Model Airplanes

Actively seeking a career in toys is a relatively new phenomenon. Toy design schools didn’t exist a generation ago, which means most veterans of the toy industry got into the business by accident. Product and industrial design is a common background for toy designers, as is fashion, illustration and animation.

Here are the stories of six designers who never could have predicted they would be working in toys as adults:

Versace to Barbie

Deborah Ryan was a New York fashion designer for Versace when she accepted a job at Mattel designing clothes for Barbie.

She thought she would stay just a few years but soon realized that designing for Barbie is not that different than designing for runway models. The body types are similar.

The main difference is that a single line of Barbie clothes might sell hundreds of thousands of units, which is much harder to pull off in the luxury fashion world.

Ryan said her roots as a designer began as a 7-year-old, making Barbie clothes with her aunts.

“That’s what got me into fashion design,” she said. “It kind of went full circle.”

Ryan now directs the toy design department at Otis College of

Article source: http://www.presstelegram.com/business/20141214/designers-came-to-toys-from-varied-careers

Cardiff doctor Nathalie MacDermott is on the front line of the world’s battle to contain the horrific ebola outbreak spreading through parts of Africa. She kept this moving daily diary of her work for Wales on Sunday.

Friday, November 28

Today I return to Liberia again following a brief rest period in the UK. I am keen to return; even with case numbers down there is still a lot to be done.

Numbers of cases being down is positive, but what remains concerning is that there is no good intervention which has occurred that can account for a reduction in numbers, except possibly widespread public awareness.

If we cannot attribute this reduction in case numbers to an intervention then we need to bear in mind there could be another wave of the epidemic just around the corner.

We have seen this several times in Guinea. What we are now seeing in Liberia is small clusters of cases throughout the whole country, instead of intense transmission in a few areas.

This is more difficult to deal with and there is the potential that any of these areas could become areas of intense transmission.

We need to act quickly to address these areas and that is where the Samaritan’s Purse rapid response model comes in.

This is what I am returning to help set up and support, as well as continuing in my role of developing and overseeing several Ebola community care centres (CCC).

The rapid response model aims to fly into communities and set up mobile treatment facilities where there

Article source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/ebola-entered-life-everything-changed-8284622

In a small office space on East Bay Street in downtown Jacksonville, Adam Dukes and Bryce Pfanenstiel are taking a traditional approach to a very new kind of business that some say could alter commerce itself in the coming years.

From the leather aprons worn by the partners, brick walls and molded Victorian ceilings at the FORGE Manufacturing LLC offices, you’d never guess it was a 3D printing shop. Then there’s the scanning devices, a few samples of their work and, finally, down a dark hall away from the storefront in a side room, is the big, box-like device that’s about the size of a bumper car at an amusement park.

That device is an $80,000, full-color plastic 3D printer that FORGE just got operational in September. The 3D Systems ProJet 4500 printer allows FORGE to manufacture or “print” objects up to 10 inches long, 8 inches wide and 8 inches in depth.

It has been used to make statues, custom trophies, minatures of the Main Street Bridge and even forensic replicas that simulate such things as a bullet hole in a window.

For FORGE, such custom assignments are novelites. In just two years, Pfanenstiel said, the mainstay of FORGE’s business has become the 200 customers whose contracted “projects” range from developing miniature space craft used for enhancing video-game development by a company in Prague, Czech Republic, to models of buildings for an architectural firm in Israel.

“What we’re seeing now is, the cost is dropping. It’s more accessible and the software that you use

Article source: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2014-12-13/story/forge-3d-printing-downtown-jacksonville-turns-custom-service-cash

Familiarity vs. complacency

Most mechanics will admit that they spend a lot more time inspecting a new-to-them airplane compared to one on which they routinely perform inspections. This makes sense, in that the airplane is a completely unknown entity to them and issues may be lurking around every corner.  In contrast, when your airplane comes into the shop they already know the status of things from the last annual, what’s been postponed, is likely to need work this year, etc.  However, I’ve seen that same familiarity cause problems when things are assumed to be good, but are not. 

Most of the time, the issues arise from inspection items not on the traditional annual inspection checklist. If you want to know what’s being glossed over, just listen. Most of the items get mentioned in conversation during the inspection: “Did we check the vacuum pump wear last year?” “We pulled that nose strut last time, so no need to do it this year…”  

Be wary of any of these types of discussions. While it’s true that most wear can be predicted, sometimes it can’t and two years (or more) is too long to go for most of those “optional” inspection items.

Benefits of expertise

Most shops cater to a variety of aircraft, which takes a wide range of skills and knowledge. However, there are shops that specialize in a single aircraft make or model. These mechanics have a level of experience that simply can’t be matched by someone splitting their time across aircraft types. They

Article source: http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2014/December/11/Breaking-up-is-hard-to-do-switching-maintenance-shops