manufacturing
Vehicles
11:45AM Damian Francis | Without meaning any disrespect to the workers at the Tsutsumi Manufacturing plant in Toyota City, watching them work as like watching the perfect ant farm. It’s rare to see such organisation in human activity. Although being that this is Japan (the Switzerland of the east perhaps) it wasn’t overly surprising. More »
Infiltrating Toyota’s Tsutsumi Manufacturing Plant
11:45AM Damian Francis | Without meaning any disrespect to the workers at the Tsutsumi Manufacturing plant in Toyota City, watching them work as like watching the perfect ant farm. It’s rare to see such organisation in human activity. Although being that this is Japan (the Switzerland of the east perhaps) it wasn’t overly surprising. More » 
Science
NASA Can Now Create Objects Using Electron Beams
1:30PM Jesus Diaz | Instead of using traditional 3D manufacturing, NASA has developed an electron beam fabrication system capable of creating any object. And hey, if it uses electron beams. Electron beams, people. That means it’s awesome. More »
Games
PS3 Is Now 70 Percent Cheaper To Make, Could Mean Price Cuts
2:45AM Sean Fallon | During a Sony conference call, corporate CEO Nobuyuki Oneda revealed that the PS3 is roughly 70% cheaper to make than it was at launch. Estimates would put that figure at around $US240—down from $US800. More »
Phones
ISuppli: IPhone 3GS Costs $US178.96 To Build; $US4 More Than Previous Model
2:26AM Sean Fallon | iSuppli’s latest teardown has revealed that bill of materials cost (BOM) and manufacturing cost of the iPhone 3GS comes to $US178.96. That’s a little over $US4 more than the previous iPhone and about $US8 more than the Palm Pre. More »
Gadgets
iSuppli: The Kindle 2 Costs $US185.49 to Build
10:33PM Mark Wilson | According to an iSuppli teardown, the Kindle 2 costs $US185 to build—or about half the device’s $US360 sticker price. That’s $US176.83 in parts, $8.66 in construction costs. Here’s the major component breakdown: More »
Phones
What the 27 Mobile Phones Produced Per Second Looks Like
6:40AM Mark Wilson | We’re inundated with stats about everything from babies dying to pounds of pizza eaten, but what does all that stuff actually look like? More »
Robots
How Frozen Pizzas Are Made (Singularity and One Badass Sauce Gun)
12:40AM Mark Wilson | The BBC has a fantastic, 3-minute clip touring a frozen pizza factory that manufactures 2 million pizzas a week. There’s something about precision, large-scale automation, even when the technology isn’t necessary cutting edge, that’s even more telling of our technological place in the world than sleek touchscreen phones and GPS navigators. Notice the eerie lack of humans, the cold airshot of sauce onto crust and the phallic towers of pepperoni being diced to scraps by machines. Has Man sold his soul to the robots so soon? And just for some crappy frozen pizzas? [BBC via MAKE] More »
Vehicles
Mass Produced Carbon Fibre Cars Down the Road
4:00PM Gizmodo US Edition | Japanese textile maker Toray Industries is on the road to mass producing carbon fibre cars, bringing us ever closer to the day when the lightweight automobiles are on the market for more than just really rich racing enthusiasts. The company said it’s developed a new carbon fibre processing method that moulds auto platforms in 10 minutes. That’s two and a half hours shorter than what current methods allow. More »
Science
