It was actually before I owned one but a friend of mine did.
When iPods first came out, if you can believe it, there were no accessories for them on the market. Well, I had just purchased the first generation iPod so I could build tooling around it for another project I had cooked up. The thing was sliding around on my desk with nowhere to go and I got a "novel" idea... It needed a stand.
So I cranked up Illustrator, and put my brain in 3D mode. In about an hour I had a drawing I knew would would work. It was kind of funky looking but form had to follow function in this case.
From there, I emailed the file to my friend about 800 miles away. He immediately cut it out, assembled it, took a photo and emailed it back to me. It worked exactly as I had planned by interlocking together.
I then emailed that photo to an emerging company getting into the iPod market and got an order for 500 units. My next step was to create packaging.
Lasers allow us think outside the box and actually do something about it. I can't think of another process that would have allowed me to go from conception to final product in only a few hours.
Here is an article from 2001:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/rev...r-modpod-ipod/
Cheers,
Doug
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Angus Hines
