AnZa is an espresso machine that uses materials seldom found in kitchen appliances—concrete and Corian. The result is both an espresso machine that brings life to any kitchen and an unparalleled conversation piece. Born out of a passion for good coffee and boredom with the default espresso machine vernacular, the AnZa brings new life and love to your countertop.
Yomee is an automated yogurt maker that allows anyone to easily make fresh, healthy yogurt at home. The Device heats up milk, drops in proprietary Yomee yogurt pods and cools yogurt all on it's own. A smartphone app allows you to select the type of yogurt and even tells you when your yogurt is ready.
View the full content hereAlfonso Albaisa is Nissan's Senior Vice President for Global Design, and he recently received a rather interesting assignment. According to Motor Trend, Infiniti's U.S. marketing team asked him "Imagine you are somewhere in the Japan countryside and came across a car, sheltered in a barn, hidden away for decades. Not only is it a race car, but it is also an Infiniti. What would that car look like? Could it be connected to the Infiniti production cars of today?"
"Our expectation was that Alfonso and his team would just do a sketch for us," says Infiniti Americas communications director Kyle Bazemore. "Or maybe, at a stretch, a CG video. And perhaps, if we were extremely lucky, a clay model."
Albaisa ran a team of designers at Infiniti's Atsugi studio in Japan, creating a model of what was dubbed the Prototype 9. When Nissan managers saw it, they decided it had to be made—using a combination of handcraftsmanship and CNC.
"I was a little surprised," Albaisa admits, "but it turns out they still train people in all the traditional car-building arts. They thought this was the perfect project, and they decided—on their own—to follow the design story as if [it were] real." A team of takumi—Nissan's master craftspeople—assembled to lead the build. Nissan's advanced engineering team learned about the project and volunteered to help, as did Nissan's specialty vehicle division, Autech. "Suddenly we had three of our largest departments working on it," Albaisa says.
The tail was hand-hammered into shape by craftspeople, albeit over a laser-cut grid.
That long, gorgeous hood did not see the ministrations of a craftsperson, but was instead created by "dieless forming, using two seven-axis robots to shape the metal." (We imagine that process is similar to Ford's Freeform Fabrication Technology.)
The Prototype 9 has been fitted with an electric powerplant, with the batteries up front and the motor in the rear, driving the rear wheels. The performance specs don't sound all that crazy—you can read the mechanical details here—but with this exercise, that seems beside the point.
One of the major benefits of printing in Polyjet is the ability to print in multiple materials for a single part. This allows you to simulate overmolds, create soft touch applications, and build living hinges among many other applications.
We get a lot of questions about how to prepare files for multi-material prints, so here's a quick guide to help you out!
When preparing your CAD model for printing in multiple materials, you want to make sure to separate your solid bodies so you can specify which body should be printed with which material. This is easily done in most parametric CAD programs and below we'll cover the process in Solidworks as an example.
1. Prepare your CAD file with different solid bodies and save as a STEP.
2. Create a PDF either as a screenshot or drawing which specifies the material for each solid body. Remember to put the durometer you want for the rubber-like material.
3. Upload your STEP file and PDF to Fictiv and select rubber-like as the material.
And that's it – you're all done! Now let's take a look how this would be done specifically in Solidworks as an example.
1. Prepare the Solidworks file with multiple solid bodies. This can either be an assembly where you have multiple parts, or a single part file with multiple bodies in it.
2. Color code your file to make it easy to distinguish the different materials
3. Save file as a STEP file.
4. Create a screenshot or PDF drawing which calls out the material for each body.
5. Upload PDF and STEP file to Fictiv.com and select rubber-like as your material.
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This post is provided by Fictiv, the most efficient manufacturing platform for fabricating parts. Powered by a distributed network of highly vetted vendors, the online interface makes it easy for customers to get instant quotes, review manufacturing feedback, and manage orders—all through a single service.
[Spoilers.]
In last night's episode of GoT we were treated to this rather epic shot of Daenarys and Drogon presiding over a defeated army.
Since dragons are not large and intimidating enough, Daenarys has placed Drogon up on a hill, to give him that couple of extra feet that make all the difference.
We also see that the Dothraki are a bunch of slobs.
