Thursday, April 2, 2009

Yanko Design - Latest Posts

Yanko Design - Latest Posts

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The Key To My Memory

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 12:18 AM PDT

Let's rewind a bit here and see what I found on the YD pages with regards to USB Stick designs. Some rectangular blobs with no aesthetic appeal whatsoever! Sheesh! A far cry from the sorry Humping Dog or Star Wars Mimobots, the radical USB's featured on YD should include elegant alternatives like the Clé. Crafted to look like a Victorian era key, the ceramic bodied stick holds either 2GB or 4GB and would look pretty fashionable with your comp.

Designer: Alissia Melka-Teichroew for byAMT Studio

Since we are talking about memory, allow me to jog yours; here are some radical USB designs we've done before.

Credit Card Size USB Card by Jurjen Rolf for Freecom

Dominos Pendrive by Marcos Breder

Wine Stopper USB Memory Stick by Arwye Wan

USBee by Damjan Stankovic

Asterisco Hub by Joel Escalona

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Camping Trip Also Means Cooking

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 12:05 AM PDT

There is no stopping the imagination of a designer, sometimes they come up with fictitious tech-specs and at other times they open up an imaginary company to promote their designs. Our friend Rob here has taken the support of a fictional company called Camplite to tout his Aduro camp stove as a camping essential; I think that's really sweet! He's sitting on the fence regarding the kind of fuel that Aduro will use, however he's very sure about his design.

To refill the stove with fuel, one would simply have to unscrew the foot, in line with the control knob, and then either pour (if liquid) or screw in (if gas) the raw fuel. Ideally you should be doing this re-fueling at home before the trip.

With regards to the form of the stove, Rob has opted for clean, smooth lines (no sharp edges here to rip bags) and incorporated 3 rubberized feet to add stability for all-terrain usage. These feet also serve to elevate the stove enough so that air can be drawn from below and the flame stays away from the ground and any debris.

Designer: Rob Prickett & Matt Lundy

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Never Stop Folding Bikes Smaller

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 12:01 AM PDT

Perhaps you are a bike folding aficionado and/or industrial designer of bikes. Perhaps you’re familiar with the recent Yanko bike folding feature. (It’s still in the top 10 posts for the week!) Perhaps you wanted more? Here you go. It’s called the “IziBi” bicycle; it folds so much, so very much you wouldn’t believe it.

Single front and rear suspension. Frame made of carbon fiber reinforced polymer, direct drive system on the back made of aluminum alloy. Front half slides into back half, back half unlatches and folds across front half, pedals fold up. So many folds. So many.

Do you think it’ll hold together? Is this reasonably nice looking? Will people buy it? I’m looking at you, Paul, Migo, Carl, M.S.W., Jessica… You’ve tried the bikes, bought the bikes, and even tried to hustle the bikes.

Will it blend?

Designer: Renato Gschwend

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This Ornate Scroll Is A Gadget

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 12:00 AM PDT

It's inlayed with some mother-of-pearl work and looks like the Korean 'Najawnchilgi' lacquer ware craft, but Gyo-Ji is actually a translation device. Compared to the ViewTrans that we saw recently, this scroll features a rolled-up screen and allows you to write the foreign script directly onto it for translation. Another way of getting the job done is to place the screen on the foreign script and then hit the translation button. At this rate I think translation dictionaries and handbooks will soon be redundant.

Designers: Soonkyu Jang, Taehee Woo, Yonghuk Yim & Chung Lee

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3D TV Glasses, Geek is Chic

Posted: 01 Apr 2009 11:37 AM PDT

3D TV glasses make the movie or television show you’re watching look exponentially more real - with objects flying off the screen and careening in your direction, and creepy characters reaching out to grab you. Wearing 3-D glasses makes you feel like you’re a part of the action – Good times

Advances in 3D cinema and TV have advanced dramatically in recent months, but the technology is still over decade away from ditching those dodgy glasses that reduce us to looking like time lords from the 80's. That's a whole ten years of not looking very cool. Bad times.

Designer Chris Nobles solves this by creating something chic and retro. These wireless sunglasses have infared sensors in the logo area which communicate to the TV its location. The left and right lens are configured to give two opposing images generating the 3D effect.

Designer: Chris Nobles for HJC Design

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Pyromaniacs Hide

Posted: 01 Apr 2009 11:32 AM PDT

For first responders, the performance of their equipment directly impacts their ability to execute their tasks. A fireman's back-mounted pack exemplifies this need for optimal design. The demands are extreme – the heavy pack must fit the body perfectly and distribute the weight evenly in order to minimize the feeling of bulk and mass. The current backpacks firefighters carry typify the “one size fits all” mentality. Evolving this to the next step requires a fundamentally new approach to the design process.

