You can now 3D print soil-living walls 🪴
Yo mates, how have you guys been doing?
In the recent issues, we’ve covered many cool news about 3D printing: like 3D printed houses, 3D printed houses using recycled plastic, reusable 3D printed rockets, and so much more.
It’s been quite fascinating to see innovation move fast, using a tool that can have countless possibilities - including helping the blind “see” with tactile graphics, and 3D printing soil. More about these below!
Little hint: It’s also the BEST for rapid prototyping!
Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark reads:
Folk shares case study on how we use their platform 🤸♀️
Launch fast with open source Product OS by PostHog ⚡️
Helping the blind see data through tactile graphics 🖼
You can now 3D print soil-living walls 🪴
Morgan is in Bucharest 🇷🇴
💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATESFolk shares case study on how we use their platform 🤸♀️
We’re actually really proud to vouch for Folk! We tried them out for a few weeks and soon after, moved all of our contacts to them and never looked back. It’s the most practical and efficient CRM we’ve come across!
Why? A lot of CRM’s focus so much on the “C” [Customer] that they only focus on sales process, sales process, sales process - having a bunch of unnecessary features. Instead of do 1 thing, or the main thing well: “RM” Relationship Management.
You will most likely make and have all types of relationships around your business, not just users/customers. For us, it’s the exceptional entrepreneurs we know, our amazing partners and suppliers, top-gun engineers and everything in between. So being able to manage all of that, in 1 practical platform, is all we needed. Check it out, you might love it for your team!
🤸 FUN PRODUCT WE LOVELaunch fast with open source Product OS by PostHog ⚡️
Product and user usage data is everything when it comes to making your solution the best there is. But it can take a lot of time to set up, depending on how complex you want your analytics to be.
Good thing you won’t have to with PostHog - “A suite of product and data tools. Built on the modern data stack.”
Features:
Product Analytics. Analyze users across a series of actions including sign ups, drop-offs, filtering, correlations.
Session Recording. So you can easily watch your users experience your product.
A/B testing & experiments. Run tests you can easily track for different user groups.
Integrate your apps. Connect to your CS, marketing, and engineering clouds.
Event pipelines. PostHog ships with SDKs and a JavaScript snippet (with autocapture).
Data warehouse. PostHog syncs with BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, or your own.
Self-hosting. Host on-prem or in your private cloud so customer data never leaves your infrastructure.
Who it’s for: Product Teams
Price: FREE until you need more customizations ;)
💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHTHelping the blind see data through tactile graphics 🖼
Remember the astonishing images that came from the Webb telescope? 🔭 The beautiful stars, nebulas and galaxies? ✨
These were images that the blind couldn’t access, or enjoy as much as we have. Same goes for data, and other sciences that are hard to delve into without sight. So how can we make imagery and data accessible for everyone?
A research team at Baylor University have been experimenting with tactile graphics, using lithophanes and 3D printing. Lithophanes are thin engravings from translucent materials like porcelain, wax and plastic. By adding 3D printing on top, you can print any tactile-focused graphic which also show full images to the sighted when backlit by a light source.
🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITYYou can now 3D print soil-living walls 🪴
3D printing soil is a thing now 🤯
Scientists from the University of Virginia have created 3D print soil structures, or “soil-based inks”, and can be used to grow plants on various surfaces, including rooftops, walls, and even random shapes (literally, anything):
They combined soil and seeds into 3D-printable inks, which also encourages greenery that could be built into the very material of architectural features, instead of just a layer on top. They even demonstrated 3D printing geometrically complex structures with it which have only been feasible and effective - pushing innovation in bio-based construction!
💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATEMorgan is in Bucharest 🇷🇴
Our social “wolf” landed in Romania last week 🐺 Handling some business but as always, he’s also looking to meet inspiring innovators, makers, entrepreneurs to bounce ideas off with!
If you’re around and would like to talk #entrepreneurship, #entrepreneurshiplife, #startuplife, #productdevelopment to #bootstrapping, and everything in between, just reach out.
PS: He’s looking for speakers for his podcast Behind the Product. Know an entrepreneur he can invite on while he’s there?
Exciting things are happening every day ⚡️ Follow us on social media to stay tuned!