I'm coming to COLORADO! Catch me in DENVER on Jan 22 at The Tattered Cover<, and in COLORADO SPRINGS from Jan 23–25 where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine. Then I'll be in OTTAWA on Jan 28 at Perfect Books and in TORONTO with Tim Wu on Jan 30.
If Andrew "bunnie" Huang didn't actually exist, I'd swear he was a character out of a(n extraordinarily technologically well-informed) cyberpunk novel. Every time I interact with this legendary hardware hacker, he blows my mind with some incredible project or insight that permanently alters how I think about technology.
I first met bunnie when he came to EFF for help with the threats he'd received from Microsoft. At the time, bunnie was an electrical engineering grad student at MIT, and he'd taken the bootloader locks on the new Xbox platform as a personal affront and challenge. He applied his prodigious skill and talent to these digital handcuffs, and in short order, he had broken the Xbox and installed Linux on it. MIT's general counsel immediately washed its hands of any responsibility to defend this young grad student from bullying by a corporate monopolist, hanging him out to dry. So he turned to us – and we got his back. You can read all about it in Hacking the Xbox, his canonical work about hardware hacking and technological freedom (it's free!):
In the many years since, I've been lucky enough to count bunnie as a friend, colleague and comrade, albeit one I only physically run into every year or so, usually at some tech event or on the playa at Burning Man, where he still camps with the MIT crew at The Institute.
I just got to see bunnie in person again, over Christmas week at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg. He gave a late-night presentation with his collaborator Sean "xobs" Cross, entitled "Xous: A Pure-Rust Rethink of the Embedded Operating System":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbWWGkyIBGM
Don't let the technical-sounding title intimidate you! This was a banger of a talk, and as with every bunnie Huang production, it left a pleasant and persistent aftertaste.
The background for this talk is bunnie's obsession with building a trustworthy computer. For decades, bunnie has been chasing the dream of a computer whose every component – operating system, drivers, firmware, and hardware designs – are open to inspection. Bunnie's reasoning here is that anything that can't be inspected (and, by extension, modified) by its users is a spot where bad guys can hide bad stuff, and where lurking bugs can fester until they are exploited by bad guys. Remember the spectacular (and still mysterious) claims that Apple's servers had all been compromised with minuscule hardware bugs? The single best explanation of that you will find comes from bunnie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQhWitJ1As
Bunnie was doing all this before there was an "open source hardware" movement, and he remains at its vanguard. His "Precursor" project is a reference hardware platform where every component is open to inspection and modification, from the chassis to the random number generator:
One area of especial concern and interest for bunnie is the promise and peril of the "system-on-a-chip" (SoC). This is exactly what it sounds like: a cheap chip that incorporates everything you need to do full-fledged computing, including interfaces and drivers for networks, screens, peripherals, etc. SoCs are ubiquitous. You find them in things like individual car engine components and inkjet printer cartridges, and each one is a whole-ass computer, capable of running some really ugly malware.
As bunnie explained back in 2020, there are two problems with SoCs: first, they are packaged such that the silicon traces inside of them can't be readily inspected, and second, they are so expensive to fabricate that someone like bunnie can't possibly come up with the millions needed to make an open, trustworthy, inspectable alternative:
That's where bunnie's CCC talk comes in. The chips that SoCs are etched upon have lots of space (relatively speaking – we're talking about nanometer-scale circuits, after all). Even after an SoC designer packs in a ton of extra traces to handle oddball applications, the chip is still mostly "dark matter" – blank silicon.
The first half of bunnie and xobs's talk concerns itself with "Xous," a secure operating system for an SoC, written in Rust. But the second half of the talk tackles the problem of procuring an SoC that you can trust to run Xous on. That's where this dark matter comes in.
Bunnie's day-job is consulting on extremely gnarly, high-stakes, high-value hardware design and manufacturing, so naturally, he's got lots of clients and contacts in the SoC manufacturing world. He approached one of these companies with a proposal: let me tape out a whole separate chip that fits in the dark matter for one of your upcoming chips. Adding these traces adds virtually no cost to the production, and adding bunnie's chips to the production run actually saves the manufacturer money, because the prices drop when the quantities increase.
