Plastic Injection Molding is the process of using high pressure to push molten plastic into a mold. The main purpose is to create useful products when cooled and solidified in shape set in the mold. An injection screw is widely used in this process because of its versatility in creating different shapes and sizes during…

In this interview, we chatted with one of the leading LED illumination experts in the world, Julius Muschaweck. If you want to know how to super-precisely measure and model LEDs for illumination, this is the guy to talk to. The former “Osram grandpa” worked as a go-to LED expert within Osram and now works as…

OddEngineer.com + Free Giveaway with Consultation and Bose Noise Canceling Headphones! While some got prison swole or Hot Cheetos swole in 2020, I got nerd entrepreneurship swole. I built a new thing for us freelance physical product engineers: OddEngineer.com. There, you can immediately book and pay for appointments with niche, hard-to-find engineering pros. Got questions…

You’ve heard of YouTubers who drop phones and other pieces of tech to test their durability, but have you ever heard of a company actually donating their products for the sole purpose of destroying them? This is exactly what Volvo has been doing recently. In order for Swedish rescue teams to get into the practice…

You’ve heard it said before.  Maybe from a manager or coworker. Maybe during an interview to try to connect or relate.  Maybe during crunch time as a misguided offer of assistance.  Maybe from someone that slapped their knee and gave you a little bump with their elbow like they were the first person to ever…

Nine months ago I got the news and I knew everything was going to change.  And now here we are, exhausted and bleary-eyed, holding the wonder we have created.  As I look down on our little miracle I hold softly cradled in my arms I think ahead. Yes, I made a part. I want the…

Need a design taken from A to B or maybe A to Q? Going from A to B might take one skill set and from B to C, another. Do you know what Q through B looks like? Stuff that brain matter back in your ears and take a breath. Let’s review the ABCs of…

In this post, we’ll delve into the world of TRAJPAR. Now I’m not talk’n about some distant galaxy, but rather a somewhat hidden parameter nested inside PTC Creo Parametric modeling software. TRAJPAR is short for Trajectory Parameter. This puppy is one of the advanced modeling goodies that allows you to turbocharge your Variable Section Sweep…

You’ve seen tons of LEGO car builds in the past (some of which can even be driven), but I bet you don’t see something like this everyday: If your first instinct was to pick up this ATV and plop it on your homemade Hot Wheels track, you aren’t alone. This is a Sherp – a…

Roam Robotics is doing some awesome stuff in San Francisco, California, and here we get an exclusive, inside look! Their first commercial product is a robotic ski exoskeleton which you can try out this upcoming season. Read on to learn more about how it works and see inside Roam’s office. Or, you can watch the…

Expanding on the success of his Disintegrating series of exploding car photos, Swiss artist and photographer Fabian Oefner has decided to try something similar with one of his close interests: cameras. CutUp, his newest project, involves a series of cameras which are casted in resin before being cut up and rearranged to produce works of…

It takes a heck of a lot of resources to get a superyacht seaworthy. Serious money, human resources, and time are spent making sure the luxury ships can withstand extreme ocean swells—yet still provide enough comfort for passengers so they can feel safe in what is essentially a floating hunk of metal in the sea.…

On the 3rd installment of “How to Network with HW enginerds in Europe,” we fly to Kiev, Ukraine! (AKA Kyiv, Ukraine.) I only had two days in this city but managed to tour three facilities and pack in four meetings, proving Ukrainians are awesome. In this short visit, I learned a lot of interesting facts…

First, let’s agree, here and now, to no longer use the phrase, “think outside the box”. Henceforth condensed to “it”.  “It” is a cliché, a tired trope, a worn-out platitude that should have never made it this far riding on the backs of cheap suits. It is a sad piece of strip mall management seminar…

If you’re engineering hardware that has any one of: a camera, an LED, a display, an IR sensor, a lens, a laser, a reflector, or an optical fiber, guess what?! You’re working with an optical system. What’s more, there’s an entire branch of engineering that specializes in optics. And, if you’re not involving an optical…

You may know Airbnb as the website you visit whenever you forget to book a hotel and need a place to crash during your vacation. What you probably didn’t know is the company has an experimental in-house design studio called Samara that works on projects far beyond home sharing and the ethics of using someone…

It’s always fun to see how products are made, but sometimes you need a dose of some good old-fashioned product destruction for stress relief, too. Ever since 1975, Utah-based blender company Blendtec has been making blenders that shred, maim, and well… blend ingredients into an easily digestible mush. Fast forward to 2006 and the rise…

