This Week in Making: Suspended Kickstarters, REI’s Boot Drying Build, and More

REI, the outdoor and sports store has dipped their toes into the DIY area with this cute snow boot drying rack. Matt Stultz, our Digital Fabrication Editor sent this to me, saying it was a pretty cool little project and it is nice to see them showing people how to make stuff. Great job REI!

A few weeks ago, we had a visit from NexD1, a fancy 3D printer. While they were in our offices, they didn’t get a chance to print an object to show us. It sounds like maybe they’re in a bit of trouble now by over promising the capabilities of their machine. Their kickstarter has been suspended and many questions have popped up over what they’re showing as results from their machine. We’re very curious to see how they respond to all this. Will they resolve the concerns and re-launch?

This week, Bunnie Huang made an appearance on Adafruit’s “Ask an engineer” live broadcast. He dished out all kinds of fun information on what happened during different projects like the Chumby and even showed off some new stuff that isn’t out yet. Keep an eye out for the section with the flexy circuits, they’re pretty neat.

Amazon has launched a subscription service for STEM toys. You can find the details here, but basically there are 3 age tiers (3-4, 5-7, 8-13) that get you regular educational toys for $19.99 per month.