NPR has a nice little video feature about Hers crisps (or potato chips, as our American cousins like to call them) being made, and it's worth taking a few minutes to watch. But the real stars are the animated gifs of the machinery at work. I can't look away. I want to watch a machine that makes crisps all day while another machine feeds them to me, constantly, forever. Mmmm, crisps. [NPR] Read More >>
While 8-tracks and cassettes are as relevent to the digital world as wax cylinders, the vinyl LP is still being steadily produced and collected despite, or perhaps thanks to, their imprecise warm analogue acoustics. Here's how LPs get their unique sound. Read More >>
Featured comment by dunksterp:
"Never! They don't pick up any decent bass frequecies really, not sub bass anyway!
Get yourself a Technics 1210;)" More »
Last week we heard rumours that Apple's courting Intel to produce its custom silicon for it, in an effort to ditch its dependence on Samsung's chip manufacturing. Now a new smaller chip in the updated Apple TV could indicate that Apple and Samsung have already split ways. Does this mean the gloves are off? Read More >>
Featured comment by Spectater:
"I was tossed off the Apple site for saying that Apple are trying to gain a monopoly over everything.
Just watch them with this Apple TV. I think App..." More »
Samsung's unlikely to be switching to space-metal and/or glass for this year's Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone, with the company's executive VP claiming bendy plastic's tougher, easier to make and what everyone really wants even if they don't know it. Read More >>
Dyson makes some of the prettiest vacuums, hand-driers, and air blower/suckers out there, so it should come as no surprise that the factory where they are born is as mesmerising as its products. Read More >>
We've all seen our fair share of crooked gingerbread houses, daubed with frosting to the point where they look less like a building and more like a bomb site. Johan von Konow has a solution to that problem, though: design the building using CAD and manufacture it using laser cutters. Read More >>
So there you are, walking around on the world's most advanced aircraft carrier. Everything around you is a multi-million pound machine packed with advanced technology. Then something propped in the corner catches your eye. Is that an old wooden ladder? What the hell is that doing here? Read More >>
Apple loves QR codes -- you've only got to look on the intimate parts of its products to know that. Thanks to a supposedly leaked test report image, left on a iPhone 5 shipped directly from China, this love for QR codes extends to manufacturing as well. That "Fail" message is a bit worrying -- not the kind of thing you'd want to see on your shiny new iPhone 5. Read More >>
When the MakerBot appeared in 2009, the idea of 3D printing was a bit foreign to all but the most advanced fabricators. Company founder and CEO Bre Pettis says he used to get asked: "So what, do you have to wear special glasses to see it?" Read More >>
Featured comment by ThisIsNotAUsername:
"Does anyone think that 5-10 years from now there'll be a 3D printer on every high street (like when we used have with photocopiers), and then in 20 ye..." More »
SSDs are wonderful things that massively speed up your computer and they're getting cheaper too. But currently they don't offer the capacity that some users demand. Fortunately, that could all be about to change. Read More >>
The days of the assembly line as Henry Ford envisioned it are fading, as manual labour is replaced by mechanical. In fact, tomorrow's factory floors could be covered with gigantic 5-axis CNC machines like this one. Read More >>
HTC's new One S has a crazy metal unibody, that the company proudly claimed was made using micro arc oxidation. But what the hell is that process? It's freakin' cool, that's what. Read More >>
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has come out and said that the reason for the delay in getting the mini-marvels into your hands is because the factory manufacturing them screwed up. It bunged a dud network port onto the first batch of boards. Read More >>
Featured comment by montyburns56:
"This doesn't surprise me as I've heard quite a few stories about Chinese manufacturers substituting components without bothering to tell the customer." More »
Certainly you've assembled a piece of Ikea furniture and experienced that special kind of frustration that comes with realising the screw holes don't line up and you have to take everything apart and put it together it again. Now imagine this problem at 750 feet in the air with massive steel girders instead of particle board. When those holes don't line up, it's a whole different kind of frustration. Read More >>
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