We are very excited to be adding this XBox HOTAS Setup by Akaki Kuumeri. This is the reason we started Angled.io so that anyone can create useful products and immediately get them into production and reap the benefits.

Akaki will be receiving a royalty of 25% of all sales of this device on Angled. We are taking care of the 3D Printing and fulfillment. This way the designer is able to focus on creating more awesome product it is possible for the average person to get access to the great 3D Printed products that are being created everyday. Check out the original article from the verge about the project below

Republished from The Verge

Microsoft Flight Simulator has got a lot of people hankering to take to the virtual skies. But for many the experience isn’t complete without a flight stick of some sort. With lots of these now sold out that can be tough. But here’s a solution: 3D-printed parts that snap onto an Xbox One controller for a DIY conversion into a hands on throttle-and-stick or HOTAS.

This amazing little mod is the work of Akaki Kuumeri, a 3D printing tinkerer who maintains a YouTube channel showing off some of his creations. Kuumeri has made a video for this mod, too, and it’s well worth a watch, just for the groanworthy selection of puns alone.

If you want to made the mod yourself, Kuumeri has uploaded the plans to Thingiverse to download for free. You’ll need to have access to a 3D printer, of course. Everything just snaps together, and there’s even the option to fit elastic bands inside the linkages to adjust the spring force on the stick and throttle.

Some caveats: responding to questions on Reddit, Kuumeri notes that the parts don’t work with the Xbox 360 controller or PS4 controller (though he says he may work on the latter if there’s enough interest). By his own account, though, the whole setup works surprisingly smoothly. “I expected the ball joints to have some slop, which [on] the scale of a thumb stick would be too much to play accurately, but they’re absolutely perfect,” he told one questioner. “It also helps that the Xbox thumb sticks are on a very smooth hinge themselves.”
So if you’ve not been able to grab yourself a flight stick, this looks like the next best thing.

Amazon recently announced a whole new lineup of Amazon Echo Products this week. The echo dot became spherical and their cameras can fly now.

But the new designs mean that there is a whole new opportunity. The chance to create unique accessories for the new spherical form factor the Echo Dot

This is not new. 3D Printed accessories for the Amazon echo have been around for as long as the echo. And Angled has been a distributor/manufacturer for those accessories since we got started.

These accessories have allowed the Amazon echo to be hidden, placed in a more useful position, or just for decoration and fun.

And there are really unlimited directions to go. Designers can create the accessories as a side-gig and just upload them to Angled where they will immediately be available to the rest of the world. Imagine what you could create, and what you could earn with a 25% royalty on each sale going to you.

If you have a design for an Echo Dot Accessory that you would like to have Angled.io add to the store. Please reach out to us with the 3D model and our team will get back to you. The Echo Dot needs to new accessories. And we need you to make them. ;)

The Bakers Cube was a sensation when it was first posted on thingiverse. With over 20,000 downloads it held the #1 spot for months.

Seeing the interest its creators (IOMAA) attempted to fun the mass production of the product with indegogo. But unfortunately they were not successful. It was just too expensive to get a product manufactured.

This is why we partnered with them when Angled.io was started. We knew that they could take advantage of the on-demand production capabilities that we had. A Cube is not made until a customer orders it. Just like an app-store all they had to do was upload the design. Then Angled printed, photographed, and deliveres the Bakers Cube to customers. All the while the creators are able to reap sales royalties every month from the sale of their product.  And what a product it is.

The Baker's Cube is just awesome. It combines all of your measuring cups into a single piece. Making it easy to always find what you need when you need it.

Contains cup measurements for:

• 1 cup
• 1/2 cup
• 1/3 cup
• 1/4 cup
• 2 Tablespoons
• 1 Tablespoon
• 1/2 table spoon
• 1 tea spoon
• 1/2 tea spoon
• 1/4 tea spoon​

It is a great addition to any kitchen. You are no longer scrambling to find your 1/2 cup or rifling through a ring of teaspoons. They are all right there. All you have to do is rotate.

