As we celebrate National Manufacturing Day on October 6, 2017, Nation of Makers recognizes the many maker organizations that are working in the manufacturing community. Read below for just a sample of some of these organizations. Please note, this is in no way a comprehensive or fully representative list of the many maker organizations that contribute to the American manufacturing community.
Adafruit – Founded in a dorm room in 2005 by MIT engineer Limor “Ladyada” Fried as an online learning resource and marketplace for do-it-yourself electronics, Adafruit is now a highly successful ($45M in revenue in 2016), 100% woman-owned (no loans, no venture capital), open-source U.S. manufacturer of electronics, marketplace, and learning resource located in the middle of Manhattan. Ranked #11 among the top 20 U.S. manufacturing companies by Inc. magazine, while still being inclusive and community-focused, Adafruit is a great example of maker to manufacturer in the U.S.
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
