• Let’s talk about BATTERIES🔋. Over the weekend, we’ve been working on making the batteries that power SIMB3. We use a custom 18V pack comprised 60 alkaline D-cells welded together. These are standard, off the shelf, flashlight batteries. You might ask, “why flashlight batteries instead of something more powerful, like a lithium battery?” The answer is pretty simple — shipping! Due to air travel restrictions on large lithium battery’s, we simply can’t rely on them for SIMB3 (which is frequently shipped to all corners of the world). Shipping SIMB3 with a lithium battery would cost over 10x what it currently does, if possible at all. The performance increase gained by using a lithium battery is simply not worth the cost and headache of transporting them. In the past we’ve purchased these batteries from a supplier. Now, we make them in house. This vertical integration gives us more control over the manufacturing and a lower cost. They take a long time to make, however. Worth it? Not sure, but it’s worth a try! #constantimprovement #builtnotbought #americanmade #innovation #simb3 #massbalance #climatechange #arcticbuoys #manufacturingengineering #cryosphereinnovation
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    Let’s talk about BATTERIES🔋. Over the weekend, we’ve been working on making the batteries that power SIMB3. We use a custom 18V pack comprised 60 alkaline D-cells welded together. These are standard, off the shelf, flashlight batteries. You might ask, “why flashlight batteries instead of something more powerful, like a lithium battery?” The answer is pretty simple — shipping! Due to air travel restrictions on large lithium battery’s, we simply can’t rely on them for SIMB3 (which is frequently shipped to all corners of the world). Shipping SIMB3 with a lithium battery would cost over 10x what it currently does, if possible at all. The performance increase gained by using a lithium battery is simply not worth the cost and headache of transporting them. In the past we’ve purchased these batteries from a supplier. Now, we make them in house. This vertical integration gives us more control over the manufacturing and a lower cost. They take a long time to make, however. Worth it? Not sure, but it’s worth a try! #constantimprovement #builtnotbought #americanmade #innovation #simb3 #massbalance #climatechange #arcticbuoys #manufacturingengineering #cryosphereinnovation
  • We’ve been busy and neglecting social media recently, but another build season is upon us so WE’RE BACK! Here is a pic of a buoy deployed in October on the @mosaic_expedition. Swipe 👉🏻 to see the same buoy ONE WEEK later. It’s always interesting to see the conditions our equipment operates in. Happy to report that even with the harsh winter conditions, all buoys are still transmitting. Click the link in bio to see the data in real time! Location: somewhere around 85° N. #simb3 #beforeandafter #arcticresearch #arcticbuoys #climatechange #mosaic #mosaicexpedition #winter #seaice
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    We’ve been busy and neglecting social media recently, but another build season is upon us so WE’RE BACK! Here is a pic of a buoy deployed in October on the @mosaic_expedition. Swipe 👉🏻 to see the same buoy ONE WEEK later. It’s always interesting to see the conditions our equipment operates in. Happy to report that even with the harsh winter conditions, all buoys are still transmitting. Click the link in bio to see the data in real time! Location: somewhere around 85° N. #simb3 #beforeandafter #arcticresearch #arcticbuoys #climatechange #mosaic #mosaicexpedition #winter #seaice
  • A fantastic question asked by @ali_everitt. As always, share your thoughts, comments, and questions below 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼 . #arctic #seaice #climatechange #globalwarming #climatestrike #climatetalk #climateawareness
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    A fantastic question asked by @ali_everitt. As always, share your thoughts, comments, and questions below 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼 . #arctic #seaice #climatechange #globalwarming #climatestrike #climatetalk #climateawareness
  • When you hear the term “Arctic”, what do you think of? Do you think of polar bears holding bottles of Coca-Cola? The northern lights? The sound of tiny hammers clanking away at the North Pole?! Well, what you should think of is unfortunately a whole heck of a lot more grim than that, because the Arctic is an area of earth experiencing rapid #climatechange. Temperatures in the Arctic are climbing faster than the rest of the globe because of a phenomenon known as #arcticamplification. In a nutshell, one degree of average temperature increase at mid-latititudes gets you about 2 degrees of temperature increase in the Arctic. This feature has made the Arctic especially susceptible to global warming, and is why it’s such an intense subject of science. Well, and the fact that the most profound feature of the Arctic is its freaking-huge-US-sized-floating-sea-ICE cover that has been melting more and more and more