The idea is to put two chips on the chip, and badge most of them with the OEM's branding, while a small rump of the chips will have bunnie's branding (he calls it the Baochip). On bunnie's chips, the traces to the OEM chip will be physically cut, meaning that the Baochips will just be Baochips – the original chip will be inaccessible and unusable.
What's more, bunnie didn't just fit one chip into the OEM's "dark matter" – he fit five separate, specialized SoCs into the unused space. Remember, the beauty of SoCs is that once they're taped out and sent to production, the cost of an actual chip is peanuts, meaning that these Baochips are cheap as hell.
Even better: the traces on these chips are scaled to be readily inspected using relatively low-cost equipment, meaning that many parties around the world can grab one of these chips, stick it in a machine, and compare the traces on the chip to the free, open sourcefile that was used to produce it, confirming that there are no nasty surprises lurking inside.
This was such an exciting talk, and as I sat through it, I had this nagging feeling that it reminded me of something else I'd learned about years before, though I couldn't quite place it. Finally, as bunnie and xobs were stepping off the stage, I had it – it reminded me of another bunnie talk I'd seen – this one at The Institute, the MIT Burning Man camp, more than a decade prior.
Back in 2015, bunnie designed and built a set of really cool, wearable radio-linked badges for his campmates, which would help them locate one another on the playa at night. These badges were really cool – they used a genetic algorithm to "have sex" with one another and mutate their color patterns. Bunnie even worked in a "consent" mechanism!
But the really cool part that stuck with me was the manufacturing story. Bunnie wanted to fabricate custom injection-molded plastic enclosures for these pendants, but injection molding – like chip design – is a mass production phenomenon, with sky-high setup costs and incredibly cheap per-unit costs thereafter.
So (and this might sound familiar) bunnie reached out to a die-maker that he worked with in China and said, "Hey, the next time you're contracted to mill out a die for a client, let me know if there's any extra space on the face of the die, and I'll provide you with a shapefile you can carve out of this 'dark matter.'" This doesn't add any cost to the die setup, and it means that bunnie can run just a couple dozen injection-molded, custom cases at a cost of pennies per unit.
I grabbed bunnie later that night and mentioned this old Burning Man project to him and he said, "You know, I haven't ever thought of it, but you're right, there's definitely a throughline between the two projects."
I asked him what he called this technique and he shrugged and said he didn't really have a name for it, but he thought of it as "piggybacking," which seems like a good name to me.
It seems to me that these two kinds of manufacturing can't be the only ones that can be "piggybacked" onto. That's what motivated me to write this post – to get people thinking about these high-setup/low-unit cost production types that might be piggybacked for small batch, delightful projects like bunnie's.
Well, that, and just to do one of my periodic bunnie Huang appreciation posts. If there's one person that I'd recommend people pay more attention to, it's him. He's also a terrific communicator, and an indecently great writer. My readers might be familiar with him thanks to the afterword he contributed to Little Brother:
https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
More recently, he wrote a fantastic intro for last year's Science Comics Computers: How Digital Computers Work, a brilliant middle-grades graphic novel that uses steampunk dinosaurs to explain digital logic and the building blocks of computation:
He also co-authored a fascinating research paper with Edward Snowden, after the two of them collaborated on a daughter-board that spots otherwise untraceable malware:
That's not bunnie's only sweet hardware hack, of course. Check out the insanely clever design for a contact-tracing dongle he prototyped for the EU in 2020:
But really, you owe it to yourself to read bunnie at book length, and his best book is 2016's The Hardware Hacker, a tour-de-force, lay-friendly exegesis on the theory and practice of hardware hacking:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Crafting the perfect bite of meat: Engineers develop metamaterials that mimic muscle and fat architecture
In a new publication in Nature Communications, Israeli and Palestinian engineers from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem pioneered the use of metamaterials to create whole cuts of meat. The work leverages cutting-edge materials science to overcome the long-standing challenges of replicating the texture and structure of traditional meat while offering a scalable and cost-effective production method that surpasses 3D printing technology.
