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Chris Loughnane

3d printing hack

It’s not going to replace Makerbot or your local rapid prototyping house anytime soon, but still a pretty impressive hack.

Tagged as: 3d printing, hacks, makerbot, rapid prototyping

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For those of you who aren’t familiar with the industry, Makerbot is the (in my opinion) at the leading edge of the RepRap movement. Or, with less jargon: Makerbot is a build-it-yourself robot. It makes things out of plastic. It’s worth checking out their website for the details, in the meantime check out my buddy Nick’s [...]

Tagged as: 3d printing, makerbot, rapid prototyping

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patent examination: patent law in plain english

intellectual property

This is ridiculous. I’ve been studying for the patent agent exam for a few months, and have just finished doing a once-over on just about everything. It is a mess of poorly written literature. It sucks. Now, as I go through my second pass of studying, I’m going to take what I consider to be [...]

Tagged as: invention, patent examination, study guide

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do-gooders are easy to research

user research

I like nurses. They do Good (capital G) I spent a fair amount of time around nurses when my first son was born, and walked away with the impression that they are the glue of our medical system. Yet for some reason it seems that there isn’t a whole lot of innovation (i hate that [...]

Tagged as: data visualization, good, nursing, word clouds

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liquid metal (as awesome as it sounds)

design

Just came across LiquidMetal today. Wow. At first I thought it was just a twist on Metal Injection Molding (MIM). Digging in a little further I realized that the really cool part isn’t the process, it’s the material. Liquid Metal isn’t actually a material, but a class of alloys, check out their website for more [...]

Tagged as: alloys, liquid metal, metal injection molding, springs

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6-32 screw warning

mechanical engineering

Came across this fun fact today… 6-32 screws have the worst ratio of torque that can be applied to torque necessary to shear the screw. In other words, they are the screws most likely to shear off. Good to know.

Tagged as: fasteners, screws

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hard anodizing

materials

A while back I had the need to get some sheetmetal (every spell check in the world keeps telling me it’s “sheet metal” and not “sheetmetal”, but I digress) and machined parts hard anodized. I’ve been meaning to post my notes on the process for some time… and now I am. what is hard anodizing? A [...]

Tagged as: aluminum, anodizing, hard anodizing, hard coat, plating

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using diamond pins for locating

mechanical engineering

When two parts need to be precisely aligned. It’s tough to beat a two pins. One goes into a hole (that fixes X + Y translation), and the other goes into a slot (that fixes rotation). It works great, but it’s always seemed a little sloppy to me. Then I was turned on to diamond [...]

Tagged as: diamond pins, locating, pins

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UL + sustainability = the future?

design

Earlier this week I made my way up VC Hill to attend MassMEDIC’s Envirofoum. The two presenters, Robert B. Pojasek of Capaccio Engineering and Kevin Johnson of Siemens did a fantastic job, but one of the topics perked my ears up a little more than the rest: the recent rise of UL Environment. what is UL [...]

Tagged as: certification, UL, underwriters laboratories, validation

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curvature continuity 101

design

Courtesy of Adam O’Hern, the CAD Junkie. Be sure to check out the rest of his amazing tutorials here

Tagged as: CAD, curavture continuity, surface modeling, surfacing

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a quick thought on attention

design

I was going through my old bookmarks today and came across this short manifesto from Design Observer. I’ve written before on the true attention cost of things, but rereading the manifesto got me thinking a little further: Currently, we decide to bring things (be they artifacts or bits of information) by a simple ratio… utility/cost. [...]

Tagged as: attention

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recycled resins: sometimes they’re just better

mechanical engineering

The biggest hurdle to overcome with regards to using resin containing recycled content is something I like to call the performance bias. Our performance bias tells us that in most cases, second hand materials aren’t going to perform as well as their brand new counterparts. It’s a bias that generally serves us well, but during [...]

Tagged as: Injection Molding, recycle, resin, Valox iQ

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how side actions work

mechanical engineering

When I first heard the term “side action”, I got what it was… but couldn’t quite envision how the tool worked. I was told that: A side action is something that allows you to create a feature with a pull direction that is at an angle to the primary pull direction. In hindsight that seems [...]

Tagged as: cam, Injection Molding, side action

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pre-consumer vs post-consumer recycled content

materials

This past weekend I was flipping through the March 2010 edition of Metropolis and came across an advertisement for a new line of San Fransisco bus shelter. As eye candy, it was in line with the rest of the magazine, but read some of the copy and you see they are trying to sell it [...]

Tagged as: Koda XT, LEED, materials, polycarbonate, recycle

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are smartphones good?

design

I should disclose something: Ever since I dropped $300+ on a Motorola V600, I have been a smartphone addict. V600, RAZR, Blackberry Pearl, currently the Tmobile G1, and I can’t help but eye The Droid Incredible. Then, a few days ago I came across the Nokia C1-00. As I pored through it’s specs (6 week [...]

Tagged as: android, attention, benefits, iphone, nokia c1-00

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statistical tolerance analysis basics: Root Sum Square (RSS)

mechanical engineering

In my last post on worst-case tolerance analysis I concluded with the fact that the worst-case method, although extremely safe, is also extremely expensive. Allow me to elaborate, then offer a resolution in the form of statistical tolerance analysis. cost A worst-case tolerance analysis is great to make sure that your parts will always fit, but [...]

Tagged as: example, manufacturing, root sum square, RSS, rss tolerance stackup, rss tolerancing, spc, statistical tolerance analysis, tolerance analysis fundamentals

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First Cut prototype

mechanical engineering

I’ve heard some bad things about First Cut. Some complained about the poor tolerances, others that First Cut won’t tap holes, still others complaining about maximum part size. They’re right, each one of them. But if you’re willing to accept tolerances of ±0.005 (give or take) and tap your own holes, First Cut is a solid [...]

Tagged as: CNC, machining, prototyping

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statistical tolerance analysis basics:
worst-case tolerance analysis

mechanical engineering

fair warning: if you’ve never heard the phrase “tolerance analysis”, you’ll likely never have to perform it and should just spend the next 5 minutes elsewhere. Otherwise… A well-performed tolerance analysis will add years to your life. No worrying about parts fitting together, no worries about sloppy fits. A well-done tolerance analysis both proves the [...]

Tagged as: example, root sum square, stackup, tolerance analysis, tolerance analysis fundamentals, worst-case tolerance analysis

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a wake-up story

materials

If you’re anything like me, you occasionally (read: habitually) flip through trade magazines, checking to see if any badass new materials have cropped off. Graphene you say? Sweet. Aerogel? Awesome. Transparent aluminum? Beam me up. Unfortunately, even as a sustainability nut I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that my knee-jerk reaction [...]

Tagged as: materials

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urethane castings: 3 things to ask before you hit ‘send’

mechanical engineering

A while back I shared some things you should know about urethane castings. I focused mainly on when you should use them, and not so much on some of the actual design considerations. So here you go… design considerations. The overarching theme is that rapid prototyping houses like to do things a certain way. Sometimes though, [...]

Tagged as: example, product design, prototyping, urethane casting guide

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