Yep… didn’t get last week’s update up. Better late than never! Not much to say about it, though. I worked on creating linear bearings (picture below) and found that I need to add a LOT more infill for that design to work properly. In the process I decided to upgrade my 3D printer’s software — which in turn requires firmware upgrades which in turn proved difficult. Hopefully I’ll have the new firmware/software up-to-date this weekend.

Yay!  This week was productive! More experiments with Sketchup and my 3D printer:  printable universal joints (click that link if you don’t know what a Universal Joint is — the animation will make it clear).  There are a LOT of ways to create a universal joint, but this is my own design (version 0.1) working under the constraint that it had to be printable (and that’s a big constraint that I won’t go into here).   Here is the result:

I did this for a couple of reasons.  First, I wanted the challenge of making this beast with NO screws, bolts or nuts.  It’s strictly snap-together and can sustain very large forces acting on it (which means it was really, really hard to put together!).  Also, u-joints + wire + servos + arduinos = animatronics!  This will end up in either a cool robot or costume.  It can be used in robotic tentacle-type grips or robotic tails.

For those of you that might not know what 3D printing is all about, here’s a 30 second video of the my “Kevbot 3000″ printer in action.  The universal joint took over two hours to print in total, so this really is just a tiny sample:

3D printers like mine melt a plastic filament (a whole lot like what you feed into a weed-eater) and extrude it layer by layer into whatever shape you want.  We really are living in the future for anyone that wants to expend the time and energy to get there!

This week I’ve brought my “Kevbot” 3D printer back online.  It’s a modified Makerbot Cupcake with a custom z-stage, Acme rods and no end-stops (dangerously:  that’s how I roll!).

I did this:

That’s a test print I did to make linear bearings.  I’m trying to get an idea of how I need to adjust idealized (i.e.: computer model) bearings so that real-world prints create precise-fitting bearings.  Each hole in the test bearing is 0.1 mm in radius larger than the next smaller.  That led me to design and build a real bearing to which I can attach a 3D printer Z-stage.  Here’s the result:

Smooth linear motion.  It’s not perfect, yet, but it’s a few cents worth of plastic versus ten or twelve dollars for a similar commercially-available bearing.  A couple more tweaks and I’ll be on my way!

Also, I dialed in some changes to the temperature of the heated build platform that gives me much more reliable builds, consistent shrinkage, and nice separation from the “raft”.  It’s been a productive week!

Wow… I forgot to post my Week Six update! Well, it wasn’t that productive of a Maker week, so maybe that’s my excuse. I did get some Maker Faire: NC work done. Outside of that, not so much in the “real world”. I did, however, do a bit of JavaScript study, which resulted in a calculator-style input screen for the home finance system we use that makes it easier to use on an iPhone. It looks like this:

and, YES, I do see that it needs a bit more work!  Something in my last tweak moved the digits higher up the page than the decimal point.  There’s a fair amount of CSS, JavaScript AND php in that, so it did take a bit of work.  In any case, it’s been a good learning experience *and* should make entering our spending much easier than the iPhone keyboard.

My next post should show a more productive week (my Makerbot is churning away even as I write this!).

Week five… parts order means ROBOT BITS HAVE ARRIVED!  Experiments with those bits will be coming in the next couple of weeks.  Meanwhile, the Maker Faire: NC management team met for several hours as we started putting together what promises to be an awesome Maker Faire.  What a team!  Maker Faire: NC promises to be a breakout event for makers in the southeast U.S.  Seriously cool stuff coming together!

Also this week, I built version 2.0 of my LED closet light.  This one has twice as many LEDs (12), adjustable brightness via a variable resistor and only draws about 3/4 of a watt of power.  Look straight into it and you’ll get serious retina burn.  LEDs FTW!

The blue and white bit in the middle is the variable resistor that lets me change the brightness.

Another improvement was using two layers of spray paint on the recycled candle holder (both on the inside). The first layer is WHITE, which is what you see from the outside.  The second is BLACK, which keeps the light from glowing through the glass and revealing the mass of wires and circuits inside.  Much cleaner look.

I used the painting time to also prep some acrylic with black spray paint for a few laser tests this coming week.  Stay tuned to see how that works out…

Not too much to say for week four (and even my review post is late!).  A little bit of this and that.  Some work on Maker Faire: NC (exhibitor applications went live and started coming in!).  My personal makery, however, mostly consisted of finally getting a the kinks worked out of my candle holder design.  I got the design right, cut it, glued it, painted it, and have been enjoying it! Elizabeth was very pleased with it as well, and asked me to make a second one.  I’ll do that as soon as I get some more 5mm plywood.

I have slew of new projects in the works, so I’m currently in that mode of ordering parts and experimenting with ideas.  However, I’m hoping that I’ll have a good thing or two to post again next week!

