GE’s FirstBuild™ Spotlights Makers of Today and Tomorrow with Home Coffee Roasting Hackathon on Manufacturing Day
October 05 2015 - 8:00AM
Business Wire
White House Maker Advocate Sees Bright
Future for Manufacturing
GE’s FirstBuild™ hosted the White House Maker Advocate at an
all-day hackathon on October 2, giving makers the opportunity to
contribute directly to a real product—an easy way to roast fresh
coffee at home.
This Smart News Release features multimedia.
View the full release here:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151005005794/en/
Hackathon winner Cool Beans is comprised
of college co-op students from Ohio, Illinois, Florida and Indiana:
Trung Doan, Lydia Pawley, Diana Alonso, Steven Morse, Hunter
Stephenson and Marcia Suarez. (Photo: GE)
Timed to Manufacturing Day, the hackathon illustrated the
opportunities in engineering and manufacturing today, and was
attended by local students from Jeffersontown High School’s
Manufacturing Education program, Jefferson Community and Technical
College, The University of Louisville, and Purdue University, as
well as makers and engineers from the local community.
By focusing on coffee roasting, which is growing in popularity,
FirstBuild wants to make freshly roasted coffee accessible to the
coffee enthusiast. All you need is a convection oven and
FirstBuild’s future coffee roaster, which is expected to be
produced in the coming months with ideas generated by hackathon
participants. Much like the at-home craft beer and wine trend,
at-home coffee roasting is gaining in popularity, but is a
complicated process—until now!
Industry experts on coffee, appliances and product development
advised teams as they competed to create the perfect at-home system
for roasting coffee beans. A panel of judges awarded the best ideas
$1,250 in cash and premium roasted coffee beans, with all entries
eligible to win over $10,000 in prizes and software in the Coffee
Roaster design competition, which is open to makers worldwide
through Oct. 25. To submit ideas, visit
https://firstbuild.com/JBerg/roast-coffee-in-your-home-oven/.
The key challenges for hackathon participants were maximizing
airflow around beans in a convection oven, removing the chaff from
beans after the roast, and fabricating the device using equipment
available in FirstBuild's state-of-the-art microfactory. Concepts
developed by makers during the hackathon will be considered for
inclusion in FirstBuild’s final product.
The winning design, Cool Beans, used a rotisserie mechanism to
remove chaff from the roasted beans. It was created by a team
comprised of college co-op students from Ohio, Illinois, Florida
and Indiana — Hunter Stephenson, Diana Alonso, Lydia Pawley, Marcia
Suarez, Steven Morse and Trung Doan. Second place went to a team of
students from Jeffersontown High School. The winning entry from the
hackathon can be viewed at
https://firstbuild.com/hunterattack/cool-beans-coffee-roaster/
Stephanie Santoso, White House Maker Advocate, spoke to the 60+
makers in attendance about the importance of math and science and
the growing maker movement. She also led a roundtable with local
manufacturing leaders during the event to discuss how manufacturing
is evolving.
The hackathon challenged participants to design and build an
in-oven coffee roaster. They learned how coffee is roasted,
designed early prototypes and worked in teams of 4–6 to build, test
and refine the best-performing coffee roasting device for a home
oven.
“We opened our doors to makers to showcase FirstBuild’s model of
manufacturing that embraces the maker movement and speeds products
from mind to market in months rather than years,” said Venkat
Venkatakrishnan, director of FirstBuild. “We want to energize the
next generation of engineers, designers and makers and show the
future of manufacturing is bright. We know coffee is more popular
with Americans than soft drinks and tap water—and we see freshly
roasting coffee beans at home as a growing trend. Makers and
consumers alike can relate to coffee roasting and will benefit from
a residential coffee roaster that FirstBuild plans to design and
produce.”
About FirstBuild
GE’s FirstBuild is a global co-creation community that harnesses
the brainpower of the maker movement to change the way major home
appliances are conceived, designed and manufactured. A physical
state-of-the-art microfactory on the University of Louisville
campus and online forum, FirstBuild speeds products from mind to
market and enables customization through small batch production,
without the costs and risks of traditional mass manufacturing. For
more information about how to get involved,
visit FirstBuild.com.
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151005005794/en/
For FirstBuild:Kim Freeman, 502-452-7819kim@firstbuild.com
GE Aerospace (NYSE:GE)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
GE Aerospace (NYSE:GE)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024