2017-09-18

Notes.
A warm welcome to OpenBOM, our new sponsor. I've very much enjoyed getting to know Oleg & Vic and tracking the progress of their tool, and am excited to have them on board!

Planning & Strategy.

• When I was in China in July, Lucas and I started tossing around the idea of a China Manufacturing tour for engineers, operators, and interested folks to learn about how things get made. If this is something you'd be interested in, we want to talk! Help us hone in on the details here.
• 99 Percent Invisible on how to brand safety procedures to coal miners.
• An excellent old New Yorker article on the reasons to build a more efficient wood burning stove, and the strategic challenges in doing so.

Making & Manufacturing.

• The NYTimes does a 360° tour of a Crayola factory.
• Airbus says they've installed the first production 3D printed titanium part on a serial production aircraft. Note to the uninitiated: This part was almost definitely printed, then wire EDM'd off the build plate, then HIP processed, then CNC machined on all surfaces.
• A video tour of Scaled Composites, which makes (among other things) the largest airplane in the world. Note the comments about keeping engineering & manufacturing functions a close as possible + the crazy shots of the airplane boneyard.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• A breakdown of hurricane Irma's effect on the agriculture industry. Estimates are up to double digit percentages lost for a number of crops.
• How paintless dent removal (used on cars damaged during hailstorms) works physically. How paintless dent repair businesses work logistically.

Distribution & Logistics.

• On the decline of small town grocery stores. "About one-fourth of supermarkets in Kansas communities with fewer than 2,000 people have closed since 2007."
• A very good article and associated tweetstorm on the logistical lunacy that is Bodega, a startup trying to replace cornerstores with dressed-up vending machines. Between the thousands of SKUs, the high-class restocking, the yet-unspecified "machine learning," and the fact that regular old 20th century bodegas are great the way they are... well, don't buy the hype.
• On the total lack of disaster evacuation apps, even in the ostensible age of the sharing economy.
• Global container shipping capacity grew 6.7% in the first half of 2017.

Inspection & Testing.

• On The Prepared Podcast this week: A conversation with John Barnes of The Barnes Group. We talk about the nuances of single crystal casting, what it's like to work at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, and his current work on metal 3D printing.
• An interview with the founder of Jawbone on that company's many missteps and near death experiences.
• A map of all of the wind power facilities in the US.

Tangents.

• On the hustle involved in the last few hours of a down-to-the-wire Kickstarter campaign.
• Is anyone aware of a good piece on the history of buttons/tactile switches? If so, holler.

Transporting & de-molding the still hot secondary mirror for the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope.