This week, I am working on a new section on the website with the goal of becoming a central hub of Information on the platform. Until now, the common place for news and all non-project information was our Blog which has been supporting everything, from photo galleries of events we participate, to interviews and little articles about open innovation. This common place, which I am calling Radar (just because it sounds cool) shall be collaboratively written, as people show interest in participating.

Letsevo Radar will be hosting our platform news, stories about people in the network who are making something interesting, friends visiting technology events can post their impressions as well publish articles.

Our blog will still live strong, and probably from now on, it will get more philosophical with Radar taking care of the on-topic stuff.

Letsevo Radar

The Folha Seca, one of our boards developed in collaboration with Brazilian ecological company Fibra, was featured in last weekend’s Esporte Espetacular. We are still working to put the board on the market but  it’s great to see our project getting this kind of attention. The snippet of the TV program can be seen online. It is great to see in the video, Bob Burnquist’s similar efforts to put an ecologic board on the market! way to go Bob, maybe we should do something together!

A step-by-step instruction guide of our DIY Skateboard project is up on the project’s page.

I just finished the prototypes of our project’s open databases. From now on, each Letsevo project has an open database featuring the project’s most important open data. This database can be accessed by Letsevo developers right from each projects’ sidebar.

See it working

For some of our projects, this database will mean that data can be shared and tracked to empower project development and communication. In that way it will be possible for developers to keep track of the design stages and to interact with suggestions for possible changes and improvements in for of “Reviews”.

Letsevo wants it’s new open databases to empower real time product development features, that means: after we create, we upload the file to the platform, we get feedback through “Reviews”, we discuss and apply changes right at the “entry’s database page”, and evolve.

We will begin using it to share CAD files, DIY Instructions but my goal is to make the database support not only “dev files” but also Supplier Listings and Component Reviews.

The database first prototype is half way working (file previews are very buggy still…). João helped me test the first “review test” and it works ok…Thanks!

Feedback on the database is much appreciated. We hope this will be widely used!

Human Body Template

Made for checking the frame ergonomics of our e.Moped project, this 1:1 Scale drawing can also be helpful for other projects.

The book also has arrows, coincidense or sign? =)

Some of it’s teachings regarding the dynamics of the projects are already flowing into our projects. For example, our electric motorcycle frame project, the e.Moped project, now features a Developer Guidelines Page to help future developers find their way into contributing to the project. Another important suggestion from the book and now implemented, is the writing of a mission statement of the project, making it clear for developers and the outside world what the project is trying to accomplish. Also mentioned in the book is the importance having the type of License the project is running on, right on the front page of the project, which seams quite obvious but as the author points out, is often missed in many projects.

The book is opening my eyes to a lot of details on how successful open source software projects are organized and definitely suggest it to anyone interested in not only open source development but the social skills need for successful collaborative work.

In a near future, I will be posting questions that were raised in my head after getting to know more about the process of open source software development. In my opinion, there are a lot of tools missing that would make it possible to fully develop Hardware in the same way that Software is developed. There is already a spark of discussion started by Portuguese designer João Rocha at the forums. It would be nice to hear more voices on this subject.

After the implementation of a Forum system, I added some social networking functionality to enable inter communication between collaborators and most importantly, have collaborator profile pages. Lots of improvements are still needed and not to mention the amount of bugs… but it is a step forward into creating a collaborative community around product innovation.

Website Ideas currently on the pipeline:

-The ability to have user profiles for sponsors and manufactures (still not really defined) but anyway, a system to make it easier for sponsors to interact with possible users they want to sponsor.

-A file publishing system, to enable each project to have it’s own database of Drawings, 3D files, Suppliers, Components, Templates etc to be easily documented, shared and commented.

-A front page layout that refreshes automatically when ever something is added to any of the projects (like digg.com)

In parallel to that, our Logo got a lift. The eurostile font gave space to custom made L, E, T, S, V, O that now “talk” more to the 4 arrows of the logo.

