Sep
9
This 3D-printed contraption is by Igor Daemen, an Eindhoven-based product designer. “I designed this businesscard embosser to be modular and 3D printable without using any support and without any hardware required to assemble,” he writes.
“The tolerances are tight,” Daemen explains. “And some materials work better then others. I have had best results using Basic PLA.”
You can download the files for free here.
Sep
9
One of the largest barriers to plastic recycling is proper separation by type. If you’re trying to recycle polyethylene or polypropylene, and you throw some PVC into the mix, it contaminates the batch and makes the whole thing unrecyclable. In countries with disciplined consumers, like South Korea or Japan, you’ll see recycling bins asking consumers to separate their recyclables by category; in the standout Japanese town of Kamikatsu, residents sort their garbage into no less than 45 different categories.
Research chemists at Northwestern University are working on a plastic recycling system that does not require sorting. They’ve discovered “a new, inexpensive nickel-based catalyst that selectively breaks down polyolefin plastics consisting of polyethylenes and polypropylenes — the single-use kind that dominates nearly two-thirds of global plastic consumption. This means industrial users could apply the catalyst to large volumes of unsorted polyolefin waste.” Even better, the catalyst is unfazed by PVC, and can break down PVC-contaminated polyolefin.*
“One of the biggest hurdles in plastic recycling has always been the necessity of meticulously sorting plastic waste by type,” said Northwestern’s Tobin Marks, the study’s senior author. “Our new catalyst could bypass this costly and labor-intensive step for common polyolefin plastics, making recycling more efficient, practical and economically viable than current strategies.”
“When people think of plastic, they likely are thinking about polyolefins,” said Northwestern’s Yosi Kratish, a co-corresponding author on the paper. “Basically, almost everything in your refrigerator is polyolefin based — squeeze bottles for condiments and salad dressings, milk jugs, plastic wrap, trash bags, disposable utensils, juice cartons and much more. These plastics have a very short lifetime, so they are mostly single-use. If we don’t have an efficient way to recycle them, then they end up in landfills and in the environment, where they linger for decades before degrading into harmful microplastics.”
Polyolefin’s recycling rates are an abysmal 1% to 10% worldwide, largely because the material is so laborious to separate. If the Northwestern researchers can scale up their process, that could change this equation entirely.
*Explaining PVC contamination: Typically when catalysts are used to break down plastic, and they run into PVC, the PVC starts to decompose and releases hydrogen chloride gas. This gas is corrosive and deactivates the catalyst, halting the recycling process.
In contrast, the catalyst used by the NW researchers actually increases its performance when it runs into PVC.
Sep
9
For those accustomed to four-wheeled vehicles, what is the biggest barrier to entry for motorized two-wheel transport? BMW Motorrad, the carmaker’s motorcycle division, reckons it’s the hassle of safety gear. They’ve thus unveiled this Vision CE concept, an electric scooter designed for “the elimination of the need for a helmet as well as protective clothing, offering riders an increased sense of freedom and a casual, carefree riding experience.”
“The centrepiece of the BMW Motorrad Vision CE is its safety concept: a metal tube composite known as the ‘cage’. Together with an appropriate seat construction with seat belt, it ensures a safe and emotional riding experience without the need for a helmet or the usual protective clothing.”
“The cage’s reduced overall height and open, airy design, combined with a long wheelbase, give the Vision CE a stretched, dynamic and visually light appearance.”
The futuristic-looking ride can also self-balance when stationary, so riders don’t need to put their foot down at a red light.
There is, however, a kickstand for parking.
The project’s presentation makes me wonder if the designers and marketing folk weren’t quite on the same page. While the concept description reads “the Vision CE offers an emotional, creative and fresh take on commuting, describing the future of urban two-wheel mobility,” the imagery seems like it’s targeted more at Instagram influencers than people who commute to jobs:
I will say that the translation from rendering to model looks pretty seamless:
At press time no production plans were announced.
Sep
9
This post is presented by the K-Show, the world’s No.1 trade fair for the plastics and rubber industry. Visionary developments and groundbreaking innovations will again lead the industry into new dimensions at K 2025 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Chris Lefteri: Nicolas, before we dive in, tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Adobe.