each year. You see, the Arctic sea ice cover naturally grows in winter and shrinks in summer. It’s been doing that forever. However the extent that it’s been shrinking too has been steadily decreasing since we started staring at it with satellites in 1978. Just yesterday NASA announced that the Arctic sea ice has reached its (expected) minimum extent of this year, which is the 2nd lowest on record. The red line indicates the average minimum extent for the 1981-2010 period. This trend in decreasing summer sea ice extent has many researchers expecting that we could see an ice free summer in the next 20 years. In light of the global #climatestrike, what are your thoughts on #climatechange? Should we even care about what happens in the Arctic? I mean, hasn’t the earth been changing on its own for millennia? Over the next few weeks we’ll be answering questions like the ones above in a series of posts. If there’s anything specific you want us to address, drop us a comment below ⬇️⬇️⬇️ PC: @nasa #climate #arcticseaice #globalwarming #nasagoddard #remotesensing #satellite
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    When you hear the term “Arctic”, what do you think of? Do you think of polar bears holding bottles of Coca-Cola? The northern lights? The sound of tiny hammers clanking away at the North Pole?! Well, what you should think of is unfortunately a whole heck of a lot more grim than that, because the Arctic is an area of earth experiencing rapid #climatechange. Temperatures in the Arctic are climbing faster than the rest of the globe because of a phenomenon known as #arcticamplification. In a nutshell, one degree of average temperature increase at mid-latititudes gets you about 2 degrees of temperature increase in the Arctic. This feature has made the Arctic especially susceptible to global warming, and is why it’s such an intense subject of science. Well, and the fact that the most profound feature of the Arctic is its freaking-huge-US-sized-floating-sea-ICE cover that has been melting more and more and more each year. You see, the Arctic sea ice cover naturally grows in winter and shrinks in summer. It’s been doing that forever. However the extent that it’s been shrinking too has been steadily decreasing since we started staring at it with satellites in 1978. Just yesterday NASA announced that the Arctic sea ice has reached its (expected) minimum extent of this year, which is the 2nd lowest on record. The red line indicates the average minimum extent for the 1981-2010 period. This trend in decreasing summer sea ice extent has many researchers expecting that we could see an ice free summer in the next 20 years. In light of the global #climatestrike, what are your thoughts on #climatechange? Should we even care about what happens in the Arctic? I mean, hasn’t the earth been changing on its own for millennia? Over the next few weeks we’ll be answering questions like the ones above in a series of posts. If there’s anything specific you want us to address, drop us a comment below ⬇️⬇️⬇️ PC: @nasa #climate #arcticseaice #globalwarming #nasagoddard #remotesensing #satellite
  • Today we had the fantastic (and very rare) opportunity to have two recovered SIMB3’s brought to our shop from @mcgillu university. Both of these instruments were deployed off the coast of Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, last winter and experienced hardware troubles immediately after deployment. We thought we’d never know what caused the failures, because we normally never see our instruments after they are deployed. One of the most difficult aspects of doing *anything* in the Arctic is the remoteness and variability of the environment. Not only is the Arctic sea ice difficult to reach, but it also changes and moves constantly. The combination of these effects makes equipment recovery efforts impractical and often impossible. As a result, diagnosing instrument failures is incredibly difficult. This creates an opening in our design feedback loop that makes development take longer and cost more. Our strategy at Cryosphere Innovation has always been to engineer our way around the challenges of our operating environment by using robust, redundant, and heavily tested designs. Of course, nature still regularly humbles us. We’ll be doing a full failure diagnostic on these two buoys over the next couple of weeks. The information we gain will help us improve our designs and our ability to collect data in Earth’s most inhospitable environment. #onward #lifeatminusthirty #simb3 #cryosphereinnovation #arcticseaice #arcticbuoys #climatechange
