{"id":13628,"date":"2016-02-19T17:57:32","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T09:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seeedstudio.com\/blog\/?p=13628"},"modified":"2018-10-19T10:22:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T02:22:27","slug":"pop-up-factory-at-oreillys-solid-conference-and-a-walk-through-in-seeeds-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seeedstudio.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/19\/pop-up-factory-at-oreillys-solid-conference-and-a-walk-through-in-seeeds-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop up factory with Seeed at O\u2019Reilly\u2019s Solid Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pop-up Factory is a production line that manufactured connected devices on the floor of the Solid 2015 conference. It was an experiment at Solid tests a manufacturing style pioneered by pirates. Below are posts that we gathered from\u00a0\u00a0amazing\u00a0documentation done by David Cranor <\/em>(Former CEO of FormLab). Enjoy!<\/p>\n

Why building pop-up factory in Solid Conference?<\/h3>\n

\"pop<\/p>\n

Building hardware is hard, indeed. Until we have general purpose\u00a0matter compilers, development of hardware products will differ dramatically from the development of pure software.\u00a0But all of that is changing as the development process for hardware begins to look like the development process for software. That\u2019s how these no-name Chinese companies do it with a small fraction of the resources that their Western counterparts have. In other words, these companies use radically dynamic allocation of expertise and open information flow to turn a profit on low-volume hardware,\u00a0basing their designs on previous or modularized ones. Furthermore, when you consider that the kids in Tahrir Square were\u00a0most likely not using $800 iPhones\u00a0to connect to Twitter, but cheap smartphones created by Shanzhai companies, the movement begins to sound a whole lot more serious.<\/p>\n

This radical shift in manufacturing is so exciting that we\u2019ve decided to try it out for ourselves.\u00a0We\u2019re going to build a pop-up factory at Solid, right in the exhibit hall, to produce electronics live during the conference. Spools of raw electronic components and 3D printing resin will go in, and fully functioning electronic devices will come out.<\/p>\n

A visit to Seeed’s Agile Manufacture Center<\/h3>\n

\"Alike<\/p>\n

The electronics that will come out are Alike bands<\/a>,\u00a0social-networking wearables designed by\u00a0Marcelo Coelho. We have partnered with\u00a0Seeed Studio,\u00a0Formlabs,\u00a0Proto Labs, and\u00a0ANT Wireless<\/strong>\u00a0to produce 1,500 Alike bands \u2014 most of them in China on extremely fast turnaround, but about a third of them on rapid, lightweight manufacturing equipment in Solid\u2019s exhibit hall.<\/p>\n

Marcelo Coelho\u00a0and I went to China to work with sponsor Seeed Studio\u2019s\u00a0Shenzhen facility in order to produce parts for more than a thousand Alike wristbands.\u00a0Working with Seeed project manager Vivian Zhong<\/strong>, we set up in a conference room for the week to organize logistics for getting neoprene straps and assembled printed circuit boards (PCBA) produced and shipped. We also worked with her to source the components that will be used for the manufacturing demonstration in the Pop-up Factory itself at Solid.<\/p>\n