For a maker of things, it’s completely natural to think in terms of shape, to remember shapes made before and to dream of the shape of things to come. The trouble is that we name our parts with descriptive language and complicated numbering conventions that attempt to describe shapes but don’t do it very well. Instead of typing words and numbers into a search box, imagine inputting a shape — in the form of a 3D CAD model — into a search box and finding everything similar. It’

We honor the craftsmen among us — the ones that bring product designs to life — because without them our world would not be what it is today. The role of the skilled craftsman has lost its stature as manufacturing has become a smaller part of the American economy and tradition. While our economy has given way to new worlds of work, many of which are based in the digital realm (website design, electronic game coding and social media application development among them), we can’

“Tribal knowledge” is a term that gets used frequently in today’s manufacturing world, and almost always in a negative sense. At Machine Research, we actually think that tribal knowledge is a great thing; in fact, it’s often the foundation of many of today’s best manufacturing companies. It represents the trade secrets, unique processes, and cumulative contributions of skilled craftsmen acquired over decades that companies employ to be the best provider of a specific manufact