Hackaday Prize Grand Prize
2023, the top award in the prize's final year, for a refreshable Braille module published as open hardware.
I build the machines that build things.
Thirteen years building 3D printers in India for 2,000+ industrial customers. My open hardware won the Hackaday Prize and ran in Antarctica.
Printed on a desktop. Run in Antarctica.
The rotor printing here is my open-source wind turbine. With its printed generator it went to Portal Point on Robert Swan's 2041 expedition, charging equipment at the bottom of the world.
Portal Point, AntarcticaFrom an acrylic prototype to industrial SLS.
I co-founded Fracktal Works at nineteen. Thirteen years on it makes seven machines for more than 2,000 industrial customers, and an SLS printer built with FSID-IISc.
Thirteen years of FracktalThe 2023 Hackaday Prize.
The Grand Prize, for a refreshable Braille module built from printed cams and micromagnets, and published as open hardware for anyone to build on.
How the cell worksThe work, out in the world.
Fracktal machines run on the floors of more than 2,000 industrial customers, including Ashok Leyland, TVS Motor, Godrej and Decathlon.
Launched by a Union Minister
The Apollo 350 industrial SLS printer, built with FSID-IISc, unveiled at IMTEX 2025 by the Minister for Heavy Industries.
Installed at Mumbai airport
Jhada: 61 printed pieces, over eight feet, off more than twenty of our machines. Called India's largest 3D printed sculpture.
Taken to Antarctica
A printed wind turbine and generator, on an expedition with Robert Swan's 2041.
I do not talk about manufacturing from a slide deck. I talk about it from a factory floor.
I am a mechatronics engineer. I co-founded Fracktal Works at nineteen, out of Manipal in 2013, and have spent the thirteen years since designing, building and supporting 3D printers in India rather than importing them. Seven machines, more than 2,000 industrial customers, and somewhere past 7,000 parts made for people who needed parts more than they needed a printer.
There are three more now. I am technical consultant to Constellation Aerospace, a Bengaluru payload company whose star camera solves attitude while the satellite is still turning. I founded Bloc42, whose RapidTool turns a part into a print-ready fixture the same day instead of four weeks later. And Metorite, an AI-native operating system for running a company on agents. All four, and what my actual job is in each.
In 2023 I won the Grand Prize of the Hackaday Prize for an electromechanical refreshable Braille module: a printed cam holding a micromagnet, in place of the piezo stack that has kept Braille displays out of most readers' hands.
Before that came a wind turbine you can download and print, which went to Antarctica. That one starts earlier than the printers do. My father was an army officer posted to the Andaman Islands, and growing up there teaches you quickly what it costs when the power and the supplies both have to arrive by boat.
Then Arduino for Kids, because the right time to meet a microcontroller is before someone tells you it is hard.
None of that is a strategy deck. It is a list of things that exist.
Things that exist because I made them.
Not a portfolio of concepts. Machines and devices with users, revisions and failure modes.
Grand Prize, 2023
A refreshable Braille module
Refreshable Braille has always been priced out of reach. An eccentric cam holding a rare-earth micromagnet, flipped by a coil, holds its own position with no sustained power. 1W at peak, and a finger cannot push the pin back down.
Fracktal Works
Thirteen years of Indian machines
From a green acrylic prototype to a range of seven, designed and supported here.
Best Design, 2017
Tipo, a Braille keypad
Eight of ten blind users in the study group preferred a feature phone, because a glass keyboard tells your fingers nothing. Tipo gives them back the buttons.
Open energy
The Portal Point Generator
Over 100W from a dual axial flux generator that is mostly printed. Built for Antarctica, named after the place it went.
How it works.
Four parts per dot. The cam carries the magnet, the electromagnet turns the cam, and the geometry holds the pin where it was put.
What I am building now.
Four companies, and four different jobs inside them. The manufacturer is the one I have run for thirteen years; the rest are newer, and one of them is somebody else's company that I advise.
