Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or modeling up a 3D storm, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. Have suggestions? As always, let us know what you listen to, what you want to hear and what tunes get you through the week. Shoot us an email or leave a comment down below!! *Note: if the embedded playlist below doesn’t…

While applications such as Google Translate can help us understand the written word in foreign languages on the fly, there hasn’t really been such an application to help with sign language. Rather than relying on sound, sign language is comprised of a series of rapid hand gestures that have to be seen and analyzed together before making sense. It’s certainly a daunting task to create something that can understand and translate such a unique method of communication, but in the case of University of Washington students Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor, they took it upon themselves to make sign language easier to understand both for the hearing impaired as well…

As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Every Monday, we link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you to get your week started on the right foot. Be sure to check in each week for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite homegrown ‘Smack. What We’re Reading This Week: Riches From Rags Before there was recycling, there was the rag…

Why limit recycling to Earth when you can do it in outer space too? Space manufacturing company Made in Space recently teamed up with thermoplastic resin and polypropylene company Braskem to create a plastic recycler for astronauts stationed at the International Space Station. Using Braskem’s specialized Green Plastic (a sugarcane-based plastic made using thermoplastic resin) in the majority of their goods and perishables packaging, astronauts can dump the reusable waste into the recycler and repurpose it into material for the onboard Made in Space 3D printer. This, in turn, helps reduce weight and allows astronauts to produce custom tools and parts with ease using materials already available on board. Once…

Huddle around the computer a little bit, your digital detox is a farce! How can you stay away from great stuff that you can read and chew on … mentally that is! We got you covered, while you were away, busy with your digital detox diet. Don’t be shy, take a look at the week that was, right here on SolidSmack. Cause we are ROCKIN! A “Personal Car Factory 3D Printer” Coming Next Year? I was a bit shocked when I saw a press release from Israel-based Modix that touted a coming “Personal Car Factory 3D Printer”. Tutorial: Model Wave Forms using Creo Parametric Variable Section Sweep and TRAJPAR Function –…

In this post, we’ll delve into the world of TRAJPAR. Now I’m not talk’n about some distant galaxy, but rather a somewhat hidden parameter nested inside PTC Creo Parametric modeling software. TRAJPAR is short for Trajectory Parameter. This puppy is one of the advanced modeling goodies that allows you to turbocharge your Variable Section Sweep (VSS). The exciting thing is that with relatively little effort (aside from wading in the waters of mathematical formulas) you can model some amazingly complex shapes that are parametric and robust to-boot!