Core77

Sigma's Minimalist BF Camera

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Japanese camera company calls their BF model"radically simple." It's machined out of a single block of aluminum, a process that reportedly takes seven(!) hours. "By simplifying and stripping away all excess elements," the company writes, "this full-frame mirrorless camera redefines the process of taking a photograph as a natural act."

The Sigma BF's most important feature is its simplicity. We wanted to create the easiest camera to use, inspired by the humble beginnings of the camera obscura. While the lens remains the soul of photography, the camera still profoundly shapes the images you take – directly, indirectly, even subconsciously. Without compromising on features or performance, the BF's design cuts out everything that distracts from your interaction with the image. From its aluminum unibody to its simplified controls and streamlined menu, the BF embodies a pure photographic experience free of frustration.

They've even gotten rid of the SD card. Instead the camera's got 230GB of memory (which you'd need if you're shooting the 6K video it can capture) and you transfer files via a USB-C port.

The BF comes in silver or black, and runs $2,200. It was designed by Iwasaki Design Studio.

In Holland, a Self-Powered River Crossing for Bikes

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The Piushaven river runs through Tilburg, Holland. In order to allow cyclists and pedestrians to cross it, the municipality came up with a more frugal method than building a bridge or setting up a permanent ferry service. They installed a chain-driven floating platform that can run from one side to the other.

If you're at one bank and the platform is on the other bank, you rotate a crank to pull it over to you.

Once aboard, you crank your way across the river. The submerged chain allows boats to cruise right over it.

Here it is in action:

The Leitz Portable Desk Organizer for Hot-Desking

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It must be hard to believe, for those that work in hot-desking situations, that there was once a time when professionals all had their own offices. Instead, the current mode is that workers keep their stuff in a locker, and break it out when a desk is available.

To make this easier, German office products brand Leitz created this Hanging Desk Organizer. It's a felt storage caddy that, once pulled out of the locker, can hang from the side of a slab desk.

While the material looks like felt, it's actually Thermofelt, a heat-formed polyester felt made from recycled plastic.

A mechanism allows you to size it for different thicknesses of desk.

This is one of those objects that will confuse archaeologists, when they dig it up after our civilization has long since vanished.

Core77 Weekly Roundup (8-10-26 to 8-14-26)

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Here's what we looked at this week:

The MegCell Pulse: A 3D-printed guitar-playing contraption.

Another low-tech disappearing-door solution from Japan.

Sole: Partially 3D-printed DIY footwear.

Design help needed: An easier, but uglier, automatic gate opener.

Konny's Dual Support Hip Seat Carrier: A more ergonomic baby-carrying sling.

Industrial designer Gudmundur Ludvik re-thinks the folding chair.

Form follows function: The Godox C100 is a new camera type that's mostly viewfinder, no screen.

The SkyNomad N90 Max, Xiaomi's shocking $45,000 luxury hybrid SUV.

Low-tech toy design: This Tuminy truck lets kids unload goods.

Amona Lab's wildly different take on domestic furniture.

Vintage folding railcar sinks for sleeper cars.

The bizarre shadows projected during an eclipse.

Haüsa Homes demonstrates how to fit a folding house into a shipping container.

In Nashville, a farm-to-table dinner served in a creek.

The Leitz Portable Desk Organizer for hot-desking.

In Nashville, Farm-to-Table Dinner Served in a Creek

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Edible Nashville, a foodie magazine in Tennessee, holds a rather unique farm-to-table dinner event each year. It's at Hachland Hill, an 80-acre inn/retreat/event space 20 minutes outside of Nashville. Since the property has a creek running through it, and the Tennessee summers are hot, the magazine sited a long, snaking dinner table in the creek itself:

Attendees enjoyed cool feet as well as cocktails, wine, beer, dinner and live music. The event is getting rave reviews on social media; these are the unique experiences people crave these days.

The next Creek Dinner won't happen until July of 2027.

The Bizarre Shadows Projected During an Eclipse

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Fun fact: During the phases of a solar eclipse where the sun is partly obscured...

...small gaps in the environment—between leaves, for instance—can act as tiny pinhole projectors. The result is that these cool crescent-shaped illuminations are projected:

You can do a Google Image search for "eclipse crescent projections" to see more.

Haüsa Homes Demonstrates How to Fit a Folding House Into a Shipping Container

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Argentina-based architect Charlie Deane founded Haüsa Homes, which makes flatpack houses. "We turn dreams into buildable modular kits," the company writes. "We're redefining construction through precision-engineered volumetric housing, combining efficiency, sustainability, and cutting-edge technology."

