Buy this thing, man.. (via getty)Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about business, but I am pretty sure you don't go about it like this. I leave you, the reader to judge. This story illustrates, in fluorescent Day-Glo, why you do not sell produ...
Supercaps... 100F is always startling to me. I cannot go into too much detail as there are IP concerns at stake. This design failure concerns a device for the purpose of....hmm...controlling a sight where customers might come to fill there "something...
Elemental is a 3D printer like no other - it's the world’s first pressure controlled 3D printer In the final stages of development, Elemental is a stereolithography (SLA) 3D printer with a difference. Elemental is the world’s first pressure...
One of the best things about being a consultant is being able to manage projects without having to manage people. Hiring employees to help complete a project can entail adding burdensome tasks as well as much more risk. At the same time, passing on p...
Money used to be such a simple thing. A $1 weekly allowance from parents for all of your childhood chores was a pretty easy account to keep track of. Want to know how much you have? Open the piggy bank and count it up. Once the money was inhand it wa...
Wait, that isn’t electronics... As a fan of Terry Pratchett’s works I’m always on the lookout for new books by the author which are coming out. Although Terry has a progressive illness he has still managed to produce at least one book year on ye...
Right now everyone who reads this article in the United States owns a business. It may only exist in potential form, but it exists. Say someone walks up to you on the street with a 555 timer and a wad of cash. He pays you to make an astable oscillato...
Today is Nikola Tesla's birthday and many rightly recognize him as one of the greatest, most influential engineers of all time. However, we want to know who do you personally recognize as the greatest? Were you inspired by a well known figure in ...
Tesla’s Wardenclyffe plant being constructed in 1904 to transmit energy across the Atlantic (Archive photo)On July 10 of this year, famed inventor Nikola Tesla would have been 158 years-old and while he’s been gone for some time now, his technology s...
A Shameful Introduction First, a shocking truth about myself. Until a number of months ago, I did not know specifically who Nikola Tesla was, my first experience of the word Tesla was in the computer game Command & Conquer: Red Alert where b...
It was my first engineering job and I was tasked with creating the new reliability system for our chip laser components. I had big dreams, I wanted to be able to test 256 individually addressable laser chips on a single board! Having this many high-c...
A few months ago we were luck enough to have engineer Seggy Segaran present this webinar. Seggy has over 35 years experience in engineering and takes this opportunity to pass on the knowledge he has gained in designing and launching over 30 products....
We posted on Monday about how our upcoming birthday has made us all philosophical about the role of the engineer, and asked you a few questions about what being an engineer means to you personally. We would also like your perspective on the bigg...
There are a lot of consultants out there who like to think of themselves as great businessmen and women. They focus in on the contract and make sure their contingencies are covered so they will get paid even if lawyers are needed. Sadly, most off tho...
We’ve got a birthday coming up. The element14 Community will turn five years old soon and this milestone has got us thinking about the big questions. Who we are, why we’re here and what we mean to people, that sort of thing. The element14 Commun...
When my consulting calendar was busy enough that I not only could say 'no' to a potential client, but I had to say no to a client, I felt like I had 'made it' as a consultant. The hardest part of my biggest challenge, initial sales, was behind me. Th...
"Will you be a judge for the competition, too?""Yes!" was my reply, I hadn't been working at element14 for long and I was already asked to take some goodies and judge a competition for the opening of the Innovation Cube in Stoke-On-Trent, a place cre...
The past articles in this series have been largely about making sales, which is the most important aspect of any business. There comes a point, however, where there is enough potential work and the consultant needs to manage the limited amount of tim...
The best way to approach any consulting job is trying to work yourself out of it by providing a great solution. The worst consultants, ironically, can make a remarkable amount of money in the short term by becoming entrenched in a project yet never d...
Congrats! Someone thinks enough of you and the work to ask how much your services cost. The natural engineering approach would be to quickly quote them an hourly rate that you have already defined as what you need in order to make a living. That'...
Let's start with a clarifying definition: You're not a self-employed consultant unless you have clients. It's fine to tell people you're a consultant when searching for your first client, but never forget that until someone hires you ...
Let's start with a clarifying definition: You're not a self-employed consultant unless you have clients. It's fine to tell people you're a consultant when searching for your first client, but never forget that until someone hires you the correct job ...
As with any stage of my career since the dreaded Wendy's job (don't eat the chili), people have responded with both envy and disgust when I explain my consulting gig. Envy with, ' You get to make your own hours,' and disgust with '...
