Boing Boing » makers

11 year old and his 3D printer

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:53:51 +0000

Alex sez, "My colleague Chris Neary and filmmaker Nathan Fitch made this great short film about 11-year-old inventor Andrew Man-Hudspith, who was so intent on getting a 3D printer he made a PowerPoint presentation to convince his parents to help him get one."

An 11-year-old and his 3D printer (Thanks, Alex!)

Printing a gun is hard

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:38:33 +0000

Caleb sez, "The Department of Defense ordered that 3d printed gun removed from the Internet. That didn't work out. You can still download it and print it. I did, and found that the files are a mess and not really functional. I also took a cool timelapse video of the printing."

1. the scale on the individual files was way off.
I suspect this has something to do with the printer it was designed for. It seemed very close to being 1 inch = 1 mm. Not a completely uncommon problem. Manually resizing got some files to look right, but I found many simply wouldn’t resize.
2. Almost every single item had errors.
If you’ve done 3d printing, you’ve found that a model can have all kinds of issues that will stop it from printing correctly. I found every single item for the gun had errors. I actually learned a lot about how to repair non-manifold items from this exercise, so it was good in the end.
Some items, like the hammer and the hammer springs simply would not print. I ran them through systems to repair them and fix errors. It would say that everything was fixed, but when I tried to “slice” them for printing, the software would crash. This means that my gun is incomplete. It has no hammer. Not really that big of a deal to me.

Timelapse of the 3d printed gun being printed. (Thanks, Caleb)

3D printing for kids, this weekend in Toronto!

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:36:09 +0000

Back in January, I blogged my visit to Toronto's MakerKids, a wonderful makerspace for kids. Now, MakerKids is running a 3D printing weekend for kids at Toronto's Harbourfront centre. Andy from Makerkids writes, "This weekend, at the 11th annual Toronto International Circus Festival (from May 16th-18th at the Harbourfront Centre), MakerKids will be helping kids to do 3D printing of circus creatures! At our station at this free event, kids will design fantastical animals and characters they'd like to see in a circus using the 123D Creature app. The crowd's favourites will be 3D printed for their designers to bring home!"

MakerKids 3D Printing at Harbourfront this Weekend (Thanks, Andy!)

HOWTO make glowing Converse

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:50 +0000

The good people at Adafruit have an easy way to make your Chucks glow!

Make your logo light up with this simple Converse sneaker mod. All you need is EL panel and an inverter tucked into the tongue of your shoe to get the stars in your Chuck Taylors glowing. Two styles!

Glowing Star Chuck Taylor Sneakers

Glowing algae make a nice nightlight

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:08:51 +0000

This is a picture of a wave crashing on the New Jersey shore. It glows because of dinoflagellates — little, single-celled plants, animals, and bacteria that float around on the water, moving about with the help of long, moveable protein strands called flagella. Some dinoflagellates are bioluminescent; that is, chemical reactions inside their bodies produce light. The result is glowing oceans. Or, as maker Caleb Kraft recently discovered, the dinoflagellates also make for a soft blue nightlight with really nifty special effects.

You can watch Kraft's nightlight project at YouTube. It's pretty simple to do at home. At it's most basic, all you need to do is purchase some bioluminescent dinoflagellates online, keep them alive in your home, and give them a good shaking occasionally to trigger the chemical reaction.

A couple more helpful links:
• Where Kraft bought his dinoflagellates
• A guide to other dinoflagellate dealers, and to the care and feeding of unicellular organisms
• Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who are studying dinoflagellate bioluminescence to better understand how it works and what role it plays in the ecosystem
• A detailed explanation of what dinoflagellates are and why they glow

Via Treehugger

Image: Red Tide Luminescense, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from piratelife's photostream

It's a face! A skull! A mushroom! Psychedelic drawing lesson

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 01:58:09 +0000

Katana Leigh sez, "I want to provide memorable ways to learn to draw that are interesting and visually entertaining. The proportions of a red spotted button mushroom are the same as a skull and these LSD colors provide maximum contrast so you can see the process and hopefully copy it. Not your boring art lessons but a new way to think about seeing."