You guys can't wipe the blood off of your weapons? Do you realize how much harder it will be to clean off after the blood has congealed? I guarantee you these guys leave their spaghetti bowls in the sink without rinsing them. These Dothraki scum remind me of roommates I've had. I bet you they don't buy toilet paper after it runs out either.
Someone who isn't a slob? Bronn. During a time when dental hygiene is presumably not a big concern, the man has surprisingly good dentition.
Drogon's teeth, however, are a freaking train wreck. I'm no dentist but at a minimum he's got gingivitis.
We see this in the scene where Jon reaches out to touch him.
The texture of Drogon's skin is pretty gnarly. He could totally have greyscale and you'd never know it.
In one of the sky shots we also get to see Drogon's P-90X dragon body.
Up at Winterfell, the mystery of Bran's wheelchair design from last week is solved! We can now clearly see that the two angled elements at the rear of the chassis do indeed meet at a centralized rear stabilizing wheel. (Still can't see what's going on up front though.)
I still don't like the ergonomics of the towel-bar-style push handle. If was there, I'm not sure what would make me want to push him less: The strain the handle would place on my wrists, or the fact that Bran is now kind of a moody dick.
Speaking of chairs, let's talk the conventional kind. The Red Keep has got fee-yancy chairs:
So does Dragonstone:
The ones at Winterfell are more subdued:
And the Maesters at the Citadel have basic, dorm-room-style chairs.
The Maester's chambers are interesting, because after lightening the shot we can see how much stuff he's got in there. There's even, at far left, an architectural model of a building spire with a spiral staircase inside it.
Also check out this interesting contraption at the back right. I guess this is how you support and swipe through huge scrolls.
I still can't figure out what this thing in the background is, but at least here we can see it's got a handle and is meant to be rotated. My guess is it's some kind of book rack.
Another thing with a handle that's meant to be rotated is the sharpening wheel in Gendry's workplace.
Because yes, this episode we finally get to see inside of a workshop!
I like the basic, minimalist design of the sword racks.
Also, check out this shot:
At far right you can see a workbench. If you look closely, it seems we're looking at an end vise, and it appears to have had its handle and screw removed from the chop, presumably by set dressers seeking to eliminate anachronisms. So I'm guessing that was an actual workbench IRL.
Over at Winterfell there's a bit of palace intrigue, with Arya discovering a scroll. I screen-shotted it to read it but still can't make heads nor tails of what's going on here.
Arya also spies Littlefinger having what looks to be a shady conversation with two Northern lords. What can they be talking about?
We also see where Sansa's been crashing at Winterfell. This being the North, the bed linens are pretty Spartan.
Cersei's accommodations, meanwhile, clearly have a freaking pillow menu.
Sam's bed at the Citadel, barely visible here, offers no pillow menu. But we do see him using an interesting object: A candle reflector, to help increase the amount of reading light.
This episode Sam makes a hard decision and decides to steal a bunch of library books and scrolls.
He then flees the Citadel, in a series of shots so dark we were surprised at what we found when we lightened them. For instance, this shot…
…of Sam taking his last, sad look at the magnificent library, is meant to mirror the shot from last season when he first sees the library.
And the shot of him fleeing with Gilly and the child was so dark that the wagon is practically invisible. Someone had to build that prop, so it'd be nice if we could see the damn thing. Particularly since it's pretty detailed.
Another cool thing we finally get to see is Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. The design of The Wall is different here, being tiered. And unlike Castle Black, it looks like there's no elevator.
Lastly, that shot of them walking toward the gate—did it not remind you of football players walking through the tunnel at the Rose Bowl?
Volume, an Industrial Design studio based in Chicago, is looking for a Senior Industrial Designer. We’re an atypical creative group looking for an atypical product designer: Someone with a crazy broad range of skills that enjoys working on an equally broad range of projects. About half of our projects are in Consumer Products while the rest are in the Toy & Juvenile Product industry, so experience doing both well is essential.
View the full design job hereMakita recently announced the LS1019L, a new 10-inch sliding compound miter saw with cutting capacity similar to that of many 12-inch models. Among its more notable features are a dual inlet dust collection system, a bevel lock that can be accessed from the front, and a slide mechanism that allows the saw to be used against the wall.