And there is one more thing, and it regards the title of this post, it’s Letsevo mantra for at least the rest of the year: Small Steps, Big Dreams. For me, It represents much of the way product development needs to be today: A series of small steps towards bigger dreams, that hopefully benefit not only the people involved in the projects and the companies sponsoring it, but the innovation and creative community as a whole. The “steps” part of the mantra, is every project blog post, every guest comment, every drawing uploaded, it’s the interactions we are having here. The “Dreams” part of the mantra, is on every collaborator’s mind, it’s what people will make with these interactions. I started Letsevo with the premise to help my projects get more exposure but I have understood now, that exposure is only part of the equation to put an idea in the market, it’s the interaction between people where knowledge is created and where a lot of  satisfaction resides. With this thought I can see Letsevo evolving from being an Open Design Brand into an aspiring Design Incubator/Platform that facilitates the development of aspiring innovators with “Dreams” just like mine. Who knows, I will let future interactions guide me on this…=)

(Letsevo) Fale brevemente do que faz, você é designer gráfico? Ainda estuda? Quando e onde estudou?

(ZA) Me chamo Fernando Zanoni, ou simplismente ZA., tenho 23 anos de idade, sou natural de Curitiba PR e estou cursando o último, quinto e derradeiro ano de design gráfico na Universidade Federal do Paraná. Gosto também da atividade de designer, porém tento levar a ilustração meus desenhos e a arte, um pouco a parte da atividade do design. É claro que em muitas vezes, uma coisa encontra a outra mas assim mantenho meu trabalho com os desenhos mais autoral, porém, não seria mal ganhar dinheiro com isso algum dia..

(Letsevo) Como foram seus primeiros passos na ilustração?

(ZA) É difícil saber, mas o primeiro esporro que lembro de ter tomado na escola quando era criança, foi porque eu estava desenhando durante uma aula que nem sei de quê…Tenho isso desde criança, sempre gostei de desenhar!

Arte para o Shape Ecosk8 por ZA

(letsevo) Quais são suas ferramentas prediletas para ilustratar? Quando e onde você trabalha numa ilustração? Tem algum lugar favorito onde gosta de trabalhar?

(ZA) Cara uso muito papel, tinta nankin, canetas e marcadores! As vezes nem sei distinguir o que é esboço do que é desenho efetivo e final. Não consigo manter por exemplo, um caderno de esboços. Se me deixar eu consumo ele em uma sentada.
E assim, de inúmeros desenhos que eu traço no papel, só escaneio e dou cor no computador, par uns 2 ou 3. Ás vezes uso xerox também pra fazer uns lambe-lambes pra colar na rua. Vez em quando saio pra pintar e fazer grafitti, mas é raro. Não tenho a mesma pegada e traço com o spray…porisso meu involvimento com a arte de rua e grafitti ta sendo mais através dos lambe-lambes, dae consigo preservar o traço de um jeito que eu gosto.

(Letsevo) O que mais te inspira a iniciar uma ilustração?

(ZA) Puts, isso varia. tudo acaba sendo inspiração…vai de um lance ruim a uma coisa banal, e também de uma alegria a um imenso bacanal. Tudo me inspira, mas andar de skate, ver coisas que gosto ouvir música, ter contato com coisas novas sempre ajuda!

(Letsevo) É possível ver uma série de personagens em sua arte, esses personagens figurados em seu trabalho existem no mundo real? Fazem parte do seu dia a dia?

(ZA) Uns sim outros não. Na verdade, nunca penso em um personagem em específico, tento representar através deles várias coisas e pessoas. Ás vezes eu simplismente sento e desenho. É natural, exceto quando a ilustração têm um briefing ou têm que representar algo em específico, dae é premeditado!

Tigre - ZA

(Letsevo) Cada artista trabalha de uma forma diferente. Fale um pouco do seu processo de trabalho. Quando você começa uma ilustração por exemplo, já tem em mente precisamente o resultado que quer atingir ou a ilustração vai evoluindo e se modificando ao longo do seu processo de trabalho?

(ZA) É mais ou menos como eu expliquei anteriormente. Se existe um briefing, to fazendo algo pra um concurso e tal, eu penso, rascunho escrevo as idéias. se for de livre expressão, dae eu sento e simplismente desenho…posso desenhar horas e tudo ficar ruim, e no fim juntar tudo e jogar for a. O importante é desenhar. Quanto à resultados, sei lá, dinheiro é bom e necessário, mas acho que isso deve vir quem sabe com o tempo. Acho que todo artista durante a carreira vai aprimorando seu estilo e técnicas. Acho que isso é natural e inevitável.

