On a recent visit to Manchester to attend the Future Everything summit, I couldn’t pass up the chance to visit the UK’s first fab lab, housed in a striking, slab-like building in the waterside district of one of Britain’s great industrial cities. I spoke to Eddie Kirkby (of the Manufacturing Institute) and Haydn Insley (fab lab manager) to find out how the fab lab movement is spreading into the UK.
How cheap can you make a cellphone? Bunnie Huang recently bought one in Shenzhen for just $12. There wasn’t a carrier subsidy, it was contract-free, and unlocked. As Bunnie says, “…that about the price of a large cheese pizza, or a decent glass of wine.”
Early bird registration for MAKE’s Hardware Innovation Workshop ends Monday, April 15. The second annual event, May 14-15 in San Mateo, Calif., comes right before Maker Faire and it will feature new hardware products and services and the makers who have created them. More than 30 speakers will share the stage, offering business insights into manufacturing options for startups, and collaborative strategies from funding to production to distribution, marketing and positioning. VCs will discuss which products get their attention and why, and entrepreneurial makers will tell their stories.
The MAKE Hardware Innovation Workshop, set for May 14-15, 2013, has just issued a call for prototypes of early stage products, projects, and ideas. Selected prototypes will be presented at the opening session of the workshop, and featured in the Innovation Showcase on Tuesday, May 14. Each winning entrant will have five minutes to present their idea and a prototype: a two-minute pitch, then a three-minute demonstration of the prototype.
Like it or not, the ability to pirate physical objects and functional electronics is nearly upon us. In this article we devote some time and space to thinking about that possible future, and what might be done to avoid it. Additive manufacturing makes the entire design process “think it up, design or scan it, create it on-site.” So where does the “research to make sure you’re not conflicting with anyone elses existing intellectual property” step come into play? Before or after you hit the print button?
The jam is a 3-day workshop to improve OSHW documentation practices: The power of open source hardware lies in the ability to build upon others’ work and good documentation is the key to making this happen. We believe that documentation best practices can increase contributions to open source hardware projects significantly. For this reason, we […]
Makers go on tour! Michael Shiloh and Judy Castro of Teach Me to Make are in Jerusalem for Israel’s first Maker Faire, teaching families how to make Arduino-powered CoffeeBots.
