Tag: make-your-own

Jaasta: Is This E-Ink Keyboard (Finally) The End For Time-Honored Design Tradition?

There’s a certain respect afforded to the rare designer who has reached the highest levels of keyboard shortcuttery—a masterfulness attained only when the self and the software (be it CAD or Adobe) become one. Whilst effortless key stroke knowledge of a chosen tool can be achieved through years of dedicated daily practice—young devotees required to spend many consecutive days and nights in intimate communion with their keyboards in pursuit of perfection—only true touch typing demi-gods can commit multiple program key combinations to memory, laying down one set and picking up another in the time it takes to switch between screen. This ancient art and time-honored tradition (handed down across generations for millennia decades) could, however, be about to fade into insignificance. Jaasta is a promising customisable E-Ink auxiliary keyboard soon to run the gauntlet of a crowdfunding campaign. Whilst customizable keyboards are really nothing new (see ’05 , ’09 and ’13 ) this challenge to QWERTY conformity— simple and use-case driven in it’s vision; enabled by rapid developments in E-Ink technology—could be the most convincing yet. (more…)

View the original here:
Jaasta: Is This E-Ink Keyboard (Finally) The End For Time-Honored Design Tradition?

China’s 3D-Printed Housing on the Rise. Literally

Remember last year, when the Chinese engineering firm WinSun 3D printed a bunch of houses? It made the news because they printed them so quickly—ten structures in less than 24 hours. The structures themselves weren’t huge, just 200-square-meter, one-story bungalows. But now WinSun’s set their goals higher, literally. They’ve 3D printed the structures you see here, which include a freaking five-story apartment building and a 1, 100-square-meter (roughly 12, 000-square-foot) villa. To be clear, they didn’t print the structures out in one shot. As with the earlier 10-house batch, they printed out individual panels which were then knocked together by conventional construction workers, and in this case they didn’t even print on-site, but back at the factory. (more…)

Visit link:
China’s 3D-Printed Housing on the Rise. Literally

Pforzheim Design Students and Hankook Tire Team Up for Futuristic Wheel Concepts

It’s time again for Hankook Tire’s biennial design school team-up, where they task ID students with developing futuristic tire concepts. Last time ’round they paired up with Cincinnati’s DAAP , and this year they’re at Germany’s University of Design, Engineering and Business in Pforzheim. And once again, not only did the students did not disappoint, but pulled off some real socks-knockers! The central trend is to stop looking at the tire as a rubber cladding for a wheel, and to think of it instead as something that works together with an actively transforming wheel to create some ker-azy functionality. Now maybe I’m biased because I know ID students were involved, but the following video showing the three winning concepts in action is more exciting than any action movie trailer you’ll see: (more…)

View post:
Pforzheim Design Students and Hankook Tire Team Up for Futuristic Wheel Concepts

Autodesk University 2014: The Future of Making Is Here

Local Motors ‘ Strati, the world’s first 3D printed car. Last week, Las Vegas played host to Autodesk University, Autodesk’s annual gathering—part conference, part continuing education—for 9, 000 professional designers, engineers and animators. Below is a summary of some of the big ideas and themes that will be shaping the conversation around making in 2015. It’s alive! Design is a living process that lives past the moment of creation—a key theme for this year’s Autodesk University . From featured speakers and workshop presenters to the company’s CTO and CEO, the message was clear: we are moving swiftly past the Internet of Things, where devices interact with us, toward a broader, more complex and, ultimately, more valuable Community of Things, where products interact with each other and respond collaboratively to the environments in which they exist. Jeff Kowalski, Chief Technology Officer and SVP, Autodesk Hardware is hot, hot, hot. Three elements in the design process and manufacturing are supporting the innovation that will drive this evolution—an evolution that’s not just on the way, it’s already here. First, the advancement of 3D printing, micro-molding, capital and funding options means that production is more flexible and robust than ever before. Second, demand is continuing to grow from “a few sizes fit all” to individual customization (see Normal’s custom-fit ear buds after the jump). And finally, our attitudes towards products are changing. For a variety of reasons—sustainability, cost, our own hyper-individualized mentalities and even our desire to create better communities—we are starting to expect that products will be responsive, change and get better over time. (more…)