Metamaterials are composite materials whose properties arise from their structure rather than their composition. By adopting principles typically used in the aerospace industry, the team, led by Dr. Mohammad Ghosheh and Prof. Yaakov Nahmias from Hebrew University, developed meat analogs that mimic the intricate architecture of muscle and fat. These analogs are produced using injection molding, a high-capacity manufacturing process borrowed from the polymer industry, marking the first time this technology has been applied to alternative meat production.
China Sanshun’s HLG Injection Molding Machines support full automation for faster and smarter production. Tasks like part removal, assembly, and packaging become easy, saving time and labor. These machines also handle inserts, colors, and multi-materials with ease. With better recycling options and eco-friendly features, they offer great value.
Have you heard about a manual injection molding machine? Along with 3D printers, the following device can be a handy tool for manufacturing at home and small business workshops. Can it be a solution for recycling failed or unused 3D prints?
Achieve Faster & More Efficient Changeovers with SWAP Valves & FasTie Systems
SMARTFLOW® SWAP Valves and FasTie quick ejector systems reduce changeover time related to ejector tie-in and water line removal by up to 90%, increasing the uptime of plastics manufacturing machinery for plastics manufacturers.
When it comes to plastics manufacturing, speed is everything. Without the right tools, manufacturers can face lengthy gaps in production during changeovers, and more, decreasing profitability and productivity.
With tools such as SMARTFLOW, SWAP Valves and FasTie quick ejector systems, injection molders can dramatically reduce mold change time for faster, more efficient workflows.
FasTie Quick Ejector Tie-In Systems
A FasTie system quickly “ties in” the mold ejector plate to the press ejection system within an injection molding press, helping to increase the speed of changeovers.
Ejector tie-ins are notoriously difficult without ease of access where ejector tie-in takes place. FasTie systems mount directly to the machine, minimizing mold change time with an easy, cost effective setup. The system is available in three sizes (1-inch, 1-3/8-inch, and 2-inch) and is ideal for most injection molding machines. A FasTie system is accessible and compact, and easily installs into existing molds and ejector plates with no additional machining required.
Traditionally, ejector rods are manually installed in difficult-to-reach areas. With this setup, changeover time can be lengthy, which results in time that the molding machine is not productive. The FasTie system automates the connection between the machine and the mold, alleviating the need for manual ejector tie-in.
Depending on the machine and molds, the FasTie system can save injection molders up to 90% of the time they would otherwise have to spend on tying in their ejector systems.
SMARTFLOW SWAP Valves
SWAP valves are simple and manually selectable valves that supply both cooling water to the mold during processing, and air to purge the water from the mold before a mold change.
These valves tie directly to the water systems that cool the molds and, like FasTie, easily connect to your existing equipment. With SWAP valves, manufacturers don’t have to worry about making a mess when changing over lines that are full of water. Instead, the valves purge the water from the lines prior to unhooking. The entire process only takes 2-3 minutes before all hoses can be disconnected.
SWAP valves bring speed and cleanliness to your manufacturing operations, transforming a task that was once time-consuming and labor intensive into an automated operation. Draining lines can be both messy and unsanitary for the work environment, creating a risk of slip and fall accidents and other safety hazards. With SWAP valves, plastic molders can have peace of mind in a fast, secure and clean operation.
Reducing Downtime from the Ground Up
SWAP valves and FasTie systems can provide up to a 90% increase in efficiency, cutting downtime between changeovers to a fraction of what it used to be.
At Plastixs, we work closely with our clients to ensure the solutions they invest in are tailored to their exact needs. If you’re not sure which tools are right for you, contact us and we can help you identify the best products for your business.
Contact us to learn more about decreasing injection molding changeover time
Plastic injection molding is very versatile approach of producing parts and items. It is one of the favored techniques for making parts because it has numerous advantages over other approaches of plastic molding. Not just is plastic injection molding easier and also more reputable, it is additionally incredibly efficient. You should believe about utilizing this approach to manufacture parts.
