design

frequently held false beliefs in product design

I recently posed the following question on Quora What are the most frequent false beliefs in mechanical engineering and product design? I find the answers compelling and hope you do as well. Design doesn’t depend on context The designer knows more about the user than the user does The idea is the hard part The [...]

Tagged as: prototyping

badass trajpar equations

if you never use pro|e, stop reading lest you get a serious case of CAD envy. If you do use pro|e, yet of never heard of trajpar (short for “trajectory parameter”), it is a parameter that varies from 0 to 1 along the path of a sweep (0 at the start, 1 at the end). [...]

Tagged as: CAD, surfacing, trajpar

this has always bugged me.

In fact, 1 fl oz of water weighs 1.04 oz. (Full math at bowl of plenty)

Tagged as: conversion, units, water

design we love

I’m loving the design we love Board on Quora. This teaspoon in particular caught me eye.

Tagged as: product design

why you should always prototype

Tagged as: prototyping

a common anthropometric fallacy

Anthropometric data can be tough to come by. This makes the numbers you do come by so tempting to implement. There they are; so precise and just waiting to be used to drive your design. Of course there are many concerns about those numbers. Are they representative of the population you are designing for? I [...]

Tagged as: anthropometry, human factors, statistics

expert enough manifesto

I’m fond of the saying “expertise is relative”. We all know this is true at heart, otherwise there would only be one expert on anything. If you are trying to help someone on a particular topic, be it algebra, how to design a product, biomechanics, or how transcendalist literature relates to product design, you just need [...]

Tagged as: expertise, product design

how to design a product

I’m running out the door but I wanted to toss this up to the readership, as I feel you are uniquely qualified to add to it. Someone posted the following question on Quora: What is the process for developing and readying a product for manufacturing? I jumped on it, and answered. I’ve copied my answer below; [...]

Tagged as: process, product design, quora

what nobody tells people who are beginners

From NPR’s Ira Glass What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me… is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s [...]

Tagged as: creativity, Ira Glass

why rectangles?

I suspect this post will be a touch more abstract than most. A few weeks ago I was at Trident Booksellers (wonderful place) and snatched Minimalism from the clearance rack. It’s a collection of images depicting minimalist attire, products, architecture etc. I was flipping through it for the first time and I found myself getting [...]

Tagged as: minimalism, Minimalism (book), rectangles, Universal Principles of Design

crayon physics

Quite possibly the best thing ever. I saw this technology a few years ago (I think it was MIT… can’t find the link). It appears it’s been commercialized, and commercialized well.

Tagged as: physics

good design

Every design, no matter how small, has an impact on humanity. Good design, once all has been accounted for, is net positive.

Tagged as: minimalism, perfect product design, product design

restlessly producing

What if I want something more than the pale facsimile of fulfillment brought on by a parade of ever-fancier toys? To spend my life restlessly producing instead of sedately consuming? -xkcd

Tagged as: minimalism, product design

You don’t need the new iPhone

I’m a big fan of mnmlist. A recent post touches on some things I’ve discussed regarding smartphones (are they good?), and I thought it was worth reposting here as a reminder that many of the things we consume (or create) are unnecessary. Here’s to creating things that are necessary. Many of you have seen the [...]

engineer vs. smart engineer

via xkcd

how engineers + designers should use Evernote

They should use it like I do. Or, if you prefer more delicate wording: I am an engineer, I use Evernote and I like to think I use it well. For those who may not be familiar, Evernote (whose motto is ‘Remember Everything) is a freemium multi-platform note taking service that has been around for [...]

Tagged as: getting things done, productivity

notes on micromolding

A while back we had a visit from a top-flight micromolder. Below are my notes I probably should have put this up a while back, but it slipped. Truth be told, the only reason I’m putting it up now is as an example for how I use Evernote. Still, the information is wortwhile… MTD (Micro [...]

Tagged as: Injection Molding, manufacturing

flow in product design (with music to get you there)

Flow: a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience As designers and engineers, we are at our best in flow. Once we have fully [...]

Tagged as: product design, productivity

on Quirky

About a year ago I wrote about Quirky. I had a few criticisms (with some lauding sprinkled in), primarily that they were just a generic design firm with a sales funnel that took advantage of people’s ideas while giving them only token involvement. Well apparently Quirky has a TV show. The TV show itself isn’t [...]

