enginoor

There are larger industrial robots that use secondary encoders to improve "out of the box" accuracy for more demanding tasks. The secondary joint feedback is paired with a kinematic model of the robot structure/mechanics to accurately predict where the robot tool point actually is.

https://electroimpact.com/Products/Robots/AchievingAccuracy

The Voyager team did win the 1980 Collier Trophy which is the nobel prize of aerospace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collier_Trophy

Shane Wighton's story of getting hired at Formlabs is interesting.

He wanted to work for the company and didn't have a way in. He built a better version of their slicing software over a long weekend and sent it to the Formlabs team. He was hired very quickly after they saw it.

https://shane.engineer/blog/how-to-get-hired-at-a-startup-wh...

https://shane.engineer/stl-preprocessor

The idea of a very targeted side project seems novel. Build for an audience of 1 specific company. Any other examples?

I would recommend Citizenfour if you haven't seen it. It's a documentary where you essentially see Snowden leak the documents from his Hong Kong hotel room. It's amazing the footage exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenfour

Any suggestions for a mechanical engineer who has some coding aptitude and wants to switch careers? I'm self taught and have mostly worked on hobby projects. I have some professional controls experience programming automated machinery (PLC). My lack of formal CS training seems like a real barrier to jumping into a full-time software role.

As a long time CAD user I was surprised to learn that a CAD kernel exists as a concept and that the same kernel is licensed and used in competing CAD packages.

Solidworks, Siemens NX, and OnShape all use the Parasolid kernel.

Inventor and Fusion360 use the ShapeManager kernel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel

Zeloof's father runs a sheet metal fabrication shop that makes components for other manufacturers. They do excellent work, I've worked with them in the past. I'm guessing his father knows engineers in all sorts of industries.

The common term is "pneumatics" and the components are prevalent in all automation and manufacturing. The air required is typically compressed on site.

Pneumatic actuators are relatively inexpensive, have a binary state that is easy to control, and offer a high power density.

If anyone is interested in factory automation I'm working on a site to catalog different processes. A good design can often be recycled into a similar machine.

https://automate.engineer/

I'm mostly building it for myself but I thought other people may enjoy.

I'm trying to design a vibratory bowl feeder that I can 3D print. Designing features to align or reject parts is a bit of a dark art and it's requiring a few more iterations than expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl_feeder

I feel that GOES satellite imagery is a hidden gem, I'm surprised more people aren't working with it.

The imagery is available at https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/ but is better explored at https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/

I have personally built a Twitter bot to collect and animate imagery throughout the day. I have it running for two locations currently.

Continental US: https://twitter.com/satellite_CONUS

NorthEast US: https://twitter.com/satellite_NE

It's amazing to see storm formation visually.

ProtoLabs is already successful in this space. I wonder what competitive advantage CloudNC has?

Construction is highly automated. Wing skins are created with automated fiber placement (AFP)

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/massi...

The wings are assembled horizontally similar to the to A350.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYXiz7GX4FI