Below are 5 major benefits of using injection molding for manufacturing plastic components and also components.
1. Thorough Functions and also Complex Geometry
The injection molds undergo extremely high pressure. As a result the plastic within the molds is pressed harder versus the mold contrasted to any other molding procedure. Because of this excessively high pressure, it is feasible to add a big amount of information into the layout of the component.
Due to high pressure throughout the molding process, facility and also detailed shapes can quickly be developed and made which or else would certainly have been too complicated and pricey to produce.
2. High Effectiveness
As soon as the injection molds have actually been designed to the consumer's specs as well as the presses pre-programmed, the actual molding process is extremely fast compared to other approaches of molding. Plastic injection molding process barely takes times and this permits even more parts to be manufactured from a solitary mold.
3. Enhanced Toughness
In plastic injection molding, it is possible to make use of fillers in the injection molds. These filler decrease the density of the plastic while it being molded as well as likewise help in adding higher toughness to the component after it has been formed. In fields where parts need to be solid and sturdy, plastic injection has an alternative that other molding processes do not provide.
4. Ability to Utilize Multiple Plastic Kind Concurrently
One of the significant advantages of using plastic injection molding for producing components is the capacity to utilize different sorts of plastic simultaneously. This can be made with the assistance of co-injection molding, which removes the fret about utilizing a details type of plastic.
5. Automation to Conserve Manufacturing Expenses
Plastic injection molding is an automatic process. A bulk of the injection molding process is done by devices as well as robotics which a single operator can manage as well as manage.
Furthermore, automation enables making accurate and exact injection molds. Computer assisted style (CAD) and also computer helped production (WEBCAM) permit close tolerances during the making of the molds.
All-time Low Line
Utilizing injection molding likewise guarantees the components manufactured barely call for any type of job after the manufacturing. This is because the parts have more or less a finished appearance after they are expelled from the injection molds. Today, plastic injection molding is an eco-friendly process. The scrap plastic created throughout the manufacturing process is reground as well as re-used. Hence, the process creates extremely little waste.
Molds are usually made from steel or aluminum as well as are precision-machined to create their specific attributes. A fluid product is fed right into a warmed barrel, blended, and also fed into the mold's cavity, eventually cooling down as well as setting to the mold's arrangement.
Which software application is best for Mold style?
For companies that create injection molds, SOLIDWORKS Plastics, assists predicts and also stays clear of producing problems in the earliest phases of mold design, getting rid of expensive mold rework, as well as enhancing mold high quality.
What is the difference in between a die and a mold?
Dies as well as molds are both tools for shaping. Dies are used to form sheet metal and also various other metal forms. A common application is the making of car body components. On the other hand, molds are utilized in injection molding such as with dissolved material or casting molten metal.
What is Mold tool?
The mold tool is the crucial component in the injection moulding of plastic: It offers a passage for liquified plastic to travel from the injection cylinder (barrel) to the mould cavity. It allows the air which would certainly be caught inside when the mould near get away. ... It cools down the moulding till it sets.
Can you mold plastic?
Molding plastic is an enjoyable, inexpensive means to develop unique pieces or replicas of your favorite items. You might buy a mold or develop your own custom molds out of recyclable molding products, silicone, as well as or plaster.
What is mold cost?
For a simple part, say a watch case, the mold price can be as low as $200. However, for even more facility products with slim dimensional tolerance requirements (i.e., plastic pallets), the mold expense can be as high as $40,000. That stated, for the majority of durable goods, the mold cost is somewhere in between $150 to $800.
What is core as well as cavity?
The core is the male component which creates the inner form of molding. The cavity is the women component which forms exterior form of molding.
Why are molds so pricey?
The main aspects that influence the price of an injection mold are the size as well as details of the part, the product made use of, and the variety of parts being created.
What is distinction between molding and casting?
Molding or Mold making is the act of developing the cavity/ kind that carries an unfavorable or reverse impact of an original design. ... Casting is the act of pouring fluid material into the cavity of a mold.
Which software application is utilized for product style?