Short and sweet:

I call that a “Snap-It”.  It’s a laser-cut design that snaps two pieces of 5 mm (1/4 inch) plywood together without screws.  I designed several cuts before I found one that snapped together without breaking and would then hold the pieces together.  The idea is to be able to build boxes and other items with no screws or glue:

Here you can just such a box.  However, I’m finding that if two tabs are too close to each other this design is still very hard to snap together without breaking something.  I also spent a bit more time with Sketchup and my laser.

The goal was to make a holder for glass IKEA candles, but after all was said and done I found that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way:  some of the pieces are slightly the wrong width and won’t fit together.  Oh well, measure twice / laser once, right?  I’ll have another go at it this week.  It’s all about getting better, so I consider it time well spent.

Week 2 — the week that success was elusive. However, it wasn’t without value.

I spent some time working to bring Maker Faire: NC email addresses with the @makerfairenc.com domain. I didn’t set up the domain registration or the website, so it felt good to sort it all out to get it working with Google Apps. So now I have *another* email address: kevin@makerfairenc.com, where you can reach me if you are interested in being an exhibitor at Maker Faire: NC this June. Sweet!

Meanwhile, I spent much of my own maker-time cutting tiny squares. Well, TRYING to cut tiny squares. My laser makes quick work of 1/4-inch plywood, but 1/4-inch MDF (medium-density fiberboard) is a nightmare. I cleaned optics, I aligned optics, I ran a gazillion variations on power and speed. Bottom line: not gonna happen. Still, I improved my expertise with my laser, so it’s not all bad.

Since we were doing a college tour with my daughter this weekend at Clemson, that’s pretty-well wiped out my weekend. I’ll have to say that the Mathematical Sciences department there managed to impress me.

Lots of makery this week, but more work than success.  That’s OK — it’s part of the process!

This week I built this:

It’s the World’s Most Dangerous filament spool for a Makerbot.  I wanted to keep the steampunk theme of my bot, so I add gear teeth to the edges.  What I didn’t realize is that (a) this design wouldn’t properly contain the filament and (b) the filament would act as a powerful mainspring that causes the whole thing to spin at high rpm’s at the slightest disturbance.  Did I mention it has teeth?  Looked great once it was painted gold and mounted, but it’s still back to the drawing board!

Next up, my friend Tom came over and I cut a bit of acrylic for him to use in a project he’s working on.  It’s a minor thing, but collaborating with other maker friends is always a good thing.  That same night Ariel had a project idea, so I offered my guidance with Google Sketchup and supervised her as she ran the laser.  She designed and made seven of these model bridges for her project on Leonhard Euler.  These allow her to easily demonstrate one of the early topology problems he tackled.

More geekery than makery, but I also upgraded my MacBook Pro to 8GB of RAM so that it can smoothly handle running Windows 7 inside Parallels to allow me to easily go from design work on the Mac side to driving my laser on the Windows side.  When did it get to be that 4GB wasn’t enough RAM???

The big Saturday maker news is that I met with Jonathan Danforth, the Event Director for Maker Faire: NC.  I’ve taken on the job of Maker Coordinator with Ariel on board to assist me.  Good thing, too:  it’s a big job!  In any case, I’m going to start looking for AWESOME stuff and AMAZING people to be a part of the 2012 Maker Faire: NC this June.

After meeting with Jon, Ariel and I headed by Home Depot for some supplies.  I picked up some stone tile to try etching in the laser.  Since I’ve been playing Skyrim lately I decided to try etching the Skyrim logo onto it.  I used some artwork from “fullbashreturns” on DeviantArt.  Here’s the result (I’m really please with it — I’ll be using this stone in the future for some more substantial projects):

Today I’m cutting another filament spool design and trying to find the right settings to cut MDF efficiently on my laser.  It’s a great material from a uniformity point of view, but takes a lot more laser power/laser time than plywood to cut.  I’ve spent several hours today trying to dial in just the right settings.  Right now I’m running a looooooong job at 15% power with FIVE repeats (Is that a lot???  Why, yes, yes it is!).

Time to start blogging quite a bit more.

You see, I decided a couple of days ago that 2012 would be my personal “Year of the Maker”. I’m going to see just how much make-y stuff I can design, build, teach, publish, etc, etc, etc in hopes of tremendously improving my skill set over the course of the year. In fact, what I really want to do is follow JoCo’s example and do “A Thing A Week” and try to accomplish at least one maker activity each week.  Not every week may yield a successful build, but I’d like every week to yield SOMETHING.  Let’s see how this goes…

This is Week One. My goal is to design and build a filament spool for my Makerbot by the end of the week (weeks will end on Sundays since that gives me the week to plan and the weekend to build). I’ll publish the results here.  Version 0.1 of the spool is done as of last night — and a miserable failure.  The filament drives the whole thing like a clock’s mainspring and since I designed it to look like a gear it even has TEETH with which to BITE THE OPERATOR.  Looks pretty, though.