You may take it for granted (what with all the cars in your neighborhood), but a large percentage of the Netherlands population (27% to be exact) heavily rely on bikes for their day-to-day commute. So it’s pretty sad when you realize most bicycles in the country are manufactured overseas— effectively increasing their cost. Due to the high labor costs needed to make a bicycle out of steel or aluminum tubing, not many Dutch companies want to invest in such a risky business. Enter Mokumono Bicycles, a bicycle company founded by brothers Bob & Tom Schiller in an effort to bring bike manufacturing closer to home. Taking notes from car production…
When it comes to side projects, hours become days, days become weeks, and weeks can often become months or years. But what if getting a minimum viable product created could happen on a Saturday…assuming you aren’t building a flying car? Many successful entrepreneurs have been touting the benefits of the 1-Day MVP—a one-day, all-out sprint to go from fresh idea to app or hardware prototype. Sure, some projects may take a little more energy and time than others, but having the process and infrastructure in place to successfully glide ideas along is what counts the most. Which is exactly the premise behind the 1-Day MVP 2.0 online training course; one…
It’s time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved mobile device(s)! The Weekly App Smack is the best of new or updated design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy design or engineering professional and this week we have a list sure to make you more efficient. Do you have an app suggestion that has made your life easier or changed up your workflow? Let us know in the comments below or send it into tips@solidsmack.com. Hit it! Brilliant – solve, learn, grow (iOS — Free) Master concepts by solving fun, challenging problems. We’ll help you learn real math…
Just look at that desk. Where are you going to put all of those dismantled 1990’s sit-com action figure parts? Jennifer Aniston would be ashamed. I know what you’re thinking though–No ordinary storage box will do. You need a special type of storage box worthy of iconic plastic leg and arm parts. Why you took them apart in the first, we’ll never… oh, you wanted to make a 50-headed, fully-articulating sit-com monster? Ahhh… we’ll leave you to it. For all those leftover pieces or other items you need to store, we have a wonderful 3D printed lattice box design by Pascal Merkli. It’s not just one though. Pascal has five…
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 “Where Your Mind Wants to Go” from Blonde Redhead before diving into irresistible tracks from Gorillaz, Dirty Projectors, Chromatics, James Blake, Fever Ray, and others before wrapping up with “Hold…
… Anything computer-related, that is. If the computer’s spiel has any truth to it, this may be one of the most powerful portable supercomputers out there. Powered by AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 SoC processors, the UDOO BOLT can handle everything from ginormous 3D CAD models to triple-A computer games. Depending on which version of the BOLT you prefer (the V3 being a slightly lower-end version of the more powerful V8), the computer can have upwards of two to eight cores running. While the V3 runs on an embedded AMD Ryzen 1202B processor, dual core/quad thread cores with speeds of up to 2.3 GHz, and an AMD RADEON VEGA 3 graphics…