We previously looked at the Gorilla Gripper and the Handle on Demand, two portable solutions for hauling heavy sheet goods. From Germany’s Zieker Innovationen comes an equally portable, but arguably easier to use solution: Push rather than carry.
If there’s one thing that’ll kill the creative process quicker than a computer crash with no Time Machine backup handy, it’s a lack of understanding and communication when creating a new product in a collaborative environment. Our friends at IDSA have teamed up with Loughborough Design School to create a simple way to keep us all on the same page during the New Product Development (NPD) process. If you’ve been to a previous IDSA conference, you may remember their token informational fold-out iD cards (not to be confused with these). The cards break down the names, descriptions and images for 32 different design representations in four different groups—sketches, drawings, models and prototypes. The cards share what the representation stands for in terms of use and the information it provides.
The new app that consolidates the cards and information in one convenient, color-coded resource, taking the mystery out of unknown terminology with straightforward appeal to all levels and genres of design, making it easy for for teams to work together cohesively. Check out the video overview of the app and its features:
At the Holz-Handwerk show there are tons of circular saws, tons panel saws and tons of CNC mills. But there’s only one Logosol M8 Portable Sawmill. This crazy contraption is something like a chainsaw combined with a tracksaw, and one man (or one Swedish man, anyway) can unload the thing off the roof of his Volvo, carry it into the forest, and start making boards.
You’re undoubtedly wondering, from the photos above, how that lone dude got that big-ass log up onto the stand all by himself. It’s not just brute strength, there’s design involved, as you’ll see around 3:08 in the demo video:
Hey folks, your correspondent is on the ground at Holz-Handwerk, a massive trade show in Germany covering everything under the sun related to woodworking and furniture building. Here they’ve got machines, tools, jigs, inventions, contrapations, guys named Hans, and all manner of cool stuff that you can use to make other cool stuff. The exhibitors seem to be primarily German, though there are pockets of companies from all over the world here.
Unsurprisingly the Italian machines (like this planer from SCM Group for when you need to work boards that are a freaking half-meter wide) have a little flair
With thousands of exhibitors spread over six-and-a-half massive exhibition halls laid out like a sprawling college campus, I realize that I could not possibly see half the stuff in here if I had twice the time, and that makes me want to cry. Plus the flowing crush of 100,000 attendees makes shooting video demonstrations of anything just about impossible. Still, the intrepid Core77 editor soldiers on, bolstered by discoveries like the following:
Deep down inside, I always suspected this is what bored craftsman raised in rustic settings did with wood cut-offs
First things first: This is without a doubt the worst demo video I’ve ever shot, in terms of A/V quality. The surly gentleman in the video refused to perform a demo for the camera, only agreed to let us shoot if he was trying to close a sale with a “real customer” and would not repeat actions for close-ups. (Plus he kept calling me “Junior.”) To make matters worse, you can’t really hear much after the guy in the next booth fires up his own tools.
Nevertheless, Bad Dog Tools’ Bad Dog Biter is amazing enough that I had to try to capture what I could, lack of cooperation be damned. This drill-mounted nibbler is designed to cut all the tricky materials you hate cutting, whether plastic, metal or laminates, and whether they’re in sheets, corrugated sheets or tubes. Check it out:
Here’s another product showing Festool sweating the details, those little things we industrial designers are trained to look out for.
If you’re using a drill to drive something into an overhead surface, you’ll find that pulling that trigger subtly changes the balance of your grip. This is a minor issue for the DIY’er hanging a pair of IKEA lamps, but a major issue for someone who hangs drywall for a living and will drive hundreds or thousands of screws in a day. Thus Festool’s DWC-18 series of cordless drywall screwdrivers feature an “Auto” setting, where the user simply presses the attachment’s plunger against the surface to drive the screw.
Ergonomically speaking, this means you’re just cradling the unit in your palm and pressing upwards, rather than gripping, squeezing and pressing upwards. Multiply that subtle energy savings over a full workday, across thousands of tool-buying customers, and that small design feature makes a profound impact.
Here’s how it looks in action, and you’ll also hear the rep run down the full list of the tool’s stats and features:
Once again we must apologize to our U.S. readers, as this was one of only two Festool demos we were able to capture at JLC Live—and both of those tools are Euro-market-only, at least for now. (If you haven’t yet seen the other, the dust-free TSC-55 track saw, be sure to check that out!)
We recommended the Grabit Pro Screw Extractor in last year’s Gift Guide, and mentioned the Accutrax Pencil Blade here. Here they are in action, as demonstrated by tool entrepreneur Bob Cumings of Prazi USA:
We headed up to the JLC Live show in Providence last week, so we just had to stop by Festool Connect, the awesome one-day outreach event where the company gives demos of their latest and greatest. As most of you know, Festool is a company with a reputation for unmatched product design—go through their user forums and you’ll find a fervent following backing that up, if you don’t already have Festool product in your own shop—and they certainly didn’t disappoint for 2014.
While we had a hard time capturing video of all of their tools we wanted to show you, thankfully were able to get footage of their wicked TSC-55 cordless track saw, which somehow magically spirits the dust away without being hooked up to a vac! You have to see this thing in action:
Our European readership is in luck, as the tool will be available April 1 on that side of the pond. For us Americans, alas, the U.S. release date—if there’s even going to be one—is TBD. We’ll keep you posted if we hear anything.
When Gregor Bruhn moved his cabinet- and furniture-making business Hand Werk from Germany to Canada, he brought with him tens of thousands of Euros’ worth of state-of-the-art German manufacturing machinery. But it was a humble-looking wooden object that most caught the eye of Matthias Wandel, the woodworking scientist behind Woodgears, when he paid Bruhn’s shop a visit (and thankfully for us, he shot video). Check out the slick hinge linkage on Bruhn’s tool chest and watch what it does:
Amazing, no? And after viewing that video above, where Wandel deconstructs how the hinge works, two young carpenters from Brazil decided to see if they could make their own. David Zimmerman Júnior and his pal Jean Pierre Lana sent their results in to Wandel, who shared it with the rest of us. Check out the video of Zimmerman and Lana’s impressive creations that incorporate their version of the dobradiças inteligente:
The J. Paul Getty Trust is serious about sharing. The institution, which encompasses the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation, is following its “Open Content” program that set free some 5,000 high-resolution digital images for use, modification, and publishing with a virtual library. Translation: 45 years of art books for free. Among the 250 (and counting) of the Getty’s backlist titles now available to read online or download as PDFs are the 2004 catalogue of the first-ever exhibition of Cézanne’s watercolor still lifes (“a moving examination of this most subtle and luminous of mediums and genres,” according to Getty President and CEO James Cuno), the definitive English translation of Otto Wagner’s Modern Architecture, and books on globe-spanning conservation projects. We suggest igniting your winter reading list with Kevin Salatino‘s Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe.
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