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Crazier Examples of What New York City's "Taxi of Tomorrow" Could Have Been

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It's already been two years since Nissan's NV200, aka the "Taxi of Tomorrow," was meant to begin replacing New York City's fleet. But uptake has apparently been slow, and I have yet to see the Gotham's streets awash in them.

Maybe New York made a mistake in choosing the NV200. Maybe they'd have been better off taking a look at cartoonist/inventor Steven M. Johnson—the guy who did these wacky auto concepts—and his unsolicited ideas for the Taxi of Tomorrow competition, which seem to take actual reality into account. His work is below (captions his).

We all know what everyone's NYC cabbie fantasy is. Why not enable it?

AGGRESSIVE TAXI: With a narrow front end and a whole body bumper, it means business!
AGGRESSIVE TAXI: On the street, it engages in brutal acts of pushing and crowding.

Miss the Crown Victorias, but like the convenience of the NV200s? In Johnson's world, you could have it both ways:

TRUNCATE: This design shows a taxi that is only one step from being a Crown Victoria.
TRUNCATE: When the roof trunk is lowered, the taxi looks like a passenger sedan.

Taxis made for economic realities:

PAY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD: Poverty stalks New York City, as elsewhere! The poor are willing to stand, as on a train or bus.

Sometimes the drivers are so bad, maybe it would be better not to be able to see the road from the passenger seats. And we could save some space to boot.

SMAXI: A Smart Car enlarged elevator-shoe style, that offers a space for backseat passengers.
SMAXI (detail): Rear passengers sit almost underneath the driver!

The NSFW taxi:

RELAXI: A taxi for sleeping, meditating or sex, paid for by the minute or hour.

Not all of the concepts are crazy, this automated taxi that can help prevent traffic jams seems pretty sensible:

TAXIPOD: Passengers are shown boarding a six-passenger cassette in this driverless taxi.
TAXIPOD: On the street, a herd of Taxipods self-organizes, moves and communicates in a cluster.

This last one is my absolute favorite:

BIKE TUNNEL TAXI: This taxi's body creates a tunnel for bicyclists and motorcyclists.
BIKE TUNNEL: A flashing sign allows bikes to enter the tunnel, or warns of turning and stopping.

See more of Johnson's work here.


ICSID Changing Moniker, Will Drop "Industrial Design" from Name

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ICSID recently held their 29th General Assembly in South Korea, where they announced a momentous change: No longer will they be known as the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. Instead, they're re-branding themselves the World Design Organization, effective 2016.

So what's up, why drop "Industrial Design" from their title? Are they selling us ID'ers out? Spreading their umbrella to include those animals in Graphic, Fashion and Web? Apparently not, according to ICSID—er, WDO: "The main objective of the new World Design Organization," they write, "is to re-position Industrial Design as a catalyst for positive change in the world." (Capitals theirs.)

It appears then that it's largely a branding issue, and they point out that their global events (World Design Impact Prize, World Design Capital, World Industrial Design Day) all already have the word "World" in them. "We will begin [the changeover] with a programme audit and new branding to introduce the World Design Organization," they state, "and ensure industrial design remains a core component."

It's also possible that they grew tired of being confused with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. How lame must that conference be.

ICSID/WDO expects the rebranding to be completed by 2017, just in time to celebrate their 60th anniversary. They'll surely be holding some type of competition before then to come up with a new logo, so you graphic designers may want to get a jump on designing one. (And okay, fine, I'm sorry I called you an animal.)

A Design Classic, Now in 3D

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The Swiss watchmaker Movado is probably best known for its Museum Dial watch, with a radically simple face designed by Nathan George Horwitt in 1947. Even if you know nothing about watches, you would recognize this one; inspired by a sundial, it has no numbers or tick marks, only a solitary polished-gold dot at the 12 o'clock position.

An early Movado ad for the Museum Dial watch. Image from A Blog to Watch.

(Unfortunately, Horwitt himself struggled to get proper credit and compensation for the design—an interesting account of the Museum Dial's somewhat checkered history can be found here.)

The Museum Dial is such an established icon that creating an updated version that does justice to the original while introducing new substance seems almost impossible. But Yves Béhar and his team at fuseproject gave it a go anyway, working with Movado to create the new Edge collection, which launched earlier this month.

"It is quite a challenge to make a watch that says something, that stands for something, in a field that is driven by two-dimensional graphics and mostly repetitive brand expressions," Béhar told us. "We wanted to keep the same sense of minimalism, but with a fresh approach—hence focusing on the three-dimensionalizing of the watch dial."

The original Museum Dial watch
The Movado Edge in black

That "three-dimensionalizing" takes place via a series of 60 sculpted ridges running around the circumference of the anodized-aluminum face. In a nod to Horwitt's original inspiration, the ridges are supposed to symbolize the sun's rays—with the added benefit of marking the minutes. "Once we landed on this specific idea of using reliefs to animate natural light inside the dial, we were able to refine and prototype until we got to the final design," Béhar says.

Sketches
Sketches and prototypes
Even more sketches and prototypes

Fuseproject's other significant change was to the dot itself. Where the original Museum Dial had a flat dot, the Edge features a raised version dubbed the "volcano dot." At 2.5 millimeters in height, it is tall enough to cast a slight shadow, paying further homage to the sundial idea.

Although these interventions may seem relatively straightforward, they required significant engineering work by the Movado team. "We had to re-engineer the movement to raise the watches' hands, so they clear the height of the museum dot-volcano shape," Béhar says. This also required a slightly thicker watch case.

Understandably, Movado itself was not willing to divulge many additional details about the watch's manufacturing, except to say that a "texture sheen" was added to the dial to catch the light. Consumers can choose from several colors and finishes for the face and even the watch hands themselves—and there are also versions with three timing subdials, for a much more technical take on Horwitt's elegant minimalism.

Having succeeded in updating the Museum Dial, you might think that Béhar would be done with this particular challenge—but he promises that this won't be the last watch we'll see out of the Movado collaboration. "In the world of watches," the designer says, "there is always more that can be done to take things to the next level, to change the way we experience time, and to create moments of surprise and magic." We'll stay tuned.

