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We’re excited to announce that the Fusion 360 team has partnered with FirstBuild, Instructables, and Sweet Maria’s Coffee to launch a design challenge now live on GE Appliances’ innovation platform, FirstBuild.
If you’re not familiar with FirstBuild, it’s a fascinating example of how Autodesk envisions the Future of Making Things. At FirstBuild, GE appliances are rapidly designed, iterated, and manufactured in a local, small-scale manufacturing facility in Lousiville, Kentucky. The kicker here though, is that anyone can be a part of the design and innovation of GE appliances – at their facility, someone can walk in off of the street and start helping to redesign the way GE thinks about their end user experience and physical production. From retrofitting any refrigerator with water filtration systems, to developing a countertop nugget ice maker, to designing an entirely new way to interact with your oven drawer, people from all walks of life are influencing the way GE Appliances is designing.
This in turn is allowing the company to quickly develop and manufacture products (sometimes in less than a year), and move on to the second generation incredibly fast. The fact that they’re doing it with help from the public only expands their ability to think and design creatively with continuous new perspectives.
You also don’t have to be in Louisville to participate. They have a thriving online community that is constantly cranking out meaningful and thoughtful solutions – a community where anyone can submit ideas and contribute to the development of upcoming projects.
Here’s a quick introduction to the project.
This month, we’re putting on a challenge to design FirstBuild’s next applicance accessory by creating a coffee bean roaster for your home oven using the mechanical design chops of Fusion 360, the wisdom of the roasters at Sweet Maria’s Coffee, and the insight of Instructables. Check out the details over at FirstBuild, and join in! Ideas can be as fleshed out or conceptual as you’re up for, as long as they meet the requirements on the project page.
The top three winners will win Sweet Maria’s Coffee and a year’s subscription to Autodesk’s Product Design Suite. The first place winner will also receive an Ember 3D Printer, and the second place winner will receive an Othermill desktop CNC mill.
The top design will be further developed and put into production at the FirstBuild facility!
We also have a special prize for the best student project uploaded to the Fusion 360 Gallery (details on the challenge website). This winner will receive an Othermill as well.
We’re looking forward to seeing what awesome ideas and models you can crank out! As an example project, Justin from FirstBuild has created the roasting tray below:
Here are a few Instructables to help get you started with Fusion 360 if you’re new to the scene:
