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The Building Blocks of Product Concept Generation

This article was written by Olivia Eaton, Product Design Engineer at Verily Life Sciences , and Kassidy MacPhail, Product Development Engineer at Neptune Medical, when they were part of Generate at Northeastern University. ‍Great ideas form through critical observations of everyday things and by envisioning potential improvements to the mundane. While it’s easy to assume […]

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How to Design Assemblies to Be Self-Locating and Self-Fixturing

There’s a reason kids love Lego. When I was a kid, nothing was more valuable to me than my big blue bucket of the multi-colored bricks. Even when my parents encouraged my interest in engineering with more complex Fischer Technics, nothing replaced the joy of quickly snapping pieces together in increasingly complex shapes. Wouldn’t it […]

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An Introduction to Solenoids

Like cavemen did thousands of years ago with fire, you might have just struck upon an incredibly revolutionary idea. As you coin down your concept and think of ways to make it as simple as possible, you’ll probably come across mechanical functions that require linear action. Energy can be converted into linear motion by an […]

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10 Amazing Engineering Jobs We’d Love to Have

No one becomes an engineer for the cubicle view. Whether inspired by inventors like Edison or falling into engineering because of math talent, we don’t dream of paperwork and taupe upholstery. Looking for more? Engineers at these great companies are changing the world and creating inspiring new technology. These are jobs we’re jealous of—jobs that […]

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Keeping Copycats Away: A Guide to Patents for Hardware Products

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 […]

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Spring Design Part 3: How Springs are Manufactured

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 […]

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Helpful Design Constraints vs. Over-Constraint: How to Find the Sweet Spot

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 […]

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Advanced Technologies Exploration: Direct Metal Laser Sintering

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 […]

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The Great Robotic Vacuum Showdown Part 1: Roomba 650 — Navigation System

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 […]

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Design and Sourcing Considerations for Springs

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 […]