Matching Designers & Manufacturers for Nearby Production
As designers and makers, we are always interested in new developments in fabrication technology and software that is making its way to everyday consumers.
On Tuesday night, a few Designers from Beyond Design attended a launch event for MadeInChicago.org – a joint initiative of the City of Chicago and the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC) and powered by a shared platform developed by the Urban Manufacturing Alliance (UMA) and Elihuu, a web tool connecting production ready designers with a community of approved manufacturers. This is great news for us as most of our clients first preference is usually to manufacture locally and this should help us to explore those options.
The event, which was held at Revolution Brewery in Chicago, was attended equally by designer and manufacturer representatives and included demonstrations of the launched site, as well as demos of Elihuu and a Shapeoko 2 from Inventables. Zach Kaplan, CEO of Inventables, also introduced a new free online tool to easily set up and control tools like the Shapeoko called Easel (easelcnc.com) – it is set to be used at the Harold Washington Library Innovation Lab.
The photo above is of the Shapeoko 2 demonstration running Easel. To learn more about Made in Chicago, check out their site here.
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