Although the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B launched just a few months ago with onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, things are about to get a whole lot more interesting for hardware developers that turn to the $35 single board computer for their prototyping needs. According to a recent interview with Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton, a…

While covering over 1,000 miles on a dog sled in only a matter of days in whiteout conditions is certainly awe-inspiring, designing and building lightweight carrying vessels by hand that can withstand demanding Alaskan winter terrain while transporting a human is equally impressive. As a builder of Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race sleds, retired Alaska…

Depending on your stance (and age) towards technology (and whether you have kids or not), Pokémon GO is either a welcome new fixture in your home life or you’re doing everything you can to avoid it. Regardless, the augmented reality game has ushered in a new style of gameplay that adds a layer of interactivity…

While Apple may be spending millions on advanced recycling robots that can disassemble iPhones and recover valuable metals for reuse, those who are motivated enough can recover their own metals from e-waste in their own backyard – provided they have some patience for the process and a whole lot of junk electronics. Starting with four and…

In the “YOU MAKE IT WE SKATE IT” YouTube series, a group of skateboarders with a video camera and a penchant for material science create skateboard decks and accessories out of random objects to see if they ride or not. To date, this has included riding on everything from a flatscreen TV to a series…

With a knack for bringing inanimate objects to life, Los Angeles–based multimedia artist Neil Mendoza knows a thing or two about leveraging modern digital and mechanical technologies to his advantage. While previous projects include programming an orchestra of sixteen knives to perform the Bee Gees’ 1977 hit Stayin’ Alive and repurposing discarded mobile phones as…

Unless you’re a true toast and marmalade connoisseur, chances are you pay little mind to your toaster aside from a somewhat considered industrial design that may or may not match the rest of your kitchen appliances. Either way, your toaster is toast. Enter Balmuda the Toaster. Priced at a hefty 24,000 yen ($230 – or…

The last time we checked in with Swedish musician Martin Molin, he had just completed building a 3,000–piece wood marble machine that uses 2,000 marbles to ring sweet melodies into our ears. While the original Marble Machine YouTube video has racked up nearly 22 million views since he released it earlier this year, Molin has…

It’s not necessarily common to hear that somebody was “inspired by sushi” unless we’re talking about taking lunch early for a plate of California Rolls and a Sapporo. But for Tel Aviv-based product designer Ori Ravgad, “inspired by sushi” led to an entirely new dimension of constructing wooden veneer objects. Specifically, Ravgad was inspired by…

At just 54 inches long and just 41 inches wide, the Peel P50 has held the Guinness Book of World Records’ title of world’s smallest production car for over 50 years. Originally manufactured from 1962 to 1965 by the Peel Engineering Company on the Isle of Man, the three-wheeled urban micro cars – which were…

Since raising over $350K for their desktop 5-axis CNC mill on Kickstarter last year, the husband and wife engineering team at hardware startup Pocket NC has shown no signs of slowing down their hustle to bring fabrication tools to desktops. Announced last week, The Machine Shield is the latest desktop fabrication machine from the Bozeman,…

Early last month, SolidSmack reported on an impressive large format 3D printer made from two $9.99 IKEA LACK side tables created by Northampton-based 3D printing enthusiast Wayne Mason-Drust – AKA the “Printtable”. Using an E3D V6 Titan Extruder with an MKS SBase controller and an MKS TFT using Smoothieware, the (

Every summer, thousands of people around the world flock to a handful of Greek islands to spend their summer vacations in a Mediterranean paradise. Similar to what happens in other seasonal small towns around the globe, this influx of vacationers tests the limit of small infrastructures designed for a very small population that lives there…

The excitement that used to come with each new “revolutionary” desktop 3D printer a few years ago has since quieted down in a major way. While technologies like HP’s Multi Jet Fusion and Carbon’s CLIP can hold their own and even generate mainstream news coverage, these are geared towards professionals at price points that are…

Despite being one of the most celebrated meals of the day, few people ever really have the time to make a full breakfast before running out the door. Unsurprisingly, this has led some to create automated breakfast machines that attempt to make waking up to a fresh plate of bacon and eggs as easy as…

Known for being almost impossible to carry around without a gig van, the last thing that any drummer would expect to be able to carry on their back is a drumset – particularly for impromptu acoustic jam sessions. But heck, what if they could? The cardboard DRUMKIT from OBILAB music just might be the best thing…

In case you weren’t keeping track, yesterday was World Industrial Design Day (which is different from the relatively new US-based National Industrial Design Day on March 5th) and what better way to celebrate industrial designers than to make fun of their quirks? Whether the video was intended as a vehicle for promoting their portfolios or…

