver money on bodywork. Early chatter indicated these drawings were fake, but Jalopnik’s now fairly certain that the Lamborghini Veneno will debut at this week’s Geneva Motor Show. Priced at a reasonable $4.6 million, the Veneno should prove irresistible to young families who need to get around town in a safe, roomy way. And the exterior styling belies a sensible 6.5-liter V12 powerplant, whose 750 horsepower and 220 m.p.h. top speed should be more than enough to get you over to the inlaws in a comfortable manner. The Veneno will reportedly not come with a glovebox, but instead, a handbasket. Then you can take that handbasket, place the car inside of it, and you can bring it straight with you to Hell. (more…)
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Lamborghini Succeeds in Creating World’s Most-Difficult-to-Wax Car
The PhoneJoy Play: A Gaming-Geek Device Makes a Larger Comment About the Shortcomings of Touchscreen Interface Design
Whether or not you’re interested in videogames, this device is kind of fascinating from an industrial design/interface design point of view. The PhoneJoy Play is essentially a portable input device with a slick mechanical design: The two holdable halves can spread sideways, connected by a telescoping mechanism. Your smartphone or mini-tablet can then be “docked” in the middle, and the variety of buttons and motion pads interact with your device wirelessly. (more…)
Ani Surabhi’s Biomimetic ‘Kranium’ Corrugated Bicycle Helmet Is Stronger, Lighter Than Traditional EPS
We first saw Anirudha Surabhi ‘s “Kranium” bicycle helmet shortly after he presented his graduation project at the Royal College of Art. Two years and £20,000 (courtesy of a James Dyson grant) later, the “Kranium” will finally be available to savvy cyclists in Europe. Surabhi, who goes by Ani for short, essentially designed the helmet from scratch: “the revolutionary Kranium liner is based on the corrugated structure found in the woodpecker and it is this structure, which provides the right amount of crumple zone to absorb impact energy.” Expanded polystyrene (EPS) helmets are proven to protect your head only 20% of the time. The Kranium liner has proven to absorb 3 times the amount of impact energy during collision. At the same time, it is 15% lighter than Polystyrene helmets. EPS helmets are made from petroleum based products where are the Kranium liner is made from recycled paper. They have been tested at several test labs across the globe, including TUV in Germany and HPE in the UK. They have been developed for mass production and will be available in the market in December 2012. As Ani explains in the must-see video (below), the project originated in his final year at the Royal College of Art, when he had the misfortune of falling off his bike and cracking the helmet which he was wearing at the time. The rest, as they say, is history: Having suffered minor concussions, I decided to take this as a design challenge and create the safest helmet on the planet. Looking into nature, the woodpecker is one of the only animal which experiences the same kind of impact on a regular basis. In fact, it strikes the tree ten times a second and closes its eyes every time so that they don’t pop out, which means a monumental amount of energy that goes through its head. (more…)
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Ani Surabhi’s Biomimetic ‘Kranium’ Corrugated Bicycle Helmet Is Stronger, Lighter Than Traditional EPS
Autodesk University 2012: Zebra Imaging Demos Holographic Prints Via 123D Catch
Way back at AU 2009, Zebra Imaging’s holographic prints blew us (and you, judging by the hit counts) away. Here in 2012 they’re using Autodesk’s 123D Catch to capture footage for their jaw-dropping technology, like the nutty 3D family portrait you’ll see in this video: (more…)
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Autodesk University 2012: Zebra Imaging Demos Holographic Prints Via 123D Catch
Flotspotting: Bike Bad-assery, Part 3: Saline Airstream
It’s been a minute since we saw the last badass compressed air-powered motorcycle , so seeing as digital designer / 3D modeler Pierrick Huart finally got around to uploading the Saline Airstream to his Coroflot portfolio this past September, it’s worth revisiting even a year and a half after its debut. Back in March 2011, Technologic Vehicles reported that Huart was a member of one of seven teams of students from the International School of Design (ISD) in Valciennes, France, who submitted projects to a speedy brief from “Les Triplettes de Bonneville.” (As such, we’d be remiss not to credit fellow team members Vincent Montreuil, Julien Clément, Thomas Duhamel and Benedict Ponton.) Described as “crazy French DIYers,” the triplets selected the Saline Airstream design, when features an Alu-Magnesium chassis by Daniel Heurton and weighs in at only 102kg (224 lbs). Meanwhile, Wes Siler of Hell for Leather explains the technology behind the engine far better than I could ever hope to: Pneumatic engines using compressed air as their power source aren’t new. If you’ve used an impact wrench or other pneumatic workshop tool, then you’ve used a compressed air engine. The technology enjoys particular interest in France, where Victor Tatin conceived an airplane powered by it all the way back in 1879. That’s where Les Triplettes des Bonneville, the team that will run the Airstream and the makers of its engine come from. The company making the engine is MDI, which is pushing the technology in low-speed, urban vehicles. Like electricity, compressed air is zero emissions (well, technically it’s emitting air…), but unlike electricity, fill ups don’t take hours. You can fill a compressed air tank from a compressor or storage unit in the same time it takes to fill up with gasoline. The downside is that power output and therefore performance are so far somewhat limited, something Les Triplettes are trying to address. The function of a pneumatic piston engine of the kind employed here is incredibly simple. Air is stored in the Airstream’s three tanks at 3,626psi and fed into the engine at 363psi, where it expands, pushing the piston down. That pistons’s return path exhausts the air through a valve, just like in your gasoline-powered motorcycle. (more…)