View post:
Autodesk University 2014: The Future of Making Is Here

The Light Bandit Lets You Plug Sunlight Directly Into a No-Electricity Lamp

It seems absurd to be burning energy by using lightbulbs while the sun is shining, but buildings can only have so many windows, and sunlight can only penetrate so far. MIT’s Solar Bottle Bulb and Ross Lovegrove’s Sun Tunnel are two ways to get sunlight inside, but both solutions require piercing a roof for installation. This new system called the Light Bandit , in contrast, is a no-construction-required solution. And it’s brilliant: “Sunlight is the fuel that powers all life on Earth, yet our lifestyles block most of it out, ” the developers write. “Between work, school and home we spend most of our time indoors under artificial lighting that lacks important benefits of natural lighting. The Light Bandit changes that.” What’s fascinating is that the coating on the reflectors filters out UV and infrared, delivering only visible light; this means you won’t fade out the part of your couch that’s got a Light Bandit lamp over it. The Light Bandit Kickstarter is no foregone conclusion, by the way; these guys need help and publicity. At press time they’d clocked under six grand out of a $200, 000 target, and there’s just 21 days left to go. But we’ve seen less impressive projects hit higher targets in a shorter stretch of time, so we’re hoping this product becomes a reality. (more…)

View article:
The Light Bandit Lets You Plug Sunlight Directly Into a No-Electricity Lamp

VetiGel: A Plant-Based Polymer That Stops Bleeding in Seconds

I once got stabbed in the head with a wooden knife. It was an accident that occurred during a martial arts training exercise. I’d heard that head wounds bleed badly, but as I waited for the taxi to take me to the hospital (an ambulance is not what you take in NYC if speed is a priority) I was shocked at the amount of blood that came out of my head. While head wounds are bad, severing a femoral or carotid artery is way worse in terms of blood loss. If you slice one of these open and can’t stop the bleeding, that’s basically the last selfie you’ll ever take. But now a tiny biotech company in Brooklyn can change that equation, having developed a product that stops bleeding, whether pinprick or grievous wound, almost instantly. Called VetiGel , the material is a plant-based polymer. It requires no training to use and can be loaded into an ordinary plastic syringe; rather than needing to learn how to prepare a field dressing, someone providing aid can simply aim and squirt it like toothpaste onto a brush. Watch how it works in this video: The leftover material, by the way, can be safely resorbed into the body or removed. As for why it’s called VetiGel, the material is first being marketed towards veterinarians, with approval for human use planned for further down the line. Should the product pass human trials and prove affordable enough to manufacture, it could be a real game changer: Simple syringes loaded up with the stuff and placed into every ambulance, soldier’s pack and first aid kit around the world could mean the difference between life and death for countless people, particularly those for whom a hospital is more than a cab ride away. (more…)

Continued here:
VetiGel: A Plant-Based Polymer That Stops Bleeding in Seconds

Flotspotting: Freddie Paul’s Beer Tree

For most of us consumers, beer is something we buy in bottles and cans, its creation process something of a mystery; we have a vague notion of grains and a fermentation process being involved. Home brewers more firmly understand the science, but much of their alchemy happens inside opaque stainless steel containers, with your average home brewing set-up hewing to the Walter White Meth Lab school of design. So for his final-year design project Freddie Paul , a Product Design student at London’s South Bank University, decided to make the home brewing process more transparent. Literally. Beer Tree is a gravity fed home brewing kit for brewing craft ales. It concentrates on the brewing process as something to be enjoyed and celebrated. The process can be completely visualised from start to finish, involving the user more than traditional kits to create a strong sense of satisfaction and pride over the final product. The video gives you a better sense of what the Beer Tree looks like in action: We’re digging Paul’s use of laser-etched graphics on the control panel, his use of materials and the overall form. One commenter on the video is more critical: “It looks impossible to clean and sanitize, your mash tun will lose so much heat, it looks like you can’t vorlauf” and more brewerspeak. Another commenter is more upbeat: “My close friends and I have all agreed. We would pay good money to own one of these. Seriously consider making a Kickstarter for manufacturing of this product. I would sign up to back you TODAY.” Paul, if you’re reading this: Given that you’ve graduated and we don’t see a current employer on your Coroflot profile, perhaps the crowdsourcing is worth a go? Check out Paul’s shots of the development process after the jump. (more…)

