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Design for Manufacturing Terms

Manufacturing is hard enough without knowing terms most manufacturers use. Here’s a quick resource to help you learn the most common terms around describing physical parts. DFM (Design For Manufacturing) Terms Undercut: In manufacturing, an undercut is a special type of recessed surface. In machining it refers to a recess in a corner or a piece of […]

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Luna on Best Practices for Manufacturing Your First Hardware Product

If you’re developing your first product, the process to take a prototype and transform it into a commercially viable product may seem overwhelming. Should you find a contract manufacturer or use several independent manufacturers? Should you work with local vendors or consider overseas? How finished should your prototype be before you start talking to a […]

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Material Properties Faceoff: RepRap vs Commercial 3D Printers

We get a lot of questions about the performance of different 3D printed materials and technologies, specifically as it relates to parts printed on hobbyist vs commercial-grade machines. There are plenty of off-the-cuff ways of making such evaluations, but empirical data is certainly better. So we were pretty excited when we came across a recent academic […]

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4 Strategies to Build the Community Your Product Needs

WeIn this Spotlight we’re lucky to share our conversation with Lisa Fetterman, CEO and Co-founder of Nomiku, the company behind an at-home sous vide machine. Lisa is a dedicated entrepreneur included in this 2015’s Forbes Food and Wine 30 under 30 and a young hardware veteran with hard-earned product development and manufacturing experience, having lived 2 years next to her factory […]

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Hardware Lessons From Anymote

In this week’s Hardware Spotlight, we had the chance to sit down with Sergiu Dogaru, co-founder at AnyMote. Sergiu Dogaru, Alina Dogaru and their co-founder, Michal Simkovic, created the AnyMote Smart Remote to give us the truly universal remote we’ve all dreamed of. We chatted with Sergiu about manufacturing in China, prepping for a successful Kickstarter, […]

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PLA Color Comparison: Color vs. Strength

We recently took a look at a study which measures the material properties of ABS and PLA printed on RepRap printers in comparison to parts printed on commercial machines. The study showed that PLA and ABS parts printed on RepRap printers are relatively comparable to parts printed on commercial machines in terms of tensile strength and elastic […]

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The Exciting Possibilities of DIY Virtual Reality

We’re seeking out the best hardware companies and engineers to help uncover the many challenges, lessons, and philosophies behind hardware product development. In this week’s Hardware Spotlight, we’re learning about the exciting possibilities of Virtual Reality with Patrick Buckley from DODOcase. He’s launched a Kickstarter to raise funds for the development of open web-based Virtual Reality software tools to support […]

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Behind the Scenes Look at a Design Project for Menlo Ventures

This week we’re spotlighting the development of a product we created for Menlo Ventures with industrial designer Mark Kelley. We took the opportunity to ask Mark a few questions about the industrial design process and how his skills fit into this collaborative project with Fictiv co-founder and engineer Dave Evans. Mark, can you describe where your design skills […]

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An Inside Look at the Development of the Zuli Smartplug

We’re seeking out the most amazing hardware companies and engineers to help uncover the many challenges, lessons, and philosophies behind what makes them so awesome and how they develop their products. In this week’s Hardware Spotlight, we had the chance to sit down with Taylor Umphreys co-founder and CEO at Zuli. Taylor and his co-founders, Sid […]

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Stop Making Negative Progress — How to Build Stronger, More Reliable Hardware Products

Successful product development involves a rigorous and detailed process of testing, breaking, and fixing. However without the right system in place, it can be difficult to parse out the details of effective changes versus ineffective ones. Nathan Hall-Snyder, VP of Engineering at Kespry, a commercial drone technology company that recently raised $10M in Series A funding, knows […]