In an age where humans generate more waste than they know how to dispose of properly, more designers are continuing to make greener choices with their creations. We have kitchen knives made from old skateboard racks, furniture made from bricks made from recycled newspapers, speakers which use plastic bottles as bass boosters, and now… aluminum ladder furniture? French collective PZZL (not to be confused with ‘pizza’ – your favorite food), has gone the recycling route for one of its projects. ‘The Great Escape’, as it is called, is a collection of three furniture pieces: a stool, a lounge chair, and an ottoman; all of which use aluminum ladders as their…

Even though centuries have passed, the act of designing and making objects is still primarily the same: the human mind comes up with a project, the human hand sketches it down, and finally, human hands get to work on manually making the dream a reality. Throw in some modern computer-know-how and manufacturing technologies in there, and you’ve got the foundation for just about any mass manufactured object. But what if you reversed this process? What if … the computer was in charge of crafting the project? Such is the premise behind the chAIr project is. The big ‘AI’ in the project name stands for “Artificial Intelligence” – which pertains to…

It’s no secret that commercial 3D printing has been taking giant technological leaps in the past few years—but bringing the price per part down has been a significant technological barrier for just about every industrial 3D printer manufacturer. With their recently-announced Metal Jet commercial 3D printing platform, HP aims to take what they’ve learned from their Multi Jet Fusion 3D Printer platform—particularly, their “voxel-level binder jetting technology”— and apply it to metallic components, starting with stainless steel finished parts. Among the platform’s beta testers is Volkswagen, where engineers are using it to create customizable auto components including key fobs, mirror mounts, and gearshift knobs. https://youtu.be/6cSOFBTJxX0 “We are in the midst…

Autodesk is making very significant changes to their Fusion 360 product offerings. Fusion 360 is Autodesk’s flagship 3D design tool that is offered in a cloud-based subscription service. The system provides not only CAD, but also CAM, simulations and even generative components. It’s proven quite popular in certain circles. As of October 7th, they will no longer offer anything other than a single product configuration. Currently, the company markets several configurations of Autodesk Fusion 360: A free tier for students and startups A paid Standard Edition A paid Ultimate Edition, which includes advanced simulation, advanced manufacturing (5-axis support) and generative design. The new Fusion 360 plan from Autodesk collapses the paid…

Dassault SOLIDWORKS is corporately swinging down from the rafters of development mode to announce the upcoming new features in SOLIDWORKS 2019. If you’re worried about SOLIDWORKS slowing development to pursue XDesign interest (that just gained some new features), this release may sway your opinion. There are plenty of new features to love and, if you’ve been a long time SOLIDWORKS users, a list of features that may, quite literally, make you shed tears of happiness To get the generalities out of the way first, this new release focuses on five areas (although the SOLDIWORKS Launch 2019 description replaces a few with others–smart manufacturing, design to manufacturing, innovation): Quality Assembly performance…

This year’s TechCrunch Disrupt had a reported 7,500 attendees bustling through the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, September 5th-7th, 2018. There were a ton of interesting talks, the Startup Battlefield competition with a $100k prize, exhibitors small and large at the expo and, yes, we’ve got all the highlights for you. See the details in the full-length video or breakout section below — including footage from the sweet 90’s-themed after party. https://youtu.be/86t8DuUhApg TechCrunch Disrupt Highlights Quantum Computing Quantum computing is now very much a thing! However, if you ask anyone in the industry, it’s still really crude. They don’t even really know for sure what it will be good for.…