Geez, I wish we had this sort of access to career counseling when I was in middle school! I think all I got was a meeting with my careers counselor and a big thick book pushed my way to thumb through entries “describing” what certain jobs do.
Mycooljob.org is an Ohio-based project dedicated to educating kids in middle school/early highschool of career options in the real world. They have interviews, videos and interactive blogs with real professionals, giving a varied look at careers (as no jobs ever take the exact same path). Here’s a really cool short video clip produced by high school students on behind the scenes of being an industrial designer at Design Central in Ohio. It takes you through the brainstorming and design process as well as showing a 3D printer in action, and then discussing that with clients. Great work guys!
One other thing to remember though , Industrial Designer isn’t just a cool job it can be a cool business too! If you want to make money online with design you should sign up to Ponoko and get uploading your designs and making your prototypes. It’s quick, easy, free and it’ll help you take advantage of all the tools we have to help designers and makers get done what they don’t want to bother with, like marketing, sales and manufacturing. You never know where it could end up taking you.
Radiohead made headlines early this month with releasing their downloadable album for free, resting on the hopes of fans paying what they want. With critics on both sides of the issue of file-sharing in the music industry, I’m sure there will be some critics of this same sort of move in the design industry.
Ronen Kadushin is one of the first to share his laser-cut designs on his website, pushing for open source design. Where he sees the creativity progress and flourish in open source software, he hopes to bring that to design, by sharing his simple designs that people can make as is or tweak it or build on it however their creative juices take them.
How and why? The how - is easy enough. A CAD file ready for a single sheet to be laser cut and then molded by hand. Why? Of course the first you’d think of is, won’t people just steal your designs and make a profit off of your hard work? Kadushin is pretty optimistic and sees the good in people - if manufacturers are honest and share some of their profit with him, he’ll offer up more open designs and continue a profitable relationship on that good faith. This cuts off what he sees as a stifling, closed and somewhat antagonistic relationship where everyone from designer to manufacturer are protective of their stakes in the production process.
There’s always a personal and self-promoting reason as well - he can “future proof” his designs. While designs that run through the normal manufacturing process are given a very limited production run, his could theoretically last forever, for however long people want to make his digital designs.
It’s an interesting approach to industrial design and manufacturing, and an even greater experiment on unleashing this sort of openness with the public and competitors. Hopefully he’ll get his fair share in profit (like Radiohead did with about $6mil) through good faith alone.
His open designs are available on his website or at movisi.com.
I just saw this today and thought, this is something I need! I work a lot on my laptop when I’m not in my office. I use it on the dining room table, but I usually have to put something under it just to give it a lift for ventilation, as well as to “protect” it from accidental spills spreading under it (I’ve got thirsty preschoolers often lurking around). It’s very multi-functional - it provides extra ventilation, helps make your laptop more ergonomic to type on, and it organizes your cables with it’s comb in the back.
Here’s some local news for Kiwis. We’re looking forward to Nov. 7th for the TUANZ Business Internet Conference and Awards in Wellington. We were selected as a finalist in the User Generated Content category. TUANZ is a non-profit organization aiming to raise New Zealand toward the top ten rank in the OECD for Communications Technology. In doing so, among other things, they promote and celebrate home-grown innovative web-based businesses. We’ll keep you posted!
The movement for democratizing fabrication is making waves. At the Maker Faire in Austin on the weekend, these few makers sat down together to discuss how to spread the word to the masses about digital tools and machines. While there are a few who have heard about these tools and are aware of the capabilities and the technology that we have now, there are even fewer who have actually used them or have access to them, or even want to use them. We hope we’re doing our part on this blog.
While nothing concrete came out of the summit, there is at least a direction towards educating the younger crowd with working on things that they know and are cool, i.e. laser engraving their ipods and cellphones. I think this whole DIY/maker movement is going to only get bigger and stronger. There are just more and more resources and web apps that are aimed at empowering users to create and make their own things.
Another group aside from the makers are scientific groups such as those behind CRN, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, who for the past five years have been introducing the concept of molecular manufacturing and the entailing responsibilities. While what they’re focused on is nanotechnologies, they see the first step towards getting mainstream is in fabbers - such as 3D printers. While their original challenge was to convince people that this technology was indeed true and available, they now focus on when this will all happen. To find out more about what they’re about, here’s their recent post on Making Fabbers Real.
This is DIY Radio Shack meets open-source coding in the form of your own personalized “Bug”. What is it? It can be any sort of electronic device you need. For CEO Peter Semmelhack, he needed a wireless GPS device to keep track of his family in the wake of 9/11. They didn’t have those back then and he couldn’t build one either. Out of those kinds of frustrations he founded Bug Labs to enable people to do that. You design your own device from their modular devices and code the hardware together using their open-source, web-enabled, modular software and hardware platform. Homemade iPhone anyone?? I don’t think Apple has anything to worry about . . . just yet.