Here's how one of their house shells breaks down to fit into a shipping container, in two pieces:

"The video shows the structural assembly process, not the finished home," Deane explains. "Electrical, plumbing, HVAC, insulation, waterproofing, and all other building systems are incorporated during the construction process according to the project's specifications."

On-site, here's how the shell is unfurled:

While the end result is a modest bungalow, the company's catalog is decidedly more ambitious. You can check it out here.

Vintage Folding Railcar Sinks for Sleeper Cars

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In an earlier post, we looked at the space-saving sinks used in the Barbican, circa the 1960s. Eighty years before that, other organizations had the same problem, of how to stuff a sink in a very limited space. Those organizations were 19th-century railcar manufacturers, like Pullman. As sleeper cars became a thing, railcar designers developed folding sinks:

Today at least one company, Watermark Fixtures, still makes replicas. Theirs is made out of cast-iron and porcelain:

Here's an example of one that's been installed, by architecture and interiors firm Cicada, in a tight basement space:

By the 1960s, air and car travel had edged out trains, and sleeper cars declined in popularity for long-distance travel. The folding sinks, well, disappeared.

Amona Lab's Wildly Different Take on Domestic Furniture

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A new Chinese company called Amona Lab has debuted their wildly different take on domestic furniture. They've designed a line of modular storage units that's unlike anything I've seen in the West—at least in the domestic space. In my eyes, the company's style borrows from laboratories, examination rooms, industrial kitchens and even garages. I find it oddly appealing:

It's such an interesting take. They don't do upper cabinets, instead opting for pegboard-style open storage. Down below, everything touching the floor is on wheels. They use metal, glass and wood. The look is clean, almost Spartan, and relentlessly honest; there's no attempt to add artificial decoration. The form is the form, and I'd say they've got the proportions right, even when mating unlikely components.

To a Westerner, marketing-speak translated from Chinese is a bit difficult to parse; the culture seems to demand ample poetry in copy, which can make discerning design intent difficult. So take what you will from Amona's description of the furniture:

Amona does not produce traditional furniture such as sofas, beds, tables and chairs.

We always focus on "intelligence, fun and tranquility," trying to respond to a more contemporary lifestyle.

[We] focus on creating a home series that is "movable, combinable and growing."

We hope each Amona product is a small exploration of "life can be played this way."

The brand has just launched this month, and the photographs you see were shot in their newly-opened "Home Experience Store" in Henan. It remains to be seen whether they're aiming to go international. I hope they do, mainly because I'm curious to see how the Western market would respond to the brand's unusual style.

Fusion Forward Juror Spotlight: Keren Ruth Wong of IDEO's Play Lab

Core Jr

Before she joined IDEO, Keren Ruth Wong launched two education organizations across Greater China and the U.S., working with government bureaus, principals, and parents to rethink how kids build English literacy. A World Economic Forum Global Shapers alumna with a B.S. from Cornell and an M.P.A. from Tsinghua University, Wong brings both a behavioral researcher's patience and a builder's urgency to the jury team on the Fusion Forward: Design For Home competition.

At IDEO's PlayLab, Wong helps partners apply the psychology of play to challenges spanning finance, health, mobility, and education. Her specific focus is global youth behavior, particularly fandom in media and entertainment, where she watches emerging technology get stress-tested in real time and sees brand loyalty built or broken in public view. It's a vantage point that treats young users not as a demographic to design for, but as a signal for where design is headed next.

"What excites me most is watching youth reclaim human-centeredness in how they adopt technology, redefine work, and orient toward the future," Wong says. "They grew up with a front-row seat to unintended consequences, and it shows. They're asking better questions than we did."

That same attentiveness shapes what concerns her about the field. Design has always shaped behavior, she says, but the speed of today's technology means designers are now shaping entire developmental environments before fully understanding the consequences. "Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren't just users — they're growing up inside these ecosystems," she says. "The long-term behavioral impact of that is something the design field is still learning how to take seriously."

For entrants preparing their Fusion Forward submissions, Wong's advice pushes past the usual checklist. "Design not just for the interaction, but also for the relationship," she says, "how trust builds, how behavior shifts, how people grow with or away from what you made."

It's a fitting lens for a home design competition. The products entrants submit won't be used once and discarded — they'll sit in kitchens, yards, and living rooms, forming the kind of long-term relationship Wong is asking designers to account for.

Fusion Forward: Design for Home is now open for entries. Three categories to choose from, $9,750 in prizes. Deadline for entry September 28.

Low-Tech Toy Design: This Tuminy Truck Lets Kids Unload Goods

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At first glance, this little wooden toy truck looks like it has its own garage:

But in fact, it's a working vehicle with a job to do:

"This satisfying sequence of loading, driving, and unloading is exactly the kind of repetitive play children love," writes Japanese toy designer Kazuto Komatsu. "It encourages curiosity, concentration, and the joy of doing something again and again."

