The Drag Knife can be used to cut almost anything you would cut with a utility knife, but with the speed and precision of a CNC router. The Drag Knife fits onto your CNC router, making it a universal fit for almost any CNC router available.
Drag Knifes are really handy for cutting soft materials like vinyl, cardboard, mat board, foam, wood veneer, leather, and many others. With flat sheets, you might use one to create some custom packaging for some product, for example, or at least to prototype the packaging.
At the end of December 2019, Chinese public health authorities reported several cases of acute respiratory syndrome in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China. Chinese scientists shortly afterwards identified a novel coronavirus as the main causative agent.The disease is now referred to as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and the causative virus is called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans.
The implications for companies are huge. While companies like Amazon might make huge profits, especially smaller shops suffer.
Corona in Germany
The initial outbreak in Wuhan spread rapidly, affecting other parts of China. Cases were soon detected in several other countries. Outbreaks and clusters of the disease have since been observed in Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and the Americas.
All federal states in Germany have reported cases of infection with the corona (SARS-CoV-2). The Robert Koch Institut is continuously monitoring the situation, evaluating all available information, estimating the risk for the population in Germany and providing health professionals with recommendations.
Information on the novel coronavirus and hygiene for the general public is available on the website of the Federal Centre for Health Education. Additionally, lots of authorities and health insurances have set up hotlines.
The Center for Systems Science and Engineering shared an online dashboard which tracks the spread of the deadly coronavirus while it spreads.
The dashboard visualizes data from the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the centers for disease control in the US, China and Europe. It shows all confirmed and suspected cases of coronavirus, along with recovered patients and deaths.
Infections
All federal states have reported cases of infection with the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). The Robert Koch Institute is continuously monitoring the situation, evaluating all available information, estimating the risk for the population in Germany and providing health professionals with recommendations.
Information on the novel coronavirus and hygiene for the general public is available on the website of the Federal Centre for Health Education. Additionally, lots of authorities and health insurances have set up hotlines.
There’s no shortage of books about improved efficiency and innovation in business. Most of them are forgettable, but here are 12 business books to read that will change the way you think about strategy, management, products and most importantly your customers.
Ray Dalio – Principles
Dalio shares the principles used in his company, the biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. Principles is a masterpiece. The main thesis is that finding the truth is the only way to make good decisions. He advocates looking at the company around you as a machine from a higher level with the ability to be tuned.
Know when to fight and when not to fight: Seek higher moral ground and avoid what is strong. How to deceive the enemy: appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. Know your strengths and weaknesses: You need to know the enemy and yourself. The book requires minimal ability to adapt to the modern world but has strong points.
Peter F. Drucker – The Essential Drucker
Peter Drucker, known as the Father of Modern Management Theory, coined leadership terms and strategies that are still used today. He advocated for a more flexible, collaborative workplace, and the delegation of power. Peter Drucker already anticipated the shift towards a society characterized by entrepreneurship.
Erik Peterson, Tim Riesterer – Conversations That Win The Complex Sale
Erik and Tim describe in an easy to understand way why deals get stuck in the status quo and what your sales message needs to look like to break this. Because some form of selling is part of everybody’s life, understanding the concepts of The Value Wedge, Power Positions enables you to sell products as well as ideas.
Nicholas A. C. Read, Stephen J. Bistritz – Selling to the C-Suite
To sell requires to create value by helping clients find viable solutions to their problems. During a meeting with high-ranking people, your primary job is not to sell but to help them address their issues. Your goal is to become an adviser. This resonates very well with the co-creation concept and explains partially why it is efficient to do so.
Michael E. Porter – Competitive Strategy
A company’s strategy must depend on its immediately the environment of its industry. Michael describes the competitive situation in an industry as a function of five basic factors (Porter’s Five Forces). The supplier power. The level of threat from new entries. The power of customers. The threat of substitution. The rivalry amongst current industry participants.
Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur – Business Model Generation
Business Model Generation describes the blueprints of business models of major companies. The illustrative way of describing the process as well as the different models make it an easy, but powerful read.
Inspired is THE must-read for every person working in or with products. The book explains how to create the holy grails in tech industry and focuses on people, culture, product managers, outcomes and process. It significantly influenced the way I think about products.
Stephen R. Covey – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The book explains habits highly effective people have. Even though I would have called it efficient, not effective, the mook lists some very good habits. Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, Put First Things First, Think Win-Win, Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood, Synergize and Sharpen the Saw. The habits are outwards as well as inwards to have healthy relationships.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt – The Goal
In The Goal, Eliyahu leads the reader through a process optimization journey of a factory floor. Three areas are hereby in focus: Throughput (rate the system generates money through sales), Inventory and OPEX (money to turn inventory into throughput). TOC clearly points out flaws that can be found in all companies such as optimization of local optima. It sharpened my thoughts on Value-Based Pricing.
Benjamin Graham – The Intelligent Investor
Even though he describes some forms of investments, such as savings bonds which might not be as attractive anymore, Graham also explains a very valid investment methodology based on fundamental stock analysis. The goal is to learn how to avoid allowing emotions to control investment decisions. Rather, Graham provides the foundation for making businesslike decisions.
