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…
Even though the world is moving towards the digital world, most homes still feature a mailbox to receive paper documents such as bills, newsletters, magazines, and newspapers. This makes it an evergreen feature in each home regardless of their sizes and style. So, if you are looking for a mailbox that is both aesthetically pleasing…
Did you know that gutters are an integral part of our home’s roof as they play a role in maintaining both its structural longevity and integrity? Gutters collect water and direct it away from the house which makes them a trust must-have and a vital requirement for any structure. Inevitably, gutters also come with obstacles…
What are the tech trends for 2020 and the decade to come? Read on and watch the video for all the gadget goodness that catches a HW engineers’ eyes at CES 2020! This year’s show in Las Vegas expected over 170,000 attendees and took up literally millions of square feet of exhibit space. That’s a…
We’ve all seen the intensely cool robot development coming out of Boston Dynamics. The latest videos from the company show a level of untethered quadrupedal and bipedal agility only previously imagined in movies. It’s a level of tech that seems inaccessible outside of a well-funded company or government research facility, but one company is breaking…
This tour of MADE Makerspace in Barcelona, Spain was my last stop of jet setting through Europe to learn about HW startup culture there. Watch the video below to take the tour with me, or read on for details! I’d like to give a big thank-you to Oriol Fernandez of “MAking props” for taking the…
As the title implies today we’ll delve into how to make realistic looking objects that can be used as film props or Cosplay accessories. And we’ll do it with the help of a new friend, The Crafsman! You’ll learn a few techniques for making molds and objects using two-part pourable silicone rubber. And after the…
Recently, I toured Europe to learn about how hardware startups grew there. Where is the Euro Silicon Valley? How are startups treated there compared to in the U.S.? How does networking, funding and team-building work over yonder? One of my stops was Warsaw, Poland. Here, I’ll share what I learned touring the FabLab powered by…
As I travel around the world searching for fellow HW nerds, I’m happy to share my findings with you, dear SolidSmack reader. In this article, I bring you the best events and organizations to check out in the San Francisco Bay area. There more than, perhaps, anywhere, the term “tech” gets conflated with “software”. However,…
We stopped by Circuit Launch in Oakland, California to get a tour of this electronics hardware co-working space and its toys. They boast 31,000 square feet of space, mechanical and electronic prototyping tools, VR and mixed reality studios, educational opportunities and, at the time of our visit, about 80 members/quirky HW nerds. If you want…
As I travel around the country, one of my most challenging tasks as an engineering service provider is figuring out where to connect with other physical product development pros. Where do the HW nerds come out to play? This month, I was in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Here I’ll cover the networking gems I discovered there.…
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…
As reported on SolidSmack back in February, music streaming service Spotify is getting into the hardware game—as evidenced by three job postings for hardware engineers or supply chain managers. “Spotify is on its way to creating its first physical products and setting up an operational organization for manufacturing, supply chain, sales & marketing,” explained the…
Despite the various conveniences that modern laptops, tablets and smartphones provide us throughout any given day, there’s no denying that the devices constantly remind us of a fast-paced world that’s obsessed with shiny new gadgetry and rapid obsolescence caused by poor build quality. But what if we could embed just a little bit of ‘lasting…
Before you say anything… Yes, I know. We’re about 10 years behind on the news of this mouse, but since we won’t need to use a mouse to move bits around in the near future, we might as well show you what mouse you could have been using all these year. The Evoluent Vertical Mouse.…
Who woulda thought!? Hard drives getting smaller? and thinner? Absolutely unheard of. Things (we) usually get fatter and uglier over time, not thinner and sleeker. Leave it to Seagate to shake up the universal trend and leave us inspired with a cool, compact design of technology. You saw it at CES. Now, Seagate has announced…
My good friend, Jeff Mirisola, got a little riled up and started beating foam bats into the skull of asinine expectations with a recent post. He talks about an engineer who couldn’t use SolidWorks… because his computer was 10 years old. That is way old. I’d put it out to pasture and let it die…
Oh, the tangled web of 3D CAD hardware and software. It spans between the cracks of ultimate compatibility for the software, ultimate confusion for the user and sticks to you right after walking through the door of deciding what computer to buy. SolidWorks uses the OpenGL graphics API. Other CAD companies have decided to use…
Way back, in a recent post that showed all you Mac-ophiles how to use SolidWorks on a Mac a commenter named Peter Privitera was having graphics issues with his MacBook Pro when using SolidWorks. His MacBook Pro uses a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card, a low-end 512MB card that runs around $130 and up.…
Oh to have the power over time and SPACE. The folding and bending and rotating. You take that too lightly and you’ve suddenly destroyed three planetary systems and a shrimp boat off the coast of New Jersey. Take that down a few million notches and you have all the harnessed energy of 3D computational manipulation…