2017-06-11

Notes.
I'm still looking for thoughts/pieces/experiences from/by women in engineering. Holler!

Also, anyone going to be in Shenzhen/Hong Kong July 1-4? Holler too!

Planning & Strategy.

• In the US, fidget spinners (and hoverboards before them) have largely been sold on Amazon by manufacturers overseas, making any kind of oversight rather tricky. Interesting to think of this through the lens of Amazon's conviction that people will always want more selection; it seems there are probably mitigating factors (safety, reliability, responsibility on the part of manufacturers and retailers) counteracting that tendency.
• Emmanuel Macron is actively recruiting climate scientists to do their work in France.
• Alphabet is unloading Boston Dynamics & Schaft to SoftBank.
• Foxconn is considering a ~$5B LCD manufacturing facility in Southeast Michigan.

Making & Manufacturing.

• Formlabs announced a new SLS printer, the Fuse 1. With a 165 mm x 165 mm x 320 mm build chamber, it's 1/2 to 1/4 the size of similar machines made by EOS and 3D Systems - but at $10K, it costs at least an order of magnitude less. Pretty impressive.
• New research out of LLNL on diode array printing in metal. This is akin to DLP of SLA parts, and could reduce print time significantly.
• A pretty great old video of the Matchbox (cars) factory.
• Plasma cutting stainless steel @ 30k frames per second.
• The new Tappan Zee bridge is drivable, though not open yet. Related, a good old Planet Money podcast on why the Tappan Zee is located at such a wide crossing over the Hudson.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• On a new composting facility being built to begin processing some of NYC's 100 million tons of annual organic waste. Most organic waste is composted aerobically, a process which emits a lot of additional carbon (from the conventionally-powered machinery used to keep the windrows aerated). "But anaerobic digestion, in which food is broken down by microbes inside tall, airtight silos, has a real shot at scaling near densely populated areas. The footprint of such plants is relatively small, and their odors are mechanically contained, if they are operated properly. Digesters do cost more to build and run than compost sites, but they more than make up for that by generating two separate revenue streams: fertilizer and biogas, which is chemically similar to natural gas and can be burned to make heat and electricity."

Distribution & Logistics.

• A really excellent piece in the New Yorker about the global supply chain of sand, and the nuances that affect a batch of sand's potential uses.
• Huge quantities of wild Alaskan salmon is frozen, shipped to China, thawed, deboned, refrozen, and shipped back to the US. Worse, we import 90% of the fish that we eat.
• A proposal to create a rail bypass around Chicago is being supported by UPS, but the rail companies say they wouldn't use it.
• SpaceX won the Air Force's contract to launch their X-37B spaceplane, beating out ULA.

Inspection & Testing.

• A new method of monitoring vacuum arc remelting could reduce the cost of specialty alloy production by 25%.
• Trump's budget slashes five NASA earth science missions.
• Stae, a startup here in NYC, is building data management tools & APIs for cities.
• Carmera, also an NYC startup, creates commercially available 3D maps by contracting with fleet operators.
• On the dramatic rise and fall of J.Crew. Note, that chart is sales *growth*; the "sales plunge" is really just a few percent after a decade of 10-20% increases.

Tangents.

• Some really great, really silly volume control interfaces on Reddit.
• The Times, fresh off of their acquisition of The Wirecutter, has a "starter" tool guide. IMO most of this stuff is crap; see the tool guide I published last holiday season for some higher quality (if a bit more obscure) stuff.
• Robert Caro will go to Vietnam to complete reporting on the last part of his epic LBJ bio.

Thanks as always to our recurring donors for supporting The Prepared. Credit also to Terry, Star, Chris, Reilly, Ada, and Jordan for sending links.
Changes to The Public Radio's progressive stamping die.