Nicolas Paulhac: I’m the Director of 3D Content at Adobe Substance. My background spans industrial design and CMF (Color, Material, Finish), where I focused on how products are made and how various industrial processes shape material transformation.
At Adobe Substance, we offer a suite of five specialized applications for material authoring, texturing, and staging—empowering 3D artists and designers across diverse industries to create digital materials, apply them to products, and visualize their designs. My role involves leading content production within these apps and curating ready-to-use assets for our Substance 3D Assets library, which provides the foundational elements creators need for their 3D projects.
Nicolas Paulhac, Director of 3D Content at Adobe Substance © Adobe Inc. 2025 – All rights reserved
Chris Lefteri: Perfect! And how do you bring the world of real materials into the Adobe software?
Nicolas Paulhac: Digital material creation can be approached in two main ways, each offering unique advantages. You can scan a real physical surface or create textures fully digitally.
Scanning, involves capturing real-world materials using a material scanner. It ensures high fidelity and precision by generating texture maps that reflect how the material reacts to light through key properties such as color, glossiness and surface relief. It’s ideal for replicating materials with accuracy and realism.
Materials can also be built entirely from scratch using procedural tools. This method offers maximum flexibility and control, enabling creators to define every aspect of the material’s behavior and appearance without relying on physical samples.
These methods are not separate but complementary to each other. Designers can start with a scanned material and then apply additional effects—modifying color, adding surface details, or introducing patterns not present in the original sample. This approach allows for creative freedom while maintaining a strong link to the physical reference, essentially crafting a personalized “material behavior”.
At Adobe Substance, we utilize both methods to produce textures. Each material in the 3D Assets library is a living asset designed to be personalized. Each material, through its exposed parameters that users can modify, acts as a mini-library capable of generating infinite variations of itself—whether in terms of color, surface grain, glossiness, pattern, and more. For CMF designers specifically, it can act as a kind of digital fab lab. This empowers artists and designers to build tailored digital materials that are both expressive and production-ready by preserving coherence with real-world material behavior.
© Adobe Inc. 2025 – All rights reserved
Chris Lefteri: And that Fab Lab is relating back to the way the materials, in the real three-dimensional sense, get processed?
Nicolas Paulhac: When there is a visual impact of the process on the surface, which is very often the case, yes. We begin by studying the visual properties of physical samples to reproduce them as faithfully as possible. But we don’t stop there. We analyze the forming processes—examining how each production step influences the final look and feel of the material. By connecting these insights to finishing techniques, we can introduce meaningful customization parameters into the digital material. It’s a way of embedding process awareness into the material itself, making it not just a visual replica but a customizable digital asset.
© Adobe Inc. 2025 – All rights reserved
Chris Lefteri: So, you must have a fantastic physical materials library?
Nicolas Paulhac: We collect samples, indeed—but not just physical ones. Our references span a wide range of formats, including images, mood boards, color palettes, and technical documentation. Depending on the material or process we aim to recreate, we have collaborated on specific collections with material suppliers, consulted existing resources, or studied real products.
In some cases, we even fabricate custom samples specifically to create digital materials. This allows us to capture larger surface areas or to isolate individual stages of a finishing process—creating each stage separately. By doing so, we gain precise control and realism when digitally reconstructing the material.
Chris Lefteri: And how do you stay updated with new materials, technologies and processes?
Nicolas Paulhac: Well, it involves staying up to date with trends in product and CMF design. We approach it with a segmented lens—by industry and product category. We observe how materials evolve across domains to ensure our digital content remains relevant and forward-looking.
When it comes to manufacturing, we engage with model makers and material engineers, especially when we need to understand how things are made.
Sustainability trends are very interesting to us. Eco-designed materials are part of our area of interest— even if, for now, our focus is on making their digital twins visually realistic. We believe digital tools have a vital role to play here—supporting sustainable innovation at multiple levels.
A great example is our collaboration with Chris Lefteri Design for the 3D Assets library, which attempts to show how digital materials can support early-stage creative exploration. Whether it’s advanced technologies like reactive surfaces—thermo-bimetals or auxetics—the digital medium allows us to mimic desirable finishes and potential applications long before physical prototypes exist.
