About the Clank Project

Clank is authored by myself, Jake Read. I work at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, where I am advised by Prof. Neil Gershenfeld.

For credentials, I’ve worked previously on the sikorsky-winning atlas human-powered helicopter, and on the othermill, now bantam tools while I was an intern at otherlab. I was also one-of-two mechanical engineers responsible for the development of the fab light metal laser cutting machine (an otherlab spinoff).

At MIT I am lead on the machines that make project, and lead TA for the machine building class, as well as contributing TA in the how to make almost anything class. My research centers around peer-production of hardware via modular systems architectures, with a focus in distributed controls and distributed learning for control algorithms. This also involves a little bit of materials modelling.

Clank itself is a result of the pandemic; in 2020 we were determined to teach how to make almost anything remotely, this birthed clank-lz (the original variant) as a take-home kit for about 30 students, each of which were successful in assembling the machine and using it to fabricate their own PCBs.

Contact / Contributing

Reach out via github!

Project Status

Please see the front page status section

License

This work may be reproduced, modified, distributed, performed, and displayed for any purpose, but must acknowledge the Clank project. Copyright is retained and must be preserved. The work is provided as is; no warranty is provided, and users accept all liability.