How To Draw A Skull 2: when a mushroom is like a face (Thanks, Katana!)

Self-assembling foldable inchworm robots

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:55:02 +0000

Here's a quick and fascinating look at "Robot Self-Assembly by Folding: A Printed Inchworm Robot," presented at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The authors demonstrated a foldable inchworm robot that actually folds itself into shape. The goal is to have all the components placed on the robot's shrinky-dink surface using a robotic pick-and-place machine, so that the inchworm robots can be produced, assembled, and set a-inching on their way without human intervention.

The tricky part of the process is the folding of the robot itself: installing the battery and motor is trivial enough for a human to do, which means that a relatively simple pick and place robot should have no problems doing the same thing. This means that these robots have the potential to scale massively: they can be printed out of cheap materials, they fold themselves together, and another robot can plonk some hardware on them and they’re good to go.

This Crawling Inchworm Robot Can Be Printed Out and Folds Itself [Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

Skittles sorting machine, version 3

Mark Frauenfelder — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:38:01 +0000

Here's Brian Egenriether's new-and-improved Skittles sorting machine. It's interesting to note that he used machinable epoxy for the parts instead of using a 3D printer. I know 3D printing is the future, but the current crop of home 3D printers make ugly parts. Subtractive fabrication technology makes better looking stuff, at least for now.

This machine sorts Skittles, m&m's and similar candies by color. It is the 3rd revision of the original machine. The inside is now complete and features user-selectable inputs to choose which type of candy to sort. Types not shown include Reese's Pieces and other types of Skittles.

The microcontroller is a BASIC Stamp 2 and the color sensor is made by TAOS. I made most of the parts by hand from a machinable epoxy including the outer case, inner housing, hopper mechanism, 5 way chute, and the the rotating disk inside. The other parts include a piece of PVC, ceramic bowls, telescope parts, wood for the base, and the funnel which was cut from a hummingbird feeder.

Automatic Sorting of Skittles or M&Ms by Colour (Thanks, D.S. Deboer!)

Ghosts in the Machine: the tiny people who live inside your computers

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 12 May 2013 02:54:58 +0000

Mark Crummett sez, "For several years now, I've been working on a series of photos featuring miniature figures living and working in our computers and consumer electronics. These are the people who Make Things Work. I'm happy to say that wired.com is featuring my 'Ghosts in the Machine' at their rawfile photo blog. Shows many pictures, plus a look behind the scenes!"

Computer Guts Become Eerie Landscapes in Ghosts in the Machine (Thanks, Mark!)

Make bread by mixing ice cream with flour and baking

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 17:49:30 +0000

It appears that you can make delicious (and fantastically high-carb) bread by mixing melted ice-cream with self-rising flour and baking it. I'm willing to believe that this is totally yummy but I'm not going to try it:

1 Preheat oven to 350 F
2 Let ice cream soften at room temperature for 10-15 minutes.
< 3 In the bowl of your mixer combine ice cream with flour until the flour is incorporated.
4 Evenly distribute sprinkles in the bottom of a greased Bundt pan and scoop batter evenly on top.
5 Bake for 35 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
6 Invert and allow to cool completely.

Cake Batter Ice Cream Bread (via Neatorama)

Algoraves: dancing to algorithms

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:00:06 +0000

Alex sez, "Algoraves are parties where people come together to dance to algorithms. It generally involves some live coding but any producers making music "wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive conditionals' are welcome. Generally some aspect of the algorithmic processes are visible, but the focus is actually on the audience, and having serious fun. We've had a few parties across the UK and Germany, and are spreading further afield in Mexico and Australia. The concept is still developing though, and is being defined by whoever turns up."

algorave (Thanks, Alex!)