On most sliding miter saws, the motor is attached to rails that slide back and forth through linear bearings. This configuration prevents you from working with the machine against the wall because the rails stick out the back when the motor is pushed in.
Makita's new saw can be used against the wall because because the motor slides back and forth on fixed rails. The only other slide miter saw with this feature is the Festool Kapex.
As with the Kapex, a knob at the front of one of the slides allows users to change bevel settings without having to reach around back.
In order to collect more of the cutting dust, the saw has two inlets instead of the usual one. The upper inlet is in the usual place, attached to the motor housing behind the blade guard. The lower inlet is at table level directly behind the slot through the fence.
A dust collecting vacuum can be connected to a port at the rear of the lower inlet, which connects by hose to the upper inlet. When working without a vacuum it's possible to replace the upper inlet hose with a fabric collection bag. Additional features include a laser cut indicator, table extensions, and an upper fence that removes for bevel cuts.
The saw has a direct drive motor (geared all the way), so there's better power transfer and no possibility a drive belt will break. As the exploded parts diagram shows, there is a belt but it's for bevel lock. The lock knob turns a shaft inside the upper rail, which uses a belt and pulleys to turn the bevel lock mechanism below.
As for what the new Makita saw can do, it will cut 12" material at 90° and 8 1/2" material at 45° on the flat, 6 5/8" crown nested, and 5 1/4" material vertically against the fence. The saw miters 0-60° left and right and bevels 0-48° in both directions.
The fixed rails and sliding motor are a throwback to the radial arm saw, which until the late 1980s was the machine of choice for wide crosscutting. It fell out of favor after the introduction of the sliding compound miter saw (SCMS), which was smaller, lighter, and safer to use. The SCMS could cut wide material—not as wide as could be cut with a radial arm saw but wide enough for the tasks performed at many shops and construction sites.
I don't know why the first SCMS (an 8 1/2" Hitachi) had a fixed motor and sliding rails instead of fixed rails and a sliding motor. Whatever the reason, this configuration was used in every SCMS built for the next 20+ years. It was not until the introduction of the Festool Kapex and now the Makita LS1019L that we had sliding saws that could be used against the wall. It's a small thing, but it makes a difference when you work in tight quarters.
To non-pet-owners this may seem like a silly application, but this is actually a very clever use of materials. It's got the simplicity of a student design project but the business brilliance of a shrewd marketer. The Ripple Rug is simply two pieces of carpet, one filled with random holes and with a baker's dozen of small Velcro strips. Here's what that yields:
The company says the carpet is made from 100% recycled plastic bottles and can be washed with regular soap and water. At $40 a pop it seems a bit pricey vs. the BOM, but I suppose if your feline scratches this up rather than your couch then it's money well spent.
Here's a 10-second clip of "Game of Thrones" costume designer Michele Clapton revealing where the capes of the Night's Watch come from:
Apparently folks were titillated that Ikea rugs were the source material.
So too was someone at Ikea, who then had whomever's in charge of producing Ikea's assembly directions create one for the cape:
Yanks are out of luck; the Skold sheepskin rug pictured above isn't available in the 'States. (The image is from Ikea's Australian website.)
This is one of those things that's technologically impressive and socially terrifying.
CNC technology has spread into most areas of manufacture. One large component with CNC operations is "hold-down," or affixing the material firmly in place so that the business end of the tool can work it precisely. Hold-down has been solved with rigid materials, but flexible things like fabric provide a problem. Fabric puckers and shifts as it's being manipulated. This is why there's still a demand for human seamsters/seamstresses around the world. The human eye, coupled with trained hands, can make the constant microadjustments necessary to feed fabric through a sewing machine.
But now even the job of seamstress is on the verge of being erased. An Atlanta-based company called SoftWear Automation has harnessed machine vision and robotics to create the Sewbot, a fully-automated garment-producing machine:
That video above was shot nearly two years ago. SoftWear Automation now says the Sewbots are ready for prime time, and last month they signed an agreement with a Chinese company, Tianyuan Garments, to set up a fully-automated T-shirt production line based in Little Rock, Arkansas. According to China Daily,
"From fabric cutting and sewing to finished product, it takes roughly four minutes," said Tang Xinhong, chairman of Tianyuan Garments. "We will install 21 production lines. When fully operational, the system will make one T-shirt every 22 seconds. We will produce 800,000 T-shirts a day for Adidas."