(Letsevo) Você participou do nosso projeto ecosk8, com uma arte belíssima para os Shapes. Qual a sua ligacäo com o skate?

(ZA) Cara, minha ligação é de amor incondicional! Ganhei meu primeiro skate com 11 anos de idade, desde então to aê! Ultimamente só consigo andar nos finais de semana e olhe lá, mas o importante é se divertir. O skate influi no meu trabalho..na verdade não só nas ilustrações, mas na vida, num contexto geral! Coisas que eu desenho, músicas  que eu escuto, roupas que eu visto..tudo ta enrraizado no skate. Quero um dia trabalhar junto com o skate. Quem sabe uma marca, produção de vídeos, sei lá, mas quero retribuir isso pro skate. Skate é diversão, e cara, pra mim, é tão arte e expressão quanto desenhar! É incontável o número de skatistas que desempenham funções artísticas e criativas. Todo skatista é um criativo e uma semiótico em potencial. Depois que vc pisa em um skate, você nunca mais ve a formas da cidade sem ponderar se ali você pode ou não andar.Na hora em que aparece a filmagem do senado federal, e aquela cabaçada, comendo um a orelha  do outro, você vai estar se imaginado dando um rolê naquela transição azul.

ZA

(Letsevo) Tem algum lugar ou objeto que você ainda quer ver sua arte aplicada?

(ZA) Cara, trabalhar com música, capas de disco, skate decks, ou sei lá, tudo que tenha ligação com coisas que gosto sempre vai ser gratificante. Mas gostaria de trabalhar em projetos editorias, ilustrar livros quem sabe. Tudo é válido, cada situação é um desafio. Quero também, depois que finalizar a faculdade, pq agora tá trash de conciliar tudo, colar mais cartazes e pintar mais de volta na rua!…e sei lá né, quem sabe a capa da NewYorker. brincadera!

UM abraço ao pessoal da Letsevo e ao pessoal do projeto ecosk8. Iniciativa muito massa.
É isso!

(Letsevo) Obrigado por participar do projeto ECOSK8 com sua arte.  Nós esperamos que muitos se inspirem com o seu trabalho.

Para conhecer mais sobre o trabalho do ZA, segue o link da página dele: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fernandozanoni/

Para ver a galeria de colaboradores do projeto ECOSK8: http://www.flickr.com/groups/letsevoskateboarddesigns/pool/

20090803-Participation Platform - first sketch

I tried to illustrate in the picture above, what an participatory innovation ecosystem Letsevo wants to be. It is the first attempt to organize and communicate the concepts being discussed here at the blog. I believe that People, Ideas, Projects, Collaboration, Sponsors and Cool Products, should be the foundation for an Innovation Platform hoping to foster the development of innovative products and technologies. Under this 6 categories, I wrote some terms to further specify the participatory “pillar”.

Am I missing some “ingredient”? Should any term be added to better express the innovation cycle in a collaboration age? I am happy to hear some thoughts on it.

...

We are proud to post here the first entries to our “Artist Series” initiative of the ecosk8 project. To know more about the Artists and their work, make sure to visit the project’s gallery

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I have been twittering on last months about the research I was doing in order to improve the Letsevo Innovation Platform. The first implementation is out today, the Letsevo Forums. Built using the open source CMS software Joomla, the forums are made to support the conversation around our projects. I would be happy to see it hosting some interesting talks on the ideas we share.

There are some bugs in this new website still, but I am doing my best to learn Joomla fast so the site can be fixed and improved with time.

The dudes at Wired.Com wrote a great story about it, and a cool video which I’m posting it here.

I taught that since the e.Moped project is still on its initial phase…maybe a good goal would be to build one for a competition like this, for now It was only meant for Zero Motorcycles, but who knows..I bet there could be a great challenge to open up for other brands…

Last Month I was back in Rio de Janeiro, 3 weeks of a mix of relaxing moments with friends and important meetings. While there, I remembered that when I was still in University, one of my good friends Daniel Xveid would always remind me that one day, I would have to design some crazy lamp for his house. So, there I went, looking for all I needed to build a Light DIYstric Lamp to surprise him.