How clay water filters for Ghana are made

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 13:00:11 +0000

Gmoke sez, "Susan Murcott and her team's factory making clay filters for Pure Home Water in Ghana. Over 100,000 served, so far."

They're shooting for 1,000,000.

Pure Home Water, Ghana: AfriClay Filters

How to make a cake pan banjo ukulele

Mark Frauenfelder — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:10:41 +0000

One of my favorite recent projects in MAKE is Chester Winowiecki's complete instructions for making an inexpensive "panjolele." It's a cake pan banjo ukulele and it sounds great. I just wish I could play and sing as well as Chester.

Below: everything you need to make a panjolele.

Scratch 2.0: programming for kids, now in the browser

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:41:56 +0000

The MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Group has shipped version 2.0 of Scratch, the justly famed and much-loved programming language for kids. Scratch makes it easy to create powerful simulations and games, even for small kids (basically, if you can read, you're ready for Scratch). The new version of Scratch runs right in a browser (no downloads or installs required), and is remarkable in its polish and power to excite. The programming environment is embedded in a sharing and shareable community, with millions of Scratch projects ready to be downloaded and remixed. It's just amazing.

With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.
Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.

Share with others around the world (via O'Reilly Radar)

Chest-burster pendant

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 02:59:55 +0000

Etsy maker CthulhuWakeUp made this stonking chestburster necklace pendant, and granted an interview to the Girl Gone Geek blog about his art:

Practicing digital sculpture in my own time, I came up with the Cthulhu pendant and I really wanted to do something with it. I put it up in kickstarter and raised money to make 150 of them. I was thrilled not only that I was able to share my personal work but to make some money along the way too. After that I decided to work towards making a side business of it. Unfortunately, I can’t work as fast as I would like to towards that goal but I’m getting there!

Etsy Crush of the Week & Giveaway: Cthulhu Wake Up (via Neatorama)

Othermill: kickstarting a desktop 3D computer-controlled mill for circuit-boards, jewelry and more

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:04:29 +0000

McArthur Genius Grant winner and maker hero Saul Griffith and his friends have a fully funded Kickstarter on the go for the "Othermill," a computer-controlled mill for creating your own custom circuit-boards -- and for milling decorative or functional shapes from "metal, wood, wax, and plastic." It's a compact desktop tool designed for home use.

With our mill, you can produce custom circuit boards quickly and cheaply. You can make all your projects light up, beep, and move. Wearable circuits, custom guitar effects pedals, and quadcopter electronics are all within reach - without waiting for boards to come back from the manufacturer. Even though the Othermill is optimized for cutting circuit boards, it can also cut metal, wood, wax, and plastic. It is great for engraving and milling 3D shapes for jewelry or mold making.
The Othermill was designed with PCBs in mind, and they were the very first thing we tested when we had a working machine. The precision and accuracy of the Othermill allows you to reliably cut 10 mil trace and space on FR-1 PCB stock. You can create custom circuits that fit into odd 3D printed parts, seamlessly integrate electronics into your clothing, and free up your Arduinos for other applications.

The Othermill: Custom Circuits at Your Fingertips (Thanks, Alice!)

Selection of Etsy Haunted Mansion tchotchkes

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:58:58 +0000

I've just had a deep trawl through Etsy's selection of weird, handmade Haunted Mansion (and hauntedmansionesque) gewgaws and gimcracks, and I herewith present my picks of the lot:

Master Gracey Haunted Mansion Miniature Halloween Dollhouse Decoration

HAUNTED MANSION Full Collection- Cutie Putti Paperie

Miniature Haunted Mansion Library

Red Velvet Open Coffin 1-inch scale dollhouse miniature

Miniature Books --- Mansion Library Collection

The Gorgon - A Certain Famous Changing Portrait - In Homage - Tribute

Miniature Victorian Library

Awesome amateur horror makeup

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:15:26 +0000

Click above for full-on grodiness

Redditor ImNotJesus has a friend who does her own amateur horror makeup. She's pretty amazing -- check out the ultra-gross fool-the-eye gaping eye-socket wound above.