Fracktal Works
Founder & CEO
The 3D printer company I co-founded at nineteen and still run. Seven machines designed, built and supported in India, from a connected desktop to an industrial powder bed, plus the service bureau that keeps the tolerances honest.
Since 20137 machines2,000+ industrial customers7,000+ parts
fracktal.in
Constellation Aerospace
Technical consultant
Star cameras, edge compute and imaging optics that let a small satellite take a sharp, geolocated picture from an ordinary bus. The star camera solves attitude while the spacecraft is still turning, and the imaging chain stacks its own sub-frames on board. I am a consultant here, not a founder.
BengaluruITAR-freeStratos-1 flown to 42 kmStacking flight 2027
constellationspace.io
Bloc42 / RapidTool
Founder
Jigs and fixtures are the tax every production line pays and nobody budgets for: a CAD engineer, a queue, and one to four weeks before a part is even held. RapidTool takes the part geometry and returns a print-ready fixture the same day, without a CAD seat or a vendor cycle.
Upload → fixtureSame-day toolingSTL or STEP outFDM, SLA or SLS
bloc42.com
Metorite
Founder
An AI-native operating system for a whole company, sold as multi-tenant SaaS. Events become work on their own: a webhook or a schedule wakes a specialist agent, which does the task across departments and heals itself when a step fails. Every autonomous change is auditable, and anything outward-facing fails closed until a human approves it.
Agent-run workflowsRow-level isolationAuditable by default
metorite.com
What other people wrote about it.
Unlike commercial units, which use expensive piezo-electric actuated pins, his design utilizes an array of tiny electromagnets to rotate even tinier cams.
Over 20 of the company's industrial 3D printers were used to construct parts for the Jhada installation.
What started just as a college project is now a registered 3D printing company which has clients from Ludhiana to Coimbatore, and even some multinationals.
Only about 10% of blind people around the world can read Braille. One primary reason is the high cost of Braille displays.
What I talk about.
Keynotes and workshops for conferences, engineering teams and universities. I bring the hardware.
The factory that fits in a backpack
Where distributed manufacturing genuinely beats scale, where it does not, and how to tell before you spend the money.
KeynoteOpen hardware, and what it costs
Ten years of Hackaday Prize entries, one Grand Prize. The leverage is real. So is the bill.
Keynote or firesideMaking physical products in India
Thirteen years of supply chain, hiring and pricing, told without the patriotism and without the despair.
Keynote or panelHow I can help.
Founder coaching
For people building hardware companies, usually early, usually overstretched.
- Prototype to something you can actually manufacture
- First engineering hires without a software budget
- Pricing, margin and hardware unit economics
- When to raise, and when it will not help
Monthly, small cohort. Ask about availability.
Consulting
For teams who need additive manufacturing to survive contact with production.
- Design for additive, and when to say no to it
- In-house print capability that outlives its champion
- Technical diligence on hardware and manufacturing bets
- Workshops for engineering teams, on your own parts
Project or retainer. Limited slots.
Everywhere else I am.
The build logs, the repositories and the running commentary. Most of the work is published as it happens rather than written up afterwards, so these are usually ahead of this site.
LinkedInvijay-raghav-varadaThe professional record, and the fastest way to reach me.GitHub@vjvaradaBraille cell, Tipo keypad, firmware. 44 repositories.Hackaday.io@vjvaradaSeven years of build logs. The Grand Prize project lives here.Hackster.io@vjvaradaThe same hardware, written up for a different room.X@vjvaradaShort notes from the bench, mostly while something is failing.YouTube@vjvaradaMechanisms moving, and machines being taken apart.Instagram@vjvaradaThe workshop, the travel, and what is on the build plate.Medium@vjvaradaLonger pieces on manufacturing and open hardware.FacebookvjvaradaWhere the older work and the Antarctic expedition are archived.