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April 21 2012
Costume Piece Molded from 3D-Printed Parts
James Bruton of Southampton, UK, (whose DIY vacuum forming machine project was featured on the blog) wrote in to share his technique for molding and casting parts for his Iron Man costume.
I designed this part for my life size iron Man suit in Autodesk 123D and had it printed at Shapeways. Then I made mould from it and cast a pair in solid polyurethane plastic.
April 20 2012
Sweet CNC Build
The Beatty family is building a lovely enclosure that will hold the computer and motor control boards for a CNC, using acrylic and MicroRAX t-slot beams.
After trying a few different approaches, we decided to build the box from scratch out of 1/8″ acrylic sheet and Microrax, with are tiny, 10mm 80/20 aluminum beams. The enclosure is about 22″ long, 12″ wide, and 8″ deep. The beauty of Microrax is that we could easily cut the beams to the size we wanted and then use small machine screws and brackets to bolt them together. This allowed us to not only construct the overall enclosure, but to bracket the four cooling fans into place, frame the I/O ports, and add an acrylic lid with hinges. MicroRax is very flexible and cool stuff that I look forward to using for future projects, not only for enclosures, but robots as well.
April 19 2012
Ask MAKE: DIY Algae Biofuel
Ask MAKE is a monthly column where we answer your questions. Send your vexing conundrums on any aspect of making to askmake@makezine.com. If we don’t have the answer, we’ll scare up somebody who does.
Phil asks:
I’m curious to learn more about some of the good “DIY algae growing at home” web resources for family scale production of algae fuel. Are there any available kits or books about this yet? (I’d be looking to spend less than $2,500.)
This Stanford student’s YouTube video looks intriguing, although I don’t happen to have a spare centrifuge lying around.
Hi Phil,
As far as I can tell, making liquid fuel from an algae bioreactor does, in fact, require a centrifuge to extract the oils from the algae. However, you can harvest the algae and make solid fuel from it through a simple drying process, which could be used for home heating. But be aware that producing even a small amount of dry fuel requires a sizable amount of biomass. For example, according to Algae Lab “To grow 100g of Spirulina a day would take roughly 20 square meters, or 216 square feet. It would have to get plenty of sun.”
If you’d still like to explore your own algae bioreactor for either solid fuel or food (spirulina), there are a couple of ways to go. Michael Fischer, the Stanford student from the video you sent, shows how to create his setup on an Instructables page. Also, algal fuel guru Aaron Baum sells starter kits through his site Algae Lab. If you want a professional consultant for a larger system, I’d recommend contacting him.
If anyone has experience with algae bioreactors or has more information, please post in the comments.
More:
Browse through all our Ask MAKE columns
April 18 2012
Homemade Motorcycle Brake Lights
As a motorcyclist, visibility is paramount to the safety of the rider. With this in mind, Pete Mills wired up his own super-bright brake light assembly using bright red LEDs. Not only are the lights powered by the onboard electrical system, but they can be toggled to either stay solid, or blink depending on the rider’s choice. This was done using an ATTiny85 microcontroller.
[via Hacked Gadgets]
More:
- LED Motorcycle Tail Light
- Vegetable Oil-Powered Motorcycle Interview
- Motorcycle Control Panel with Arduino
April 13 2012
The Importance of Sketching
Joel Miller of Massachusetts wrote in to share this great blog post on the importance of sketching up a design prior to booting up the computer.
I have been struggling with the design of an enclosure for my CNC mill that would allow me to use flood coolant and contain the mess of metal and plastic chips this machine can create. I had a rough idea in my head, and looked around at existing enclosures, so I immediately jumped into CAD to sort out the design. For days I iterated on-screen, unhappy with the results but trudging through each new concept until I hit a wall.
So last night as I sat on the couch I opened up my laptop to give it another go, only to find technical issues that kept me from launching my CAD software. Frustrated, I shut the laptop and pulled out my sketchbook. Within minutes I was teasing out the solutions that were so elusive on screen, and by the time I shut off the lights I had my design roughed out.
What do you think, readers? Do you prefer sketching your initial designs by hand or working on the computer?
April 11 2012
How-To: Mix and Mold GFRC
Concrete, as most folks know, is strong under compression but weak under tension, and is commonly strengthened by casting it around, e.g. a grid of steel reinforcing bar (“re-bar”). Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete is, well, pretty much exactly what it sounds like: concrete reinforced with glass fibers. As in most composite materials, the fiber elements in GFRC can be carefully oriented, or randomly distributed, in the solid matrix. The nice thing about the latter method is that you can just mix the reinforcing fibers into the bulk concrete and don’t have to pre-position them in the mold. GFRC concrete panels can be much thinner and lighter than metal-reinforced slabs, and the glass fibers are not subject to corrosion.