A good friend of mine does horror makeup regularly. What do you guys think? I'm going to surprise her with the support. [X-post from /r/horror] (i.imgur.com)

Bicycle hackers of 1948

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:12:49 +0000

In 1948, a group of makers in Chicago's "National Bicycle Dealers’ Association" took to modding their bikes in very creative and downright weird ways. They are the progenitors of Cyclecide, San Francisco's crazy bike carnival and rodeo creators! Above, the "Gangbusters Bike" outfitted with "13 shotguns, two revolvers, six bayonets and a flare gun." At right, the "Uno-Wheel," which "if braked suddenly, has been known to spin its rider round and round inside the big main wheel." More photos at LIFE. "Hell on Wheels: Life With Mutant Bicycles"

VR helmet Guillotine simulator

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:42:16 +0000

Disunion is a guillotine simulator that uses the Oculus Rift VR headset to bring you a realistic experience of being beheaded (this experience is enhanced by a strategic neck-chop!). It was created in two days at the Exile game jam by Erkki Trummal, André Berlemont and Morten Brunbjerg, who clearly enjoy making people feel like they're had their heads lopped off just a little too much.

Disunion

Hannah Peel covers OMD's "Electricity" on an antique music box

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 04 May 2013 12:49:44 +0000

Rick sez, "Hannah Peel found an old musical box in her grandmother's trunk, and rebuilt it, sampled it, looped it and created this lovely cover version of the OMD song Electricity. The very inexpensive EP includes similar versions of Blue Monday and Tainted Love. Exquisite!"

Electricity - Hannah Peel (Thanks, Rick)

Masterclass in making with Bunnie Huang at the Hardware Innovation Workshop

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 04 May 2013 03:21:40 +0000

On May 14-15, Make is hosting its second annual Hardware Innovation Workshop in San Mateo, CA. There's a pretty amazing speaker lineup, but perhaps most exciting is a "Maker Pro Master Class" with Andrew "bunnie" Huang, one of the great hardware hackers of our age.

Homemade laser pops 100 balloons

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:32:41 +0000

Scott A. Stevenson modded a Blu-ray laser flashlight to run at 500mW and used it to pop 100 black balloons. For science!

100 black balloons vs. Blu-ray laser! It is all over in under 8 seconds. The sound they make as they pop is a bit mesmerizing! Note: The laser used in this video is custom made from a flashlight body and the laser diode from a 12X speed Blu-ray burner drive and not purchased in a store or online.

Laser Videos by WorldScott.com (via Geekologie)

8-year-old's invention for keeping books dry in the bath

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:45:37 +0000

This ingenious technique for safeguarding books from falling in the bathtub was invented by redditor Crash-From-Space's 8-year-old daughter. The suction cup came from the plumbing aisle at Home Despot.

Never drop a book on the bath again. My 8 year old daughters invention. (imgur.com)

Homemade Thor's hammer with an 80,000 volt Tesla coil in it

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:27:11 +0000

Not content with a "crappy plastic Thor's hammer," Caleb from Hackaday made himself a Tesla-coil-equipped Mjolnir with a tiny, 80,000 volt Tesla coil in its head. It shoots lightning! Lots of built photos on the Hackaday site, too.

I had seen some videos of [Staci Elaan] showing off her battery-powered coils and I really liked her results. I figured, with her experience, she could probably do a better job than I could on getting the most bang out of a small package. She was happy to be involved and delivered a small 12v powered coil for me to work with. I should also point out that the coils [Staci] makes are usually donated to educational groups. This woman is awesome.
She had built this big flat head on it, with the initial plan being that it would be the front “face” of the hammer. It didn’t really work out that way though. I ended up having to increase the size of the head a bit and change the orientation of the coil. I experimented with different types of foam and you can see in the “making of” video what I finally ended up using. The blue insulation board you see in the pictures melted way too easily.

