If you thought the age-old craft of metalworking couldn’t get any more precise, well think again. In a recent semi-viral Twitter post from Singaporean news service Mothership.sg, engineers demonstrate how to cut metal so precisely that you can’t even see the grooves between the pieces when they are put back together. This manufacturing process is…
While Frank Howarth of Frank Makes may be one of our favorite go-to YouTubers when it comes to woodworking, This Old Tony is close behind when it comes to machining and other forms of metalworking. While the scope of his videos vary from designing and making your own springs to machining tool holders for a…
Long before Apple’s aluminum unibody hardware designs –– along with Jony Ive’s unmistakeable “aluminium” pronunciation –– aluminum had already changed the world of mass manufacturing. Having dropped in price by over 1200% over a 50-year stretch, what was once one of the most difficult metals to refine became one of the cheapest thanks to mass manufacturing…
When it comes to fascinating alternative use cases for manufacturing processes, waterjet cutting has had no shortage of applications, yet New Zealand-based designer Mark Wilson might have just come up with the best use case yet. In the waterjet manufacturing process, the high-pressure water stream can lose its pressure and precision soon after entering a…
In the vast and wonderful world of guitar pedals, it can be hard to stick out from the crowd, but 21-year veteran guitar pedal builder Zachary Vex just might have developed the strangest and most unique pedal to date: the Z.VEX Candela Vibrophase. Powered entirely by a tea light candle, the vibrato/phaser is a highly-efficient…
Whether working with a shop, a local supplier or a company you think operates out of the Southern Guangdong province, there’s always a need to find a reputable manufacturing team that can take on your high capacity runs or one-off chunks of production-ready prints. Usually, a search for such a shop takes you online, and…
There are five things I want after designing a part–a damn part, damn fast. 3D printing was suppose to be the revolutionary technology that made all our manufacturing woes go away, speed the whole process up and leave machinists in a wake of plastic fumes and corporate laughter. DMLS still holds high hopes for production…
Ahhh… the smell of freshly-cut urethane foam in the morning. The Nomad 883 delivers a 25 micrometer (.001″) repeatability on the X and Y (2.5um on the Z), a minuscule 18″ square footprint, and an impressive 8″x8″x3″ build volume… and we want it. We want it bad.
It is no secret that high-fashion is like history; it is known to repeat itself. While the latest fads might not always be carbon-copies of their predecessors, the roots of modern style are often painfully obvious to those with an observant eye—and eyeglasses themselves might be the perfect example of this. With the recent rise…
The lonliness that consumes you when the CNC operators talk shop is all about to end. You may not know how to bolt a billet of aluminum into a chunk without removing half your arm skin, but you can download a program with less trauma and bring a CHUCKle to a machinists face. A fresh…