One thing I see a lot in my professional life is the use of extruded beams used for prototyping. There are a number of great products out there but with many of them either the extruded bars or the specialized fasteners used are very expensive. Enter the OpenBeam.
OpenBeam is a Kickstarter project that has already generated over $10,000 in pledges out of the $30,000 required and still has 25 days to go. I saw the project on the Adafruit blog and was drawn in by what I saw. The slots for OpenBeam are designed around standard metric M3 nuts and bolts, taking the sting out of the expensive alternatives. The parts for the OpenBeam are built in the US, the extrusion bars are recyclable, and the joining plates are reusable from prototype to prototype. The full project is envisioned as an open hardware project and all of the design details will be made available via a Creative Commons Attribution license. The whole project is envisioned for the Maker community.
Off the top of my head I can think of several things that I could build using these parts and would make my prototyping efforts much easier. I have a small work area with minimal tools so having something like OpenBeam to allow rapid prototyping would enable my addiction hobby to expand. I encourage you to think about having these available in the future, and if it is something you would use go ahead and sponsor OpenBeam. Every little bit counts. I know I will be kicking in.