Tang said that with complete automation, the personnel cost for each T-shirt is roughly 33 cents. "Around the world, even the cheapest labor market can't compete with us. I am really excited about this," he said.
Those who are pro-American-manufacturing might also be excited: American technology turning the tables, and stealing Chinese jobs? Well, yes and no. Tianyuan's Little Rock factory will create just 400 jobs "in time." I'd wager it takes more than 400 conventional seamsters/seamstresses to manufacture 800,000 T-shirts per day.
Viewed from an America-vs.-China perspective, yes, American technology is siphoning away Chinese jobs and creating several hundred American ones. But from a global perspective it is of course a net loss of jobs.
The larger picture is that technology is now supplanting workers around the world who are trained in performing a task that was previously impossible for a machine to accomplish. In many regions, a person with little education but good manual skills could earn wages, however paltry, by filling demand at a garment factory. That opportunity will evaporate.
As Sewbots proliferate, SoftWear Automation and companies like Tianyuan Garments will undoubtedly profit. What will happen, we wonder, to the would-be seamsters/seamstresses?
"Sewbots prepare to take millions of jobs off humans in clothes manufacturing sector," Robotics & Automation News
MESA is a portable light that operates on the simple principle that light should shine where you're looking and not in your eyes. MESA's revolutionary form factor provides directed light without glare so you can see indoors and out. MESA is tall enough to work under and short enough to see over, making it ideal for almost any situation.
There are enough quirky "found thing" necklaces out there for this one to pass as nothing more than a piece of jewelry ironically moonlighting as a camera—which is exactly what Brooklyn-based designer Olivia Barr wants you to think. In reality, it's a real-live piece of tech that's perfect for the hipster Harriet the Spy in all of us.
View the full content hereYesterday Pantone announced they've collaborated with Prince's estate to give the late artist his own official color. Unsurprisingly, it's a shade of purple.
It's called "Love Symbol #2," in reference to the symbol Prince temporarily went by in the '90s following a contract dispute. Writes Pantone,
The (naturally) purple hue, represented by his "Love Symbol #2" was inspired by his custom-made Yamaha purple piano, which was originally scheduled to go on tour with the performer before his untimely passing at the age of 57. The color pays tribute to Prince's indelible mark on music, art, fashion and culture.
Prince had commissioned the piano in preparation for the aforementioned tour. On Prince's Twitter account, which is still up, you can see his excitement at receiving it:
R.I.P. Prince.
A roundup of our favorite Kickstarter projects currently crowdfunding for your viewing (and spending!) pleasure. Go ahead, free your disposable income:
Rollbe is a compact circular measuring tool that allows you to measure in straight lines and on curved surfaces simply by rolling the device from point to point. One reddit user brings up a valid argument about the price and the measuring device's DIY potential. Would you rather pay $20 or make this yourself?
Feastfrom is a simple but effective line of cooking utensils designed with campers in mind. While the full collection features two sizes of spatulas and a set of tongs, we're most interested in tongs' clever nesting design—great for camping and tiny living spaces.
Honestly this VR outfit just looks fun as hell.
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Assist the President and Director of Design in creating unique and innovative automotive wheel concepts that align with the company’s brand. Confer with clients to ascertain their needs, establish design specifications, and present to President and Director of Design. Prepare sketches and other illustrations of new automotive wheel concepts and submit to President and Director of Design for approval. Research materials and manufacturing requirements to assist President and Director of Design in ascertaining cost estimates and production limitations.
View the full design job herePublic Goods is the tiny company hoping to make a huge impact on our personal finances. Entrepreneur Morgan Hirsh's mission is to manufacture common household consumables—shampoo, soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, cleaning products, et cetera—and sell them directly to the consumer at cost. By eliminating middlemen and retailers they can sell, for instance, a $12 bottle of shampoo for $3.25. (The company profits not on the products themselves, but on membership fees--$12/month, or $96/annually.)