Yea or Nay? Crescent's X6 Pass-Through 3-in-1 Wrench Set

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My selection of cheap sockets is a cobbled-together mess, and I hate having to maintain both Imperial and Metric sizes. I can hardly read the faint etchings on the sides, and it often happens that I'm tightening a nut onto a too-long bolt, causing the socket to bottom out and wedge itself onto the post. And because I bought the sockets piecemeal, there's no carrying case; I store and transport them on a magnetic knife rack, with occasionally disastrous results. It also means the ratchet handle and sockets often become separated, which is why I haven't been able to find the handle for the past two days.

To solve all these problems, I decided my next tool purchase would be pass-through sockets that are laser-etched for legibility and come in a case that keeps them all together with the handle. I've been poking around and the design of this one, the Crescent X6 set, initially seemed promising:

I'd still have to carry an additional crescent wrench to hold onto the bolt head while I tighten the nut, but it does seem handy to give the handle some extra functionality.

Then I took a closer look at the design. With the laser etching, it's a shame that they wasted visual real estate with the brand name and part number, rendering the more important size numbers squint-worthy:

The approach Craftsman takes seems much more sensible. Even if we make the photos small, you can see these are more readily legible:

The X6 carrying case doesn't look so hot, but I'd live with it if it fits in a drawer and holds everything securely:

That being said, I'm skeptical that the reversible angled jaw would suffice for pipe work, and is eight inches really enough leverage? It also occurs to me, by looking at the photo below, that once you flip it 'round to the socket side you're really only getting five to six inches of leverage.

Lastly I've never tried the combo metric/Imperial sockets; I know the difference between sizes is only 0.1mm or so, but for those of you who've used them, is that difference enough to strip a stubborn bolt? I'm particularly interested in that latter point because I've noticed that the quality of fasteners seems to be declining these days.

Verdict time, socket-users among you: Yea or nay on these? Good design, or gimmick? 

Magic Leap Releases Undoctored POV Video of Their Augmented Reality Technology

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Magic Leap is secretive Florida-based company said to be working on a game-changing augmented reality system. The company's aim is to start with the user rather than the technology: "[We observed] that current technologies we use to access the digital world limit, or even take us away, from the real world," the company writes. "[We concluded] that the future of computing should be derived from respecting human biology, physiology, creativity, and community. Why can't computing feel completely natural?"

To that end they created something called a Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal, reportedly a method of projecting images onto a user's retina. They refer to the system as "biomimetic, meaning it respects how we function naturally as humans." While no images of what the device looks like has been released, earlier this year MIT's Technology Review reported:

…It's safe to say Magic Leap has a tiny projector that shines light onto a transparent lens, which deflects the light onto the retina. That pattern of light blends in so well with the light you're receiving from the real world that to your visual cortex, artificial objects are nearly indistinguishable from actual objects.

TR further theorized that Magic Leap's device would be "a chunky pair of sports sunglasses wired to a square pack that fits into your pocket." Meanwhile the job description for "Industrial Designer" on Magic Leap's website states "Experience designing soft goods or fashion is preferred," so it seems a sure thing the device is wearable.

As for what the experience of using it will be like, back in March they released a POV demo video, allegedly showing a game that Magic Leap employees were actually playing in their offices:

That video was produced in collaboration with New-Zealand-based effects house Weta Workshop, who has been hired to produce games for Magic Leap. It was widely assumed (but never confirmed) that Weta doctored the video, presented a more seamless and cleaned-up version of what the company could actually produce.

And so, perhaps to allay skepticism, last week Magic Leap released a second teaser video, claiming that this is the real deal:

Assuming it's real, it appears they've certainly got the visuals into market-ready shape. But none of the user interactivity depicted in the first video is shown, so it appears the UX—which we all know is a long road—has yet to be perfected.

With only those two videos on their YouTube channel and a strict policy of silence on potential release dates, Magic Leap is maintaining their air of mystery. But they have secured over half a billion dollars in VC funding and are currently going on a hiring spree, so we're holding out hope that this doesn't turn out to be vaporware.

Dutch Design Week 2015: Atelier NL's Site-Specific Ceramics

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Like it or lump it, ceramics were shown in force during Dutch Design Week, ubiquitous in the subtle way that both a tabletop landscape or a single sculptural artifact can be presented in a space without dominating it. Ease of transporting ceramics behooves exhibitors and visitors alike, making them popular souvenirs; take home a teacup as a token of DDW2015 for less than €10.

A tile from Atelier NL, on the other hand, will set you back €35 — but, as anyone who visited their Earth Alchemy Factory last week knows, the money will go toward a good cause. Staged as an IRL form of crowdfunding to complement a concurrent online campaign, their goal is to permanently install the research/education/production facilities in the modern converted church space that has been their home for some eight years now. With their lease due to expire on November 1st, they've launched a campaign to buy the building, an unassuming creative community hub on a quiet residential block of Eindhoven.

“It's a factory where education, design and production comes together,” notes Atelier NL co-founder Lonny van Ryswyck during a tour of the Earth Alchemy Factory at Bergman Church. “It's not only about producing, but it's also about learning, so people when they come here, they can learn how to make raw materials into products.”

Indeed, education has been part of their practice since van Ryswyck founded Atelier NL with fellow Design Academy grad Nadine Sterk in 2006. Bringing scientific rigor to examining earth as a material, the two have spent the years since knee-deep in the country for which their studio is named, scouring every corner of the Netherlands in the interest of cataloguing richness of their homeland, which was beautifully displayed in the church during design week.

“That's why we made this huge tile wall, [displaying] all of the clay we collected for eight years,” van Ryswyck explains, noting that they need to sell all of the tiles to raise enough money to buy the church. “The whiter the wall gets, the more people have funded us. If the wall is empty, we survive.”

An offhand joke that they're creating a religion, during one of the workshops they conducted last week, only underscores the fact that Atelier NL has brought out a kind of sacredness to the material with which they work. If ceramics are appealing precisely because they are humble, usable-yet-aesthetically-pleasing products, it is this notion of provenance that imparts a deeper significance to these objects.

“It's the same as with people,” van Ryswyck muses. “We are all different, we come from different backgrounds, from different streams and rivers, and we have our special ingredients... and when we know these qualities, you [end up with] the best product.”