If you’re interested in experimenting with GFRC, however, you may have noticed that practical how-to information is a bit scarce online. The notable exception, IMHO, is this pair of hands-on tutorials from Brandon Gore (who produced the cool concrete coffee table with cast-in saucers we hit last Friday), first published in Concrete Decor magazine in the summer of 2008 and now freely available on their website.
In the first, Brandon details three different concrete mix recipes used in the casting of a GFRC bathroom counter with integral sink. These are the “face coat,” which is sprayed in to line the mold and does not contain fibers, the “vertical backing coat,” which is applied behind the face coat to the panels upright services, and the “self-consolidating backing coat,” which fills in the rest. In the second article, Brandon covers the process of actually applying the mixtures to the mold. [Thanks, Brandon!]
Concrete Decor – GFRC Mix Design
Concrete Decor – GFRC Application
April 09 2012
Young Maker’s Yarn Pen Inspired by MAKE Article
From Al Westpfal:
My 10 year old son Albert based his school entrepreneurial project on Arvind Gupta’s Touching Slate. He sold his product at the school marketplace event. Albert also got in touch with the Concordia Learning Center at St. Joseph’s School for the Blind in Jersey City N.J. to donate dozens of his product.
Al’s project came from the pages of MAKE volume 28, and is a pen that expels yarn instead of ink. When written onto an adhesive surface, whatever the user writes becomes tactile, serving the blind and visually impaired.
His creation was covered in an article in Wayne Patch in which he says “I’m glad that I could make something that helps other people.”
Cheers to Al for taking another maker’s idea and running with it.
From the Pages of MAKE
MAKE Volume 28, Toys and Games
MAKE Volume 28 hits makers’ passion for play head-on with a 28-page special section devoted to Toys and Games, including a toy “pop-pop” steamboat made from a mint tin, an R/C helicopter eye-in-the-sky, and a classic video game console. You’ll also build a gravity-powered catapult, a plush toy that interacts with objects around it, and a machine that blows giant soap bubbles. Play time is a hallmark of more intelligent species – so go have some fun!
April 06 2012
Arduino Ambient Temperature Display
Larry Ogrodnek, creator of the LED NameTag kit, figured out a great way to use an RGB backlight LCD to display temperature data.
This is a really simple ambient display for temperature using an Arduino, an RGB backlight LCD, and a temperature sensor.
The LCD displays the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius and adjusts the color of the backlight depending on the reading. An ideal range is set at 61F to 67F. If the temperature is in this range the backlight will change green. Above this range and the color will change red, below the range it will change blue.
The great thing about these kinds of displays is that you can immediately get some rough information from across the room.
This is just a quick project. An obvious improvement is to have more variations in color depending on how far you are from your ideal range. I.e. as the temperature increases out of the ideal range, move along the color wheel and use shades of yellow, then orange before hitting red. There’s also a lot of empty room on that LCD. Possibly room for data from other sensors, or maybe just a larger (2-line) font.
This is perfect for someone like me who only needs 5 different temperature increments; really cold, cold, nice, hot, and really hot. Most of these parts and (Larry’s NameTag kit) are available in the Maker Shed.
[via Analog Machines]
April 05 2012
DIY Camera Sliding Rig
Maker Daniel Colvin built this simple camera slider out of little more than wood, string and some hardware. The camera sits atop a platform and is pulled by a string using a K’nex geared motor.
If one wants to take simple tracking shots, conventional options use wheels and pipes, so it’s great to see Daniel using thrift as his motivator for this project.
[via Hacked Gadgets]
April 04 2012
GuitarExtended Uses Arduino and PD to Control Effects
GuitarExtended is a multi-effects system that can digitally alter the sound of a guitar using PD. The user has a box with multiple switches on it that change the alteration to the sound, and the variables of that sound are controlled using a homemade expression pedal with the help of Arduino.
One of the differences in this setup as opposed to other similar examples, is that the resulting tone is sweet and lyrical, as opposed to gritty and bit-smashed. Check out GuitarExtended’s site for more info and documentation.
More:
April 03 2012
DIY Adjustable Desk Lamp
Utrecht area maker Tim Castelijn built this adjustable desk lamp from a stainless steel salad bowl and parts liberated from an old bed frame. [via Ikeahackers]
March 31 2012
Upgrade Your Office With An RFID Reading Door
Tired of dealing with keys to get into his office, Valentin Heun hacked together this door unlocker with a laser-cutter, Arduino, and some bits n’ bobs from SparkFun. Full design files and parts list can be found on the linked page.
