At EPFL, 3D printing starts designing material mechanics, not just shape
DNGEs combine stiff elastomer microparticles with a softer second network. Their architecture lets a printer shape the object while varying its mechanical behaviour locally.
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IRZ archive, page 28.
A surveillance network still ends on a pole
A printed shell makes the physical dependency of a huge plate-reader network visible. The interesting part is not the installation method but what the object reveals about the system.
A payphone that barely does anything still works ten years later
Since 2016, an obsolete payphone in Takoma Park has played local bird calls. Its longevity says more about the design than its technical specifications do.
The hard part of automating steel begins after the weld
In Cincinnati, 1872 is putting planning software, shop-floor operations and welding robots into one loop. Full autonomy remains a company target for 2027, not the current state of the factory.
This grill escapes the cloud without replacing its controller
The Gravity 800 controller already contained a programmable ESP32. FreeFall 800 keeps that board and moves remote control back onto the local network, with explicit security limits.
Eight robot boats can become one floating structure
Eight 21 cm boats assemble and travel as one structure. FloatForm moves most coordination from a global planner to neighbouring robots.
An eight-metre animatronic emerges from one inflatable tube
AirForce folds, constricts and actuates one continuous tube to build human-scale moving structures. The useful trick is not just low weight: structure, actuators and logistics become the same material system.
Framework is repairable. A failed BIOS update still needed a flash programmer
A failed BIOS update turned a modular laptop into an SPI-flash repair. The interesting gap is between hardware that opens easily and firmware that still needs a bench-level escape route.
A train becomes the second axis of this line-scan camera
Linecam records one vertical strip at a time from a moving train. The hard part is not resolution but measuring motion well enough to decide where every strip belongs.
Quake's shareware CD contained the games you still had to buy
In 1996, unused CD capacity became a local software store: the payload was already on the disc, while a phone call sold permission to unlock it. The trust boundary was the fragile part.