The wall on Sunday, October 25, with three days to go in the campaign...

Learn more about Atelier NL's Earth Alchemy Factory — and help them with their crowdfunding campaign — on Voordekunst.

Drafting Table Quarterback: Power Drill Teardown

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In this installment of the Drafting Table Quarterback, we have a side-by-side comparison of two products near and dear to any design student, homeowner or design professional: Two 18v cordless power drills. We picked these Ryobi P271 and the Makita XPH012 not because they are the most popular or highest rated. We selected two entry level products, not made by the same parent company. Sorry Black & Decker, DeWalt and Porter-Cable, as much as I wanted to peel back the housing and prove my assumptions that despite the price differences and styling, there is no real difference your 20v drills, we were afraid that beyond that bit of gotcha journalism, there would not be much else to talk about. There may have been other, even better, options but we thought these would provide two varied looks at the same product segment.

In full disclosure, I own a Ryobi Cordless Drill, live 30 miles from their office in Anderson, South Carolina, and even interviewed for a job there 17 years ago. Are any of these factors coloring my opinion in this article? Absolutely. I am a designer, not a journalist. That's also part of the fun.

I know what you are thinking, a drill is a drill. Did you really need to tear apart two of them for this article? On some level, that is true. A drill is a drill. They share a lot of the same approaches and even the same components. They both use Samsung batteries. They both share a basic configuration of a pistol grip balanced on either end by a battery and motor. They both use a traditional chuck that was likely purchased from a 3rd party. They both have a decent center of gravity that doesn't add undue stress or twist on your wrist or arm. Neither are game changers either. They are members of the orchestra assembled by their respective companies. They are just company 'tools' towing the corporate line. That orchestra plays a big part in the design.

STYLING

If you haven't noticed, power drills have an inferiority complex. They are not often seen clad in the all-metal housing of their forefathers. They are plastic, either ABS like the Ryobi or glass-filled polycarbonate like the Makita. They still want to be taken seriously and designers go to great lengths to convince buyers that they are not buying a toy. 

Makita XPH012 18V cordless power drill

The styling of the Makita is bold and aggressive. The TPE is used to dynamic effect as if to wrap the drill in a protective exoskeleton. Pretty is not a word I would use to describe it, nor is beautiful. It is a masculine tool that requires masculine adjectives. Does all this styling make the tool better? No more than Mike Tyson's facial tattoo makes him a better boxer. But I would not dismiss either one.

The Ryobi drill is not as aggressive. I would more say that it is strong (and a little flamboyant) but still approachable. This fits well with its target market. It is designed to make people who are not experts feel good about buying their tools. There is a certain amount of bolstering in both tools. I would not go as far as to say they are being dishonest. Each generation of these tools has to yell louder and push the boundary further. 

On the left the Ryobi 270G. On the right the Ryobi 271.

The Ryobi P271 is a near dead ringer to my personal Ryobi P270G that I bought several years ago, so much so, that I could not help but place them side-by-side and do a little mini evaluation. No, I didn't take mine apart. I don't need 3 broken drills, thank you. But even on the surface, there are some interesting changes that have taken place since that original purchase and much that is familiar. I first bought a Ryobi drill 15 years ago. When the NiCad battery sucked it's last electron a few years back, I wandered into Home Depot on my lunch hour for a new battery. There I found two options: Buy a replacement lithium battery for $80 or a new Ryobi drill, two lithium batteries and a charger for $99. I chose the latter. Although, I went to art school and didn't study economics. The buying proposition was simple: spend $20, get two batteries and a new "Baby Poop" green drill as a backup to my much older Ryobi Drill.

BATTERY

I bring this up because it leads me to my first design consideration. Ryobi has an extensive collection of battery-powered tools that share the same battery. When they changed battery technologies, they made sure the new lithium batteries were compatible with their existing lineup. I owned their drill, flash light and near-worthless battery-powered chainsaw. And when given the chance to run away, I doubled down. Being reverse compatible won them a sale.

On the left, Ryobi's reverse-compatible battery features a hollow connector post. On the right, Makita's sliding battery.

Every other manufacturer, including Makita, changed their connectors. Maybe they had less invested in this idea of a family of tools with a shared power source. Keeping the same style battery connector with a hollow connector post affects the design of every cordless tool Ryobi makes. Love it or hate it, I doubt they are going to change it now. Which is great for consumers with tools that outlived their batteries, but likely a pain-in-the-ass to design around.

The Makita uses a similar connection method to other manufactures where the battery is slid on from the front of the drill. I am not sure if this is correcting an engineering flaw or just good UI. The Makita battery has this little red printed strip on the battery release. When you attach the battery from the front, there is a point where the battery makes electrical contact but is not completely locked onto the drill. Tip the drill forward and the battery will slide off. The red warning stripe is there to alert you of this condition. When the battery is locked in place, the red stripe is hidden. The Ryobi avoids this by having a battery that is connected from the bottom. If it is not mechanically connected, it is not going to stay on.

CONSTRUCTION

Cordless drills all have a similar construction. There is a power source (battery). A reversible variable actuator to manually control the amount of power applied to the motor (trigger switch). There is a gearbox that allows the drill bit to spin at a much slower rate than the motor. Both the Ryobi and the Makita have a 2-speed gearbox. That adds an additional set of planetary gears and a switch on the top that engages and disengages these gears. They are engaged by a plastic ring in the gearbox that slides in and out of position by the switch. 

Ryobi 2 Speed Gearbox

At the end of the gearbox is a clutch that can be adjusted to limit the torque provided by the motor. Attached to the clutch is the chuck. This is the part that holds the bit (or apple) in place. Most every chuck is based on the same design. Back in my day, drills used a key system to tighten the bits in place. I remember some of my earliest experiences with a drill and losing that key. It was not long before I would not bother looking for it, grip the chuck in my hand while applying power, using the friction to tighten the bit. I mention this because I am certain at some point, a designer realized that no one uses the key and have all adopted the "friction lock" method I described. Almost every time I use a drill, I am reminded of difference between design and user experience, and the value of understanding how your product is used by real people. 

HOUSING COMPARE

A three-part housing design supports the rear motor bearing on the Makita drill.