The toy set is called Tuminy, and Komatsu sells them through his wooden toy brand, Comomg. They retail for about $68.

Xiaomi's Shocking $45,000 Luxury Hybrid SUV

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In a stunningly short amount of time, Xiaomi has gone from making smartphones to luxury hybrid SUVs. Their new SkyNomad N90 Max is a three-row model that retails for under $45,000. It delivers 288 miles of battery-only range—or 1,059 miles of total range, thanks to a 1.5-liter turbocharged gas engine that serves as a generator to keep the battery juiced.

The exterior design shamelessly cribs from the Range Rover:

However, the interior is truly innovative. The rear row can be folded up, and then the second row and center console slide back on tracks. The front seats rotate, creating a living-room-like arrangement.

Alternatively you can fold the second row flat, and use the third row as chaise longues.

There's a large flip-down screen in the ceiling.

The center console contains a refrigerated drawer.

"Studio Mode" features a table that can be mounted in the track system in the floor.

The second and third rows can be folded flat to accommodate an inflated mattress.

Here's a video look at all of the interior features:

Fat chance this will be coming to the U.S., though Europe is a possibility; Xiaomi hasn't said. For now, the vehicle is Chinese-market only.

Form Follows Function: A New Camera Type That's Mostly Viewfinder, No Screen

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Believe it or not what you're looking at is a camera, and it is form-follows-function.

The C100, by China's Godox Photo Equipment Co., is yet another sign that folks crave analog experiences. While it is technically a digital camera, it's intentionally been designed with no screen. Instead there's a massive viewfinder that takes up most of the form; the opaque part at the bottom, which houses the camera and shutter button, serves as the handling point.

The idea here is to preserve the surprise of old-school film cameras, where you had to wait for film development before you could see what you'd actually captured.

The Joy of "Blind" Shooting: Live in the moment and embrace the suspense. By removing instant screen playback, the Godox C100 invites you to shoot freely all day and experience the nostalgic excitement of "unboxing" your memories.

The viewfinder is actually two pieces of plastic that sandwich an LCD layer. The LCD is there to overlay information like the battery status and shooting mode; you can choose between 16:9, 4:3, 3:2 and 1:1 square. The LCD overlays the frame lines on the screen.

Furthermore, you can use the device as a light meter, turning it into a companion device for a "real" camera.

You're not actually developing film, of course. You transfer the images via a micro-SD card or a USB-C cable.

The camera's maximum resolution is 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, and it can also shoot video at that resolution.

The C100 runs $45.

Industrial designer Gudmundur Ludvik Re-Thinks the Folding Chair

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"Why should a folding chair be a compromise?" asks Icelandic industrial designer Gudmundur Ludvik. "For decades, folding chairs have been designed around storage and transport, often at the expense of comfort and everyday use."

Ludvik aimed to change that with his Backflip chair. " The ambition was to approach the typology from the opposite direction — to create a good chair first, and a folding chair second. The result is a chair that moves easily between use and storage while maintaining the comfort, character and presence expected from everyday furniture."

To accomplish his desired arrangement of components, Ludvik had to jettison the conventional hinging points. Instead he developed a hinge mechanism concealed by the backrest. It makes folding/unfolding the chair a nifty one-handed operation:

"Rather than exposing the technical complexity, the construction allows the chair to maintain a calm and familiar appearance. The mechanism becomes part of the structure rather than an addition to it. This approach made it possible to achieve a level of comfort and visual simplicity rarely associated with folding furniture."

The Backflip is in production by Hay.

Sponsored: 5 CNC Machining Pitfalls Industrial Designers Make (And How to Avoid Them in CAD)

Core Jr

5-axis CNC machining center cutting a metal part under coolant spray

Design accounts for just 5% to 7% of a product's total development budget, but the decisions made at that stage lock in 70% to 80% of eventual manufacturing cost. That gap is where most CNC headaches originate: a geometry that looks fine on screen but forces a machinist into slow tool paths, extra setups, or outright rework.

None of the pitfalls below are exotic. They're the same five issues that show up, project after project, in DFM (Design for Manufacturing) reviews. Catch them in CAD and you save weeks of back-and-forth later. Here's what to watch for, and the numbers behind each fix.

1. Sharp Internal Corners (The Tool Radius Trap)

It's an easy habit to bring over from sketching: a clean 90° inside wall. But CNC mills cut with round tools, and a round tool physically cannot produce a square internal corner. Push for one anyway and a shop either has to plunge with an undersized cutter (slow, chatter-prone) or flag the part back to you.