The company also claims their products are as natural as possible:
Savings aside, what matters most are the quality of our products. We began with obsessive formulations, vetted by the most discerning people we know. It took us over a year. We visited over 100 skincare labs. We consulted with experts. Hired the most reputable chemists. And we think you will really like the result: healthy products, naturally scented, cleanly designed and packaged.
Public Goods is currently running a wildly successful Kickstarter that's garnered $552,481 pledged on a $20,000 goal. And it's no wonder why: They're offering lifetime memberships for just $69 (or $79 if the 124 slots left at press time run out).
The campaign ends this Friday, August 18th at 8pm EST. After it wraps lifetime memberships will no longer be available, and you'll have to go either monthly or annually if you want to sign up.
Here's the price list for the items they're planning to launch with, which you'll be able to order a la carte "as soon as 15 days after this Kickstarter campaign is over:"
Shampoo 8oz $3.25
Shampoo 12oz $3.75
Conditioner 8oz $3
Conditioner 12oz $3.5
Moisturizer $3
Bar Soap $2.75
Liquid Soap 8oz $3.5
Liquid Soap 12oz $4
Deodorant $3.5
Razor Handle $11
Razor Blades (x4) $3
Toothpaste $4.5
Toothbrush $3.5
Shaving Cream $3.25
Lip Balm $1.25
Sunscreen $3
Toilet Paper $7.75 (6 thick 2-ply rolls)
You'll need to do a little math to determine whether or not it's worth it for you. I went over my Amazon orders for the past year and here's what I found:
- I'm paying $0.44/roll of toilet paper on Amazon vs. Public Goods' price of $1.29/roll
- I'm paying $3 per tube of Colgate toothpaste vs. Public Goods' $4.50
- I'm paying $0.60/bar for Dial soap vs. Public Goods' $2.75
- Public Goods' shampoo, however, is less than half of what I'm paying now
- PG's razors are nearly 50% cheaper as well.
So, whether or not you'll see a savings by going with Public Goods all depends on how much you order each year. Happy calculating!
A star drill is a specialized chisel used to make holes in stone, concrete, and masonry. Drilling holes with this tool involves hitting it with a hand-held sledge, slightly rotating it, and then hitting it again. Do this enough times, and you will eventually create a hole.
You can still buy star drills but few people today would consider using one, not when electric rotary hammers are available for drilling concrete and masonry. A rotary hammer uses a motor and gears to replicate the hit/turn/hit/turn action of a star drill. Only it does it faster and with less reliance on muscle. The pneumatic rock drills used for mining do more or less the same.
Interestingly, rotary hammer bits frequently have the same cross shaped tips as the star drill—but made from carbide instead of hardened steel.
In between the invention of the star drill and that of the modern rotary hammer were some interesting manual solutions. The person who devised the hand-powered machine in the video below had a sense of humor or was extremely literal in his thinking—along the lines of "if drilling holes by hand requires a hammer then doing it with a machine must require them too".
In spite of being manually operated, the machine in the video below has more in common with the modern rock drill or rotary hammer. Where it differs, aside from being human powered, is the way the blow is directly transferred to the back of the bit. In today's rotary hammers the drive piston never actually touches the back of the bit holder. Instead, the drive piston drives a second piston (flying piston) forward on a cushion of air and it hits the back of the bit holder.
The gif below was pulled from an animation of an older DeWalt electric rotary hammer. Mechanisms vary from tool to tool but what it shows is illustrative of what happens in nearly every modern machine. The drive piston is separated from the flying piston by a cushion of air, which prevents the motor from being damaged by isolating it from vibration that would be transmitted back from the bit.
AirLink by NeorbLab is a Bluetooth jack adapter that wirelessly connects headphones to smartphones. Thanks to its built-in Bluetooth module, AirLink adds Bluetooth capability to any stereo device.
For the past couple of decades, the adjustable mouth has always been on the laundry list of features a plane should have. For example, in an article in Fine Woodworking #171 by Chris Gochnour on shoulder planes, one big complaint he had about the Clifton shoulder planes is that they do not have an adjustable mouth. What he doesn't explain is why it matters.
The real question is not if a plane has or doesn't have an adjustable mouth but what, if any, advantage are they to the user?