Makita boasts of a shorter length and lighter weight which led them to design a three-part housing versus the simpler two-part clamshell of the Ryobi. At first blush, I took this three-part housing as a design decision to allow for a well considered vent pattern on the tail end of the drill. I briefly applauded the designers' ability to get engineering buy-in on this moment of design excess. Upon pulling apart the housings and comparing the Makita to its dissected counterpart, I realized that Makita integrated the housing of the drill and the motor housing. That third part added to the design includes a molded detail to support the rear motor bearing and is key to reducing the size and weight of the product. Ryobi's motor is completely entombed in a metal cylinder that is not conducive to non-destructive investigation and by comparison is HEAVY and BIG. It is both obvious and hard to say which solution is better.

Makita wins the engineering award when it comes to solving the weight challenge. It is kinda "futzi" to put back together and makes a pretty high pitched annoying noise compared to the sound deadening effects of the heavy metal can that seals up what is likely a very similar motor. The Ryobi has to be easier on those tasked with final assembly and it likely allows for the company to outsource the motor assembly and still test the incoming parts without first building a complete drill. 

The clamshell design of the Ryobi housing.

I say it is obvious and hard, because I can easily justify Ryobi's choice but have also suffered through far too many experiences—holding that heavy-ass drill in some awkward position or trying to squeeze it into a place it had no place being—to accept my own justifications. So much so that two months ago I bought a 9V Ryobi drill with a LED light for such situations.

TOOLING

Co-molding plastics and TPE have some production limitations but can also generate some interesting design details. The TPE is molded directly on the plastic part. This requires the tooling to have two cavities. The plastic is injected into the first cavity—once cooled the plastic part is removed and inserted into the second cavity. On the outside of the drills is a recessed line that separates the areas covered by TPE from the areas not covered by TPE. This is where the tooling seals against the plastic part of the drill. Having this moat helps hide any marks. They are still there, just less obvious. 

The recessed line on the outside of the drills helps hide where the tooling seals against the plastic part of the product.

This process fuses the materials together fairly well but engineers still use methods to mechanically fasten the two materials together. The engineers devised a dovetail styled joint to keep the two materials from coming apart. In most cases, it is best to keep the TPE connected to create a single form so that it can be injected from one location.

Detail showing the mechanical dovetail joints that secure the TPE to the ABS
Hidden channels to connect the TPE over molds on the Makita housing

The Makita uses some neat tricks to make this happen but the rear housing has three injection points. TPE is a little more forgiving when creating forms with variable thicknesses than ABS plastic, but thicker parts do require more cooling time in the mold. If you were designing a toothbrush, the product cost is not in materials but cycle time. The faster you can open and close the mold, the cheaper the product becomes. A power drill is no toothbrush (that should go without saying) but undoubtedly keeping the cycle time down on these parts is a definite design consideration.

There are a lot of great reasons to want to know if a consumer has been peeling back the plastic housings of the product that you worked so hard to design and manufacture. There are obvious warranty issues but there is also the issue of swapping out consumables and broken parts from newly purchased items and then returning them with internal bits from an earlier purchase. Spending five minutes unpacking an ink cartridge will express the lengths manufacturers will go to stop you from "creative shoplifting."

     

In cordless power tools, batteries represent the ink cartridge. Both drills employ a similar tactic by press fitting a piece of plastic in one of the screw holes on top of the screw. You can't remove the screw without removing the plastic and you can't remove the plastic without destroying it. Ryobi also used security screws with a post in the middle of the torx head. Once inside, the Ryobi drill's battery assembly is fairly easy to disassemble if one were so inclined. They are readily available online.

Makita uses security screws but chose an assembly method that I am pretty sure will result in things not going back together again. My first thought was that they are making it really hard to recycle this battery, sure you can tear it apart, but there is definitely not a reuse option. Again, they want you to buy a new battery pack with a huge profit margin, not refill the one you got with batteries bought wholesale.

ASSEMBLY

If you have ever visited a modern factory, you will see rows and rows of people completing small tasks and passing the product down to the next person in line. To do this and not make a mess, the products are mounted in fixtures to hold them in place while carrying them on their journey. You cannot underestimate the importance of fixtures in manufacturing. The less a product is lifted and man/woman-handled, the better. 

When you look at the two main housings of these drills, you will see a side with screws and a side without. By putting all the screws on one side, this frees up the other housing to be used as the first component in the assembly process. With the right housing placed in a fixture, the drill can be passed from station to station, each person adding a different component. An interesting point to note is that none of the parts are screwed to the housing. Each part is placed by hand in the housing with molded details that hold them in position. 

Once all the parts are in place the two housings (three in the case of Makita) are screwed together sandwiching the parts securely in place. The value of putting all the screws on one side of the house is two-fold. Yes, it makes assembly easier, as they are all accessible without moving the tool. The other thing it does is give you a side with seemingly randomly placed holes and screws and one that is pretty enough to photograph. 

Conclusion

There are many more things that I could point out on both of these products. Whether it is drop testing requirements, motor ventilation or Marketing's push for bigger logos and bolder colors, these details and more were debated, reviewed and agonized over. Consumers often overlook them, but we don't. 

What should we teardown next? We need you to do the scouting report. 

Leave your ideas in the comments or tag a product with the hashtag #draftingtableQB and we'll consider your product for our first round pick.

Meet the Drafting Table Quarterback

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When designing a product, designers face challenges from many different camps both within the company and externally. Good designers and good designs handle these challenges and create products that add value and delight for the people that use them. This series will take some of the products we, as designers, are most familiar with, tear them down, and like any good arm-chair quarterback, analyse them for their successes, failures and compromises. I did not design any of these products, nor is Core77 being paid by these companies for these articles. In fact, we didn't tell them of our plans. So, if you work for Techtronic Industries (Ryobi) or Makita, surprise! For this first installment, we are looking at you.