March 30 2012
$25 DIY DSLR Camera Crane
If you’re shooting a video and would like to get a nice vertical shot without breaking the bank, then try this $25 mini camera crane from OliviaTech. With some aluminum angle, square tube, a quick release mount, and hardware, you can build a portable jib boom to get the right shot. [via DIYP]
March 29 2012
Luma League: Superbright LEDs Save Lives Supercheap
Jaundice in newborns, if untreated, can lead to brain damage or death. Fortunately there’s an easy treatment, called phototherapy, which just means exposing the baby’s skin to blue light with a wavelength of about 458 nm in sufficient amounts. This changes the excess bilirubin (the yellow chemical that causes jaundice) into a slightly different chemical that the baby’s body can eliminate much more easily, until their liver matures enough to take over the job itself.
Commercial “bililights” for jaundice phototherapy are too expensive for most of the world, so Tim Z. Falconer designed a DIY version that uses commodity superbright LEDs and is makeable for $50 at most. Because the bililights need to be calibrated for use, Tim also designed a calibration device in inexpensive, kit form. The first version of Tim’s open-source devices began saving babies’ lives last August in the Congo, and since then, his Luma League designs have also been locally assembled and put to use in Haiti, Guatemala, and (just this past week), Nepal, via local partner Nyaya Health.
With his kits and open source designs, Tim wants to facilitate local entrepreneurship and expertise — an approach that contrasts with that of companies such as Green Light Planet, who mass-manufacture inexpensive finished devices for centralized distribution and sale to the developing world.
Tim and the Luma League will be exhibiting at Maker Faire Bay Area this May 19-20, where Tim plans let people assemble strings of LED’s for actual bili lights that will be used where needed.
Luma League: http://lumaleague.org
How-To: Carve a Stone Bowl
Want to make a gift to eternity? Nothing says forever quite like a handmade stone bowl. Maker extraordinaire Tim Anderson writes our Heirloom Technology column each issue of MAKE, and for Volume 24, he shared his technique for carving a stone bowl. Head over to Make: Projects for the full tutorial. As Anderson notes, “Fortunately, tools with diamond-studded cutters have become cheap and abundant. They make stone carving amazingly fast and easy. The same techniques seen here can of course be used to make any sort of stone objects you desire. My bowl is heavy and shallow because I plan to use it for a mortar to make nut butter. And I want it to last forever.” What kind of bowl will you make?
March 28 2012
An Inexpensive Self-Balancing Robot
This self-balancing robot was designed and built by Kerry Wong and uses just a few ICs and some basic electronic components to get the job done. This project is definitely more up your alley if you’re interested in using discrete components rather than a microcontroller designed for prototyping, but the cost in doing it this way makes it attractive.
From Kerry’s site:
I used a LPY450AL for the gyroscope and anMMA8453Q for the accelerometer. These two devices are rather inexpensive and the IMU can be built for well under $10.
The toy truck I used for this project has a single motor that drives both of the rear wheels. Since I only need the drive wheels, I cut off the unused front portion. The toy car’s plastic chassis is not rigid enough so I hot-glued a few pieces of plastic and metal support on the back. The extra support is important as excessive vibrations affect the accuracy of the sensor measurements.
Here is the bill of material in my build:
Platform: Toy truck (0 – $20)
Controller: ATmega328P (~$4)
Accelerometer: MMA8453Q (~$2)
Gyroscope: LPY450AL ($4)
H-Bridge: SN754410 (~$2)
Miscellaneous: ~$10
[via Hacked Gadgets]
More:
- Self-Balancing Telepresence Robot
- Arduino-Based 2-Wheel Balance Bot
- Self-Balancing Robot Powered by Arduino
MicroRAX and Lego CNC
Jason Welch built this lovely CNC from MicroRAX t-slot beams with Lego bricks for the linear paths. See the video’s notes for some notes on sourcing the various components.
March 23 2012
Mike Davey’s Wooden Wall Clock
Mike Davey is a maker we’re already familiar with through projects such as his incredibly detailed Turing Machine. This time he’s made a wooden wall clock, based on a design by Clayton Boyer, that almost looks like a long-legged creature with a little finger periodically pulling on the escapement.
More:
March 07 2012
Adafruit’s Enclosures On Thingiverse
Adafruit Industries has uploaded their .SVGs to Thingiverse, so now you can take their Community Commons enclosure designs, mix them up, and laser them out! My favorite is the Ice Tube Clock enclosure designed by w0z.
Open Source Speakers find Homes in Mason Jars
Sarah Pease borrows from David A. Mellis’ open source speaker design and mates it with mason jars as enclosures. They not only have a great look, but different sizes and types of jars can be swapped out to create different sound signatures.
The cork bases are a nice finishing touch.
[via DudeCraft]
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