High voltage Thor’s Hammer: Mjolnir at 80,000 volts

Cell model cake

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 May 2013 02:43:21 +0000

Canadian artist/photographer NicoleWilliam created this cell model cake for her BIOL330 class in 2010. I hereby grant her a retrospective A+. It even comes apart!

Biology Cell Cake (via Geeks Are Sexy)

HOWTO make a HAL9000

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:43:41 +0000

With just a few steps, you can turn one of Adafruit's Massive Red Arcade Button kits into a working (ish) HAL9000 computer:

Devoted film fans will spend countless hours and hundreds of dollars (occasionally even thousands) to create flawless replica props for their personal collections. The iconic eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: a Space Odyssey is one such object of desire…popular enough that detailed (and pricey) licensed reproductions exist. This is cool stuff! But if we relax our criteria just a bit, you or I can turn out a pretty decent, recognizable facsimile in a weekend for just a small fraction of the cost. The 80/20 rule in action!
We’re not selling a prop or even a kit here…that would raise a big licensing stink, so please don’t ask. What follows are some ideas on creating one yourself. Much like our not-a-Back-to-the-Future-clock project, the concept came about when customers noted that a component already in our shop resembled an unrelated film item — in this case, our Massive Red Arcade Button and HAL’s distinctive lens.

Affordable HAL 9000 Replica (Thanks, Phil!)

Japanese folk music glitch hop

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:14:28 +0000

Daniel Ryan describes his music as "a mix of Japanese folk music and glitch hop." This isn't normally my sort of thing -- I pretty much only listen to music with words -- but I played this one three times in a row this morning. There's a lot of clever stuff going on here that I lack the vocabulary to describe but possess the aesthetic apparatus to appreciate. According to one redditor, the folk song is this track off the Samurai Champloo soundtrack.

Nagasaki

HOWTO make a spiral oak staircase out of cheap IKEA countertops

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:41:20 +0000

Bryce Phelps made himself a beautiful oak spiral staircase and saved a ton of money by cutting up cheap IKEA oak countertops for the treads:

I went with a 4" steel pipe from the local steel yard buying 18'. Also purchased some angle and flat steel to frame out the stairs. My treads needed to be 22" long making the whole staircase 4' including the center pipe. The treads are 30 degrees, so you can fit 6 on one side or 180 degrees together. I had a total of 7 treads or runs and about a 9" rise. Take the overall height and divide by the runs = the rise needed. Once all this was welded back supports aren't needed and the stairs are very rigid.
For the treads I headed to Ikea and picked up the 8' NUMERÄR Countertop in Oak, traced and pattern and laid out the cuts in pencil with the grain all going the same direction. I cut the straight lines with the skilsaw and round cuts with the bandsaw. Took the router to the edges and followed up with some sanding and stain. Attached the treads with lags and wiped everything down.
It really turned out better than I thought and for a fraction of the price + you get to tell people you made it.

Spiral Staircase with Numerar

20-foot dinosaur made from balloons

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:38:17 +0000

This 20-foot-tall acrocanthosaurus is made out of twisted-together balloons. It was created over four days by Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle's company Airgami for the lobby of the Virgina Museum of Natural History.

airigami (headed by larry moss) has completed a 20-foot long acrocanthosaurus--a dinosaur from the early cretaceous period. this is not the first time the team has built one of the mammoth creatures from their signature medium of balloons, but it is the first occasion in which they have produced and displayed one alongside a cast of an actual skeleton of a prehistoric reptile. finished over the course of four days, the massive inflated beast is installed within the virgina museum of natural history (for as long as it will last).
the core team of marsh gallagher, TJ michael, phil cosmos and dee cosmos who realized the larger than life blow-up sculpture were assisted by many helpers including elementary school students and museum staff.

20-foot dinosaur made from balloons by airigami [Designboom]