Now the DIYstric Lamp returns to it’s birth place, Rio de Janeiro. Daniel, hope you enjoy it!

Step by Step:

DIYstrict light – Build, Plug and Play!

Although I am positive that the name of an art work doesn’t make it an better art piece, I do think it’s important. Picture yourself, wondering through a contemporary art gallery, imagine you know nothing about formal Art (at least you didn’t study it), you stand in front of what seems to be a group of 8 randomly displayed, white “marshmalowish” balls sitting on a room filled with sand. You are in front of the a contemporary art installation, and you think: what the Hell? next, puzzled, you go to the name plate and it says: Untitled, 1998 Mr. Artist – Rocks; sand and marshmallow. what the F@&k! you almost feel like screaming. Houston we have a problem. Yep, I have been there too my dear reader! The name was the only clue to bring some understanding to the object without post graduating in the history of arts. People get angry, many feel very bad. What a sad story, at least in my opinion.

In order to fight for the democratization of art we have to fight for more satisfied art consumers, I am starting today a movement against Untitled artworks, for the sake of the mere mortals who don’t have a degree in Art but who just want to have a go in understanting the story being told by the artist, on the fly, on the spot. How we are going to do this? No, please, lets not come up with sticker tags, or barcodes…that after you scaning it with your iphone, link to the wikipedia article of that art work. Lets give this artists some homework to do! send them letters! require some explanation =) they will like it.

I didn’t do my homework I have to confess, ’cause the art object up there still features the Untitled flag. Well, ok, at least I am here, writing about it.

But the problem of my Untitled art object is still not solved.

Here is what I propose:

Deal?

Finding the Right FORM

Looking at nature for the best Form for a fin propelled submarine can be quite overwhelming at first. Trying to define a specific fin shape for the Neptuno Submarine was no easy task giving into to account the HUGE number of different forms and configurations marine creatures have. Thanks to biology research, a lot has been written on this subject.

Form Specialization – (Illustration: A.Kesel 1997 adapted from P.Webb 1984)

Every maritime biological being has passed through various stages of adaptation in the course of its evolution. Thus optimization to different living conditions eventually led to various forms and characteristics. This illustration from Prof. Dr. A. Kesel shows a comparison chart between fish shapes and their behavior characteristics (read strenghts). On the top we see fishes who can accelerate very quickly,on the left fishes which can maintain very high speeds for long distances and on the right of the chart, fishes that can maneuver very precisely.

How many Fins?

When we look closer to a fish, we see that there are many different fins, and that each one of them has a different function. This seems quite obvious, but understanding their functions can bring key insights for design decisions for future vessels.

Tail Fin: Is the mail propeller for a fish, It has also the function of controlling the direction of the swim.
Pectoral Fin: In most of the fishes, pectoral fins help them control their level (maneuvering up and down) but some coral reef fish have very strong pectoral fins that act as the main propulsion system (i.e. Box Fish).
Dorsal Fin:The Dorsal fin acts like a stability aid, keeping the body from oscillating to much when accelerating.
Pelvic Fin:This fin act like an hydrodynamic parachute help fish to brake and slow down.
Anal Fin:the Anal fin has the same function as the dorsal fin, it is there to keep the ride stable.

Kinematics

the correlation of form and function is clear as you look deeply in to the matter, but there is also one other aspect the greatly influence the performance of swimming, its their body movement.

Most importantly, there is a distinction between the actuating angle of the movements between fish and aquatic mammals. Probably because of their need to come back to the surface for air, aquatic mammals have their fin swinging in the vertical plane, making them more agile in that case. Fish have their bodies swinging in the horizontal plane (there are exceptions like the Plaicefish).

