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 get the groove going with “Lying Has To Stop” from Soft Hair before diving into irresistible tracks from Club Kuru, Ultimate Painting, Inner Wave, TOPS, and others before wrapping up with “Blush” from Mr. Twin…
Contrary to popular belief, there is much more to a bicycle than simply pushing your legs to make the wheels go round. Take for example the bike’s drivetrain, which transfers all your leg power to the drive wheels. While there are a ton of variations, most drivetrains consist of a front wheel, chain, and rear wheel which allow you to change gears depending on the terrain. One of the most significant problems the system faces is friction. When you’re pumping your legs to the point where they feel like jelly, transferring the energy into the wheels takes its toll on the drivetrain. To make matters worse, an inefficient drivetrain can…
Forget their proposed drone delivery system; Amazon just solved one of the biggest problems for engineers, designers, DIY’ers, or anyone handy enough to use a screwdriver: identifying a screw. Don’t you just hate when you find one of those buggers under your sofa or behind the fridge and have no idea where it came from or where it goes? *looks under arm* Or maybe you do know what the screw is for but need more of the same kind. Instead of taking the screw to a hardware store, you can make use of Part Finder – a feature on Amazon’s iOS app which helps you figure out what the part is,…
If you were too busy re-topologizing that scan of your skull last week, you may have missed this announcement from nPower Software/IntegrityWare–they’ve released version 5.0 of their Power Surfacing / Power Surfacing RE for SOLIDWORKS software. It was just a year ago (June 2017) they released Power Surfacing version 4.0 that brought support for SOLIDWORKS assembly environment and G2 curvature continuous constraints. Those are some GREAT features and Power Surfacing 5.0 builds on those with some slick, new automated mesh conversion and clean-up and some interesting new features to improve surface quality in SOLIDWORKS. The new features include: Automated scanned mesh conversion (see video) Superior accuracy with Shrink Wrap technology Follows curvature and…
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…
Glances from beneath their transparent sheath missed us as we hid, the hair of their eye jibbles quivering in time with the rattles of their undulating movements, moistening the corridor with the critical ingredient needed to find, extract, and combine these links. Mack Sztaba – A concept artist with a wide range of talent, particularly in the areas of everything – characters, environments, ships and some stinkin’ sweet mechs. Anamorphic – Anamorphic grafitti by Lisbon-based Odeith. Anamorphic as in created on two walls and a floor in such a way as to make it pop right off. Drone Awards – The 1st annual drone photography awards with over 4400 entries from over…