As the complexities of hardware design continue to be broken down and simplified into build-it-yourself projects for inspiring the next generation of inventors, the quality of these build kits only continue to get better. More recently, Bose has tapped into this new category of build-it-yourself consumer electronics with their BOSEbuild lineup, which includes appealing end…

Having just graduated with a degree in Industrial Design earlier this year, 27-year-old Ludwig Rensch is already proving that he can lay down the iron fist and squash existing design annoyances with his innovative problem-solving skills. For his final project, which focused on our relationship with today’s machines and how they can be used more…

Despite the plethora of apps and games that are slowly breaking down the barriers for learning how to code, one of the biggest remaining hurdles is as simple as they come: humans like to build stuff with their hands. As an open hardware platform to help developers, designers, and researchers build the next generation of…

Few objects have the same level of rebellious punk cred as a pair of black Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars (see: Ramones), so it’s no surprise that the brand has always tried to appeal to music fans over the years with various limited editions and marketing campaigns. For their latest––and perhaps silliest––Converse Chuck Taylor yet,…

As the creator of design documentaries Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized, filmmaker Gary Hustwit has made a name for himself by opening up the worlds of graphic, industrial and urban design to the general population with compelling interviews that to this day are among the best of their kind. For his latest––and most ambitious––project, Hustwit is…

With a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering and over 9 years of experience at NASA (7 years of which were spent working on the Curiosity Rover), Mark Rober knows a thing or two about how to make stuff work. More recently, Rober teamed up with fellow engineer friends David and Ryan from the YouTube channel…

Presented by In seismically active, emerging nations that have suffered through devastating earthquake damage, rebuilding communities doesn’t just end with repairing homes, schools and other community structures – it ends when a foundation has been laid for a safer, more prosperous community. Unfortunately, many rebuilding efforts are based on routine cookie-cutter procedures that are incapable…

Released last month, Nike’s Vaporwing Elite running sunglasses consist of a one-piece design that fuses the lens with the frame to significantly reduce weight while minimizing wind resistance and debris. While casual sunglasses designed for the average pedestrian are one thing, eyewear designed for the demands of competitive runners is a whole different ballgame. Among…

Considering how pianos can become the centerpiece of a living area within a home, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen more collaborations between instrument manufacturers and hand-crafted furniture manufacturers. If we did, we’d probably see a lot more pianos like the KIYOLA ‘Made In Japan’ Series KF-10 from Roland and Karimoku Furniture. Designed by Karimoku’s…

Although a well-designed and balanced pen can be a dream to write with, few writing instruments could ever replace the humble wood pencil. Now, artists, designers, engineers, woodworkers and anybody else who grinds their pencils down to a nub will soon be able to get a lot more mileage out of that lead. Soon to…

Having started his custom shoe design business during high school in 2008, Jacob Blaise Ferrato soon gained exposure in the massive underground sneaker community when he started posting pictures of his hand-painted Nikes in online forums. Today, the now 25-year-old custom sneaker designer demands upwards of $2,000 per custom pair of sneakers – both custom variations…

When it comes to fascinating alternative use cases for manufacturing processes, waterjet cutting has had no shortage of applications, yet New Zealand-based designer Mark Wilson might have just come up with the best use case yet. In the waterjet manufacturing process, the high-pressure water stream can lose its pressure and precision soon after entering a…

Unless you’ve been churning out legendary solos, filling stadiums, and selling millions of records since the 1970s, the likelihood of having your own signature guitar model is pretty slim. Launching this week, the new Fender Mod Shop is changing all that and will now let anybody design and customize their own signature guitar model from…

As far as factory tours go, the LEGO Inside Tour at the LEGO production facility in Billund, Denmark exists in a league of its own. Assuming that you can grab a spot on one of the four scheduled LEGO Inside Tour weekend dates that take place in May and June of each year, the price…

By day, Wataru Kami is a concept artist at a production company in Tokyo, Japan. By night, he is a seasoned hardware tinkerer with one hand on the keyboard and the other holding a soldering iron. More recently, the Japanese designer put his two passions together to create what is surely one of the most…

It was only two weeks ago when LEGO released their extremely detailed “life-like” replica of the iconic Porsche 911 GT3 RS with a 2,704-part build sequence modeled after the real-life vehicle’s assembly process. Although the $299 kit is already out of stock, LEGO wants to settle your woes with yet another impressive automobile kit modeled…