Being a good arm-chair quarterback, I am going to express my opinion, make blanket statements and form some assumptions about things for which I have no direct knowledge. That inevitably means I am going to be wrong sometimes. If you see it different, leave us a comment. This is meant to be a conversation. If you designed either of these products or even just work for either of these companies, think before you decide to comment. This is not worth getting a visit from HR or some pissed off middle manager. #VoiceOfExperience

If you have found your way to this page because you want to buy one of these products and need an expert opinion on which of these drills is right for you, sorry, these are not the articles you are looking for (but maybe you can get some guidance from our friends at ProToolReviews). #JediHandWave. Here at Core77, we are going to examine these products from a designer's perspective. Which of these drills performs better, runs longer or can stand up to the rigors of life in your toolbox? Who knows! I didn't use them except to take the other apart in some bizarre act of consumer product assisted suicide. Our focus is on the design considerations that were made and should have been made when designing these products.

(Now on to the carnage)


How German Homes Maximize Energy Efficiency

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We all know that your average American McMansion is a lot bigger than the standard German home. But increased American energy usage isn't just down to size; the very way that we Yanks build our houses leads to inefficiency, a problem that modern German homebuilders have obsessively tackled.

At first glance, it may not be obvious how and why the Germans do things differently from us. Why do the majority of German homes distribute their heat via water, while the majority of Americans use forced air? Why does the house next door to the one shown below have steps built into the roof? How does the German government incentivize homeowners to make their homes more efficient? In this video, the fellas from the American This Old House TV show answer these questions and more:

I especially like the "Energy Pass" idea. Even if you were just renting a place, wouldn't you like to know, in advance, how much the utilities would actually run you?

Are These Photos of Moons, or Frying Pans?

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Earlier this year, NASA's Europa Mission Tweeted the following photo:

"One of these is Jupiter's moon Europa," they wrote, "the rest are frying pans."

We're sure you're trying to guess which of these is the real deal, but before we get to that, where did these images come from? While the photo of the actual Europa was snapped by their Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s, are we to believe that NASA techs are sitting around shooting photos of spent frying pans?

No, they're not. The frying pan shots are the work of Norwegian photographer Christopher Jonassen, who began shooting his Devour and Devour II series—"Still life photography of worn-out frying pans"—in 2010 or earlier.

In 2013 someone on Starship Asterisk, an online forum for astronomy geeks, began posting Jonassen's photos in the APOD (Astronomy Photo of the Day) section alongside photos of the real Europa. They subsequently ran seven "Moon or Frying Pan?" quizzes featuring Jonassen's work, properly crediting him. It appears that this quiz is what whomever handles NASA's EM Twitter account drew from.

In any case, have you figured out which of the photos in the Brady Bunch shot is the real Europa?

It's this one:

It's tough to pick it out from a field of nine, but at least one member of the Starship Asterisk forum found it easier in side-by-sides like the one below—and not by drawing on his astronomy knowledge:

"Speaking as a professional cook," the poster writes, "this one was a bit too easy. If you could somehow parley the sheen of grease into a sense of scope and distance, then you would have a challenge indeed!"

Yamaha's Alternative to Driverless Cars: Robot-Driven Cars, Starting with Motobot

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Tesla rolled out their autopilot feature this month, and it seems a sure bet we're headed towards a future filled with driverless cars. But Yamaha's working on an alternative: Robot-driven cars. The company's thinking is that for driverless cars to become pervasive, well, everyone must purchase one. Rather than making the millions of cars already on the road obsolete, Yamaha thinks you should just get a humanoid robot to drive your car for you.

They've started down this road by producing Motobot, which apparently can drive one of their motorcycles, though they sure don't show the thing getting on and off:

So let's assume Yamaha takes the next step and creates a 'bot that can actually drive a car. The all-important factor they haven't explained is what you do with the robot when he's not driving:

- After he drops you off at the bar, does he stomp off to find and kill John Connor, or does he hang out in the car listening to the radio?
- If I run into four friends when I'm out and want to give all of them a ride, do I kick the robot out and make him walk home?
- To free up space, does he fold up and fit in the trunk, or can I tow him from the back like he's water skiing?
- And do I want this metal creep sitting next to me all day when I'm stuck in traffic?

For their part, Yamaha is making no bones about this robot's self-awareness and eventual desired position in the food chain. Listen to it narrate its own Prime Directives, which were clearly not written by Isaac Asimov:

How creepy is that last bit, where he goes "I am Motobot. I was created to surpass you." You're going to surpass me, tough guy? I'd like to see you navigate a McDonald's drive-through without crushing the french fries in your lousy metal mitts.

A Kiosk That Spits Out Free Short Stories

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While slicing fruit, crushing candy and swiping faces have become commonly accepted forms of smartphone-based time killing, can't we do better, in terms of our intellectual health? Entrepreneur Christophe Sibieude thinks so. Thus he started Short Edition, a French "community publisher" that has users of its smartphone app trading short stories that they themselves write and consume. The Short Edition community is open to all ("male, female, old, young, blond, bald…"), and in four years has attracted some 140,000 members.

In an effort to further immerse society in humble literature, Sibieude conceived of a kiosk that would dispense, for free, short stories. Placed in a train station, airport or one of France's famously bureaucracy-saddled municipal services buildings, the device would allow the line-waiter to disappear into a story, if only for a few minutes at a time.

It sounds crazy, but what's even crazier is that the machines have actually launched. The Mayor of Grenoble, a city of 150,000 colloquially known as "The Capital of the French Alps," ordered eight of the machines placed throughout the city center. Users can select a one-minute, three-minute or five-minute story, and the machine instantly spits it out on recycled paper. (Amusingly, the stories still appear to be shorter than your average CVS receipt.)

"The idea came to us in front of a vending machine containing chocolate bars and drinks, Sibieude told Agence France Presse. "We said to ourselves that we could do the same thing with good quality popular literature to occupy these little unproductive moments."

While it might sound like an impractical idea to some, RT reports that interest in the machine is high:

"We are getting a lot of requests from all over the world for this invention. Once we will sort out our costs, we will ship these machines anywhere – for maybe a month, several months or even for a few years," Quentin Pleple, one of Short Edition's founders, told RT.

There is an unembeddable, French-language news video showing the machines here.

Making the Ultimate Minimalist Pen

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In 2012, Brooklyn's CW&T raised more than $280,000 on Kickstarter for Pen Type-A, a stainless-steel upgrade to the Pilot Hi-Tec-C, a plastic gel pen with a cult following among writers, designers and other pen connoisseurs. But almost as soon as CW&T shipped its last Kickstarter reward, its founders had a realization—they needed to make another version.