What also varies a lot between species, is the amount of body which swing and the type of curvature that it makes. Basically there are fish that use almost the whole body, and there movement is characterized by a wave that travels through the whole body. Which is often called ondulating movement. One example of this kind of kinematics is found by the eel. What is interesting in these kind of fish is the ability to switch the curve direction of their body movement to swim backwards. These fish are very precise in maneuvering but aren’t that efficient when it comes to speed.
On the other hand, Fish like the Tuna, can achieve enormous speeds underwater (up to almost 100 km/h), by having a partial undulating movement of their bodies which on the end of each swing cause a oscillating movement of the tip of their fin (thus called sub-undulating). Their highly hydrodynamic bodies and stiff/narrow fins make up the perfect combination of high speed swimming for long distances in the many situations when it has to swim in open water looking for food.
By contrast, some fish leaving in the narrow environments like coral reefs have the necessity to maneuver very precisely in very small paths, some times even swim backwards. The box fish for example, uses mainly their pectoral fins for propulsion leaving there caudal fins almost exclusively for steering, there fin Oscillate from side to side, almost as if it were pivoted in one point.

Flexibility X Stiffness

Researchers of the MIT working on this subject of flexible fin propellers have come to many achievements regarding the developments towards a more efficient and quite way of propelling vessels underwater. Their Robotuna project served as a platform for testing different functional aspects aroung the theme.

One particular study caught my attention, which was the study from Michael S. Triantafyllou, Alexandra H. Techet, and Franz S. Hover, entitled: Review of Experimental Work in Biomimetic Foils*. This study tell us a bit about the effects of stiffness in the efficiency of such propulsion systems, drawing the conclusion, that with every different swing frequency/amplitude ratio, a specific stiffness of the fin would bring the best results regarding the consumption of energy. This suggested that there was another variable to be taken into account when designing flexible fin propulsion systems, which is the flexibility of the body of the submarine. * IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 29, NO. 3, JULY 2004

Wraping it up for now

These were some of the aspects that I considered most important and to keep in mind during the next phase, the conceptual phase. On the next post I will be writing about the design strategies I developed after this analysis and I will also tell a bit about the festo pneumatic muscle technology which I used as starting point for my proposal.

The Neptuno Submarine Concept submarine was my graduation project at the School of Arts and Design in Offenbach, Germany. I time where the letsevo website was not yet existent. It was first presented in the 17 of February of 2005. My supervisors for this project were: my great mentor Prof. Dieter Mankau (HfG Offenbach) and Dr. -Ing. Robert Mayr. The work was sponsored by the german automatization company Festo AG, which had interest in applications for there Pneumatic Muscle Technology.

Goal of the project:
Design a submarine that makes use of new developments in maritime propulsion research, more specifically: Flexible Fin propulsion (read: Fish Propulsion). Learn from what research was telling us about flexible fin propulsion and translate that in to a design of a two person research submarine propelled only, by the means of such propulsion system.

Startpoint at that time (Jun 2004) were research results from the MIT Robotuna (2000), and the “Forelle Flossenantrieb” from the university of Saarland, Germany (1995) along with many scientific articles on the subject from brilliant minds like W. Nachtigall, R. Blickham and Dr. A. Kesel on the great Biona Report.

Neptuno Submarine, 2005, HfG Offenbach. Design: Henrique Monnerat

In the next days, I will we writing a series of posts to explain in detail how I came to this design and what happened after my graduation, when I received a full scholarship from Festo AG to develop a working model of the propulsion system conceptualized for the Neptuno Submarine in form of a post graduation study.

Stay tuned!

Click here to go to the gallery site

Until now, a total of 19 Artists collaborated with 36 Artworks until today, Letsevo’s Favorite Picks are:

Sextafeira from Amnd (Brazil)
~ so many possibilities ~ from opaquEpiphany (Australia)

Thanks for all contributions! It very exciting to see all of your creations! Spread the word, push the button.

This experiment can turn out to be a new section on the e.Moped project site, It’s my first attempt to use yahoo pipes mashup tool. The pipe you see above can aggregate automatically solidworks+tutorial Tags in the bookmarking service Delicious along with tutorials from the the SWX Design website into an always updating piece of Java Sript code.

The result is what you seen here, a RSS feed capable of being placed into any website. There is a whole range of possibilities with this mashup tool, even combining Flickr, Geo Data Information to Display photos on Google Earth. I see my dream “Skateboard Ramp Mapping Widget” coming soon. Got any ideas for other cool pipes? write on..

Download the file, open it up in google earth, get inspired and give your hood something to be proud of…drop us a comment to share your creations.

This is what you get when you export green thunders in a box from Rhinoceros as a .3dxml file and import into 3DVIA platform.

