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supermechanical.bsky.social
Supermechanical
@supermechanical.bsky.social
32 followers 2 following 34 posts
Making instruments for makers. Pickup is a sensor power tool:
https://kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/pickup
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supermechanical.bsky.social
Update on Pickup—putting the final touches on development and preparing for production. blog.supermechanical.com/2025/09/30/m...
A chick standing with a Pickup prototype. Printed case with beautiful MJF texture.
September 30, 2025 at 8:10 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Got a brood of new Pickup alpha testers.
A sleeping chick between Pickup and Twine environmental sensors.
September 2, 2025 at 10:54 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Learning about making 3D printed production parts, and how designing for multi jet fusion is different than injection molding.
blog.supermechanical.com/2025/06/27/g...
Granular
Slow progress lately. Maybe it’s the summer schedule. Maybe it’s because I’m back on the mechanical track. Multi-jet fusion: it’s different The new printed parts took a while to get to me (I su...
blog.supermechanical.com
June 27, 2025 at 7:52 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
What better way to test new database code than using Pickup to check whether popsicles will stay frozen in my cooler for the afterschool party? Trying to prove that dry ice won't be needed.
Pickup graph widget showing temperature dropping to freezing and holding the temperature for several hours.
May 29, 2025 at 2:47 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Gifts in the mail! We're adjusting from injection molding to MJF printed parts. These can't do the same level of detail so these prints are helping me tune things, but they look great! Additive manufacturing has come far. blog.supermechanical.com/2025/05/12/a...
Box filled with MJF printed prototype parts for Pickup Kid smiles holding a real Pickup
May 27, 2025 at 4:27 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Measuring fruit offgassing with Pickup's VOC/particulate cartridge.
Bowl of bananas, apple and a mango next to a Pickup VOC/particulate sensor.
April 23, 2025 at 6:50 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Pickup getting some air. Testing lenses for the spectral cart in outdoor light.
Pickup board and spectral cart testing outside on a rainy day.
March 28, 2025 at 6:42 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
In which we play with a bunch of sensor boards.
blog.supermechanical.com/2025/03/07/s...
Sensor party
To make up for those boring logistics updates, we have tangible movement on actual stuff this time. Unfortunately not case plastics, but a bit of just about everything else. The case molds are stil...
blog.supermechanical.com
March 7, 2025 at 2:50 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Testing Pickup distance sensor carts — bouncing lasers off that far wall.
Distance sensor boards in a Pickup on a tripod, being tested against a wall.
February 25, 2025 at 10:45 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Assembled spectral sensor, plugged into a preproduction Pickup! Got color sensing working, though it's still uncalibrated.
Spectral sensor cartridge assembled and plugged into a prototype Pickup environmental monitor. Testing color recognition on the (uncalibrated) spectral sensor. Reads a PCB as green.
February 18, 2025 at 3:38 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Bringing up Pickup sensor cartridges...
blog.supermechanical.com/2025/01/27/s...
Sensor cartridges getting made, educational science
Things are moving forward, slow but steady, which is about all you can ask for when sandwiched between Christmas and the Chinese New Year. We finally got a date for the first sample injection molded p...
blog.supermechanical.com
February 14, 2025 at 7:53 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Pickup update in which we try to untangle tariffs, which are currently in a quantum state. Also, sensor cartridge boards.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/sup...
Update 13: Sensor cartridges getting made, tariffs, educational science · Pickup is an environmental monitor for the rest of us.
Things are moving forward, slow but steady, which is about all you can ask for when sandwiched between Christmas and the Chinese New Year. We finally got a date for the first sample injection molded p...
www.kickstarter.com
January 31, 2025 at 10:30 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
First samples of our sensor cartridge boards are done! Cases are being printed as I type.
Circuitboard for CO2/humidity sensor cartridge for Pickup environmental monitor
January 24, 2025 at 7:17 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
It's neat that contract manufacturing lets you make products without a lot of experience. But making innovative products requires that first-hand experience. Here's how hard it is.

blog.supermechanical.com/2024/12/23/y...
Running sample parts at an injection molder in Maine to get the right color and translucency. Prepping the injection molding press for a sample run.
January 9, 2025 at 3:48 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
It's hard to make hardware in America when you're small. How we're making the supply chain for our environmental monitor:
blog.supermechanical.com/2024/12/23/t...
Demolding injection molded handles for our thermometer.
December 31, 2024 at 6:19 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
When you're making a hardware product, you're really making two products. Been wanting to write about the experience of building a supply chain for a while.
blog.supermechanical.com/2024/12/23/t...
The small link at the end of the chain
This update’s for the logistics nerds instead of the techies. Your first product is a supply chain You may have wondered why businesses can be built on importing existing products from overseas ...
blog.supermechanical.com
December 23, 2024 at 9:06 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Pickup update #11 is a little dull unless you're into the nitty gritty of hardware production. Always fun ("fun"?) to get your first batch of boards to start analyzing the failures! (3 out of 50, but easy fixes.)
blog.supermechanical.com/2024/11/14/b...
Boards, bugs, better interface
Hi — after getting shiny new boards last month, this month we’ve been back to grinding on code. I’ll do my best to make this interesting, but no promises. Hardware We got around to testing all o...
blog.supermechanical.com
November 19, 2024 at 3:12 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Production circuitboards have arrived just in time for pumpkin spice season. Read this for a snapshot of the many balls you have to keep in the air (and the one I dropped) when developing a consumer electronics product.

blog.supermechanical.com/2024/10/08/t...
The production boards are looking autumnal.
We have been boring lately. Though in general, most of the work of manufacturing is just grinding, on the supply chain as well as on our own engineering tasks. That’s one reason I was holding off on a...
blog.supermechanical.com
October 9, 2024 at 5:31 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Special delivery! Got samples of an unreleased sensor. 1% the size of comparable sensors, which makes it easy to fit into a cartridge for our pocket-sized environmental monitor.
An anti-static package containing sensor samples.
August 28, 2024 at 10:45 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
That feeling when you finally hold the first physical instance of the thing you've been working on for a year.

This is why hardware development is hard to quit!

blog.supermechanical.com/2024/07/30/s...
An engineer holding the Pickup data logger he's been developing, finally in assembled form with a case and everything.
August 2, 2024 at 2:58 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Making injection-molded parts is not as hard as you think, as long as you can swallow laying down a lot of money. I wrote about the grind as I finish up the molds for Pickup:
blog.supermechanical.com/2024/07/01/a...
Diagrams of injection mold flow and draft from a moldability report. Exciting.
July 8, 2024 at 9:20 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
A lot of money was spent. New Pickup project update:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/sup...
Cross section in CAD of the Pickup environmental monitor.
July 3, 2024 at 9:39 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
We got production candidate circuitboards for Pickup! Nearly there.
blog.supermechanical.com/2024/05/14/m...
Final candidate Pickup PCBs. Need only a few tweaks.
June 13, 2024 at 6:20 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Big pads, little component. That's why you prototype the process. (From the Pickup environmental data logger we're manufacturing.)
Little baby chip trying to fit into adult pads on a PCB.
May 3, 2024 at 2:08 PM
supermechanical.bsky.social
Tuning Pickup ambient light sensors. From outdoor to indoor is quite a dynamic range. Nerd details in our latest development update: blog.supermechanical.com/2024/04/09/f...
Forward March
March has been productive. We left off last time with a major decision to change out a key component, the microcontroller that handles all of our sensor IO and power management. We've had our heads do...
blog.supermechanical.com
April 25, 2024 at 7:38 PM