2017-03-05

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.