ifHive

(I - five)

ifHive, fully realized, will help drive the democratization of product development and manufacturing by enabling makers and creators to rapidly prototype and manufacture products, as well as empowering localized, distributed, collaborative mass production.

What is It?

ifHive is a modular, flexible, scalable manufacturing system that is easily transformed and re-tooled to suit the complexity of nearly any product and production rate. It is designed on a standardized platform to bring regularity to the build process while providing broad flexibility to what can be created or assembled.

In addition to the hardware, the system instructs the modules on each step needed to manufacture the product - it is the product and assembly steps in digital format. It can be used to run a single 3D printer or create a complex production line - either in a dedicated location or in a garage, basement, or spare room.

ifHive is localized manufacturing, reducing the risk and time associated with long product development times and logistics chains. ifHive can be configured in nearly unlimited ways and comes in several sizes, from small cells capable of building a cellphone-sized object to large modules for rocket engine assembly.

ifHive determines production flow by deeply understanding steps needed to create your product, optimizing the flow of product and materials while achieving user-defined goals. The ifHive cells are configured in swarms with drag-and-drop modules within the ifHive application. Editable properties for each cell define unit functions required to create your final product.

What Does it Do?

Besides transforming product development and manufacturing as we know it, ifHive, once fully developed, will be able to build a vast array of products.

Highly flexible, ifHive’s cells can be arranged and rearranged into application-specific production swarms with intelligent software directing the configurations to optimize the production flow and output based on user-defined goals.

ifHive will provide endlessly configurable, scalable, localized production capability.

How Does it Work?

Using a combination of physical modules, combined and arranged into production lines called swarms, controlled by an intelligent application, ifHive will be a dynamic, rapidly adaptable production system.

As users build different products with their swarm, the application uses machine learning to optimize each build and inform future product manufacturing. Over time, when the user tells the system what they want to make the system will then provide an optimum production scheme using the available cells and tools, based on user-defined goals.

Users can:

• Create small runs of customized products using their personal ifHive swarm and application inputs

• Join their swarm with others to produce more complex products or larger product runs

• Collaborate with makers or production swarms around the world to coordinate production and availability of required materials

When makers join the global network, ifHive swarms will be able to communicate to share optimizations and coordinate required material inventories and timelines, as well as providing anticipated outputs based on individual and group variables.

The system can be rapidly reconfigured to build a broad variety of products, manufacturing and assembly descriptions will be saved as configuration files, which are easily shared between users and application installations.

ifHive’s functionality will enable a shift in manufacturing from a few large organizations to many more local workshops around the world, mitigating the risks of long logistics chains and reducing the total energy required to transport raw materials and manufactured goods across the globe.

Bringing real manufacturing capabilities to smaller workshops enables creators to try more product ideas and execute faster iteration cycles allowing more people to productize and sell their creations. With ifHive’s rapid retooling product personalization and customization become viable. Customization data can be passed to the manufacturing cluster automatically once a product order has been placed

If a user chooses to join the ifHive global network:

• Their swarm can automatically request input materials to manufacture their product, such as 3D print materials, fabrics, electronic components, modules made by other clusters, etc.

• They can collaborate with other users to leverage local swarm manufacturing capabilities to fulfill product orders in proximity to their client based on an agreed exchange or production rate.

• You can join a global + local crisis response network to work collaboratively with manufacturers large and small to produce needed goods.

Where can I get it?

ifHive is currently in the design and iterate phase and I am actively seeking collaborators and contributors to accelerate development and bring this critical technology to market.

How can I get involved?

ifHive is a self-funded project, but I welcome contributors, investors, and collaborators to accelerate development and time to market.

Explore partner opportunities HERE

Contribute via Patreon HERE

Offer time and/or skills HERE

Submit module designs to the repository HERE