The Pen Type-B

"We designed the pen and we were super happy with it, but we realized that it's not something that we can take everywhere with us," says Che-Wei Wang, who founded CW&T with Taylor Levy. "I literally took a Pen Type-A and ground its edges off so that it could go in my pocket. And that was silly."

So the duo set about designing a new version—Pen Type-B—that could fit comfortably in your pocket, thanks to its newly rounded form. But the new iteration is not only more portable. "There's a big difference in all of the parts," Levy says. "We've tweaked tiny little things about it to make the pen itself work a lot better." Indeed, Wang and Taylor spent four years refining their design, testing numerous materials (titanium, aluminum, steel, brass) and finishes (glass bead blast, polish, black oxide), and sending drawings back and forth with the multi-generation machine shop in Vermont where they fabricated the first pen.

Like its predecessor, Pen Type-B is precision machined from solid metal for ultra-high tolerances that create a piston-like effect between the body of the pen and its sleeve. But the latest edition also introduces a magnetic closure, which posed a host of manufacturing challenges. While Pen Type-A was milled and turned from a block of 304 stainless steel, Type-B uses three types of stainless steel of varying ferritic properties to achieve that closure. The tip is 400-series stainless (magnetic), the cylinder is made out of 300-series stainless (non-magnetic) and the dime screw at the end (for replacing the ink cartridge) is cold-worked stainless (slightly magnetic, but just the right amount). "We're just trying to balance magnetism on both ends so that it feels right," Wang says.

Finding the perfect magnet to embed in the brass sleeve of the pen also proved tricky. The team initially started with rare-earth machineable magnets, which—despite their name—proved exceedingly difficult to machine. One day when browsing K&J Magnetics for another project, however, Levy stumbled upon a doughnut-shaped magnet with an interior chamfer that could perfectly hug the ferrous tip of the pen. "It was literally the perfect magnet," she says.

The brass sleeve is made from two parts, the barrel and the end cap. These pieces are joined together through supercooling the end cap, and allowing it to shrink enough to be slip-fit into the barrel; then the cap expands so that it's permanently fixed and the seam between the two parts disappears. Machined using a massive gun drill, the barrel has super tight straightness tolerances and a mirrored interior finish on the sleeve. A rubber piece on the interior protects the tip of the pen behind the doughnut-shaped magnet. In addition, a flat edge was added to the sleeve to prevent the pen from rolling—off your desk and far, far away. The sleeve is left uncoated to allow for a gradual patina to build over time.

In addition to the doughnut magnet, another prefabricated piece is the ink cartridge itself. As with Pen Type-A, Type-B uses a black gel .3mm Hi-Tec-C ink cartridge manufactured in Japan. "They really are the best," Levy says. "But they can be a bit finicky sometimes and hard to work with." Levy and Wang made small adjustments to the tip's outer and inner openings to help improve ink flow, adding a radial pattern of tiny holes near the pen cylinder tip. Those perforations create airflow into the pen that assists with that flow of ink, and that also equalizes the air pressure on the ink cartridge as the pen is pulled from its sleeve.

Each raw cartridge ships to the factory in Vermont with a small rubber cap for protection and to keep the ink from drying out. Wanting to use every piece efficiently, the factory even went so far as reuse the typically discarded rubber cap in the sleeve of Pen Type-B, providing a tight seal around the tip of the pen and ensuring that it won't dry out when not in use. "They're basically salvaging this tiny rubber thing stuck inside this plastic cap for each pen," Wang says. Since the cap is used to keep the ink fresh, the factory had to be strategic about the amount of time the cartridges spend un-capped from its rubber counterpart. "There was a problem for a while where, if there was a pause in production, the pens would dry out," Levy says. "Last week, we asked them how they worked around that and they showed us a jig they built, so that the last operation in the production takes the rubber thing out, squeezes it (since it's rubber) and shoves it actually under the magnet already embedded in the tip. They're totally in love with solving little problems like that."

As with any additional introduction to the manufacturing process, adding a magnet to the sleeve of the cap or changing small diameters added new layers of complications that rippled down to the final prototypes — requiring even more incremental tweaks to the pen. "From the width of the flat on the pen to how far the pen sticks out from the cap, just these little things," Levy says. She and Wang went through several prototypes, making minute changes to the length of the barrel, getting the flat edge to be just the right size. "They're all like little picky things because we're picky people," Wang says. "We're trying tackle all these issues as early as possible so they don't show up when they go into production."

Levy and Wang see their Pen Type-B as an exercise in reducing the writing instrument down to its essence. They also promise that this is their very last pen—they swear. But perhaps they shouldn't be too quick to abandon the product category, given what is clearly a powerful demand for such obsessively considered writing instruments. The Type-B Kickstarter campaign was fully funded in mere hours, and it has now raised over twelve times its goal of $12,000, currently clocking in at nearly $165,000. Nonetheless, the pair is already onto their next project, which they say they might to turn to Kickstarter to fund as well. "[Kickstarter] just works for us," Levy says. On the last day of their campaign, though, she won't be watching the dollars tally up. "It makes you kind of crazy," she says of the individual Kickstarter notifications that you can turn on for every backer. "It's a bit of an unhealthy habit."

My Vote for This Year's Best Halloween Costume, and How Casey Neistat Built the Most Viral Costume

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Call me a simpleton, but I think this is the absolute best Halloween costume I saw this year:

Sadly there's no attribution, though the photo's all over social media.

As awesome as that get-up is, in this day and age it of course was not the most viral. That honor goes to this mythical, Disney-appropriated character and his special mode of transportation:

As you probably recognized at the end, it was none other than Casey Neistat, and co-conspirator Jesse Wellens of the PrankvsPrank YouTube Channel, behind the costume and rig. Here's how they (well, mostly Casey) put it together:

Thinking back to the porcupine: You reckon that kid can't sit down until he gets home?

Julie Anixter will be AIGA's New Executive Director

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AIGA is embarking on its second century with new leadership. Today the esteemed organization announced that, beginning in January 2016, Julie Anixter will take the helm after Richard Grefé's tenure will come to a close in December of this year.