© Adobe Inc. 2025 – All rights reserved
Similarly, our visual explorations around plastic injection processes for the K-Show enabled us to pre-visualize new effects linked to the use of fillers. This opens creative opportunities to make imperfection and transformation desirable—turning technical constraints into expressive material qualities for design.
Chris Lefteri: Yes, this most recent collaboration was looking at sustainability as a new way to realise the surface or composition of a material and to somehow represent that digitally. Was it a challenge for your team to work on our collaboration, or generally on dealing with unperfect materials?
Nicolas Paulhac: It was a truly stimulating challenge. The brief on composite plastics gave us the opportunity to explore not only how to visualize these effects with realism, but also how to parameterize each technical attribute to animate transitions between different surface states.
It’s a perfect example of what I mentioned earlier: building each effect digitally and procedurally, then combining them into a cohesive material experience. One of the key challenges was controlling the flow effect when mixing different components—capturing realistic dispersion patterns, the kind of surface visuals that emerge as fillers propagate and accumulate progressively. This type of work shows how digital materials can go far beyond static textures — they become dynamic, expressive tools for storytelling in CMF design.
Chris Lefteri: So would the user of the software be able to control this level of tunability, in terms of color, movement and flow of the material?
Nicolas Paulhac: Yes, users will have control over most of these aspects. Of course, there are the basic parameters—like color and glossiness—that come standard with every material. But in this case, the user can also control the size and amount of filler added into the formula, and adjust the parameters that influence distribution, density, and growth. These changes directly affect the resulting patterns, giving the user the ability to shape how the material evolves visually.
© Adobe Inc. 2025 – All rights reserved
© Adobe Inc. 2025 – All rights reserved
Chris Lefteri: Are you seeing more industries adopting and engaging with digital materials outside the traditional ones of automotive and product design?
Nicolas Paulhac: Yes, we’re definitely seeing a wide range of industries embracing digital materials beyond the traditional domains of automotive, architecture, and product design. Industries such as fashion and consumer packaged goods, to name a few, are increasingly adopting digital solutions—not just for the product itself, but across every aspect of the design and visualization process. For example, even the contents of a package now need to be visualized with realism.
This shift opens new opportunities for designers to streamline workflows, enhance visualization, and maintain consistency between digital and physical outputs. It’s largely driven by the need for faster iteration, cost reduction, sustainability goals, and the expanding role of digital twins—from early-stage development to marketing visualization.
Chris Lefteri: Are you saying that individuals are using the software to develop food?
Nicolas Paulhac: Yes, it’s connected to the design. It also plays a key role in accelerating the overall process. It helps bridge design and production with the marketing phase, allowing products to be showcased earlier to consumers. This is a major advantage of using 3D: it enables visualization at an earlier stage, in a faster and more cost-effective way compared to traditional methods like photo shoots.
Chris Lefteri: I was actually thinking of how chefs could use it to develop their recipes or food. Because a lot of this high-end food is very visual, it is more about the Instagram image than the food itself. So, chefs could use it to design texture, patterns or effects for instance?
Nicolas Paulhac: I believe that’s one of the opportunities as we look ahead. A good example could be cosmetics—how do you accurately represent what comes out of the tube? Oils, serums, and other formulations need to be visualized realistically for marketing purposes. So why not use the digital medium to explore creative iterations in terms of design? It opens up new possibilities for visual storytelling and early-stage concept development, even before a physical prototype exists.
Chris Lefteri: And, for example — dare I say — even something like skin?
Nicolas Paulhac: This is actually a well-established practice in the world of games and film, known as “character art,” where specialized artists focus on texturing human and non-human skin—whether realistic or stylized.
Thanks to the level of realism we can now achieve, new opportunities are emerging in other fields like Medical and healthcare. Being able to visualize not just skin but full anatomy in high detail is proving valuable—for example, one of the applications is training medical staff with virtual surgeries.
Chris Lefteri: Very interesting. Also, you now have the more futuristic imagery which doesn’t even relate to a physical product – it is completely imagined. How do you approach this?
Nicolas Paulhac: A large part of the materials we create is dedicated to the game and VFX industries, where expressiveness and realism are key. The finality may differ across design disciplines but actually, the approach of creation isn’t so different. Whether the material is real or imagined, it still needs to tell a story. It’s about crafting what makes the material visually credible to the eye. We all go through the same instinctive reactions when we see a surface for the first time: is it soft or hard, reflective or matte, smooth or textured? These visual cues are essential to conveying emotion and materiality—how something is made, what it’s made for, and what it could inspire in terms of application.
