Hello Inventables Community!
My name’s Dave, self-appointed evangelist for a rural, non-profit learning center my friend Lou & I co-founded a few years ago. We play on the side of STEM we like to call ‘Mechatronics’, de-mystifying how things work & encouraging making things.
Out of an email conversation, Zach Kaplan, CEO of Inventables, encouraged me to post the new & pretty cool to us product family ‘before’ prototyping, giving all of you an opportunity to share your ideas, experience & contribute to creating something useful for others.
A place for things & everything in it’s place. We’ve made all manner of structures to hold our tools & projects, using tree parts, metal parts, commercial products, kee klamps, speed-rail, welded, bolted, you-name-it.
Then we found a very well thought out industrial product from the ‘Lean Thinking Methodology’ and said ‘ahha!’. Plastic coated pipe & shiny fittings, strong enough to hold several hundred pounds on a shelf or work surface.
It has a unique advantage, it is ‘easy’ to fabricate any structure you need or want. It is ‘easy’ to change the structure, add, adjust or remove parts without taking the whole thing apart.
Working with the product, our thought is to create a kit of pre-cut lengths that make it fast & easy to fabricate & tune your vision for a workspace. Like an erector set for the diy community. Golden ratio proportions in several delicious colors, adaptable to almost any need, affordable.
It’s being used for 3D printer stands, would make your X-Carve look very professional & also provide an exoskeleton to support cooling, vacuum, lights & more. Easily add wheels, doors, wiring clips, accessory clips, hooks, part & tool storage.
We’re just starting to use Fusion 360, we do have some useful step files and we’re very open to your ideas & participation. We’re lifelong fans of electronics, Louie holds a few patents, we’ve learned a lot from the care & feeding of our cnc mill, we have a very cool RPi based digital signage app if you do expos, poster sessions, etc. (and you can fabricate your booth & transport containers from these diyElements). I’m working on a 1500 watt portable power pack, eBike or a week in the woods.
What do you want to make?