The Bakers Cube is made from eco-friendly bio-plastic which can be industrially composted. This ensures that it is not adding to the worldwide plastics problem. Though it does require that you wash the Bakers Cube in soap and cold water, and dishwashing heat and chemicals can cause it to break down.

The Bakers Cube is best for measuring dry goods like flour and sugar. When measuring liquids make sure to wash the Cube after use and allow to dry.

We love the Bakers Cube here at Angled. It is a perfectly designed product that solves a problem for everyone. And we are especially excited that the guys who created it are now about to monetize their invention without having to manufacture it themselves or sell off their intellectual property.\

If you have a product design that you would like to submit to Angled.io, send it over. We would be happy to take a look and would love to add it to the site.
​

Angled has been live for several months now. We have been getting all types of submissions for each month's new cohort of products.  Unfortunately, we have not been able to approve all the submissions to Angled. Which begs the question, "How do we evaluate Products for Angled."

With this post we hope to clarify what makes a great 3D printed product, and how we sort them out.

Some parts just can't be made affordably yet. We want Angled to be a marketplace that the average consumer can access. Therefore the products must have  a price that matches their value. 

The first component of manufacturability is the design itself. Can this part be 3D Printed. Design for Additive manufacturing is a whole post (or book) unto itself, so we will point you to this article about designing for 3D Printing,  which covers most of the issues.

But if a product is manufacturable then there is the issue of "can it be made affordable." Remember that every Angled product is made on demand. It has to be produced in time and affordably within our systems. If it can't it will either be very expensive or just physically not possible for us to reliably produce. 

The most common contributor to this is the number of parts in the product. We have had submissions for puzzles, kits, and games of all kinds. But the issue is that they may have 20 separate pieces in the set. This many pieces in a set can be expensive to produce. Ideally an angled product is made from 1 Piece and no more than 3. This is not a hard and fast rule, we will still look at the large sets of pieces. (For instance 3D Printed Katan sets are coming out)

Another issue is just the complexity of the piece. Admittedly 3D Printing is really good at making really difficult geometries. But it can be challenging. Some parts would need a person to pick at it for an hour to clean it up after it comes of the machine (the part on the right below). Other parts come off the machine fully complete and ready to ship (every Angled.io part in this post)

Does it solve a problem or is it just cool.

Now this part is a bit subjective, so the team will use our collective experience to make a decision. But generally if we are on the fence we will release the product. We want new products to have  chance.

Now let's break this down some more. Does it solve a problem? And does it do it well?  We don't want products on angled that are second rate. We are curating them in order to get the best of the best so that a customer doesn't have to wade through piles of bad products looking at reviews.  So we will ask "does it a solve a problem well.?" If it does then it is in. 

Now solving a problem is great and necessary. But there are awesome products out there that are really just not that functional. But we still love them and want to see them. These are all super subjective, so we will generally post them if we can (within the bounds of manufacturability) just to see what will happen. 

This is a very simple test. If a product is an iteration or improvement on what already exists our researchers will check to see if something like this is actually in demand. They will look at search traffic and performance of past products.

Now this is generally a step we take when a product is particularly difficult. We put in a lot of effort in photography and ensuring that the products are well made by designers. So if we are putting in all of that work we want to ensure the products have a great chance of success. It is better for the designer and for Angled.io as a whole.

But truly great products of course combine all of these attributes.  They are optimized for 3D Printing. They solve a problem and look great. And they are in a market with a lot of demand so they can be a successful product.

One of our favorite examples of this is the Baker's Cube. The Baker's Cube solves the issue of keeping track of all of your measuring cups, but is also just a great piece. The perfect cube is clean and sleek. It is on a mission, but it can just stand there too.  And on the manufacturing side it is perfectly optimized for 3D Printing, so it can be made quite affordably.

​We really have to say that the Baker's Cube is a perfect product for Angled.

Hopefully that has given you some context as to what we are looking for on Angled.io. We are looking for great products that can be manufactured with 3D Printing. Over time we hope to open it up more and more so that anyone at anytime can upload a product and just run with it. But for now we are trying our best to make sure that each our designers and customers has a great experience and a great chance of success.