I'm not arguing against a fine mouth on a plane, but rather why we should care if a plane has or doesn't have an adjustable mouth, as long as the mouth it has is fairly fine.
I would suggest that the only real reason for an adjustable mouth on any plane, bench, shoulder, specialty or otherwise is the ease of manufacture.
Traditionally made wooden planes do not have adjustable mouths. You will occasionally come across a well used plane where a later user has repaired the mouth of the plane and inserted a piece of wood to tighten up the mouth. But the planes weren't sold that way. Norris and other firms also made iron front plates which could be retrofitted to a wooden plane for the same purpose. But these were repairs, and once the retrofit was done to an old plane, the mouth was fixed again to a specific width.
English style steel planes by Norris, Spiers, and other makers never had adjustable mouths. Planemakers would fit planes for a fairly thin mouth, and that was that. You could "Adjust the mouth" by swapping in a thinner or thicker blade, but that required getting a new blade. There is user literature (I forget where) that suggests using a shim behind the blade near the sole to tighten the mouth of a plane or a shim behind the blade far way from the sole as possible to tilt the blade up and widen the mouth. Of course on a bevel up shoulder or mitre plane, a thicker iron doesn't effect the mouth opening.
In the wooden plane world quality smooth planes came with very, very fine mouths and in use as the sole and blade wore you could either replace the blade or more likely start using the plane for less critical work and get a new plane for the very fine work. A well fitted cap iron also makes the mouth size less critical for all but the most difficult of situations but that is another story.
For the sake of argument, let's suggest you want to make a plane with a .004" mouth (which is really fine). From a hand work perspective, it takes skill but not much else. The plane maker just makes the plane with an overly tight mouth and then skillfully widens it to whatever dimension is called for. Or you can size an iron to whatever thickness you want to. This method is reliable but also requires skilled labor. The biggest problem is that between normal variations of blade thickness and body manufacturing tolerances, making a mass production tool with a consistently fine mouth is near impossible, and in the 19th century, impossible. The steel plane makers such as Norris and Spiers (and modern makers) solved the problem by custom fitting each iron to each blade and then stamping assembly numbers on everything so that once fitted, it was easy to keep blade and body together during manufacture.
Shoulder planes by Norris, Spiers and others were made with very tight, non-adjustable mouths. The adjustable iron shoulder planes that Preston invented at the turn of the 20th century, that Record later bought out, and Clifton copied, didn't have adjustable mouths. Later versions of the same planes by Record and Lie-Nielsen did. On fixed mouthed shoulder planes of all kinds you will occasionally see planes with widened mouths but the finer the mouth of the plane the easier it is to control as it enters and exits the sides of a joint.
Part of the brilliance of Leonard Bailey's bench plane design was that it was made of easily reproduced cast iron parts that each only needed a little machining in a couple of places. The frog, where the blade rested on was just bolted onto the sole of the plane and it was adjustable so that no matter what the machining and blade thickness tolerances were, the frog could be positioned wherever you wanted to for whatever mouth wide you desired. There was no need for a skilled hand to hand tweak the metal parts to get a good fit. This allows for mass production.
If you have ever reset the frog of an older Stanley plane you immediately find that even on a Bedrock there is enough play and tolerance in the fitting so that getting the blade square to the body can be quite finicky and isn't a five second operation. By transferring the responsibility of setting the mouth of the plane square and at the right width from the factory where it would need skilled labor, to the customer who could either do it or not, Leonard Bailey saved himself oodles of expensive labor.
The marketing argument for the adjustable mouth was and is that with an adjustable mouth the woodworker can set the mouth of their plane to whatever opening they find suitable for the wood at hand. But in general most professionals didn't work a huge range of wood species that required changing the mouth setting and in 30 years of collecting, using, and comparing planes I don't think I have ever found one that showed any evidence of anyone every adjusting the frog position. The only time I have ever seen stripped out screws and things is when it was on a plane were the frog was incorrectly set and someone probably tried to fix it.