Future firefighters will have a slipstream backpack called the PyroPack that fits tightly against the back. Plates of armor would extend down their arm, giving them protection from falling objects with a drychem nozzle located at the wrist to snuff out spot fires.

THE PROCESS

The stocking-clad bodies of the show's hosts were scanned by CyberFX, using a Cyberware laser scanner. Once surfaced, the now-digital body is introduced into a Pro/Engineer model comprising both fixed geometric entities which would remain unchanged per instantiation, and trimming surfaces, which serve to define portions of the body that ultimately be fabricated as body-mating contours. The body surface is offset, sliced, and joined with the existing CAD geometry, and a bespoke pack is instantly, automatically created. The user's individual bone structure, body asymmetries, and spine curvature all drive the final resulting geometry. The design compensates for flexure in spinal areas that need to twist or adjust to body movement. Anticipated shape changes, particularly around the waist, were designed to be especially flexible, so that the geometry would never confine the user should they gain weight. The design incorporates captive parts – hinges that connect the arm components as well as a ball-and-socket connecting hip belt to pack frame. This allows the hips to move in their 'figure 8' motion as the user walks, while still supporting the weight from the pack.

DIGITAL FABRICATION

Now in digital format, the shape needs to be actualized. Traditional CNC machining cannot create the thin walls, the extensive undercuts, the interlocking mechanisms nor the hollow cable and hose conduits that the PyroPack requires, especially not considering the time and budget requirements demanded by the project. Selective Laser Sintering was selected for the process, and a flame-retardant polyamide was the chosen material.

And EOS P730 laser-sintering machine is able to handle the large physical size of the backpack. The material used is polyamide – a strong, light, durable polymer, infused with flame retardant. The resulting parts are dusted off and ready for final assembly with the internal components and ready for use.

The arm 'armor' is similarly fabricated with interlocking upper and lower arm parts, with an integral hose extending from elbow to wrist, allowing the firefighter to spray dry-chem 'Spiderman style'. Like the backpack, this is designed based on trimmed offsets of the user's arm scan.

Completing the product suite is a headset, comprising a sintered clamshell case housing electronics and thermal imaging camera. A waterclear SLA slider component allows the user to deploy a heads-up display in smoky environments. This was achieved by mounting a display into a spherical gimbal, fabricated of 17-4 stainless using DMLS. Although these parts were not geometrically complex, the rapid turnaround time required by the filming schedule drove the process choice.

SHOWTIME

The pack was attached to the show's host, and he navigated a smoky room guided only by the heads-up display. He then extinguished a fire using the 'arm hose', attached to the drychem extinguisher located within the pack. All the while, he marveled at how he barely noticed the weight or bulk of the heavy pack.

The Pyropack portion of the episode received relatively little airtime, ironically, because it came together exactly as anticipated. And since suspense was an unwritten requirement of any televised story, the success of RM undermined its achievements.

Cost: Each pack would cost around $7K, likely lower as machines improve speed and resolution. This is comparable to the cost of a current pack, which comprises many welded parts and low-quantity fabrication runs.

Weight: Sintered polyamide is inherently light, strong and flexible, offering every attribute needed to create a high-performance pack of this sort. With proper FEA optimization, it can be assumed that this pack would be comparable in weight to its current counterpart

Performance: The integrated, 'ball and socket' mounted waist belt and back suspension allows a perfect fit, thereby minimizing the likelihood of back problems, fatigue, and discomfort during use. Even the best 'one-size-fits-all' product cannot reach this level of user centricity.

Adaptability: RM, by its very nature, invites on-the-fly design changes. As new technologies arise, problems are discovered, or niche specialty components come about, the parametric CAD model can immediately adapt to implement needed enhancements.

Well done Scott, bravo!

Designer: Scott Summit

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Different Faces

Posted: 01 Apr 2009 11:22 AM PDT

The UNI watch has a customizable digital face. You can choose fonts, colors, backgrounds and hand designs with just a few clicks in the included software. It’s made of that weird soft touch plastic. Something about that texture keeps me petting it over and over. Even tho the pictures don’t show it very well, the display is a full color OLED. A built-in accelerometer turns the display on only when your wrist turns and the mini-USB port makes it easy to connect to your computer.

Designer: Takemura Ori

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