- A Lego-NXT frosting 3-D printer was demonstrated and then upgraded from polar to Cartesian kinematics; participants explored off-loading inverse-kinematics computation from the NXT brick to a PC via the iCommand Bluetooth library (http://lejos.sourceforge.net/icommand.php).

- The channel crowdsourced a list of open-source finite-element analysis tools—OpenFOAM, OpenFEM, Impact, and others—with the goal of integrating them into BRL-CAD for mechanical design simulation, while debating whether game physics engines can ever supply the quantitative force/stress/torque data needed for real engineering.

- Mitsubishi’s public CAD-file repository (http://www.meau.com/eprise/main/sites/public/DOWNLOADS/) was cited as evidence that manufacturers can release part geometries, prompting discussion of incentives for broader open-hardware data sharing.

- A “manufacturing package manager” concept was proposed: every downloadable hardware unit would declare precise input/output types and tolerances so that alternative components could be substituted automatically, with Debian’s debtags and debtree (http://alioth.debian.org/~fjp/debtree/) suggested as metadata models.

- The SKDB open-source hardware package system was extended to treat command-line tools as unit processes whose inputs/outputs are physical objects (e.g., a block of wood), with YAML metadata extended to list alternative build recipes and expose differing dependency sets for each variant.

- A bounty model was floated to accelerate SKDB development—$1,000 rewards for designs such as an “effective HF leacher”—while Debian-devel mailing-list skepticism about automatic recipe substitution was cited as a cautionary parallel for hardware dependency resolution.

- An email-only personal-management agency was mentioned as an example of lightweight, asynchronous outsourcing, and marine-virology literature on viruses in the sea and diatom-infecting viruses was shared as possible background research for bio-related projects.

- University IP policies were contrasted: one participant’s institution is legally barred from patenting student inventions, while recent Slashdot coverage highlighted universities aggressively patenting student ideas.