It’s 3am. Visions of green and red shapes are swirling through your mind. Was it a bad batch of kombucha? No – it’s Autodesk Generative Design. Autodesk Generative Design provides a surprisingly addictive mix of novelty, somewhat mysterious results, and interesting shapes. If you can justify the cost – try it! Before I dive in,…

It would seem like an impossible endeavor to top NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson’s Super Soaker water gun, but a team of German engineers may have taken the water weapon crown with their Spyra One- a water rifle that fires ‘water bullets,’ meant to improve accuracy and distance. Whereas the Super Soaker requires you to fill…

An unusual robot designed by professor David Zarrouk at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is capable of changing its shape to overcome obstacles, allowing it to roll around on wheels, crawl like a turtle, and even flip itself over to traverse difficult terrain. The RSTAR (Rising Sprawl-Tuned Autonomous Robot) features sprawling wheel-leg assembly, which…

Since its founding in 1995, Lockheed Martin has made a myriad of contributions to the aerospace industry with groundbreaking new technologies. With the introduction of 3D printers and the onset of additive manufacturing, Lockheed has leveraged these tools to create everything from missile components to spacecraft parts. The aerospace company can now add giant 3D…

Creo 5.0 now lets you model in perspective! I for one am excited! I’m relishing the thought of giving my eyes and brain a long-awaited respite. It’s just not natural to process depth using trimetric or dimetric projections. Unlike some of my industrial design buddies who gave up on Creo (formerly ProE) opting for other CAD programs tailored for…

It happened fast, but drones these days are a dime a dozen. With the air filled with hovering robots, you need something to make your drone stand out from the standard store-bought crowd. DRAGON (short for “Dual-rotor embedded multi-link Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformation”) might be the coolest drone concept you’ve ever…

If you went to college on your path to becoming an engineer/designer/maker you may have learned there are a lot of occupational hazards you were not warned about in that schooling. Even if you didn’t, I bet there were a lot of nasty surprises. Like, what about being cursed? I don’t mean in a profanity…

With over 14 million vinyl LPs sold in the United States alone in 2017, it’s no wonder that some artists and hardware manufacturers are putting their lossy MP3 files on the backburner to take a closer look at physical media—including cassette tapes— all over again. But for some extreme audiophiles, nothing beats going straight to…

We’re walking the floor at Solidworks World 2018. One must see is Easton LaChappelle’s Unlimited Tommorrow (UT) exhibit. He is cranking out some amazing prosthetic devices! Easton at 14-years-old took an interest in robotics where he submitted a robotic artificial limb in a science fair. His epiphany with regard to his future role in the world…

Several weeks ago, Headup Games announced the next installment in their popular Portal video game series. But, it certainly wasn’t what fans were expecting. Instead of continuing on their first-person puzzle-platform, the new game is a bridge-building simulator with some aspects of Portal thrown into the mix. In essence, it’s ClockStone’s Bridge Constructer combined with…

2017 was a good year for Advanced Modeling Tools enhancements inside of Onshape. In particular, I’m talking curve and surface creation tools. These are the kind of features that have got this ole ID guy chomping at the bit to model something curvy and sweet in form! My aim in this post is to highlight…

Back in the summer of 2016, MillRight CNC burst onto the scene with their surprisingly affordable M3 desktop CNC machine ($299 for the kit)–a barebones setup which featured an MDF frame, NEMA 17 stepper motors, a modest 10.25″ x 10.25″ (260mm x 260mm) work area and powered by an Arduino Uno control board. Consequently, the company…

Nike made a splash with their self-lacing shoes, but a foot isn’t the only place to take advantage of auto-adjusting tech. According to AppleInsider, Apple was granted US Patent No. 9,781,984 for a self-adjusting Apple Watch band—leaving puny straps, buttons, velcro, clasps and every other attachment ‘inconvenience’ in its wake. Reads the patent’s abstract: “Systems…

Even though Google’s Pixel 2 release is a wee 364 days from its predecessor (it’s rumored to hit shelves this October 19), the company has done its best to include as many add-ons as it can with its new phone. Of all the new upgrades and features, the instant language translation has caught our imaginations the…

Welcome to our new ‘Ask An Engineer’ series, where Dan Slaski addresses questions that have you losing sleep or staring off into space during important meetings. Have a question for Dan? Send it in. Question: Why aren’t there more women in Engineering and what can be done to change that? Dear the Future Is Female, This…

With demand for analog records surging in recent years, it comes as little surprise that some of the original turntable manufacturers have been coming out of the woodwork to refine their products for a new generation. Yesterday, Panasonic unveiled a prototype of the Technics SP-10R, a direct-drive turntable with the world’s highest-level S/N (signal-to-noise) ratio…

People People, the Swedish company behind the Modern Pocket Watch and Wearable IoT for Snickers Workwear, has successfully run a new crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter for their Small Wireless Transparent Speaker with Flic Button control. The new speaker features a glass case so you can see exactly how the drivers are all wired together to…

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you know is SolidWorks, everything you design will look like RoboCop. You can do better.