Anixter's unique career path has spanned numerous aspects of both the creative and business sides of design. She has focused on helping clients anticipate and adapt to the changing world—advocating, as she explains, for design to be "recognized as the force for good that it is; ensuring that the craft of design is valued, the discipline is taught more broadly, and the expert use of design helps us all navigate our information-laden world with greater ease." She has been involved with consulting, curation, business development, education, management, marketing, product, service and UI/UX development, and R&D for a host of brands and institutions including Chanel, GE, P&G and the U.S. Military. Most recently, she has held leadership roles at Think Remarkable Consultancy, Innovation Excellence and as Executive-in-Residence at the Disruptor Foundation.

Her experiences connecting design, business strategy and technology in order to instill transformation and growth will be key attributes leading AIGA into its future, as the organization continues to expand the reach of design in culture and society. As Su Matthews Hale, President of AIGA's Board of Directors remarked, "Design is a powerful force in every facet of the creative and business disciplines, and in Julie, we found a leader who can be a connective thread across our increasingly diverse community of designers, innovators, educators, and advocates."

Anixter's hire is not the only change for AIGA. The organization has also revised their strategic direction to be more focused on members and chapters, invested in an endowment and relocated the national office staff to the historic Woolworth Building in New York City. Under Anixter's leadership, the organization hopes to best leverage the creative energies of their ever-growing 25,000 membership population and advance the strategic role of design further.


Impressive Demonstration of the "Incremental Launching Method" of Bridge Building

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Commenting on the efficacy of levers, Archimedes reportedly said "If I had a place to stand, I could move the Earth." 

That "place to stand" is a key consideration in the building of bridges and elevated roadways. In modern construction, pylons are created at ground level, each a fixed distance apart from the rest. Pre-fab spans are then trucked in and lifted into place by a crane. But this assumes that the crane has a place to stand, a staging area. When spans must traverse deep valleys, water crossings, unfirm soil or roadways incapable of supporting the load, a crane alternative is needed.

In 1907 the Canadian Pacific Railway solved this problem by devising the Incremental Launching Method: They created a 415-foot steel span on the north embankment of a river crossing in Ontario, and "launched" the entire thing from one side to the other between two massive pulley blocks, using steel cable and a pretty darn powerful hoisting machine. By the 1960s Venezuela had pulled it off with a concrete span, and in the 1970s we Americans developed a way of launching half-spans from both sides at once and getting them to meet up in the middle.

I'd love to see YouTube video of these erections (yeah, I said it), particularly of the 1907 feat, but surprisingly they do not exist. We do have, however, footage of a modern-day Chinese construction company using the 21st-Century version of ILM. It is an incredible feat of engineering:

Here's an animation that lets you more clearly see how the process works, and also reveals the pick-up phase back at the staging yard:

Today the ILM is used around the world, from Scandinavia to Europe, Russia to India, Australia to Asia, with more than 1,000 bridges worldwide constructed via the technique. But it doesn't seem to be prevalent in the U.S., which prompted the National Cooperative Highway Research Program to launch a 2007 study [PDF] to find out why.

Alas, it seems the study's answers are terribly American, related to everything from the obfuscation of financial details, a lack of education on the part of construction firms, and a difficulty with securing required permits for this type of construction. Being an American, I suspect it's more to do with money than anything else. "As is often the case in the highly-competitive construction industry," the report states, "the cost of these specialized bridge construction bid items are not widely published and are not available without considerable research into each specific project. Therefore, the projects presented in the following case studies do not present this information." It's no wonder we don't use the method much when we can't even figure out how much it will cost. Who'd have thought bridge-building would be like healthcare?

Classic Workwear with Contemporary Appeal

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The new Fall/Winter collection is in! With it comes high-quality textiles, cozy layers, and classic cuts. These distinctive pieces hail from England, Germany, France, the U.S., and more, and are all made for the long haul. There are tough new chambrays and brushed cotton button downs, wool skirts, outerwear, raw denim, and tons more. 

To test it all out we spent a day exploring with two Portland creatives, musician Mike Rich and ceramicist Ashley Rose Hardy. From the studio to the streets, these Fall-friendly pieces keep pace with an active life and do it with comfortable style. Check out the lookbook with Ashley and Mike, and see the full collection here!

Bird-Biology-Inspired Bionic Boots

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In your opinion, which of these animals is more majestic?

To an American the choice is obvious, and there's a reason Don Henley didn't co-found The Ostriches. But as far as which animal we humans have more in common with, it's the latter bird.

That's because ostriches run on two legs, like we do.

Unlike us, however, ostriches can reach speeds of over 40 miles per hour. Take a look at the gams on this thing:

Pretty impressive quads, considering they don't do CrossFit. But an ostrich's speed also has much to do with their tendon structure. After studying this, obsessive inventor Keahi Seymour has spent nearly two decades tweaking prototypes of his Bionic Boots, which are based on ostrich anatomy:

Pretty impressive. And from a biomimetic design perspective, it seems that in contrast, eagles simply don't have much to offer us.


How to Build Your Own Supercar

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It's every car-designer's dream—to design and build a supercar from scratch, with no constraints. Talking with Carlos Salaff, ex-Mazda exterior designer, I realize he is living that dream—he's the master of his own creation. And what a creation: Project Caden is a supercar with voluptuous surfaces formed by hand, flowing together to create the ultimate visceral driving experience.

Prototyping Project Caden

Salaff worked at Mazda's Southern California design studio for a decade, and was part of the exterior design team for the Ryuga, Nagare and Furai concept cars, as well as production vehicles such as CX-7, Mazda 3 and new MX-5. In 2012, he formed his own car company, SALAFF. I spoke to Carlos from his base In Cleveland, Ohio.

Carlos Salaff: I started thinking about this project seriously in 2008 at Mazda. It was around the time we were working on the Furai—a big inspiration—and it made me want to continue that level of design excitement. Working on that kind of project, and then seeing the concept go away, I remember thinking: 'Wow, this could be a production car!' But that's the nature of a big car company—to always bring in the bread and butter. I wanted to dive into something more exciting.