Tagged as: product design, quirky

engineering sets the pace

This is in regards to continuous deployment of software projects, but it’s enough to make you drool if you imagine being able to do this with physical products… engineering sets the pace. We get shit done, we get it done fast, it goes into production within 15 minutes of pushing it to master (feels like [...]

Tagged as: agile, product design

Reaction Injection Molding (RIM) design guide

I’ve written before about reaction injection molding as it pertains to memory foam. Recently I’ve had occasion to dive back into it, and have found the following design guide to be pretty helpful. (notify me if the link ever breaks, I’ve got the PDF locally). Much of it is really basic (i.e. outside corner of the [...]

Tagged as: foam, Injection Molding, RIM

when to use nonlinear finite element analysis

Dig even a little bit into the different fea packages out there and you will notice a distinction between linear and nonlinear analysis. You might then wonder under what circumstances to use linear analysis and what circumstances to use nonlinear analysis? First off, let me say that mechanically speaking, there is no such thing as [...]

Tagged as: CAD, Finite Element Analysis (FEA)

why design > marketing

The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself. -Leo Burnett

Tagged as: product design

sins of minimalist design

Applying a minimalist aesthetic to something someone doesn’t need Choosing a aesthetic minimalism over environmental minimalism Designing redundant minimalist products (each product consist of less than the one before it) Ignoring nature… nothing is more minimalist. If it’s not laterally recyclable, it’s accumulative. Accumulative is maximalist. If you are having difficulty with a UI, [...]

Tagged as: Letters from a Stoic, minimalism, Walden

gaussian and mean curvature

So I’ve been doing some fancy surfacing lately and spent a few minutes digging into the math behind the surface tools. The math itself is a little esoteric, but I also came across a really nice, digestible description of gaussian and mean curvature. These are the types of curvature (along with maximum curvature) that CAD packages like [...]

Tagged as: CAD, curvature, Pro Engineer, product design, SolidWorks

tips for recyclable designs

A colleague of mine recently took a plastic design class at UMass Lowell, and was kind enough to let me flip through the notes. There is a lot of really great stuff in there, not least of which are some thoughts on what a product designer should consider when designing for recyclability. Just because something [...]

Tagged as: product design, recycle, recycling

pro|engineer (or creo, or whatever): a few more things

A bit over a year ago I wrote about problems I was having with pro|engineer (now creo) and SolidWorks. It was one of my more popular posts and inspired some passionate responses. (I also copied the image from that post even though I’m primarily going to talk about pro|engineer…lazy) Well I’ve been doing some heavy [...]

Tagged as: CAD, Pro Engineer, SolidWorks

robust CAD models

I’ve been thinking lately about what makes a robust CAD database. I considered writing down a checklist, but as projects differ I find the checklist to be overkill or incomplete, both of which render it useless. Instead I asked myself: What principles are always true when building a CAD model? Take note of my use [...]

Tagged as: CAD, Pro Engineer, product design, SolidWorks, Unigraphics

video:curvature continuity between splines in sketcher

This was birthed out of a conversation that started over at mcadcentral. The inital problem was trying to make two splines curvature continuous to each other (which this video shows how to do in a particular context), but I also end up showing the differences in C0, C1, and C2 continuity. note: it occurs to [...]

Tagged as: CAD, curavture continuity, Pro Engineer

black chromium: black hard anodizing for stainless steel

You can’t hard anodize stainless steel, I know this. But today I wished I could. I was looking for a black, low friction, wear resistant, corrosion resistant coating to put on a stainless steel part. So I looked around for a while, and came up with something similar (as far as I can tell): Black Chromium. [...]

Tagged as: black chrome, finishing, guns, plating

new vs. perfect

Imagine for a moment that a company – PP Inc. – had made the Perfect Product. That is, a product that is perfectly attuned to the human condition in the physical and emotional sense, is as cheap to produce as possible (and able to be easily switched to a new material when raw material prices [...]

Tagged as: perfect product design, philosophy, reduce

metal injection molding (MIM) notes

There was a forum question over at Core77 about metal injection molding, and it just so happened I had an exhaustive set of notes on the process. I’ve since gotten enough follow up questions that I thought it would be worth re-posting here. We had a guy from Precision Made Products present to us [...]

Tagged as: Injection Molding, manufacturing, metal injection molding, product design

zen and the art of product development II

On Friday I exposed you to a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that artfully laid out the ambiguity inherent in product development. Well here’s another, no explanation required: “The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer [...]

