This week on CRAFT!
Spring Classes at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn
and this gem from the CRAFT Flickr pool.
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CRAFT weekly recap
Posted: February 21st, 2010, 8:38pm MST
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The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? @ 60 Minutes
Posted: February 21st, 2010, 8:38pm MST
The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? @ 60 Minutes...In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that's inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard. You'll generate your own electricity with the box and it'll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines. It has a lot of smart people believing and buzzing, even though the company has been unusually secretive - until now.
I'm always hopeful of "new power" developments, specifically fuel cells - what do you think makers? They raised $400m so far... well, that's what they implied. There are 20 customers so far: FedEx, Wal-mart, Staples, Google (the first - powering a data center for 18 months), eBay (5 boxes, saved them $100k in power costs)... all in CA, they get 20% off the costs ($800k per unit) and tax breaks. I'll say this, I want a Bloom Box at Maker Faire :)
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Microfluidics with common thread
Posted: February 21st, 2010, 8:00pm MST
"Microfluidics" (Wikipedia) is kind of a blanket term that covers manipulation of liquids on a very small scale. An inkjet printer head is an everyday example of a microfluidic system, but many of the more exciting applications are in biochemistry and/or medical diagnostics, where mass-produced "lab-on-a-chip" systems incorporating complex networks of tiny fluid channels could one day bring complex analytical procedures, that once were practical only in the laboratory, out into the field. Many of the same technologies that are used in the production of semiconductors can be applied to the manufacture of microfluidic systems.
As in semiconductors, however, the costs of prototyping labs-on-chips can be quite high. Many of you may recall the buzz surrounding UC-Irvine professor Michelle Khine's recent discovery that inkjet-printable shrinky-dink plastic could be used to rapidly prototype microfluidic systems.
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Automated anti-piracy water cannon
Posted: February 21st, 2010, 6:00pm MST
Don't let the elevator music distract you, this system can squirt water at 4 bars, or about 60 psi, as compared to a typical fire hose which packs a working pressure of 100 psi or more.
[The] system consists of a number of rotating water jet guns installed on the shipside which provide a continuous high pressure water curtain all around the ship side. The system once installed can be remotely operated from a safe location without any possibility of harm or injury to crew. The system does not require any additional installation which are costly, time consuming and might require various class or administration approvals. Furthermore it provides a visible deterrent to the pirates who will possibly divert to easier targets.
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3D-printed shoes
Posted: February 21st, 2010, 1:15pm MST
Fashion design students Naim Josefi and Souzan Youssouf created the shoes using a technique called selective laser sintering, and displayed them at the Stockholm Fashion Show. [via core77]
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Biology rap
Posted: February 21st, 2010, 9:00am MST
This excellent video features Stanford's Derrick Davis and Tom McFadden rapping about glycolysis and pyruvates. [via Tierneylab]
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President checking out a ShopBot
Posted: February 21st, 2010, 4:30am MST
The President is checking out a ShopBot, in our lifetime we'll have a FabLab in the Whitehouse... not a matter of if, just when :)
Unfortunately this photo set from New York magazine's Daily Intel is called "A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things" - most/all of the photos are of the president looking at manufacturing, equipment, factories, laboratories, and workshops - the author of the article describes this mundane. To me, it seems like the author is poking fun at how boring this must all be, but I think having the leader of the free world tour factories, laboratories, and workshops is worth celebrating. I don't think the President is "faking interesting" as the author writes. These are great Americans, great companies, making great things, you can see in the photos how proud they are of what they are doing - we're all trying to support more manufacturing, get kids interested in science and engineering - it's not mundane - it's the most exciting thing our country has going for us, we need more of this :) So, here's my plan - I'm going to try and contact Dan Amira (the author of the article) - and see if he'll come out to Maker Faire NYC or to Maker Faire, CA - there's probably going to be over 100,000 people at our Faires all together. Makers from all walks of life, showing what they made, you won't find anything mundane Dan. You might see some of the same people from that slideshow, some of the same equipment (like the ShopBot) but Maker Faire is everything *but* mundane, hopefully we can get the President to stop in too. Dan, if you see this - I have some Maker Faire tickets for you, email me!
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