Having new shoes that you need to “break in” because they hurt your feet (or dealing with shoes that always feel uncomfortable no matter how long you wear them) will soon be a thing of the past thanks to 3D Printing. Several shoe companies, including Nike, Feetz, and United Nude, are now using 3D Printing technology to give customers shoes that are custom made for them — in the store, on the spot. I have been covering 3D Printing for over 20 years in my Technotrends Newsletter, and at first the technology was used for rapid prototyping. Over the past few years,…
Author: Lloyd Graff
I walked the floor of IMTS two days this week. I saw some impressive machine tools and robots, made some important business contacts, ate at Connie’s Pizza twice and saw a lot of sports cars in booths that seemed to be placed there for no reason. Was IMTS 2014 a productive show for me? Yes, but much of the flavor — the FUN that for decades defined IMTS — has been stripped away like steel scale passing through a Cincinnati centerless. This year’s IMTS booth budgeters must have not realized that it is not 2010. The time of austerity in…
The International Manufacturing Technology Show, IMTS, takes place this week in Chicago. It has a lot of meaning and symbolism for me. It brings the community of those who make manufacturing their life’s work together in one place every two years. A lot of the folks walking the floor and manning the exhibits are grizzled veterans of a dozen or more of these grueling events. They are filled with memories of past shows and the characters, some dead and many retired, who walked the aisles and shared drinks in the evenings. IMTS to me is a testament to grit, stamina…
For those few people reading this who have been dwelling in a cave in Greenland all summer and still don’t know what the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is, I shall enlighten you. In July and August of 2014, inspired by similar fundraisers, some folks came up with the CRAZY idea that people should call out contacts on social networks asking them to give $100 to ALS research, or in lieu of the donation, pour a bucket of ice water on their heads. Variations evolved in which people post videos online pouring the bucket of ice on themselves and then still…
With elections coming up we are hearing more talk about raising the minimum wage. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel advocates $13 per hour. Seattle is phasing in a $15 rate. New York’s left wing Mayor, Di Blasio is blathering on for the need to lift it substantially in the city. President Obama obviously is promoting it as a good way to save the Democratic majority in the Senate in 2014. My do-gooder side sympathizes with the plight of the $8 an hour worker cutting lawns or flipping burgers. But the sad fact is that a significantly higher minimum wage in…
As we diligently rub metal on metal, producing the stuff that makes the wheels roll smoothly, the big money in the economy continues to flow to the world of ideas, entertainment and health. A few thoughts to connect. Monday Amazon agreed to buy Twitch for $970 million. Google thought they were going to get it but Amazon swooped in at the last minute. Twitch is a site that broadcasts online video game competitions. They aspire to be the ESPN of video gaming. Who knew? But this is a big business and growing fast. Twitch is in the top 15 most…
As Chicago wraps its mind around 3D printing for consumers, business and transformative projects including the UI Labs-led Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, there’s a document that provides some broad insights. The Wohlers report, released each spring for almost two decades and covering in depth the state of 3D printing and more sophisticated additive manufacturing used by industry, shows a field increasingly focused on high-end manufacturing. The 2014 report adds an important layer to the familiar picture of 3D printing, in which everyday consumers can buy and use tabletop devices suitable for the home hobbyist. The Midwest plays a…
I was going to write about the important stuff — unemployment, Fed policy, Ferguson, and the price of the new Hepatitis C wonder drug. But then the Little League World Series came on TV and I knew what really spoke to me. I’m one of the millions of men and women hooked by the Little League World Series — broadcast on ESPN, brought to you by Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. I know it’s all brilliantly packaged by the media flacks, but the authenticity of the 11-13 year-old boys and one amazing girl have lifted the event from obscurity to center stage. A…
This basic truth haunted Brian Nowicki for years as he moved through important jobs in the distribution of tooling and machine tools for 30 years. The opportunity he saw was in the dead inventory sitting in the Lista and Vidmar cabinets all over the world, filled with perfectly usable cutting tools that were no longer needed by manufacturers or couldn’t be sold by the Sandviks, Iscars and Kennametals because they had developed slightly more advanced cutting materials to push. Tooling Marketplace is Nowicki’s online answer to the problem of unloved inventory. It is an Internet supermarket of carbide and other…
A principle my parents have repeated to me is that nobody in the world is a mind reader. Therefore, to get what you want from other people you have to be as clear as you possibly can. I usually hate going to a new barber because they ask me tough hair questions that I do not feel qualified to answer. They ask things like, “Do you want it short on the sides?” “How much should I take off the top?” “What gage should I use?” “Do you want it thinned out?” I’m not a barber. I don’t know this stuff.…