search
By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We may use the info you submit to contact you and use data from third parties to personalize your experience.
Article
Welcome to another month of the Fictiv Hardware Roundup, where we share interesting news, education, events, and opportunities from the hardware ecosystem. Want to contribute? Have feedback? Just want to talk hardware? Shoot me an email at madelynn@fictiv.com. Industry News Congrats to Lemnos Labs, one of the leading seed stage hardware venture firms, for raising […]
Article
As an entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard this many times: “Ideas are worthless until you get them out of your head and see what they can do.” Every big idea starts with a small first step and many leaps of faith to get it realized. However, you’ve probably also seen big Kickstarter projects get funded, only […]
Article
According to our 2017 State of Hardware Report survey participants, the second most useful website in existence is YouTube. Not surprising—where else are you going to find a quick CAD tutorial, learn about manufacturing, and watch a blender shred a brand new iPhone? As such, we’ve compiled a list of YouTube videos that show how […]
Article
If you design products, whether you’re a full time in-house engineer, a professional freelance industrial designer, or a moonlighting inventor, you’ve likely come across situations in which there is no solution to the design problem you have come across. I’m not referring to a scenario in which you cannot come up with a solution; I’m […]
Article
Welcome to another month of the Fictiv Hardware Roundup, where we share interesting news, education, events, and opportunities from the hardware ecosystem. I’m dying to know what you think about the Roundup thus far—what articles you’d like to see more of, less of, or any additional sections you think we should add. Respond to this […]
Article
There are lots of different exciting advances in prototyping and machining technologies on the horizon. For this article we’re going to take a deeper look at one advanced technology we hear a lot of buzz around: Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). Read on for an overview of the method, the technical specs, and our views […]
Article
In the first part of our Roomba teardown, we looked at the components that allow Roomba to move around and suck up dirt. Now we’re going to see what allows Roomba to actually navigate around your room semi-intelligently. The first sensor is actually a mechanical component—the small caster wheel found on the bottom of the […]
Article
Springs are absolutely everywhere, from jewelry clasps to large industrial robots. The probability of a fresh-out-of-school mechanical engineer encountering his or her first spring design problem within the first year of graduating is not 100%, but it’s pretty high. Most of the time, it’s not practical to go straight into making a custom spring in […]
Article
While electric motors drive vastly different applications, their core function remains the same—to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. Numerous articles highlight the characteristics of each unique motor on the market, but they can be simplified into two overarching categories: AC (alternating current) motors and DC (direct current) motors. Each type has its own pros […]
Article
A new engineer, I was getting used to the “excitement” of cubicle life when something (finally) happened. We’d stiffened part of our flow meters a month prior, and one of our customers started complaining about breakage. The graybeards upstairs were defending the change, while my engineering partner was struggling to explain why the minor tweak […]
