Our co-founders Nate Padgett and Sam Holland pulled together some key learnings from their decades of experience creating amazing hardware and bringing products to life. The informal Hardware Handbook 📖 focuses on current trends, challenges, and the tools needed to bring a project from conception to completion. It is made up of advice from experts in a variety of areas within the industry, giving critical direction that can make or break any project. We're excited to have sourced this information within our informal community and to share the knowledge with you! Sign up for our newsletter in the link below to unlock access to the complete guide.
informal
Business Consulting and Services
San Francisco, California 2,319 followers
a freelance collective for people in hardware
About us
informal matches world class freelancers with companies of all sizes. From solo inventors to publicly traded companies, informal helps clients build, brand, and scale their physical product businesses.
- Website
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https://www.informal.cc
External link for informal
- Industry
- Business Consulting and Services
- Company size
- 11-50 employees
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2019
- Specialties
- Consulting, Electrical Engineering, Product Design Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Supply Chain Management, Design for Sustainability, Community Engagement, Crowdfunding Campaigns, Industrial Design, Marketing, Freelancing, and Branding
Locations
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Primary
45 29th St
San Francisco, California 94110, US
Employees at informal
Updates
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Re-sharing musings from Caleb Vainikka - an extraordinary ME, product developer, and informal member. "You don't need a $1000 iPad to sketch concepts. Paper and pen work fine. Don't let your lack of tools limit your concept exploration. Think with your pen out. Sketching is a superpower for engineers." #sketchyengineering
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Imagine having a central place where you can check out the color, material, and finish (#CMF) specs of a wide range of products. We're excited to share the CMF Database, powered by informal! This free resource lets you explore and view CMF specs for an ever-growing list of products. Plus, you can add products to the database, making it even more valuable. We want CMF-DB to be your go-to source for finding the perfect mix of color, material, and finishes. It's designed to improve the way we communicate the complexities of CMF with clients. Check out our latest blog post for more details on this handy tool, and tell us what you think!
CMF Database - powered by informal
cmfdb.com
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Our favorite burrito holder just got a new video review from the crew over at Sorted Food! Didn't know there was a better way to eat burritos this entire time? Meet Burrito Pop. We dare you not to change your mind after watching this review! Props to the inventor Madelin Woods, and to the #informal collective who helped bring this product to market. (Nate Padgett, Sam Holland, Elizabeth Goodspeed, Tristan Cannan and Michael Terwindt)
Reviewing Kitchen Gadgets | S3 E4 Sorted Food
https://www.youtube.com/
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informal reposted this
Summers are usually the slow period for Hardware Meetup because of travel and vacation schedules, but not this summer! Exciting to see a couple new cities coming online too.
🤖 july hardware meetup newsletter out summer kickoff events across sf (h/t Nate), ny (h/t Paul, Christina), zurich (h/t Rayan), and a special product tear down event in portland (h/t Helen)! and thank you to Jillian and the startup program at SOLIDWORKS for supporting the community. hardware companies hiring right now: · Magrathea is hiring sr. mech-e - https://lnkd.in/gHj6iXRF · Multiply Labs is hiring a mech-e - https://lnkd.in/gDd96C4J · Sofar Ocean is hiring a sr. backend api engineer - https://lnkd.in/gPrZ7yxm · Quadric is hiring sr. design verification engineer - https://lnkd.in/gESA4NUu · informal is hiring experienced engineers, designers, and go to market specialists for the freelance collective - https://lnkd.in/g2nCVbQW august is heating up with 10 different cities hosting hardware events! 🗓️ more here: https://lnkd.in/gswvkS4k
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We had a blast speaking with informal member and mechanical engineer Dan Holzer for this member profile piece. Based in the fast-growing Boston hardware community, Dan has a diverse range of technical skills that he uses to work alongside early-stage startups and small technical teams to design, prototype, and commercialize new technologies. He’s received a product innovation certification at MIT, built composite products for a company acquired by 3M, and led rapid prototyping & engineering design projects at Shell Techworks. Dive into the full feature below to learn more about Dan and why he would be a massive technical asset to your team!
informal member profile: Dan Holzer, mechanical engineer
https://www.informal.cc
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informal reposted this
FREE ME RESOURCE: informal has partnered with Hardware FYI to offer this free 8-page tool for #mechanicalengineers ! Keep it on your desk, bring it to an interview, and have quick answers to the most common ME questions at your fingertips. You can use these ME cheat sheets to reference: - Mechanics of Materials - Materials 101 (Materials Science & Material Selection) - Free Body Diagrams - Materials Science - Heat Transfer & Fluid Dynamics - Manufacturing Processes https://tally.so/r/3yyWq6
Tally Forms
https://tally.so
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While fundraising on Kickstarter has a very low barrier to entry and is easily accessible to those who don’t wish to go down the traditional VC route, standing out in a crowded space and garnering buy-in for your yet-to-be-developed product is no easy task. To date, there’s been roughly 260,000 successfully funded projects on Kickstarter. On the flip side, there’s also been over 365,000 that were unsuccessful in reaching their funding goal. Even for the successful projects, most of them raised less than $10,000 in funding. Then we have an impressive outlier like Micronics LLC, who launched their SLS 3D printing campaign on Kickstarter with a goal of $100,000, ended up raising over $1.3 million, and achieved this as a scrappy 2-person operation. It’s no surprise SLA printing powerhouse Formlabs announced their acquisition of Micronics late last week. But will this acquisition move the needle in making SLS 3D printing more accessible? Or will this be another flop of a merger that seems to stifle innovation and haunt the 3D printing industry? Only time will tell. With the many informal members' collective experience working in the additive manufacturing tech space, including our co-founder Sam Holland, we wanted to share the news and get any hot takes from our community. So let us know what you think in the comments! #hardware #3Dprinting #kickstarter #tech #hardwarefounders #techcrunch
Exclusive: Formlabs acquires 3D printing startup Micronics mid-Kickstarter campaign
https://techcrunch.com
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The final post in the Bridging the Valley series is live! With this series, informal freelance member Michael Lo explores a common stumbling point in hardware product development between lab research and the leap to implementation, appropriately named the "Valley of Death". In this final installment, Lo looks at how a few programs like Sinai BioDesign, FedTech and TechLink are helping to productize innovative technologies by connecting research and funding with entrepreneurs and industry. #valleyofdeath #research #technologytransfer #technology #development #hardware #trl
Real-world solutions to the Valley of Death - Mike Lo
https://www.informal.cc
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Despite the ability to snap great pictures through our phones, there's some unique value to having small pictures (with undeniably lower resolution) printed and posted on our walls. That was product design engineer and informal freelance collective member, Shivam Dehinwal's inspiration to purchase the Fujifilm instax mini 8. Once it was in his hands, he quickly realized there were many great things about this camera apart from the size, color and form factor. But the only way to truly appreciate all of the detailed engineering going on in the camera of course would be to take it apart! So here is his teardown, focusing on a small but very important part of the Fujifilm instax mini 8: the springs! We hope you enjoy. Do you have experience with the Fujifilm instax mini 8? Share your stories in the comments! Jonesing for a teardown of another product? Let us know that as well! Read the full teardown 👉 https://lnkd.in/eNxVstBU #Teardown #mechanicalengineering #designcommunity #industrialdesigners #designeducation #productdevelopment
Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 teardown analysis - informal
https://www.informal.cc