Robert T. Kiyosaki – Rich Dad
Even though I have to say that I’m not a fan of investment and money books, I find the easy to follow way in explaining the terminology around assets and liability as well as the visualization of it very helpful. The core of the book is to invest in assets, which per definition put money in your pocket, whereas liabilities take it out. Reading this book gave me a unified way of thinking about investments.
Carrying or even checking drones on an airplane exposes the fragile mechanics to all sorts of opportunities to break. If the frame has been designed in a CAD program such as Fusion 360, it is very easy to create a undestroyable drone case tough.
Just project the outline and connect the corner points with a spline.
Then extrude the outlines of components such as the FPV camera, the gimbal rails etc at the right height.
The waterproof case has the right size to be taken on a plane as carry-on and allows to create additional layers to fit all required equipment. Please find the PDF version here: Quadcopter Case Foam.
Two Acoustic Panels, cut to length perfectly fit the top rugged drone case to protect the props.
3D printing enables rapid prototyping but lacks production-ready qualities such as smooth surfaces, temperature resistance and food safety. These attributes however can easily be added by combining 3D printing with casting silicone and urethane plastic for small batch production runs.
As long as you don’t need hundret thounsands of parts, this method should get you up and running without paying a fortune for a silicone injection molding setup.
When selecting mold making materials for 3D printed parts, it is important to be clear about the intended material for mold and cast .
Some points to consider are:
Silicone such as Dragon Skin can be extremely difficult to stick to surfaces, except silicone itself.
Urethane plastic such as Smooth Cast 310 is exotherm. This means it gets hot while it’s hardening.
Some 3D printing filaments are more temperature-sensitive than others.
Some 3D printing filaments are easier to post-process than others.
Having this in mind, the proper materials can be chosen basing on the desired material of the positive.
This requires a non-wax based clay to define the two-part mold. Otherwise the surface in contact with the clay will be full of air bubbles due to the melting wax-based clay.
Hot glue is not a good choice for the mold as the glue melts again and the mold leaks. Better use glue + Acryl or Wood + Screws (+ glue)
Applying multiple coats of XTC-3D with sanding (400…1500) in between is highly recommended.
Degasing the silicone and urethane before pouring significantly reduces trapped air bubbles and increases the chance of success.
This setup in combination with a regular 3B has been used for demonstrating “Real-Time” FFT of ADXL345 data via MQTT with Node-Red. The code and documentation can be found on Github.
The center board has been glued with HK CA glue (HC-50-175). A small frame with screws through the four beam holder holes kept the sandwich layers aligned. Note: Better do large areas with this glue outside as it generates a fume. Using nylon spacers and screws, the top and bottom sandwich were assembled.
Beams
The beams were machined with a 1/32″ flat end mill and cut to length in the last run. M3 nylon screws lock the beams and act as breaking point when crashing.
Electronics
To attach the electronics to the center board, I chose two different approaches. Components which will not be used in every flight have been attached using Velcro. The other components were glued directly to capton tape I put to the center board. The ESCs were wrapped in capton tape to prevent short circuits. I hope the heat dissipation is reasonably low with the 30A ESCs.
Sandwich Glue
HK CA glue (HC-50-175)
Loctite Vinyl, Fabric & Plastic Flexible Adhesive
HK 30min Slow Cure Epoxy
3M General Purpose 45 Spray Adhesive
Sandwich Bend Test
100x10mm x 1mm CFK, 3mm Fill, 1mm CFK
CFK 1mm, 3k plain weave carbon, orientation parallel (0°/90°) to centerline Fill +/-45°
Bend test showed best adhesion and no separation up to 6kg for HK CA glue (HC-50-175). All other separated well below this (usually at around 3-4kg). However glueing is tricky for large areas such as the center board.
Endurance
During the first flights, the flight time was reasonably high at a bit over one hour with 1555 props.
Crashing
Arms folded away during the first crash (I’d love to call it unplanned rapid decent though :-)) and the M3 nylon screws broke as planned, preventing damages to the rest of the drone.
Flight Time
With this setup, flight times above one hour have been achieved, even including the 180g 3-axis gimbal and GoPro.
In the diagram below various test flights for a 15″ 5.5 and 17″ 6.0 propeller were aggregated to show the effect the prop choice has on flight time.
Update: I’ve updated the battery with a 6600mAh 6S and the quad flies a lot more stable now.
Previously the flight recorder showed motors occasionally maxing out during sharp moves or wind gusts.
I’ll do some test flights and check the flight time. First flight was 2500mAh for 15min
Flight time depends mainly on the drone weight. In order to get flight times above 1 hour on a single charge (as shown here), the weight has to be minimized. Typically the most dominant weight hereby is the battery. To identify the best battery I created a 4S LiPo Battery Value and Capacity Comparison.
Value can be calculated by Capacity / Price)
Density can be calculated by Capacity / Weight
The diagram above is sorted left to right by Ranking = Cap /Weight * Cap /Price
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