Navigate through the thunder storm I built by going to the Model`s page.

Se vc é um artista e quer participar:Leia mais

Today is the offcial start of the e.Moped Design Project. After having talked to some friends about Letsevo’s plans to start a open source project of an electric scooter, the wishes have finally come to reality.

I spent a a couple of hours programming and setting up the space for this project here at Letsevo.

Colaborators are wanted, we need engineers, electrical mechanics, motor developers, test riders, designers….any one wanting to evolve this idea further.

I know this a pretty daring task, to build such a vehicle from scratch. But for me, the wish of some day, be cruising around the neighborhoods on what we built, is much greater than the fear of failling. Not to mention having in the end, collaborated for more clean ways of transporting ourselfs around our planet!

So Let the journey begin!

I sent him a couple of events that I know happen every year and pointed out to him Upcoming.org, one of those clever web 2.0 tools that does the task of organizing shared events from users around the globe. Think Flickr for your calendar, did some thing sparkle in your mind? Well, it sure sparkled in my mind that craves for exploring the potentials of such tools.

Why am I talking about a calendar tool here in letsevo? What does that have to do with product innovation?

Before starting to explain or respond to these two questions I would like you to please take a look at the Sidebar of the Letsevo website, the right sidebar. YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!

I am freaking glad to anounce the brand new Letsevo Collaboration Calendar! Powered by Upcoming.org and some mad artists/designers/scientists/cool-kids/inventors/whatever contributors that want to join the team of letsevo in the task of tagging every event surrounding technology, innovation, design.

Why am I doing this?
Because I want to share the events I know with the developing community and in this away help spreading the news about places to go when you want to exchange ideas, see new things and learn whats going on.
Why collaborativately?
Because I am positive that there are always people that know more then us, and when we do this together we have more power to achieve greater changes.
Why should you participate?
Because its fun to change the world, action by action. But in order to answer this question more accurately I will tell you a small story that happened to me:

I got to know that this year’s Volvo Sportsdesign award theme was EcoDesign through a post in the Design Blog “Design.com.br”, writen by Fernando Galdino. Without Fernando writing it about it in his blog, Letsevo would probably miss the deadline of the Award. We, from theEcosk8 project, sent immediately a prototype of our ecological Skateboard to the Award. And as I wrote here before, we were nominated for the Board equipment category!! If it wasn’t for Fernando Galdino and his love for sharing his knowledge, maybe it would have been too late for us to participate.

I hope Letsevo Calendar helps someone just like Fernando’s post helped the ecosk8 project!

Wanna participate? Logon to the Letsevo Calendar group inside of Upcoming.org and start to change the things around here. Lets evo!!!

It took a while to believe but we were there! Our Ecosk8 project was nominated for the board category of this years Volvo Sportsdesign Award. Among names like Salomon Snowboards, Arbor Snowboards and amazing projects like the Ecomoana Surfboard, our “Folha Seca” skateboard was the only chosen product from the southern hemisphere.

I had the chance, together with Pedro Themoteo and Bruno Temer from Fibra Design Sustentável
to go to this years Design Forum at ISPO to represent our project. Our open development project was chosen to participate in the “Elevator Pitch” where some of the best projects had 90 seconds to tell what they were about. Bruno represented our team and did an amazing job, finishing our message right on the last second bring a wild applause from the crowd.

Checkout some of the Pictures of the Event!!

At the end, Salomon Snowboards was awarded with the final prize with their “Sickstick” Bamboo Board. We got to know David Farcot and Henri Rançon from Salomon and were amazed by David Farcot’s words of support to our project while he spoke on stage. That was awesome! congratulations David and Henri.

Another great thing about the award is that it happens in the same time as the Volvo Design Forum – with this years main theme – Eco Design. Among the several lectures the forum organizes workshops that are really interesting to take part. I got the chance to participate on the “Build a chariot from Bamboo” workshop, organized by Nick Lobnitz and Bob Giddens from Carry Freedom. They have a sweet open-source project on bicycle racks and share their knowledge with everyone planning to build a bike rack.

More news about the ecosk8 project can be seen in almost real time at ecosk8’s open development website.