Welcome to our new ‘Ask An Engineer’ series, where Dan Slaski addresses questions that have you losing sleep or staring off into space during important meetings. Have a question for Dan? Send it in. Question: Should I work for a big company or a small company? Dear Consciously Corporately Constrained, Recently my girlfriend and I…

Efficiency. Glorious efficiency. The streamlined and punctual Japanese train system. The meticulous movement of precision components in a Swiss made watch. The time saving zzzchick of Velcro shoes. I don’t know about you, but I am getting goosebumps. Certain cultures, like the Germans and their engineers in particular, are known for prizing the concept of…

When it comes to professionally-engineered LEGO builds, the end-goal is more often than not to recreate a real-world object as accurately as possible using square bricks. For some of the company’s most recent models, this dedication to modeling after true life has gone as far as having a build sequence modeled after the true-to-life factory…

Despite drastic efforts to increase STEM education across the country, as well as a renewed interest in industrial design thanks to a new crop of product design startups in London, the number of skilled UK engineers is actually on the decline. Enter James Dyson. As the sole owner of Dyson Ltd, James Dyson is no…

Few things are as enticing to young engineering students as the opportunity to build their own go-karts from scratch, and 18-year-old engineering student Jasper Edwards is living the dream. The UK-based engineer, who works out of his own garage, creates his karts starting with shopping carts and wheelchairs scavenged from local junkyards. Using the existing…

Commonly used to seamlessly join dissimilar materials with different melting points, friction welding has been used to manufacture everything from airplane parts and rocket thruster tanks to even space shuttles and the razor-thin iMac. But regardless of the intended application, the visual spectacle provided by forcefully joining two materials together with brute force is one…

Completed in 1912, Portland’s Steel Bridge is the only double-deck bridge with independent lifts in the world and the second oldest vertical-lift bridge in North America – after the nearby Hawthorne Bridge just a stone’s throw down the Willamette River. For his 3rd-grade son’s recent school project, our woodworking YouTuber Frank Howarth of Frank Makes…

Like many other designers and engineers who work in front of the computer all day, robotics engineer Mike Parris was tempted to leave the office environment for good in favor of working directly with his hands. At the time, Parris was working as a robotics engineer at Carnegie Mellon developing the technology that would later…

You would think that having been called a “brilliant science-and-technology documentarian” whose “videos should be held up as models of how to present complex technical information visually” would go straight to one’s head, yet Bill Hammack (AKA Engineering Guy) is anything but your typical engineering dude. The University of Illinois teacher, whose popular course, ‘The…

In most cases, sitting on a flat wood surface for hours at a time isn’t what most people would consider comfortable, but with an innovative new wood block cushioning system, they may be singing to a different tune. The Block System, which was masterminded by the mad geniuses at Los Angeles-based Sitskie Furniture Co, was…

With the latest installment in the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, arriving in theaters on December 18th, we’re already starting to feel the early ripples of yet another tidal wave of Star Wars mania. While some marketing teams have been busy developing strategies for jumping on the Star Wars hype train the…

The Engineering Boss. A peculiar creature. Shhh, there he is in his native habitat.

Invented by naval engineer Richard James in the early 1940s, the Slinky has provided generations of kids and adults with a never-ending supply of satisfying levitating tricks and was even declared as the official national toy of the United States after having been declared “a recreational device that exemplifies the inventiveness of the American spirit”.…

Although existing cutaway and section view tools that exist in today’s CAD tools are incredibly reliable, they pale in comparison to the hand drawn detailed cutaway drawings that were – at one time- the most advanced form of communication for designers, engineers and manufacturers. Although cutaway illustrations have been used for centuries for everything from…

As a young block builder, you loved LEGO and would fly through the kits before quickly moving beyond build tutorials to creating your own unique creations using items from around the house. You loved puzzle games and toys with mechanisms like Mouse Trap and Transfomers. Maybe your parents started to let you take apart broken…