I can't tell whether to be flattered by this or what.
FWIW I am proud of most of these, especially "coined countersinks," for which I am *bafflingly* the top result. I also have reason to believe that a good number of the unprovided search results are for DMLS pricing, which is more exciting to me than the fact that someone wants to see me (or some lesser Spencer Wright) in the nude.
PCBA, recently @ The Public Radio:
We've got about a dozen beta radios out in the wild right now, and are working on an additional 10 or so. There are a few small hardware revisions that are yet to be made, but the overall design is about right, and we'll be rolling out a larger launch in the coming months. Stay tuned.
Product photography is fun, and weird.
Today I spent the majority of my day on-location shooting The Public Radio with Zach and Colin (and with help from Hannah, Lianna and Chris). It was good, and exhausting, and fun.
When I was building bikes, I self-consciously photographed a huge portion of my life. My aim was presumably to build a personal brand that would improve the appeal of my company, but looking back I wonder how much of it was pure narcissism.
Now it's (ostensibly) different; I'm part of a larger team, and in many ways the aesthetic that we're selling is distinct from my own. Sure, I use Mason jars, and I truly enjoy FM from time to time - and when I do, I only listen to one station. But the challenges that interest me about The Public Radio are largely distinct from the reasons that (I believe) our customers would buy it, and that has a huge effect on the way I present it to the world. It frees me up, and removes self-consciousness from the equation. It makes it much easier.
Anyway. Consider The Public Radio's crowdfunding campaign begun. Stay in touch for updates.
I think this is very pretty.
With any luck, I'll have an update on my coffee grinder driver in the next few days. The bottom line is that it's live and working, and you should holler at me if you're interested in testing one!
I just want to point out: *this* is how we send things around the world. Paper. Pens. Carbon copies.
I'm pretty sure that this is totally insane.
Yesterday I received new PCBs for The Public Radio, and quickly built up a few units.
These will go out to beta testers early next week.
Building them up has been really fun - they work well, and all of the parts are organized in a way that makes assembly pretty straightforward. Getting everything all knolled nicely actually helps a significant amount in PCB assembly - now, if I can just get my parts organizer up and running...
This is me, working on this bike, a long time ago.
Have been a little hectic.
In addition to trying to make some long overdue progress on my DMLS work, The Public Radio is kind of heating up right now. We received a new batch of PCBs, and got a few of them built up quickly.
To our astonishment, the first board we built worked immediately. This was actually kind of weird - we were expecting at least a bridge or two would need to be fixed, and there was always the chance that we had made a design error. Having our first board turn right on, and then quickly tune to WBGO 88.3, was a real kick.
Things won't always go so well, though, and so the following day we spent a bit of time straightening the workshop and setting up a bit of new tooling. The Public Radio HQ is now the home to a brand-old 1984 Tektronix 2465, a 4-channel 300MHz analog scope. We also picked up an inexpensive hot air rework station, and I dumped some bike parts out of one of my small parts cabinets and dragged it in to the city as well.
We don't have stencils for these boards (aligning circular stencils requires a bit more foresight than we could muster when we made the purchase) so we're laying out solder paste by hand with a syringe and toothpicks. Then we laid out a big piece of card stock and placed SMT components out part by part and set out with tweezers and loupes to place them on boards.
Our boards have two fine-pitch parts on them (the FM IC and the amplifier), and then they're almost all 0603 packages. These are manageable once you get going, but initially they're just fucking small. Anything smaller and we'd have a really hard time hand assembling these boards.
There are a few small modifications that we'll make before we go into production. Our thru hole trimpot's package needs to be changed, and we need to do a little tweaking on the gain setting resistors going into the amplifier, and I want to spend a little while getting graphics on the silkscreen layers. But these are minor changes; overall, the boards are 95% there.
On Monday we'll be receiving a batch of lasercut stainless steel lids, and we'll finally see how our whole assembly fits together IRL.
This is maybe the second or third 3D model I ever created. I was attaching a glass handrail to an existing deck, and needed a way of documenting the irregularities of the support members. My steel guy didn't respond all that well to my screenshots, but it came together quite nicely.
This is one of my favorite things about my website in the past month: someone dropped here by googling "hat how did little naked green men get on mars". Wow.
Incidentally, this is the page that they landed on - one of my favorite quotes, by Tom Wolfe, about the power of *not* fitting in.
I'm mostly just posting this to give Jonathan Bobrow, who created the kernel of The Public Radio's logo, a shout out. Anything I've done on top of his original work is, I'm sure, to our detriment.
Anyway, I spent a little while kerning today. Cause hey, someone's gotta do it.
From mid 2010:
This looks simple but there's a lot going on.
The handle itself is 7 or 8 pieces; this mockup shows it mounted to an assembly of extrusions (all of which I designed, and clad in blackened mahogany) which together make up the stile of a 2000lb swinging door. In the close corner you can actually see the inflatable pneumatic seal (I can't stress how cool this is) that keeps the door weatherproof from the exterior.
The handle has a couple of stainless steel mounting brackets which are hidden inside the stile. Then there are the horizontal parts, which are drilled internally to allow a bundle of wires to be routed from the stile into the handle itself. The vertical part of the handle is actually split along its long dimension, though you can't see it in the photo. The part on the right is solid, but the part on the left (towards the stile) rides on a couple of shafts and actuates about 1/16". When you grab the handle, the moving part clicks in just a little bit and closes a pair of tactile switches, which tell the door's brain (a custom ATMega board) that someone wants to be let out. That in turn deflates the pneumatic seal and releases a couple of electromagnets, unlocking the door.
If you followed any of that, kudos.
Anyway it's fucking cool. Too bad it never got built - it took me months to design & prototype.
Sure was a fun project, though.
I try to sit in the kitchen with Zach & Libo, but sometimes I need to move to my desktop to do 3D stuff.
I drew this in 2006, when I visited MoMA; the text is a word for word copy of the placard accompanying "144 Lead Square". I still feel deeply conflicted about MoMA & Andre's description of the intent of the work, especially vis a vis the last sentence.
But I do rather enjoy my transcription & doodle as meta-art :/
This was a long time ago, when I ordered an in-depth investigation of what adhesives to use to bond mahogany to anodized aluminum. This entrant was not the winner.
I love this. A few inches away are a stack of custom PCBs, too :)
We pulled the trigger on this today.
There are a lot of small-to-medium changes here, even from the last photos I posted.
On the top edge of the board:
On the bottom edge of the board:
We should have boards back in roughly two weeks. In the meantime we'll be hustling in like twenty ways so that we can be totally ready. Should be fun :)
A week or two ago, at Jace's.
Memphis, Libo, Zach, and The Public Radio, getting our ya-yas out after a good day of work :)
Yup.
