Christoph Laimer offers step-by-step instructions for making a 600W, 3D-printed Halbach array brushless motor.

GreatScott! shows us how to play music on a Tesla coil. It’s the third in a series about how to develop your own Tesla coil. You can check out the first two videos on how to make your own Tesla coil below.

Check out the Stratasys Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator. The modular, automated fused deposition modeling system has interconnected, high-throughput capabilities for mass manufacturing.

Just in time for the Hubble Telescope’s 27th birthday, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center released two new images of galaxies captured by the telescope.

Richard Browning, founder of U.K.-based Gravity Industries, developed the Daedalus Mk.1 suit, an Iron Man-like jetpack. Here, he tests his invention.

It’s almost beach season, so what better time than now to view the lovely sights of Ogunquit Beach, a section on the northwestern flank of lower Mount Sharp on scenic Mars. This 360° panoramic view from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory offers a unique look at the dunes that stretch for miles on the Red…

Cassini is making its final passes around Saturn, and the spacecraft has captured some fascinating images of the ringed planet on its journey. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory presented this movie sequence comprised of rapid-fire images taken by Cassini ahead of its final dive, which is expected in September.

University of Michigan engineers describe how they model space weather, a growing concern as we become more dependent upon cell phones, radio communications, and electronics. Those things are impacted by solar wind and other factors in space.

If you’ve got kids, they’ve probably begged for the hard-to-find fidget spinner, a toy that masquerades as a stress-relief gadget. Sure, they’re fun to spin on your finger, and they might actually provide some stress relief. But just how long will they spin in a vacuum chamber? The Action Lab finds out!

You’re most likely to encounter paraffin in wax products like candles or crayons. Engineers from Stanford University and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley used a paraffin-based fuel to operate this Peregrine hybrid rocket motor. The fuel burns three times faster than conventional fuels, NASA says, providing more thrust and higher performance than existing…

NASA’s Space Launch System, the first exploration-class heavy-lift launch vehicle, will likely be grounded until early 2019, according to a letter from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The potential for technical mishaps and the costs associated with the rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and ground launch systems ultimately led to the delay. SLS was scheduled for its…

This 3D-printing process from the University of Connecticut would make Willy Wonka proud. UConn engineering students have developed a way to print chocolate using additive manufacturing techniques. It’s a process that is pretty sweet.

Have you ever wanted to build your own 3D-printed jet engine? Well, now you can, thanks to these open-source hardware plans from Gerry Hamilton. Watch as it prepares for takeoff: 

Check out these underwater robots from SeaBotix. They were developed using design tools from SOLIDWORKS.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is approaching its grand finale after 13 years of exploring Saturn. Travel along with Cassini and take in 360-degree views of the ringed planet.

Product Design & Development recently spoke to Michel Têtu, senior business development advisor for Reflex Photonics, about the importance of VITA standards for the backplane interconnects market, as well as trends in the sector. How do VITA standards support flexibility in terms of backplane interconnects? VITA is a non-profit organization developing standards for critical aspects…

The Webb Telescope is lifted by crane in the cleanroom at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The telescope will be transported to NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston for testing. 

When most people think of fabrics, they envision a spring line from Barcelona’s hottest fashion designer. Raul Polit-Casillas’s mother was, in fact, a fashion designer in Spain, but the fabrics he uses are far more suited for spacecraft than the runway. Polit-Casillas, a systems engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is now developing advanced woven…

In this experiment from Electric Experiments Roobert33, liquid mercury is placed inside a wooden disc. Two aluminum wheels are located at the sides. A magnet is placed at the center. When an electric current flows through the aluminum conductor, it generates a magnetic field, which rotates the liquid mercury. Talc powder was added to make…

Check out this liquid that pours itself. Polyethylene glycol has a high molecular weight — about 1 million. Water has a molecular weight of about 18. According to the brilliant minds at Hydraulic Press Action, the long molecule chains allow the liquid to pull itself from a container.

Mechanical engineering students at the University of Michigan installed the world’s largest hand-solvable, stationary Rubik’s Cube over the weekend at the university’s North Campus. Could you solve it?

Students from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology tell the story of Passover as only engineers can. Happy Passover from all of us at Product Design & Development.

Stratasys offers tips for clearer transparent and translucent 3D-printed prototypes. This video provides some suggestions for controlling and improving the transparency of VeroClear parts, optimizing the Stratasys system for printing, and utilizing post-processing techniques to ensure parts aren’t yellow or dull.

Smart homes are the wave of the future. That future could include more than 4 billion smart home sensors installed in homes around the world by 2022, according to ABI Research, a technology market research firm. These sensors, ABI says, will change the way houses are built, maintained, and managed. Sensors are embedded in a…

Have you ever wondered what happens to suction cups in a vacuum chamber? The inquiring minds at Hydraulic Press Action certainly have. They popped a bunch of these sticky do-dads inside a vacuum chamber and dialed down the pressure. Let’s see what happens.