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    Today we had the fantastic (and very rare) opportunity to have two recovered SIMB3’s brought to our shop from @mcgillu university. Both of these instruments were deployed off the coast of Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, last winter and experienced hardware troubles immediately after deployment. We thought we’d never know what caused the failures, because we normally never see our instruments after they are deployed. One of the most difficult aspects of doing *anything* in the Arctic is the remoteness and variability of the environment. Not only is the Arctic sea ice difficult to reach, but it also changes and moves constantly. The combination of these effects makes equipment recovery efforts impractical and often impossible. As a result, diagnosing instrument failures is incredibly difficult. This creates an opening in our design feedback loop that makes development take longer and cost more. Our strategy at Cryosphere Innovation has always been to engineer our way around the challenges of our operating environment by using robust, redundant, and heavily tested designs. Of course, nature still regularly humbles us. We’ll be doing a full failure diagnostic on these two buoys over the next couple of weeks. The information we gain will help us improve our designs and our ability to collect data in Earth’s most inhospitable environment. #onward #lifeatminusthirty #simb3 #cryosphereinnovation #arcticseaice #arcticbuoys #climatechange
  • Having a great time at the Dartmouth Entrepreneurship Forum in San Francisco! Many great take-aways from experienced entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and academics. My favorite quote so far: When seeking opportunity, “Learn to identify moments of punctuated equilibrium” - From Jim Coulter, billionaire and CEO of TPG Capital. #dartmouthef19 #entrepreneurship #education #bayarea #siliconvalley @dartmouthcollege @thayerschool
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    Having a great time at the Dartmouth Entrepreneurship Forum in San Francisco! Many great take-aways from experienced entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and academics. My favorite quote so far: When seeking opportunity, “Learn to identify moments of punctuated equilibrium” - From Jim Coulter, billionaire and CEO of TPG Capital. #dartmouthef19 #entrepreneurship #education #bayarea #siliconvalley @dartmouthcollege @thayerschool
  • A photo dump from our most recent build of 4 SIMB3’s for the year long MOSAiC cruise! The deadline for these buoys was pushed forward a week, making it necessary for us to manufacture, assemble, test, package, and deliver these buoys in just 4 days. I’m happy to report that the build went as smooth as it could have, and the instruments we’re delivered with time to spare. To me this is a real testament to how far these instruments have come over the past 2-3 years. It used to take us a week to build just one SIMB3, and the process would be riddled with issues at every step. We’ve worked consistently hard to improve our design to reduce these issues, but it has often felt like we would never get there. You fix one problem and create two others. With this build though, something really beautiful happened. All of the design, manufacturing, and process improvements we’ve painstakingly made over 3 years added up, and each of the four buoys functioned perfectly immediately after initial hook up. The reduction in troubleshooting time is what made making this crazy deadline possible. I’ll definitely remember back to this lesson when struggling with similar situations on future projects. #slowgrind #steadygrind #constantlyimproving #innovation #design #manufacturing #designengineering #manufacturingengineering #madeinamerica #climatechange #seaice #massbalance #arcticbuoys #simb3 #mosaic #mosaicexpedition
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    A photo dump from our most recent build of 4 SIMB3’s for the year long MOSAiC cruise! The deadline for these buoys was pushed forward a week, making it necessary for us to manufacture, assemble, test, package, and deliver these buoys in just 4 days. I’m happy to report that the build went as smooth as it could have, and the instruments we’re delivered with time to spare. To me this is a real testament to how far these instruments have come over the past 2-3 years. It used to take us a week to build just one SIMB3, and the process would be riddled with issues at every step. We’ve worked consistently hard to improve our design to reduce these issues, but it has often felt like we would never get there. You fix one problem and create two others. With this build though, something really beautiful happened. All of the design, manufacturing, and process improvements we’ve painstakingly made over 3 years added up, and each of the four buoys functioned perfectly immediately after initial hook up. The reduction in troubleshooting time is what made making this crazy deadline possible. I’ll definitely remember back to this lesson when struggling with similar situations on future projects. #slowgrind #steadygrind #constantlyimproving #innovation #design #manufacturing #designengineering #manufacturingengineering #madeinamerica #climatechange #seaice #massbalance #arcticbuoys #simb3 #mosaic #mosaicexpedition
  • Buoys, buoys, buoys. . #simb3 #arcticbuoys #climatescience #climatechange #research #handbuilt #madeinamerica
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    Buoys, buoys, buoys. . #simb3 #arcticbuoys #climatescience #climatechange #research #handbuilt #madeinamerica