The Volvo Sportsdesign Award website

The idea is simple: Download the DIY Skateboard Design PDF, Print it out, stick them together over any rest of wood to be recycled, cut, put on some wheels and enjoy the ride.

If you want make your own design, Download this DIY Skateboard Blank PDF (90cm long) and make it happen.

I would love to see some of your creations, so send a picture if you are proud of what you made.

a step by step of the building process can be found here.

Wanna be part of it? Hit the scan button and Lets evo.

Today is the last day of the most important event of the industry calendar, the HMI 2007, which happens every year in Hannover, Germany. There, companies, research intitutes and universities show their lastest developments in technology. The HfG Offenbach Design School participated once again with the supervision of Professor Dieter Mankau.

The project I have been working on since August 2006 together with Dr. Deane Harder from the Plant Biomechanics Group of the University of Freiburg and Dr. Markus Milwich from ITV Denkendorf – Institute for Textile and Fibre Research Denkendorf was presented at the Bionik – engineering powered by nature booth. Done in collaboration with Rittal GmbH & Co. KG, the project concerned the development of new shock absorbing concept for a transport pallet used for transporting overseas sensible products like huge computer servers.

Unlike other years, the Research & Technology Hall showed fewer breakthroughs in technology as last year. One thing to notice is that there isn’t yet much of a communication between engineers and designers in order to present prototypes of technologies closer to reality. Designers can play an important roll inside a research team because of their ability to foresee applications of technologies and to communicate speciall caracteristics of a future product through design. Still, most of the research works lack the ability to communicate what are they meant for mainly because of the absence of a product designer.Best of Hannover Industry Fair 2007

Its been a long time since I started working on this but like y’all know, everything has its time to come to life. I have been working hard the last weeks to finish EVO’s newest skateboard.

The deck is 83cm long and is a mix of an old school skateboard and a Longboard. It’s aimed for riding with ease around town but still allow some tricks here and there. It was build using 7 layers of 1,5 mm Canadian Ahorn Plywood pressed together at exactly 27,69 Tons/cm² using epoxy resin.

Its griptape design was inspired by the leaf’s Gestalt. After drawing the desired shape and printing it out, a lot of time was invested to cut and apply the separate peaces of the grip on the deck. I image how difficult it might be to produce this in large scale but until I find a engineer to come up with better solution I will be cutting and pasting the old school way.

Special thanks should be given to Teimaz from Azita Skateshop who kindly lent me wheels,trucks,bearings for the photos.

The Evo Sk8 T Shirt features an always ready to use arm brace so when things go wrong you are safe to walk home. And the nice thing about it, is that it looks kind of “bad ass” when you are just wearing with the brace around your arms, it has a “just came out of the madhouse” style that skatergirls like……. target group..you know?

If you wanna build one for yourself, send an email, I can send some videos about it.

Project Page

the mother wants it to be called “love at first light” but the father would prefer something like “blackout”

wanna help? leave a suggestion

wanna take her home? send an email.

I am Trying to bring some people together to do some lake jumping in Rio in October. I need some help so this goes for the brothers in Rio.

“Ai galera, quem estiver afim de se juntar para uma sessäo de lake jump na lagoa agora em outubro, por favor, se apresente. Faltam alguns detalhes como uma bike e uma rampa, mas vontade há de sobra. Eu tenho alguns desenhos técnicos para uma rampa, faltando alguém pra construir, sugestöes de marceneiros säo benvindas, rampas já existentes também.

Quem puder e quizer imprimir esse mini cartaz e colocar nas lojas de bike e lugares afins já estará ajudando a vera. Todos estäo convidados a dar uns splashs nas águas cristalinas da lagoa. Uma mangueira com água potável para um banho depois do tibum será providenciada.”

é isso. Seria o bicho se desse certo. Até breve.

Para participar escreva para: bora-lake-jump@lets-evo.net

Download Poster PDF File (Cartaz)

I did this illustration after listening to a really good album from the producer and MC Iky Castilho from my home town Rio. Iky´x Tape Vol 1 is an awesome example of rio´s rap scene featuring DJ Babao and various MCs. The album is complete downloadable at the website.