Substance digital materials are based on PBR—Physically Based Rendering—which means they accurately simulate how a surface interacts with light. With the Substance 3D applications, creators can design fully digital materials in a hyper-realistic way while maintaining control over key visual properties that matter in their field of expertise.
© Adobe Inc. 2025 – All rights reserved
Chris Lefteri: How do you see the use of these digital materials and tools evolving in the future?
Nicolas Paulhac: Looking ahead, I believe digital materials and tools will become even more central to how industries design, validate, and communicate products. The goal isn’t to position physical and digital materials as opposing forces in product creation, but rather to explore how they complement each other in the design process. By doing so, designers gain more creative freedom to visualize and communicate a design intention.
Digital twins will evolve into more dynamic and interconnected systems, enabling seamless transitions between virtual and physical workflows like behavior simulation, real-time feedback loops and predictive design.
As sustainability becomes non-negotiable, digital materials will play a key role in reducing waste, supporting more confident decision-making earlier in the process.
Chris Lefteri: My final question is, going back in time now, what’s your favourite material memory from childhood?
Nicolas Paulhac: One of my favorite material memories from childhood is leather. My grandfather owned a small leather goods shop, and I spent countless hours watching him shape and repair leather bags. Observing the process—the way the material responded to heat, pressure, and tooling—sparked my fascination with how things are made. It was during those moments that I developed a deep interest in the transformation of materials, not just for their aesthetic qualities but also for their performance and surface effects. That early exposure continues to influence how I think about material design today.
NOTE: Chris Lefteri will be running design tours at the K Show on the 12th & 13th October. If you are interested in participating contact ktour@chrislefteri.com
Sep
8
Few 20th-century architects were more famous than Michael Graves, who became a household name in the ’80s and ’90s. Aside from famous structures like the Portland Building and the Denver Public Library, he also veered into the ID space, designing housewares for Alessi and Target. After a spinal infection left him paralyzed in 2003, he shifted his focus towards designing accessibility-minded objects, furniture and spaces.
While Graves passed away a decade ago his firm, Michael Graves Design lives on, and is still regarded as an expert in accessible design. This is evinced in this small but wonderful design detail in their line of dressers for Pottery Barn.
Practically every dresser on the market has a completely flat top. The MGD-designed ones here have a molding around the perimeter, which make for convenient grab points.
These are useful for both wheelchair users and folks who need some support as they move around the room.
“It gives you this secure place to hold onto, and we went through a lot of iterations to get it so clean and so simple, yet so comfortable and beautiful,” says Robert Van Varick, MGD’s Chief Design Officer.
The molding is also neatly notched at the back corners to accommodate cables.
Here’s a brief interview with Van Varick discussing the design:
Sep
8
Speaking to a customer service rep with a thick accent is difficult enough; when the connection is bad, it’s even worse. Similarly, even for those who speak multiple languages, understanding someone speaking in a different language in a noisy environment, like a transportation hub or a convention center, can be challenging.
Chinese electronics manufacturer Timekettle has designed their W4 AI Interpreter Earbuds for the latter application. They use bone conduction technology (in addition to a microphone) to accurately capture speech even in noisy environments. They need to be paired with your phone to connect to the company’s cloud translation service, and as you speak, your translated communications are played through your phone’s speaker—in your voice, cloned by AI.
That said, listening to a phone speaker in a noisy environment isn’t ideal. To get around this, the company has developed a One-on-One mode, which comes with a slight ick factor: You give one earbud to the person you’re speaking with, so you’ve each got one. When you speak, the other party hears the translation directly through the earbud, and vice versa.
The company says that the translation time is just 0.2 seconds (I imagine it actually depends on your connection speeds), and that they can handle 42 languages and 95 accents with “up to 98%” accuracy.
The buds offer up to four hours of translation time on a single charge. They run $350.
Sep
8
Students at ETH Zurich have invented a new type of metal 3D printer, which takes a cue from turntables: It spins. Designed specifically to produce cylindrical objects, it reduces manufacturing time versus conventional laser powder bed fusion machines (LPBF) by a staggering two-thirds.