This of course never stopped Stanley, the mass marketers of Bailey bench planes, to try to make it easier and easier to set the frog. First they added a screw behind the frog so you could "micro-adjust" the frog position. Then they introduced a "Bedrock" design which allowed you to adjust the frog with the plane iron in place. Back to back comparisons of the same vintage Bedrock series planes to standard Bailey bench planes give the Bedrock an edge in performance, mostly because the frog is bedded with more contact area to the sole in the Bedrock design, but you still don't see evidence outside of the company literature suggesting that anyone adjusted their frog position as a matter of course.
In general for a smoothing plane you will want to take a shaving of a couple of thou or less. If you use your plane a lot the front edge of the mouth will wear so it's an open question if closing the mouth of the plane to only a few thou makes any sense. Also the tighter the mouth the easier it is for a slightly out of square frog to cause trouble and getting it perfect is time consuming. A mouth of say .010" is pretty wide from a super thin shaving standpoint and if you look at people's planes it's rare that the mouth is set so fine. Don't get me wrong, there are cases where that's appropriate and having a super fine mouth makes sense when the blade is perfectly sharp, the cap iron set correctly, etc. But it's rare. But the more important point is that after you get your plane all set up with the fine mouth why would you ever move it wider?
The idea of an adjustable mouth being important becomes more ludicrous when you consider that the overwhelming number of Stanley planes were sold for use in construction and were used for trimming softwood on a construction site.
Modern plane makers such as Clifton, Lie-Nielsen, Lee Valley, and Wood River have the manufacturing ability to make an adjustable mouth with enough precision so it can be adjusted without needed a lot of fiddling, but that doesn't change the fact that it is far, far less expensive even today to built a plane with a user adjustable mouth, than have a skilled craftsman hand fit the mouth.
From a user standpoint is an adjustable mouth worth having anyway? The only time I have ever adjusted the mouth of a plane is when I have retrofitted older planes with newer, thicker irons. Certainly that's a reason for the old planes to have moveable frogs. But premium planes of today already come with thick irons so there is no advantage on that score.
My best plane doesn't have an adjustable mouth and I never felt the need for one. On a bevel up shoulder plane there really is no point. A tight mouth on a shoulder plane makes the plane easier to control on entry and exit on the wood. Less hooking on and damaging the edges.
Now I am not at all arguing the benefit of a fine mouth on a plane, and on a smoothing plane a very fine mouth. I am simply arguing that considering the actual thickness of shaving the benefit to the manufacturer of an adjustable mouth far exceeds the benefit to the user, and the main advantage is that adjustable mouth planes are far easier and less expensive to manufacture.
The lower cost of course is an important advantage to user, but that's it.
The two planes in the picture are a late 18th century mitre plane by Gabriel and a 1920's vintage steel soled cast Norris shoulder plane. With bevel up planes a fine mouth—even on a shoulder plane cutting end grain, gives more control, but the real performance difference in steel planes is that the sole behind the iron comes to a knife edge and the blade is supported almost up to the cutting edge. Cast bevel up planes, even very good ones typically don't have this level of support and don't work as smoothly.
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This "Tools & Craft" section is provided courtesy of Joel Moskowitz, founder of Tools for Working Wood, the Brooklyn-based catalog retailer of everything from hand tools to Festool; check out their online shop here. Joel also founded Gramercy Tools, the award-winning boutique manufacturer of hand tools made the old-fashioned way: Built to work and built to last.
This is so cool.
Shop tools come in two varieties: Bring the work to the tool (i.e. table saw, bandsaw) or bring the tool to the work (circular saw, jigsaw). A laser engraver has always been in the first category, but now a Taiwan-based startup called Muherz has created one that falls into the second category.
Behold the Cubiio, a portable laser engraver:
Due to power limitations the Cubiio can only engrave on wood, paperboard, cardboard, fabric, felt, leather (and pancakes, I guess), but not metal, glass, concrete, stone or ceramics. Plastics are iffy, with transparent materials "not recommended."
As for how you calibrate it, the developers say it first fires a weak laser beam that visually outlines the engraving area, allowing you to confirm it's correct before you do any actual burning. It appears you must have your material 150mm to 160mm away from the lens. And the operation is driven by smartphone app.
The Cubiio Kickstarter campaign has been wildly successful, with $212,980 pledged on a $25,000 goal at press time, with 34 days left to pledge. Early-birds are going for $299, with the device expected to retail for $449.