“I am going to chage the world before the world changes me” ( Iky – Eu vou mudar o Mundo)

Thanks Chico for lending me this amazing Tape. Lets Evo Recommends

So you bought an Ipod and is now kind of depressed because is filled with scratches. And you don´t fill like buying these dorky ipod socks for 20 dollars?

I´ve been there too brother and I found a way out of this dilemma. Just get yourself an old sock, wrap up your pod to protect it and go for the ” I don´t give a damn about fashion” look.

You can even make it Theft-proof if you grab a fresh smelly sock!

Cool and Functional Design

Lets Evo recommends

For those who don´t know yet how the curvature in a skateboard is achieved here is a brief example how a board comes to its shape.

Basically a skateboard is made from an uneven (7,9,11) number of wood layers laid between two CNC molds (Forms) that hold the positive and the negative side of the board’s curvature. When laying the wood layers, it is important to pay attention to the direction of the woodfibers making sure the they are always 90° in relationship to the top and bottom layers, this ensures a great deal of stability. Between each wood layer comes a small amount of epoxy resin evenly distributed. After giving them 18 hours of pressure we have strong skateboard curvature ready to be cut.

Wouldn´t it be nice if you could get to a new city and download to your mobile every information about the best skateboard spots in town, If you like to ride a skateboard, you know what I mean. looking foward to that I started the “Lets-Evo Skateboard Areas Rio de Janeiro” at the google earth´s community page hoping that it grows with new spots every now and then.

I hope many of you are not really into this whole robot hype. Technology is leading us to a future where we are going walk into a company or a fair and be received by a machine that is suposed to help us find our way and give us the atention needed.

Just like these call systems that already drive us nuts when all we really want is a human beeing to pick up the phone, Robots are really going to make our lives miserable. And then there is this whole facination with robots playing bad soccer at the “Robot Cup” etc…

The only cool use I can think for a robot is the one of flying around me and my friends while we ride our bikes, skateboards, snowboards, kites…. shooting cool videos at insane perspectives. I am starting to gather information about institutes that are researching about microflying robots, maybe some of us will get together for the design of one.

The first thing I would recommend to take a look ist the Delfly Project from the Technical University Delft. Other examples are welcomed.

I finally did something about this huge hole at the bottom region of my jeans.

before attacking it I knew I had two choices. The first one was to Hide it, placing a jeans “patch” and using some jeans color threads, which had to be done really good in order not to look cheap or uncool. The second one was to close it but in such way that it would look kind of though, kind of “Yeah, so what?” style.

With the tools in hand I was set to bring some style to the Hole. The result is what you see. Since I was already warmed up, I just made my pockets look good.

]]> http://www.lets-evo.net/blog/2006/06/23/hack-your-jeans/feed/ 0 http://www.lets-evo.net/blog/2006/06/17/go-big-or-go-butter/ http://www.lets-evo.net/blog/2006/06/17/go-big-or-go-butter/#comments Sat, 17 Jun 2006 19:50:08 +0000 Henrique Monnerat http://www.lets-evo.net/wp/?p=45

Go big or go butter

I am working on a form for a new downhill skateboard with double curvature that should hit the streets in a couple of weeks. I am working on it in my free time and hope to get it ready for my next trip back home in Brasil so it can be tested by Rio´s finest downhill riders.

After leaving the CNC Mill machine I applied to the forms a layer of “grundierung” ( I donn´t know the name of this thing English – something that makes MDF waterproof) and than a layer “spritz Harz” (Resin) and than sanded it to make the surface even. The board is going to be 1,3 meters long and is intended for easy carving down steep streets like the Vista Chinesa Downhill in Rio de Janeiro. Test riders are welcome.I am going to be there from the 2nd until the 12th of October. Just send an email.

The 60 pages of the results alog with videos are going to be available soon at the project´s page.

Thank you Frank!

Last year we received a beautiful carbon skateboard deck from a material research institute in the University of Clausthal in Germany. Our job was to test it and say what we think of the new board because those guys from the institute are good in making things light, but they don´t know nothing about riding boards! The riders: Nico Hopp, Lars Mayer, Simon Schlör and myself have had lots of fun helping them understanding what was good and what could be better in the board. We made a nice video that was send to the university researchers with images of the board in action together with each riders toughts. The video will be posted soon here in Lets Evo Blog.