For independent designers and engineers wanting to tap into wearables, the headache of both incorporating and managing sensor data can stop an otherwise brilliant idea dead in its tracks. But what if figuring out how to track and measure data through health and motion sensors were, in fact, the last things worth worrying about? More…

Back in April, the LEGO design team unveiled their latest 2,704–piece LEGO Technic model in the form of a life-like” replica of the iconic Porsche 911 GT3 RS with a build sequence modeled after the real-life vehicle’s assembly process. To keep the LEGO build process as close as possible to the same real-world assembly process…

While it’s not uncommon to take 3D printed parts to a high-level of finished quality, it’s not necessarily something we tend to see too often when it comes to stationary toys and objects that have become synonymous with consumer FDM 3D printers. At their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY, the Locknesters team of toy designers are…

As one of the most memorable parts of Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space, the infamous “Printer Scene” gave an honest look at how some of us really feel about our office equipment when it fails to work as intended. While it may not reach the same level of badassery as seen in the film,…

If you’ve been paying attention to the Apple rumor mill as of late, you’ve likely heard that Apple is (supposedly) working on incorporating an OLED touchscreen trackpad to replace the function row of keys at the top of the new MacBook keyboard with a monster trackpad below – expected to be released later this year.…

As far as turning wooden bowls on a lathe goes, Frank Howarth is the man. Even so, the master himself needs an added challenge every now and again…and this one is three years in the making. For his most recent project, the woodworker/filmmaker took a bowl he had previously turned from a raw piece of…

Having already set the record for the most funded Kickstarter campaign twice before, it should come as little surprise that smartwatch manufacturer Pebble is set to beat their own record yet again for two new smartwatch designs and two versions of a hackable wearable. The new Pebble lineup – properly titled the Pebble 2, Pebble Time…

While Apple’s industrial design team is known to sweat every last detail of a new product in their top-secret lab, a not-too-secret team of aftermarket hardware customizers at the ColorWare facility in Winona, Minnesota have been turning back the clock to keep the characteristics of yesterday’s Apple industrial design alive in 2016. Founded on the…

Designed to withstand the harsh demands of the world’s elite sports and wildlife photographers, Canon’s $11,000 EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Extender 1.4X high-performance super telephoto zoom lens is a beast of a piece of glass. While the specs – which includes a switch for increasing the zoom range from 200-400mm to 280-560mm at the flick…

As the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Northern European countries, uitto – or log driving – was the process of moving logs from a forest to sawmills downstream using the current of a river. It is also the inspiration for a group of Finnish skateboarders who want to bring sustainable skateboard…

As a professional carpenter who has worked in commercial construction for over 30 years, Ontario-based woodworker John Heisz is no stranger to making use of old and rusty saw blades that he comes across. As a matter of fact, he has an entire YouTube channel where – among other projects – he injects new life…

Since introducing their Futurecraft initiative late last year, Adidas has shown no signs of slowing down their exploration – and intention – of incorporating additive manufacturing and other next generation digital fabrication techniques into their supply chain in the not-too-distant future. Tomorrow, in honor of World Oceans Day, Adidas and ocean conservation group Parley for…

It’s no secret that design is more than just about making something look good; many of today’s billion dollar companies are driving record profits through their neverending search to better understand their users to build them better products that are more friendly to use. But as many of our three-dimensional experiences move into two-dimensional interfaces,…

Nearly a year ago, the BBC revealed a pocket-sized computer called the BBC Micro:bit that they planned to give to one million UK-based Year 7 school children as a part of their mission to “inform, educate and entertain” as more schools adopt more STEM-friendly curriculums. At 70 times smaller and 18 times faster than the…

Often used for the production of engine parts, lost-foam casting (LFC) has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years despite having first been invented by sculptor Armand Vaillancourt in the 1950s and first used commercially by General Motors in the mid-1980s for their Saturn car line. More recently, Dutch industrial designer Klaas Kuiken became…

Perhaps best known for sand casting his Pewter Stool in the natural landscape of Caerhays beach on the South coast of Cornwall back in 2006, industrial designer Max Lamb has continued on his quest to explore new ways of manufacturing products in nontraditional ways over the past ten years. For the Crockery Collection, Lamb turned…

The ability to quickly observe a form and deconstruct it into primitive shapes that can be sketched or modeled is one of the most valuable skills that a designer or engineer can have. Unfortunately, learning how to think this way doesn’t necessarily come naturally for most – particularly if it involves a sketchbook and a…