I wanted to share a few personally recommended websites, blogs and Youtube channels of that I am constantly returning to.
These inspire and amaze me, I hope they may do the same for you.
Websites & Blogs:
Hackaday:
One of the best collectives of hacking culture and insights into manufacture & industry. It is a great community of knowledgeable folks that are interested in all things engineering. Articles and posts range from "hacks" & repairs, coverage of tech conventions, industry perspectives, tech startups & entrepreneur interviews and occasional historic forays into obsolete technologies and innovations. Mostly electronics are covered, but every so often a totally awesome design & construction project gets picked up. Hackaday is home to anyone who has documented a project build online.
Make:
Make magazine is an institution. I subscribe to their magazine and visit their site daily. There's always some trick/process/material/machine being written about that will inspire you.
3Ders
A great resource for what is happening in both the DIY/bobby and commercial 3D printing/prototyping world.
Ponoko Blog
Run by a prototyping/fab company, Ponoko, this site has a lot of very useful guides to laser cutting/digital fabrication.
GrabCAD
A whole world of free high quality CAD engineering models, available in native & non-native parametric/polygon formats.
Youtube channels:
Applied Science
Ben Krasnow of GoogleX labs gets up to in his spare time in his workshop. DIY scanning electron microscopes, Supercritical CO2 experiments, lasers, food science! And a lot more..
AvE
(ArduinoVsEvil) A Canadian guy who gets up to a lot of mischief in his garage workshop. He's seemingly a veteran of the mining industry and has worked in hydraulics/automation/electrical/industrial equipment and has a bunch of awesome hacked together projects. This guy rules the powertool tear-downs & reviews (see 'BOLTR' tagged videos).
Clickspring
Another guy's workshop in action. Amazing to see him document his process to scratch build clocks with a mill, lathe, grinder & hand tools.
Dan Gilbert
This man hosts an 18-part series on some fundamentals of prototyping that should I would consider mandatory viewing for any designers/engineers.
EEV Blog
(Electronics Engineering Video Blog) Tune to see Dave talk & demonstrate everything you want to know about electronics. Old & new tech, there is a video for everything. The old electronics tear-downs are the highlights.
The Post Apocalyptic Inventor
Witness a lone German man's mission to salvage and repair as much as he can in the name of following his passion (and living cheap) In this case his passion is to have an amazing metal/wood/electronics workshop.
GrunBlau (Brian Oltrogge)
Beautiful designs combining CNC machining, sand casting, welding & finishing, all presented extremely well.
Jimmy Diresta
Jimmy has a basement workshop in Manhattan, building commissioned furniture & signage for his NYC clientele. His distinct video style often featuring reuse & recycling old antique junk into beautiful restored pieces is perfectly suited for both learning some tricks & appreciating his sense of design. His "Tips and Tricks" series is also wonderfully useful. Jimmy is a true modern craftsman and a skilled teacher. Look out for his contributions to Make Magazine.
Podcasts:
Enjoy!
JM