Image: Michael Tucker / ETH Zurich
Image: Michael Tucker / ETH Zurich
With conventional LPBF machines, a layer of powder is spread, then the laser takes a pass, fusing select parts of the layer. Then another layer of powder is spread, and so on. With ETH’s Rapture machine, however, the powder is spread and the laser is fusing continuously, with no dead time between layers.
The Rapture can also handle two different metals at once and lay the particles with precision, greatly reducing waste.
“This process is ideally suited to rocket nozzles, rotating engines and many other components in the aerospace industry,” says ETH Senior Scientist Michael Tucker. “They typically have a large diameter but very thin walls.”
Image: Michael Tucker / ETH Zurich
The project was supported by ARIS, the Swiss Academic Space Initiative, which plans to build its own rockets. Rapture could make that an affordable reality.
Sep
8
Porsche reckons that plugging in an EV each night is a hassle. “Ease of use, suitability for everyday use and charging infrastructure are still the decisive factors when it comes to the acceptance of electric mobility,” says Porsche Board Member for Development Michael Steiner.
To get around that, they’ve developed a wireless charging system for their electric Cayenne, consisting of a pad you leave on your garage floor. A power cable runs from the pad and is plugged into a 220V outlet; while this eliminates the need to install a charging station, you’d still need to hire an electrician to install the high-amperage outlet, unless you’ve already got 220V in your garage.
As for how it works, from a user point of view:
“To initiate the charging process, the Cayenne only has to be parked above the floor plate. A special view in the Surround View parking function makes it easier to maneuver the Cayenne to the optimal charging position.”
“As soon as the parking position above the floor plate is reached and the parking brake is activated, the charging process begins. The contactless transfer of energy between the two charging units takes place over a distance of roughly four to six inches. To make this possible, the Cayenne reduces the ride height automatically.”
That sounds neat, but seems it might be problematic, as it relies on the car’s adaptive air suspension to lower itself. While adaptive air suspensions can be reliable if regularly maintained, there are more potential points of failure.
That said, they have thought about the safety aspect of the charging arrangement in case, say, the family cat wanders into the garage: “The base plate has a motion detector and foreign object detection. The charging process is automatically interrupted if interference is detected.”
Porsche Wireless Charging will launch in Europe next year, and they say they’ll expand to other markets after that.
Sep
6
Here’s what we looked at this week:
Sep
5
Viken Detection specializes in harnessing detection technologies for use in security, law enforcement and public safety. To create their Raven product, a handheld X-ray imager, they turned to industrial design consultancy Sprout Studios.
Sprout partnered with Viken Detection to design the next generation of their handheld imaging device, RAVEN. This compact backscatter X-ray imager is purpose-built for trained law enforcement, security, and inspection professionals who rely on powerful, portable technology in unpredictable environments. With its lightweight frame and advanced imaging capabilities, RAVEN delivers high-resolution scans and exceptional mobility, making it an essential tool for rapid threat detection across a range of operational contexts.
The design needed to accommodate a wide spectrum of users and conditions—from gloved hands in cold weather to fast-moving, high-stakes inspections. Viken sought a modern aesthetic that communicated ruggedness and clarity of use, integrating tactile controls and a high-resolution screen into a housing that supported both one-handed and two-handed operation.
Sprout approached the challenge by grounding our design decisions in human-centered principles and real-world functionality. We developed a robust resin housing that meets IP-54 environmental protection standards without sacrificing portability. The handles were sculpted for intuitive grip, while control surfaces were optimized for usability in complex field conditions. Throughout the project, Sprout worked in close collaboration with Viken’s engineering team—holding frequent check-ins to adapt the exterior design in step with evolving internal layouts.
The final form marks a purposeful shift forward in Viken’s visual language—sleek, durable, and built to integrate seamlessly into the broader product system. A targeted CMF strategy further reinforces the product’s identity, drawing from visual cues common in military and law enforcement gear to signal performance, resilience, and tactical intent.
The result is RAVEN: a smart, handheld imaging tool that elevates the standard for mobile security operations. It merges cutting-edge detection capabilities with thoughtful, field-ready design—empowering professionals to operate with confidence, speed, and precision.
You can see more of Sprout’s work here.