Dallas Makerspace Show and Tell - July 2017

Post a picture and description of anything you are working on this month at the 'Space here!

It can be anything from a small craft project to a large CNC router project to building a table to 3D printing to a science experiment and so much more. There are lots of people doing cool things at DMS all the time, but most of us don’t get to see it. Post it here and share the interesting things you are doing at Dallas Makerspace this month!

Posting here helps not only promote Dallas Makerspace, but could inspire others to make something. It will also help PR post a monthly look at what can be done here on a blog post (with attribution to each maker of course).

:bulb: NOTE: Please try to include the following on each post, to help make for richer blog content!

a decent QUALITY photo
a notation about WHAT you've made
WHO you are (for attribution on the blog)
HOW you've made it
and WHY
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I made a planter for my apartment balcony so I could have some growing space. Made it using all the wonderful tools in woodshop (router and table saw).

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Had a weird space in our entryway, decided to use some offcuts and random pieces to make an abstract art piece. It’s made from birds eye maple (carved with orbital sander) padauk, mesquite with turquoise sand inlay, slab of pecan that I turned then roughed up with an axe and painted it with aqua and grey milk paint. I finished some of the pieces with oil, some with shellac to make the light hit it differently in places. We like it. Turbo is confused.

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I took John’s advanced laser class and learned to etch a tumbler today.

This one is going to my mom for her birthday later this month.

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So the other day I was chatting with @Kluper. She wanted to create a ‘learn to solder’ board for the coming open house in Kicad. I mentioned that i had created a basic SMD board with the idea that @artg_dms could teach some learn to solder smd classes. So I sent her the Kicad files with the idea that all she needed for a through hole solder board was to switch the footprints on the parts (jelly bean transistors (3906), four resistors, two caps, two LEDS, and a battery holder.

This circuit is a wonderful one, I first came across from Forest M. Mims book many, many years ago. I am thinking about creating a class where we look in detail at how this circuit works. I think I will call itm “You don’t need an Arduino to Blink and LED” And perhaps with a little encouragement, we can get @artg_dms to teach that class on SMD soldering.

Anyway, I finally got around to assembling one of the three boards from my initial order with OSHPark. It took some time, but I finally caught a photo of D1 (led on left) as it was extinguishing as D2 (led on right) was approaching full brightness. This circuit is known as a multivibrator (or flip-flop) and the two leds flash opposite of each other.

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@wandrson - you are one of the most diverse makers I know!

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Still really digging the cone 6 glazes! I highly recommend layering the Amaco celadons and Amaco Potter’s Choices. The speckly one is a new clay body for me, Spec-tacular (available at Trinity Ceramics), and I really liked it. Throws well and is really sturdy.

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Aspen wood, a Forstner bit, and some jute cord combine to make some LED accent “candles”.

Made at the Fort Collins Creator Hub.

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3D Zodiac Set of leather embossing stamps:

I’m posting this on here mostly to inspire others. this was cut on (my) laser in 3d mode. to do 3d (actually 2.5D) you need to have 16 bit grey scale art where a different power level is attached to each shade for depth. It’s not as clean as pure CNC work, but it does open up a bunch of possibilities. I don’t know if the Thunders support a 3d mode in their driver. The software I used for the 16 bit grey scale was ASPIRE by Vectric - so another push to get ASPIRE, folks.Although, it’s possible that Illustrator may do it. cheers!

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Been making pens and teaching others how to.

Tonight @LeeCJones and I are making Fountain Pens.

Steve’s handy work.

Brandt & Duyen on a date night, building skills and making things.

I have been focused on the hand position. Everyone holds a pen differently. It’s neat to see someone pick one up and write with them.

Turning in Acrylic

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@Paul_Mai 's handy work. He dialed it up a notch with lasering on the Epilog Zing.

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I made a captive nut puzzle on the lathe today. The next one I do will be out of steel.

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this was my tour night demo piece. Cowgirl figure carving in aluminum. it is around 4.25" tall. 5 hours of total carving time.

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This is my rough carved guitar top and the thickness gauge I made on the Bridgeport Mill. The dial gauge is just a Harbor Freight special, but it will be precise enough for my needs.

Here I am doing the actual work of carving the top to thickness.
Soon, I get to start working the maple back to a similar shape and thickness.

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Made a prototyper’s enclosure for an Arduino mega and auxiliaries mini beard board out of clear acrylic to allow visual trouble shooting (usually not sufficient) and assessing available real estate for instrument adds. This is for use with a thermodynamics/physic demonstrator collecting process variables such as pressure, temperature, distance, RPM, and making the data ready for graphic display by a higher level software in a computer. Wanted an enclosure that allows frequent movement of equipment without the wires pulling out yet ease of revision without soldering and re-soldering as a ridiculous number of adds and revisions are anticipated. Wire combs hold wiring in place and wire gutters help keep wiring organized. Mini zip ties keep wires from from each instrument bundled and prevent pulling and pushing of bundles from transmitting stresses to the individual connections made inside the enclosure. Didn’t see any thing for sale online that did all this in this dimension class. Hopefully, a couple of clear photos show here.

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Seems no show on the photos.

Perhaps uploading one at a time will work out.

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This is an example of a lithophane cut out of a $1 cutting board I bought at the dollar store. It’s a proof of concept that I’m teaching in my “Image to 3d print/emboss/lithophane class”. In this case I want to see how well some cheap plastic would cut and produce and image. I’m pretty happy about the results. Work flow is image>grey scale rendered to STL model>v-carve tool path generation>MultiCam. Video link of cutting included. You need to be and Advanced CNC user to cut other materials other than wood. I use my own bits.


Here is the video:. https://youtu.be/Fwn--5pK0TI

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Other examples of lithophanes that are 3D printed and also 3d printed images using glow in the dark filament.

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Another fun class down. John Gorman was the winner of the 50 cal. pen we did in class after a very vigorous (but bloodless) death match of rock/paper/scissors. Congratulations John and cheers to all the participants.

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