Well, it’s finally happening. After years of promising to bring drone deliveries to the masses, Amazon Prime Air has finally gotten approval to operate as a drone airline. The clearance, which comes from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), classifies Amazon’s drone delivery program as an “air carrier”. This will allow Amazon to begin commercial trial deliveries across certain parts of the United States, which will in turn allow the FAA to modify its rules and regulations when it comes to unmanned aerial deliveries. You wouldn’t want hundreds of drones flying around your neighborhood now, would you? This comes as a big change for the FAA, who have until recently been…

The folks over at Onshape have been cranking out a ton of resource material across all categories. I’m especially excited over the uptick in surface creation related content being published out. For example, two new surfacing courses recently went live on the Learning Center. So if learning Onshape is on your bucket list, I encourage you to hop over there and have a look. They’ve currently got six Learning Pathway Courses to choose from. Each pathway is designed to help you lay a good foundation and for growth over the long haul.However, if you are looking for some tasty educational morsels, you’ll want to turn your attention to the Onshape…

Hey, Solidsmackites If you are looking to learn Autodesk Fusion 360 starting at ground zero, but don’t want to go it alone, then we’ve spotted a series that may be just the ticket! Ben over at 3DGladiator kicked off a guided Fusion 360 series building a super cool vintage military tank. Currently, he is on Day 10 where he builds his first honest-to-goodness Fusion part, a tire, and rim. Now that’s the way to set the model build in motion! Now Ben’s aim in the series is to chronicle his personal learning journey while building an object of sufficient complexity. He’s set up the series in a “Learn-With-Me” format. He…

Multi-cavity tooling is the topic we’ll be exploring in today’s SkillCoach Plastics Playground. Now I’m not referring to picks, scrapers, or the high-pitched rotary tools used to make quick work of a menacing cavity wreaking havoc on your molar. Rather, I’m speaking of an injection-mold tooling configuration.Multi-cavity tooling helps optimize the production of plastic parts. Instead of an injection press spitting out only one plastic part per cycle, multi-cavity tooling enables the injection press to pump out oodles of parts in a given cycle! The net result, more parts in less time. As they say, “time is money!” So, if you’re needing to find a way to shave a few…

We all know how a guitar works: put your fingers on the strings across the frets, use your other hand to strum the strings, and BAM, you’re creating music. But what if you could change how one of those elements works entirely? Anthony Dickens’ Circle Guitar (created by engineers Jacob Boast, Luke Perkin, and Marie Tricaud) looks very similar to a conventional guitar… that is, until you reach the body. Located at the center is a special device designed to strike specific guitar strings at a specific time and rate. In essence, it introduces multiple other fingers to strum, allowing an entirely new sound to be generated which would otherwise…

I bumped into a 3D print accessory I’d never heard of, and think it’s a pretty good idea. The accessory is “Plastic Repellent Paint”, distributed by Slice Engineering. They are a reseller of unusual components for 3D printing since 2017, and their product line consists of a few exotic hot ends, replacement parts, accessories, and nozzles. One of their products is Plastic Repellent Paint, and while I haven’t tried this yet, I believe it could be a tremendous way to avoid major damage on desktop 3D printers. The problem being addressed here is a certain type of 3D printer failure, in which a large amount of material is deposited on…