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Hand-Eye Supply Design Directory Coroflot
Say Hello to the New Coroflot!We've recently redesigned our portfolio site & job board from the inside out!
Why User-Centered Design Is Not EnoughProfessor John Wood takes a look at the bigger picture
Regarding Kickstarter & Product Design ProjectsDon Lehman breaks down the new policy changes
Farnborough International Airshow 2012Photos by Brit Leissler
Designing 007Celebrating 50 Years of Bond at the Barbican Photos by Sam Dunne
Core77 Design Awards 2012Images of all of the 2012 honorees
International Bicycle Design Competition 2013Presented by iF DESIGN TALENTS
Deadline: September 15, 2012
A Better World by Design ConferenceProvidence, Rhode Island
September 28–30, 2012
The Journey of Sebastian ErrazurizReview & Interview by Ray Hu
Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design, by Chris LefteriReviewed by Robert Blinn
Suspending Disbelief for Student Concept DesignsWhere do you draw the line?
Howest Industrial Design Center's Upcoming Creative Prototyping Summer SchoolA weeklong digi-fab crash course
Neat Car - DeltaWing Le Mans RacerHalf the weight and fuel consumption of a Le Mans but promising equal performance
Ouya by fuseprojectCan the combination of the Kickstarter Community and Yves Béhar's star power revolutionize console gaming?
Core77 Design Awards Open for Registration on January 17, 2012
SHIFTBoston 2012 Glow Competition Deadline: February 3, 2012
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
Ben Chapman is a denizen of the Thingiverse, and his 3D-printed knife-sharpener is both inventive and ingenious. Obviously printed plastic won't yield a sharpening element, so Chapman designed the thing to fit onto the bottom of a standard coffee mug.
Why a coffee mug? Because as it turns out, the bottom of every mug has an unglazed ring of exposed ceramic, the part of the mug that's contacting the surface it's sitting on during the glazing process. Chapman's design allows a knife blade to contact that ceramic edge at the proper angle, honing the edge with a few quick swipes:
My only suggestion for a version 2.0 would be to create some sort of handle that keeps your non-sharpening hand above the blade, towards the dull side.
In any case, if you've got a 3D printer of your own, or access to a TechShop (which is where Chapman made his), the design can be downloaded here.
A buddy of mine who goes camping carries a foam eggcrate-looking thing with him. He explained that it's to lay on the ground underneath your sleeping bag as a measure of insulation. Even rolled up the thing's pretty bulky, but he says it's indispensable.
The AeroBed Pakmat seems like a neat alternative, and I dig the design (though I should admit I have very little camping experience). First off it's inflatable, so air pockets provide the insulation rather than bulky material, and once emptied it rolls up to a fraction of its size. Secondly it stows away in the canister you see here, which is actually the hand pump you use to inflate it.
You can be fooled by the product photos into thinking the canister's smaller than it is, as it kind of resembles a water bottle; but poking around the web I found this review, and the photo below shows its actual size:
The $120 asking price on Aerobed's website seems kind of steep, but they're also selling them on Amazon for 96 bucks.
Nearly seventy years after the end of World War II, motorcycles still have a place in the military, however tiny. They're still a fast, nimble way to transport crucial documents or personnel (forward observers and artillery spotters, for instance) from point to point. But the relatively fat Harley WLAs and sidecar-carrying BMWs are a thing of the past, replaced by more agile off-road bikes.
In the 1980s Harley-Davidson acquired a manufacturer named Armstrong and took over production of their MT500 military bikes. In the '90s, H-D released a smaller version called the MT350 (pictured up top), which was purchased by the Canadian and British militaries. There is an unembeddable video of a British soldier introducing the bike here, and as you can see, it's vastly different from the WLA we looked at earlier.
One problem with the MT500 and MT350 is that they run on gasoline; for reasons of resupply logistics, the U.S. military prefers diesel. By the mid-2000s, the U.S. Marine Corps was using Kawasaki KLR650 off-road bikes that run on diesel fuel, seen here:
According to this site: "Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit prepare to load their M1030 motorcycles into a CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) during flight operations in the Mediterranean Sea on 18 April 2005."
The video below shows their training facility in California, and features instructor and Gunnery Sergeant Bryon Schmidt—noted as one of two Marines to ride from Kuwait to Baghdad on a motorcycle during Operation Iraqi Freedom—discussing the problem with riding into combat situations:
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Last month's post on "How a Woman with No Arms Dresses Herself" did not get the amount of responses I was hoping for, but I still feel designers can make an important contribution towards easing the challenges that handicapped folk face. Daily activities that you and I never even think about, like getting in and out of a car, are problems for the handicapped that need evolutionary design solutions. And from what I'm seeing, there aren't enough interested designers tackling these problems in user-friendly ways.
Let's look at how people without the use of their legs get in and out of their cars, and bear in mind that they have to get both their bodies and their wheelchairs in and out. First up is Chelsea Zimmerman, who runs a blog called Reflections of a Paralytic. Note the little things, like how far she has to stretch to close the door:
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