Diagram comparing a sharp internal corner that cannot be machined against an optimized internal radius the tool can cut cleanly

The fix: keep internal corner radii at R ≥ 1/3 of the cavity depth. A 12mm-deep pocket wants at least a 4mm radius. Go tighter than that and you're forcing tools with high length-to-diameter ratios, which is exactly the condition that causes chatter and premature wear. If a mating part genuinely needs a square internal corner, say for a snug press-fit, specify a T-bone or dog-bone relief cut in CAD rather than leaving the machinist to guess.

2. Over-Specifying Tight Tolerances

Global tolerancing is a tempting shortcut. Set the whole model to ±0.005mm and you never have to think about it again. The shop, on the other hand, now has to hold aerospace-grade precision on every surface, including the ones nobody will ever measure.

Tightening from standard shop tolerance (ISO 2768-m, roughly ±0.1mm) down to ±0.005mm doesn't add cost linearly. It adds it exponentially, on the order of 200% to 400%, because you've triggered secondary operations like grinding or EDM and, often, 100% inspection. Reserve that budget for where it actually matters: bearing seats, seal grooves, anything load-bearing or sealing. Let cosmetic exterior surfaces sit at standard tolerance and you can cut cycle time and cost by more than 30% without giving anything up functionally. For a deep dive into tolerance classes and cost impact, see this ISO 2768 tolerance guide.

3. Deep Cavities and Thin Walls

Precision CMM probe inspecting a thin-wall machined aluminum part clamped to a fixture

Thin walls and deep pockets are a package deal, and both push a cutter toward the same failure mode: deflection. A wall that's too thin flexes under cutting load and either deforms or snaps outright. A pocket that's too deep relative to the tool diameter forces long tool stick-out, and deflection under that condition scales cubically (L³) with stick-out length, per Sandvik Coromant's guidance on tool overhang. Past a certain point you're not machining anymore, you're vibrating a very expensive piece of carbide against your part.

The numbers: minimum wall thickness of 0.8mm for aluminum or stainless, 1.5mm for engineering plastics like POM or PEEK. Keep pocket depth within 4x the cutter diameter. If a design genuinely needs a deeper cavity, add internal stiffening ribs rather than asking the shop to fight physics with a longer tool.

4. Ignoring Setup Orientation and Tool Access

A feature at an odd angle relative to the rest of the part looks like a minor CAD decision. To a shop, it can mean an entirely separate setup: repositioning the part, re-establishing datums, sometimes bringing in 5-axis indexing where 3-axis would have done the job. Every additional setup adds cost and introduces a new opportunity for repositioning error.

Where possible, align features to standard 3-axis planes, or at minimum keep angled features consistent with each other so they can be machined in the same 4- or 5-axis orientation. It's one of the cheapest DFM wins available, because it costs nothing in the design and saves real setup time on the floor.

5. Unreasonable Thread Depth in Blind Holes

Threading a blind hole all the way to the bottom feels like it should maximize strength. In practice it's one of the most common causes of snapped taps, and a broken tap inside a near-finished part is an expensive problem.

Effective thread depth beyond 1.5x to 2x the nominal thread diameter adds negligible pull-out strength; for an M6 thread, 9 to 12mm of engagement is already enough to reach full load capacity. Leave at least 0.5x the diameter as unthreaded relief at the bottom of the hole, giving the tap somewhere to go before it bottoms out and shears.

CMF Considerations Worth Building In Early

Geometry gets most of the DFM attention, but finish is part of the same conversation. As-machined CNC surfaces can hit Ra 0.8 μm right off the tool, with mirror polishing available where optical clarity or high gloss is the goal. For handheld and consumer device housings where tactile quality matters as much as appearance, media (bead) blasting combined with anodizing gives a consistent texture and uniform color across a run, the kind of detail that separates a part that reads as "prototype" from one that reads as "product."

Colorful anodized aluminum enclosures in blue, black, silver, green, purple, red, and gold

Bringing It Into Practice

Every one of these fixes is cheap in CAD and expensive to skip. Building them into your modeling habits, rather than catching them in a DFM review after the fact, is what actually protects both your timeline and your budget. To bridge the gap between initial CAD concepts and production-ready hardware, many teams work with manufacturing partners like LS Manufacturing during early DFM reviews, catching exactly these kinds of issues before they become quote delays. When tight tolerances and complex geometries are unavoidable, precision CNC machining services built around DFM feedback can hold part accuracy without blowing out turnaround time.

Got a complex design ready for prototyping or production? Upload your CAD files to LS Manufacturing for an instant quote and expert DFM review.