Researchers from Carnegie Mellon and the Missouri University of Science and Technology have developed a method of 3D printing battery components to dramatically increase capacity. There’s great interest in improving battery technology in recent years, due to the ongoing switch from oil to electric power, particularly in vehicle design. Many researchers are investigating a number of improvement avenues, some of which involve tweaking the types of materials involved in battery construction. But another avenue of investigation deals with the electrodes. In order to increase the capacity of electrochemical reactions, it is desirable to have electrodes with significant surface area. The additional surface area allows the electrolyte more exposure to the…

If you have access to a shop, it makes perfect sense to jump at the opportunity to upcycle discarded materials into entirely new designs when creativity strikes. For woodworker Alex Fang, this came in the form of creating a sleek paper tray using scrap wood from his past projects. After picking out the scraps that will produce the least amount of additional scrap waste, Alex begins by cutting them down to size and flattening with a jointer before bringing them down to a uniform thickness on a planer. To cap off the resizing, he cuts the wood down to a similar width using a table saw while adding a small…

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. This week on SolidSmack Radio we’ll fire things off with “Teenage Birdsong” from Four Tet before jumping into fresh tracks from Foxygen, Cate le Bon, Pixx, Tame Impala, and others before wrapping up with “Quivering Prints” from Son Lux. Ready? Let’s…

There are an infinite number of uses for the traditional LEGO brick, but using the plastic toys for teaching robotics through STEM curriculums in the classroom has surged in popularity in the last decade—and the applications keep getting better and better. With the introduction of the SPIKE Prime LEGO kit, the company aims to provide an onramp for introducing students in grades 6-8 to more advanced LEGO robotics applications. Unlike some of their more complex (and expensive) Mindstorms kits, SPIKE Prime teaches the basics using simpler, modified drag-and-drop coding based on the MIT Scratch language. At the center of the kit is a smart hub which has six input/output ports,…

Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. 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…

After the release of the Tesla Model Y in 2018, Tesla CEO, visionary, and (some would say) eccentric, Elon Musk took to Twitter and asked people what they would like from a Tesla pickup truck. *Pause for gasp from crowd* Based on the few snippets of information he provided, the truck would have built-in power outlets which allow users to use 240V power tools without the use of a generator. And the truck itself will have a dual motor all-wheel drive with “crazy torque” (unlike pickup trucks with a sane amount of torque?) and a load-balancing suspension which allows it to adjust dynamically over various types of terrain. That… was…