So it works like this - Starting off with a Bugbase, a minicomputer on Linux, you can add different devices however you want, kind of like adding Lego pieces to create your ultimate monster. A mashup of electronics. They’ll first release a GPS system, camera, motion sensor and LCD screen, with new modules released every quarter.
I sure like Legos, but unfortunately I’m not that technically inclined to write code. I’m keen to learn though. In the meantime, I’ll just have to keep an eye out on what those early adopters out there create. I do think it’s great giving the tools and accessibility for people to create what they want - the ultimate in personalization.
We like them because they share the same philosophy as we do: empowering users to design their own devices. While theirs is hardware, ours is everything but. And thanks, Bruce for your suggestion on making Ponoko shells for their Bugs. What a great idea!
The post below is courtesy of the geniuses on the Ponoko technical team. In order to help everyone (and in particular people like me who have very little experience in designing with vector software) we needed to make some changes to our starter kit. This addresses any problems opening .eps files with the vector software we recommend using. These changes come thanks to all the great feedback we get from you guys out there and on the Ponoko Forums. We can’t implement every change we get requested but we certainly love hearing them so don’t be shy about commenting or letting us know your thoughts.
Why have you changed the templates and the making guide?
Unfortunately, we’ve been finding out that one size does not fit all when it comes to .eps files. Adobe Illustrator CS®, Macromedia Freehand MX®, Inkscape and CorelDraw X3® all handle .eps files differently - which has been causing problems for everyone!
We did a bit of investigation and saw that we needed to provide templates that work in each of these vector art packages.
So we’ve been busy and created 4 downloadable starter kits. They contain new Ponoko templates and a revised making guide for Adobe Illustrator CS®, Macromedia Freehand MX®, Inkscape and CorelDraw X3®. The revised making guide outlines the design steps you need to follow to make sure the .eps files you create upload properly.
I have the old .eps templates and making guide, what do I do?
You’ll need to download the new starter kits. They contain unique templates and making steps for Adobe Illustrator CS®, Macromedia Freehand MX®, Inkscape and CorelDraw X3®. You can also download a ‘general’ making guide that shows you the design process to make with Ponoko - but doesn’t outline the unique steps for saving .eps files.
Why can I only upload .eps files?
We have chosen to use .eps files because they have a greater degree of accuracy than other file formats. This means you have greater control over your design. We are currently investigating how to accept other file formats.
Got more questions?
Check out the Templates and .eps files FAQs.
A few weeks ago Phillip Torrone from Make mag blogged about his Test Drive on Ponoko. Despite having a high-power laser cutter sitting in his living room, he decided to give us a go with his iPhone stand design that he had already made for his tutorial. At the time (this was posted on the 23rd of Sept.) we were still in beta test mode with MyPonoko being rolled out in a staggered basis, first to New Zealand only, therefore there were some snags for makers in the US. Now that we’ve rolled out to the US, MyPonoko is accessible to Americans wanting to have a go.
Phillip’s test drive is now complete - his package arrived safely with his design ready to be assembled. See his photos below and read his follow up - Ponoko really works! From package to final product in use:
If you’re new to the blog, you may wonder why I’m writing about this. You can quietly disregard the robot and human augmentation part (unless you’re truly intrigued). It’s the 3D printing, personal manufacturing, rapid prototyping part — this is all the stuff we’re fascinated with and truly see as a core part of how we will make and buy things in the future. From the 2007 Gartner Symposium/ITXpo in Orlando, Jackie Fenn presented the emerging trends they see on their IT radar in the next 10 years:
I’d like to draw your attention to 3D printers in the 5 - 10 year range:
Personal manufacturing and fabbing: Fenn says that 3D printers will be coming to a Kinko’s near you in the not too distant future. Today, these printers are used for industrial prototyping, product designs and architectural models. But there is a growing hobbyist movement. In a few years, you’ll see home-based printing of replacement parts. Your kids will print out models of their avatars. These printers, which come from companies like Z Corporation, are in the $20,000 price range–the price range where laser printers got their start. Timeline: 5 to 10 years.
For the Ponoko community, the exchanging of designs with the ability to manufacture at home or at a local 3D printing shop is where we want to be. At the moment, current digital manufacturing technologies are right up there allowing us to do some fantastic work. But when fabbers hit mainstream, we’ll be ready (and so will Ponoko users!).
There have been a few people asking for video of our presentation and the subsequent panel discussion at the Techcrunch 40 conference. While video of the presentation hasn’t been released yet, the panel discussion that followed is now available. You can watch it below courtesy of Techcrunch and Blip.tv. You get to hear the opinions of some very successful businesspeople on the relative merits of all the companies who presented in the Crowd Sourcing section of the conference.
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