Tagged as: perfect product design, product design, zen, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

zen and the art of product development

Long-time readers will know of my affinity for Thoreau and how his thoughts can be applied to perfect product design. Well I just read the following passage in a similar-minded book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (free link | affiliate link). I’d been thinking about optimizing/restructuring product development process and this passage seemed [...]

Tagged as: perfect product design, product design, thoreau, zen, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

video: inverted peaucellier mechanism

I was recently screwing around with mechanisms for straight-line motion and came across the Peaucellier mechanism. I modeled it up and inverted it to see if I could get the straight line in a smaller footprint. There are a lot of pseudo straight-line mechanisms out there, but this one is pure.

Tagged as: linkgage, mechanism design, straight line motion

LinkedIn InMap

A quick review of my web analytics reveals that a lot of you (my readers) are associated with some some large organizations such as MIT, Toyota, Cambridge Consultants,and Gyrus Medical just to name a few. (I hope you all enjoy it!) That being the case, I assume most of you are on LinkedIn (I am). [...]

Tagged as: infographic

video: makerbot print quality keeps getting better

Now thanks to a stepper motor upgrade to the extruder. From Makerbot Using a stepper motor to drive your extruder brings a host of advantages. Fussy DC gear motors are history: stepper motors live substantially longer as they do not have internal brushes to wear out. Stepper motors are also much more precise as the [...]

Tagged as: makerbot

five phases of “done-ness”

Everyone keeps some sort of task list, be it mental or written, and those of us in product design are no different. What is different are the phases of “done-ness”. Whereas a honey-do list might include an item like “fix the toilet” which is binary (i.e. it’s either done or not done), I find that items [...]

Tagged as: product design, productivity

apple dual anodization

ismashphone reports the apple is filing a patent on dual anodization (links mine): A metal surface treated to have two anodized layers or regions may be used in electronic devices. The surface treatment may include performing a first anodization process to create a first anodized layer, removing the first anodized layer at select locations, and [...]

Tagged as: anodizing, apple, hard anodizing, product design

Escher curves

Escher curves happen early in the development process. You’ve been there. Either you or a designer sketches some loose orthographic views of a concept; everything looks like it makes sense and things will fit so you bring into CAD. Only then do the Escher curves begin to show themselves. Escher curves are what happens when [...]

Tagged as: concept development, industrial design, interdisciplinary, product design

best mechanism design library

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, but the Kinematic MOdels for Design Digital Library (KMODDL) is probably the best collection of mechanisms and mechanism-related materials I’ve found. The site (which is shamefully difficult to come across via google, and not much easier to navigate internally) is full of images, videos, CAD, tutorials, [...]

Tagged as: mechanism design

injection molding plastic part design guide (GE)

I’ve got a treasure trove of design guides. Even when you are super comfortable with a process (like injection molding) I find it good practice to use them as a low-cost checker. So i figured I would share one of my favorite design guides, the GE Engineering Thermoplastic Design Guide. It’s a concise, 15-page guideline [...]

Tagged as: CAD, Injection Molding, plastics

how Quirky could fail

Quirky bills itself as a place for “social product development” , and at first I loved them. “Surely”, i thought “this will usher in an era where citizens take a front-and-center role in designing the products they consume. From here on out beautiful, usable, functional products will be the norm, and superfluous junk is gonzo”. [...]

Tagged as: product design, startups, venture capital

touch screens: capacitative or resistive?

A few years ago I did some design work on a piece of lab equipment that required a touch screen. Early on we had a vendor come in to help us spec the appropriate screen for the application. He touched on a lot of stuff, but one of the main ones was the difference between [...]

Tagged as: product design, touch screen, usability

what would you do with a 3D-printer?

There has been a lot of buzz around 3D printing lately, and while I feel that it has the potential to create a revolution in production I find myself unable to articulate why. So… if you could buy a 3D printer for a few hundred dollars, would you? What would you use it for?

Tagged as: 3d printing, rapid prototyping

chinese-made cheap 3d printer

I’ve been on a cheap 3D-printer kick lately, and it continues. From BoingBoing The UP! personal 3D printer from China retails for $1500, with goop running at $50/kg. Fromthis early adopter’s review: It runs at 0.3mm resolution, and the finished models show striations from successive layers of goop, but light sanding produces a smooth finish. [...]

Tagged as: 3d printing, rapid prototyping

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

makerbot build video

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

liquid metal (as awesome as it sounds)

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, apple, liquid metal, metal injection molding, springs

UL + sustainability = the future?

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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