Innovation, August 2012

Popular Science profiled a new handheld woodworking router tool developed by two students and an associate professor at MIT. The machine “will redirect itself to rout wood along the appropriate route after the pre-drawn plans” are loaded into the system and a camera records the entire surface. Read the article

Graduate student in mechanical engineering, Ilan E. Moyer (MA B ’08), is part of the team working on the project. The tool has the advantage over current “automatic cutters, CNC routers, because those devices can only cut things that are smaller than themselves.”

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has been awarding grants recently through the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program and the Presidential Early career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Click here for the list of recent funded awards complete with title, investigator, and organization

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Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, OH D ’79, has developed Contour Crafting (CC), “a layered fabrication technology with the potential for automating the construction of whole structures as well as sub-components.” Dr. Khoshnevis is a professor of engineering and director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) at the University of Southern California.

Visit the CC website for information on how the technology works. You can also read a recent feature article from Popular Science highlighting the potential of CC to produce an entire house in 20 hours.

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