"It was a gut thing and something that just evolved. I always wanted to have that emotional impact with my design—this artistic impact—and I realized I had to take a more independent path to create my vision."

While the auto industry prepares us for a future where we no longer engage in the driving experience, there is a groundswell of designers, engineers and innovators keen to celebrate the tactile, man-machine interface. Honda's 2&4 concept shown at Frankfurt was an example of this raw, interactive analogue machinery—and Project Caden was born with the same philosophy.

Honda's 2&4 concept car

"The extremes are becoming more apparent—the more society moves towards a digital future, the more we will want 'connectedness,' and the more we'll crave that special union with the machine. That's what we're seeing more and more, and it's fascinating. I definitely have nothing against autonomous vehicles—I've been stuck in Los Angeles traffic many times! I love the idea of getting in a very sleek smooth architectural space that can whisk me to my destination and I can do something productive in the meantime. But I also think there's a need for the human soul to create these very tactile experiences and for us to not lose sight of that as a society. That's the place I want to play in; I've always been a tactile guy—Star Wars over Star Trek for that reason!

Ed Stubbs: So, how does that manifest itself in Project Caden?

Salaff: The interior will be about the feel—a manual shifter, toggle switches—combined with progressive forms and authentic materials; there's just something about aged leather, saddle-leather, that really enhances the interior experience.

I'm following the race-car paradigm with a central driving-position. Passengers offset to the rear, a central driving position, like the McLaren F1. I started with a traditional seating position, but it's a natural thing to put the driver in the middle to enhance the experience. The doors will be half-door gull-wings. I want to take complexity out of the car; keep things simple. 

Caden will be powered by a BMW V10 engine. 

I felt that the sound and response of a naturally aspirated powerplant was key to creating a connected and timeless experience.

Craftsmen Rodney Roeder and Peter Jackson attaching body panels to the metal shaping buck. Caden's body is being shaped at Pete's Custom Coachbuilding in Cleveland, Ohio.

What are your plans for the finished car?

Well, I obviously don't have the OEM budget, so I have to think very strategically about what matters most. My plan is to build this prototype, and to continue making Project Caden in small numbers, focusing on the artistry, the quality.

Logging the design and build process is key—with so many supercars you get this 'ta-da!' moment, but you don't see the story behind it, the creative story—I think it is important to establish that relationship with people.

Did you have any cars that were key to the inspiration behind the project?

The cars that really excite me all seem to fall into the 1960s-80s era of racing, such as Group C racing in the '80s, and Formula 1 in the '60s. Boiling it down is tricky, but the Tyrell Ford of Jackie Stewart in the '70s: mechanical, beautiful in its purity. And Formula1 BRMs—they have a purity of form, like a fuselage with wheels...

You studied at Art Center—when you look back at your time there, what would you do differently and what advice would you give your younger self?

I'd say: 'Learn a lot more than what's expected right now in the industry. Learn everything about a car, from the engineering to the business side. You have a limited time as a student and you can't do it all, but when I think back to my final projects I'd look more at how to integrate the engineering and aesthetics in a better way.

And think about how to create a business plan that's outside of the mold. Because now design students are much more empowered than we were—rapid prototyping tools for instance: that ability to micro-prototype and manufacture, and to create more personal vehicles, is opening up exciting new ways of doing business."

Project Caden is modeled digitally – Carlos designed every element himself before starting the build: exterior and interior, engineering and chassis design.
The aluminum tub under construction at Metcalf Racing in Garland, Texas. Metcalf managed structural and suspension engineering for Caden, as well as chassis construction.

Digital gave me the ability to fail a lot, before I actually built a physical model. And to run it by experts in the field—it gave me the ability to use design iterations. I did at least 100 different designs before landing on the one.

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The melding of old and new technologies is something that Carlos is keen to explore. He has a CNC milling machine, which he's used to mill windshield glass-molds, interior surfaces and door-skins. At the other end of the chronological scale is a metal-forming English wheel, used to create the exquisite aluminum curves that form the exterior skin (using the Italian Superleggera method pioneered in the mid 1930s).

Laser cut pieces, assembled together to form a traditional metalshaping tool—the buck
The complete buck
Metal craftsman Rodney Roeder on the English Wheel

This juxtaposition between digital design and analogue construction methods is key, and reflects a real movement. We're entering an age where the digital design-canvas offers enormous scope for new forms of personalization and new ways of expressing aesthetic personality, yet we still covet and value products created by artisans, craftsmen skilled at hand-beating metals, stitching leather with a needle and thread.

For more on Project Caden or follow SALAFF on Instagram.

Video of Wood Being Friction-Welded Together

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Friction welding is a process whereby two pieces of like material, typically plastic or metal, are rubbed together at high speeds. The resultant heat essentially melts the adjoining surfaces together. Surprisingly, someone figured out that this process can also be used with wood:

According to the Laboratory for Timber Construction at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, what's happening here is…

… the interface between two timber boards is heated by a fast and short oscillating frictional movement combined with pressure. The introduction of heat energy leads to a thermal decomposition of the polymeric compounds in the wood cell material. The chemical products of this degradation process form a viscous layer of thermally softened material, which hardens when the friction movement is stopped and the interface is cooling down, while a certain cooling pressure is applied.

The video above was shot by UK-based The Welding Institute. Though the video itself is fairly recent, the technique is not, and may not offer much in the way of practical applications; in an article called "Timber Welding," TWI researchers wrote that "The world of furniture manufacture could be turned on its head shortly..." That was in 2006.

While another article from the Tennessee Forest Products Center claims that "the technology is most promising for interior joinery and furniture," it seems unlikely it will replace glue and clamps anytime soon; the machines are not cheap, and whatever time efficiencies are gained by not having to wait for glue to dry would likely be offset by the complicated clamping and jigging required to fasten two parts that weren't small milled boards. Nor is the process suitable for exterior construction, as the earlier EPFL article reports that "The relatively brittle bond is highly sensitive to swelling and shrinkage movements of the wood. Changing climatic conditions can lead to cracks within the interface."

Those of you who work with wood, particularly on an industrial scale: Can you think of any applications for this technology, given its limitations, that would lead to greater uptake? If so, you'd be cracking a puzzle they haven't been able to solve for roughly a decade.

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