Continued here:
Flotspotting: Freddie Paul’s Beer Tree

Tesla’s New Dual-Motor, AWD Car Has Autopilot That Reads Speed Limit Signs–and Automatically Sticks to the Limit

Yesterday Tesla Motors held a press event where they announced their new all-wheel-drive models, which hit the road in December. These being electric cars, rather than using a single motor to drive all four wheels, Tesla is simply dropping a second motor into the car; with one up front and one in back, there’s no need for a driveshaft in between and all of those pesky linkages. And these cars will go from 0-60 in an absurd 3.2 seconds, in case you need to smoke a Bugatti. “This car is nuts, ” Tesla skipper Elon Musk told the audience. “It’s like taking off from a carrier deck.” (See video below for the full carrier deck/ Battlestar Galactica -esque “launch sequence.”) Some optimists assumed that at last night’s event, Musk was going to pull the sheets off of a completely self-driving car. While that’s undoubtedly a ways off, the autopilot features announced last night for the new models indicate it’s not as far off in the future as you might think. Using a combination of radar, a camera and a dozen sensors, this is what Tesla’s new models can reportedly do: – The new system will move the car over a lane when the driver uses the turn signal. – The car reads speed-limit signs and adjusts the car to the speed on the sign. – Drivers will be able to get out of the car in their driveways and watch it park itself in the garage. When drivers are ready to leave, the car will able to drive itself up, with the car’s temperature and stereo system set to the driver’s preferences. “It will come to you wherever you are, ” Musk says. “It will slowly make its way to you.” I’m not sure why you’d choose to get out of your car in the driveway rather than in the garage—most architects are thoughtful enough to put a door between the garage and the house—but then again, perhaps Musk is targeting the super-rich owners who live in manses apart from the stables. (more…)

Read this article:
Tesla’s New Dual-Motor, AWD Car Has Autopilot That Reads Speed Limit Signs–and Automatically Sticks to the Limit

Why Would Walmart Make Continuous 53-Foot-Long Carbon Fiber Panels? For Their Supertruck Prototype

Everyone loves to bash corporations, but few talk about how much good they can do in this world. Their immense fortunes and longevity means they can undertake radical, expensive experiments that smaller outfits simply couldn’t sustain. A good case in point is Walmart and their Advanced Vehicle Experience concept truck . Built earlier this year as a testbed for their fleet efficiency program, it features a 53-foot trailer whose roof and sidewalls are made from single-piece 53-foot-long panels of carbon fiber. This confers a weight savings of some 4, 000 pounds, meaning it can carry an extra 4, 000 in cargo to burn the same amount of fuel, or carry the same weight of cargo as before and save a tremendous amount of fuel. Creating carbon fiber panels of that length is fiendishly expensive, and a company would have to ship a lot of cargo indeed before they’d make their money back on fuel costs. In other words, you’d need a Walmart to do something like this. With 6, 000 trucks crawling our continent and logging millions of miles, the overall, long-term impact would be substantial. (more…)

Read the original post:
Why Would Walmart Make Continuous 53-Foot-Long Carbon Fiber Panels? For Their Supertruck Prototype

Radinn’s Electric Powered Wakeboard Lets You Go Surfing Without the Waves

With the goal of “revolutionizing the watersport industry, ” Swedish company Radinn has released their first product: an electric powered wakeboard . The carbon fiber craft carries onboard lithium batteries and is controlled via a wireless handheld remote, allowing the rider to cruise at up to 30 miles per hour. The coolest thing about having a self-propelled board is that it frees the rider from the beach. With an EPW one could navigate rivers, lakes, public fountains in Stockholm… Want. The 64-pound board’s batteries can provide 30 minutes of runtime. Currently in its final testing stages, it’s expected to go on sale next year. And no, it won’t be cheap, but if you’ve got twenty grand to throw around, you could do a lot worse. (more…)

Original post:
Radinn’s Electric Powered Wakeboard Lets You Go Surfing Without the Waves