Posts from March, 2009

Capital Costs

Going freelance has made me think long and hard about the cost of the tools that I use day-to-day. Starting a freelance design business is capital-intensive! Even the most basic realistic setup will run about $8800, and buying a reasonable parametric modeler will bump you up to $12800! Forget about getting a “real” CAD package; those run $10k and up by themselves!

So the basic hardware/software absolutely necessary for an industrial designer costs over 13 G’s: that’s 130 Benjamins, people! It’s no wonder piracy is so rampant in the design world. I am striving for integrity in my business, and therefor am doing everything I can to be 100% legal, but it isn’t easy.  I’ve been able to reduce some of my overhead by seeking sponsorships from some of these software companies, and it helps tremendously, but the cost of these things is still a big burden on my Quickbooks!

Bare-bones Setup:

• Decent Computer: $1500
• Wacom Tablet: $500
• Windows Vista: $300
• MS Office: $400
• Adobe CS Design Premium: $1800
• Sketchbook Pro: $100
• Quickbooks Pro: $200
• Rhinoceros: $1000
• SpaceClaim: $1000
• Modo: $1000

SolidWorks, ProE, etc: $4000

Catia V5 or UGNX: $10k-100k, Ouch!

PDF Portfolio

My full “teaser” porfolio is now available as a PDF here.

Feel free to take a gander! More detail is available on many of these projects on request. Thanks for taking the time to look, and let me know if you see any typos :)

You  may notice that my work from Bose Corporation is not yet available in my portfolio. Unfortunately this will likely be the case for the indefinite future.

Thanks!

–Adam

Giving to the Homeless

I often wonder what the ethically responsible response is to panhandlers and beggars on the sidewalks of Boston. I am torn between what I know is the “best” thing (i.e. giving to community organizations that help the homeless, rather than to individuals), but that doesn’t relieve the sting of walking away from the person who so needs my help.

So today I had an idea. From today forward, every time I see a homeless person, I will give a pre-specified amount of money to a local organization for the homeless. That way I will know that each time I walk away from that hurting individual, I’ll know that I’m giving something to help his/her plight.

Think about it. You might find something like this could even help you feel more connected with your community.

off to Cut & Paste 2009 Global Championships!

For those who missed Cut & Paste on Saturday, you missed quite a show! These guys put on a fantastic event, and it couldn’t have been more fun to participate. There’s a brief slideshow of the events here, and I’m told that eventually there will be at least some portion of the live broadcast available for view as well, though I don’t think it’s available yet.

For those who missed it completely, here’s the gist: four contestants, two 20 minute rounds on two different themes, and all 3D built from scratch. Head to head, before a live audience of about 600, and a live webcast of a couple thousand. No pressure!

Our two themes were “Tombstone,” and “Nuts & Bolts.” These could be taken literally, figuratively, or any-other-ly, we just had to use them as a jumping off point for the piece. The judges (designers and firm owners from around Boston) would then rank the contestants for various criteria, and the winner would move on to the global championship in June.

I won!! So this means I’ll be headed to NYC June 20th for the Cut & Paste 3D Design global championship! I’m absolutely stoked.

Here’s are a couple of video re-enactments of what I did at the show, for those who missed it:

Keyword: “Tombstone”

Keyword: “Nuts & Bolts”

What kind of Stepper is this?

So I found a great deal on Electronic Goldmine: miniature stepper motors for $1.50 each! (20 steps per revolution, or about 18 degrees.) I bought five. These puppies should be perfect for my new side-project!

My new project is a split-flap display math-learning board game for use in my Dad’s math tutoring business, Mathnaseum. The point of the game will be to teach the little one’s their addition/subtraction/multiplication/division tables in a fun, whimsical way by creating an intelligent automatic flash card system, and an accompanying game that allows kids to play head-t0-head in a battle of arithmatic-mad-science. I couldn’t find flexible split flap display for cheap, and it would take too much modification to bother with  modding a flip-clock, so I thought I’d try to make one from scratch.

I want for the game to be as “real world” as possible; this could easily have been a computer game, but kids are bored with computer games. The magic of LCD’s is no longer magic: it’s everyday, it’s humdrum. By making the game mechanical, I’m hoping to intrigue kids, and help foster the idea that people can still make things in this high-tech world! So I’m going old-school: split flaps, literal bells and whistles, and analog inputs; maybe using old typewriter parts. I want it to look like a 1940’s vision of a time-machine.

The idea of a split-flap display is pretty simple. Basically I’ll be creating my own spindle system for each character, and to keep things simple I’ll probably just use one motor per character (which is why I have five of these motors!). The problem for me right now is how ignorant I am about steppers. For my CNC machine project (still in progress), I was able to utilize a clever driver board called the “Easy Driver” to drive my steppers. Unfortunately I don’t think that will work for this one.

So what do I do? I’m asking the world: how do I make this stepper work? Electronic Goldmine provides a very handy schematic for how to create a stepper driver using parts from their site. Unfortunately, I’m an electronics-o-phobe in rehab, and I really don’t understand this at all. Could someone explain it to me by any chance? The more detail the better: I’m pretty dumb when it comes to this stuff! More info after the break: more »