Planning & Strategy.
- NYC's Futureworks Incubator is open, and I'm excited to be a mentor for my second year as a mentor. Working on a hardware/manufacturing business? Apply, and let's talk!
- FuzeHub is offering $25-75k grants to nonprofits working in manufacturing in New York State.
- New York Governor Cuomo and energy company Entergy say they'll close the Indian Point nuclear power plant by 2021. Doing so will be very hard.
Making & Manufacturing.
- On my own blog: The best example I've ever seen of distributed manufacturing was nowhere near a 3D printer, and wasn't enabled by any online marketplace or fancy data transfer protocol. It was behind a series of rollup garage doors in Dongguan, China.
- A good 5-part documentary on the design, development, and initial production of the Boeing 777.
- Tesla is shutting down their Fremont factory (and pausing Model S/X production) in order to expand their paint shop & retool for the Model 3.
- How internal cavities can be created in investment castings.
- A project to dehydrate NYC clay and cast melted down aluminum cans into the cracks that form in it.
Maintenance, Repair & Operations.
- How American Eagle went about insourcing the MRO on their new distribution center.
- The Syrian seed bank, which made the first withdrawal from the Svalbard Seed bank two years ago, returned the favor.
Distribution & Logistics.
- Pretty clever: Biodegradable fixed-wing drones for dropping supplies into remote areas.
- Being a courier for a Chinese delivery startup is grueling work, and colder than factory jobs. Also, the pay sucks.
- The new Yiwu <> Germany cargo train line opened, providing relatively quick and low-carbon transport between China and Europe.
Inspection & Testing.
- A compendium of military, technology, and superfund sites in the Bay Area.
- A good teardown of the Dyson hair dryer, with explanation for how it works (and how quiet it (kind of) is).
Tangents.
- "Japanese toilet industry agrees to standardize complex bidet controls."
- Anish Kapoor's color war continues.
Credit to Ezra, Deb, Poul, Andrew, Star, and Lucas for sending links. If you see something, send something :)
Making Light Phones at a Foxconn factory.
Love, Spencer.
p.s. - We should be better friends. Send me a note - coffee's on me :)
