This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist knocks you in the pop sockets with head-boppin’ groove tuneage to help propel you through the work week in style. Whether you find yourself inking markers until they’re dry, grinding material through a bandsaw or working that 3D geometry all day, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week we’ll start things off with “you can’t hide/shame on you” from LCD Soundsystem and work our way through tracks from The Avalanches, Bauhaus, The Ruby Suns, Fugazi, GusGus and others before wrapping up with “Lady Day and John Coltrane” from Gil Scott—Heron. Have suggestions? As always, let us know what you listen…

While the desktop 3D printer revolution put rapid prototyping and small production run capabilities into the hands of small firms and independent design consultants, unfortunately, the same can’t quite be said for yet another important part of many hardware design projects: building circuit boards. While contractors can be hired to assemble small batches for relatively affordable prices, the process can be painful when iterating through multiple design cycles. Recently launched on Kickstarter to solve the needs of modern day independent electronic developers, The Chipsetter ONE is the first pick-and-place machine designed to help users easily overcome the barrier to rapid circuit assembly. Based around an economical removable electronic feeder system…

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. Each Monday, we’ll 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. Be sure to check in each Monday morning for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite homegrown…

Draft angles are fundamental to part design. If you want to make physical things, you gotsta’ master draft. In his inaugural post, the great Vince “Skill Coach” Haley shows you how. There’s nothing like the musty aroma of carefully crafted paper mache popping free of its surrogate mold. And to my daughter’s delight, that’s exactly what happened! Seizing the moment, I said “You know why it works like that don’t you? Well It’s because of something called draft angle.” She raised a brow as if to say “Do tell”. I pointed out that the opening was larger in size than the base, making the sidewalls tilt at an angle. I…

Don your favorite bathrobe, cream that coffee and get comfortable with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. The Weekend Reader features a handful of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack over the past week ranging from tips and tricks to inspirational designs, processes, and more. So lay back, relax and take a load off while reading the top ten stories on SolidSmack this past week. Oh and uh…don’t forget to shed some much-needed sunlight on your face, too. This Clever Drawing Trick Makes it Quick and Easy to Sketch in Perfect Perspective Unless you sketch every day or have a brilliant sense of hand–eye coordination, chances are that sketching…

First introduced in 1955 and used as numeric displays in early digital products, Nixie Tubes were the LEDs of their era before being superseded in the 1970s by the actual light-emitting diodes that we see in today’s products. Among other reasons for their replacement, manufacturing Nixie Tubes was a complicated and pricey process that involved fabricating a glass tube containing a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes shaped like numerals and other common display symbols. Filled with a mixture of gases, the cathodes would emit an orange glow when in use. After discovering nixie tubes in 2011 and realizing that they were no longer being manufactured, design engineer Dalibor Farný took…