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Flotspotting: Bike Bad-assery, Part 3: Saline Airstream
Surprising News About Bicycle-Powered Electricity Generators
That hourglass-shaped device is the PowerPac, an energy storage device meant to be powered by a human on a stationary bicycle. Conceived of by South African design firm Ideso , the PowerPac won a Red Dot Design Award in the “Best of the Best” category. “Our aim was to create an aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly and functional design that marries the fluidity of cycling with dynamic power generation,” says Ideso MD, Marc Ruwiel. “It can be used by avid cyclists who can reduce CO2 emissions and generate their own electrical power, while enjoying a good workout at home.” I’m all for people-powered electricity generators, and I would’ve loved to have one of these during the recent blackout, but something struck me in the copy: “…An average cyclist could fully charge the battery from empty with 80 minutes of cycling and 132Wh of charge/potential energy can be stored in the battery.” The “Wh” designation stands for watt-hour , and “132Wh” means you could power a 132-watt device for 1 hour. For 80 minutes of cycling to yield, say, just over two hours of light from a 60-watt bulb sounds like a low yield, doesn’t it? My first thought was, can that be right? I did a little digging, and here’s what I found. It turns out hooking a bicycle up to something that directly powers a mechanical device is a fairly efficient way to generate energy. Rig a bicycle up to drive a sewing machine or a hand mixer and you get decent bang for your buck. But the second you get batteries and electricity involved, the efficiency drops way, way off. An article in Low-tech Magazine called ” Bike powered electricity generators are not sustainable ” explains why: …Generating electricity is far from the most efficient way to apply pedal power, due to the internal energy losses in the battery, the battery management system, other electronic parts, and the motor/generator. These energy losses add up quickly: 10 to 35 percent in the battery, 10 to 20 percent in the motor/generator and 5 to 15 percent in the converter (which converts direct current to alternate current). The energy loss in the voltage regulator (or DC to DC converter, which prevents you from blowing up the battery) is about 25 percent. This means that the total energy loss in a pedal powered generator will be 42 to 67.5 percent…. And it even turns out that the bicycle itself has mechanical inefficiencies that suck up more energy: (more…)
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Surprising News About Bicycle-Powered Electricity Generators
U.S. Soldiers’ Combat Invention Inspired by “Predator” Movie
Medium and heavy machine guns are “crew-served” weapons, requiring two and even three soldiers working together to operate it at maximum efficiency. While it’s one guy pulling the trigger, the other two carry and feed the bulky ammunition belts into the weapon. Having to rapidly re-position the weapon therefore brings challenges. According to an article in Soldiers magazine , after a 2.5-hour firefight in Afghanistan, an American infantry combat team started discussing “how three-man teams manning crew-served weapons struggled to stay together over difficult terrain in fluid battles.” It goes without saying that a machine gunner separated from his ammo is not good. It would be better if the gunner were self-contained, but that gun’s not gonna feed itself. Or could it? As a joke, one of the soldiers brought up Jesse Ventura’s character in Predator , who runs around with a minigun fed by a box on his back. A simple one-person solution, as envisioned by some Hollywood propmaster. What Ventura’s character had was one long, continuous belt feeding uninterruptedly from the pack into his gun. But without that arrangement, the best a lone machine gunner could manage would be to carry individual 50-round belts to load himself—and stopping to reload every 50 rounds. That leads to lulls in fire, and the more times you reload, the more you increase the chances of the gun jamming. This is a design flaw with potentially life-or-death consequences. And so, following the “Predator” discussion, Staff Sergeant Vincent Winkowski thought about it and figured a back-mounted ammo rig might actually be doable. So Winkowski grabbed an old ALICE (all-purpose lightweight individual carrying equipment) frame, welded two ammunition cans together—one atop the other after cutting the bottom out of the top can—and strapped the fused cans to the frame. To that he added a MOLLE (modular, lightweight load-carrying equipment) pouch to carry other equipment. “We wondered why there wasn’t some type of [system] that fed our machine guns [like the] mini-gun as portrayed in the movie,” Winkowski said. “So, I decided to try it using the feed chute assembly off of [a vehicle-mounted weapons system]. We glued a piece of wood from an ammo crate inside the ammo cans to create the decreased space necessary so the rounds would not fall in on each other. “My Mark 48 gunners, Spc. Derick Morgan and Spc. Aaron McNew, who also had input to the design and evaluation, took it to the range and tested it, and even with its initial shortcomings, it was much better than the current TTP (tactics, techniques and procedures) we employed. On Feb. 26, 2011, our prototype ‘Ironman’ pack even saw its first combat use by Spc. McNew when our squad was ambushed by up to 50 fighters in a river valley, and it worked great!” “I’m not impressed!” (more…)
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U.S. Soldiers’ Combat Invention Inspired by “Predator” Movie