This week, Nimuno fundraised nearly 14,000% of its original $8,000 Indiegogo campaign for their Nimuno Loops. The loops are an adhesive plastic tape that can make any surface LEGO-compatible. The tape can be flexed or cut and is seemingly strong enough to even hold small LEGO sculptures at a 90° angle! It’s a simple idea but one that could help young makers achieve new levels of creativity. I’m honestly surprised Lego has not come out with something like this already.
Kuka sponsored a bottle-flipping robotic arm that appeared this past week at SXSW 2017. The machine appears to have a personality (and cute cowboy hat) all its own and even gives a little bow after its performance.
Just because it's cool #sxsw2017 @oauxcloud pic.twitter.com/L0R7sNGX5p
— jrwashley (@jrwashley) March 14, 2017
Last year, Memphis Meats, a food technology startup operating out of San Francisco, received recognition for the tasty meatball they made with beef grown in a lab. This past Wednesday, the start-up unveiled their newest creation: lab-grown chicken strips. Prior to release, Memphis Meats invited people to come to a private taste-testing. Lab grown duck was also available.
Those who tried the strips enjoyed it and claimed they did actually taste like chicken. Memphis Meats hopes their new chicken strips will ultimately prove universally popular and, when sold with their lab-grown beef and duck, revolutionize the $200 billion meat industry by offering healthier and cleaner replacements for meat. Lab grown food products have always been a topic of controversy, but Memphis Meats hopes their chicken will eventually reach people’s homes and are aiming to release the meat commercially in 2021.
3D Veterans, a training and veteran support organization, is partnering with Dremel, the manufacturer of digital fabrication tools for both life and learning, to provide work for U.S. veterans. 3D Veterans works with Dremel to hire and task veterans with installing Dremel’s Idea Builder 3D Printers alongside students in schools across California, Texas, Florida, and New York.
3D Veterans hopes for two outcomes in their partnership with Dremel: veterans getting the chance to find purposeful work as they transition back to civilian life and students finding role models and an appreciation for new technologies.
Brock Hammill, a teacher at Corvallis High School in Corvallis, Montana, developed a maker project for students in his science class to directly address a problem unique to their community. Air pollution is particularly bad in the region where they live, so Hammill borrowed air sensors from the University of Montana to teach his students how to measure air quality. When he learned he could only borrow the sensors for a few days, Hammill decided to make his own and get his students to help.
In total, Hammill and his students have constructed seven sensors. Although happy he was able to pull off the challenge, Hammill is more grateful for the experience it gave his students. The project gave them ample opportunities to fiddle with both hardware and software and some of the students are continuing to work with the sensors in hopes of adapting them into smaller, more portable forms. Hammill and his students’ efforts prove that makers can come from any walk of life as long as they have the desire to create and better the world.
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