Dallas Makerspace Show and Tell - June 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
2 Likes

New mask sculpt of Goliath from the show Gargoyles. Next step will to be to cover it in plaster.

22 Likes

Pinocchio is a combination of pine and poplar, with a smidge of Lemonwood and African Blackwood (the sewing pin is shown only for scale - the joints have turned wooden pegs). He is about 2-1/2” tall including his hat. His limbs are fully jointed. The cherry stool has a fun 3-way lap joint that was surprisingly easy to construct.

(Before you ask … yes - originally he had a retractable nose but I had to eliminate that due to an, ummm, misjudgment on my part).

Later in the fall I will be taking a sculpture class (through the International Guild of Miniature Artisans) to create Gepetto. Although Gepetto will be clay, I wanted Pinocchio to be wood (he is pine in the original book).

Fortunately I was able to rough the puppet parts on the lathe before finishing the carving. I have steadily been enhancing my Taig microlathe, primarily using the Bridgeport mill at DMS. These enhancements enabled me to make Pinocchio (in my home workshop).

28 Likes

Wow.

Wow.

Wow, and one more to make 20.

8 Likes

I’ve always been a believer that it is just as important to share the failures as well as the successes as a learning tool. this was something I was running during tour night so that people could look at and ask questions about. Probably no one but me noticed it was wrong until the end. Because of the small amount of memory in the HAAS I have to break up the file into segments and hand code the start/stop of those segments. I must have gotten distracted and missed something else as you can see part of the texture was missing. Not a big deal as it is one I’ve successfully done at home, but it does point out a cardinal rule - don’t distract the person working on the haas.
In the end - enough people had questions which I’m happy to answer and hopefully it inspired them beyond running just mechanical parts. I’ll get it right next time. cheers!

16 Likes

Two fairies and a goblin. Both fairies are wearing my wings @Trent_T cut for me on the PlasmaCAM and the goblin was painted by me. Photos by me at the Dallas Arboretum.

23 Likes

I can always find time to design things, less so to implement them. Some of this is due to tools being down, some if it scheduling on my part. So here’s another design awaiting implementation: assuming I can manage to keep the runtime down below 15 minutes, I’ll cut this out on the MultiCAM as soon as it’s back up and I can schedule my test:

It’s a platform to raise my monitors at work - being a tall fella I find that typical pack-in monitor hardware fails to put monitors at the preferred eye level.

The cutouts within the footprint of the large “boomerang” are pockets for the legs to slot into (I’m aware that the finished product will have round ends; I don’t care since this is the underside anyway). I originally had shallower pockets for angle braces, but since it’s 1/2" material, I didn’t want to futz with a mere ~7/16" of grip; would also like to keep the runtime manageable.

Saving a bit of runtime and a goodly amount of material by cutting “arches” into the long supports to accommodate the short supports (entire footprint is 27"²). Intuitively, I also knew that the long supports would not end up bearing much weight under most scenarios, so only supporting the corners is fine.

Contemplating some stiffeners across the long front part; flat stiffeners will be easier due to the angles but not quite as effective.

“Signature” in the middle because I’m required to V-bit something.

I did some rudimentary analysis of all the likely CoG’s and it’s looking good:

So many CoG’s because there are so many likely possibilities:

… and it just wouldn’t do to have it tip over on me should I adjust the monitors to something other than how they’re presently situated on the desk.

11 Likes
5 Likes

Worn out cruise control switches on the Ranger - decided to swap them out before I zapped some of the ICs on the cruise control despite still working:

… replaced with new …

For lack of a torque wrench, T50 bit, and puller at home, I did this at DMS. If the 'zon had been faster I would have also indulged in the super-fun task of swapping out instrument cluster lamps.

My apologies to anyone in the workshop when the horn went off a few times fine-tuning the arrangement (read: un-shorting the contacts). :sweat_smile: Nothing like the prospect of accidentally popping the airbag in your face to make for some exciting moments.

9 Likes

Did you see “TAKATA” anywhere? :fearful:

Didn’t look. Was mostly concerned about static discharge since that’s the real hazard - apply > ~12V across those terminals and pop goes the pyrotechnic charge.

Airbags are supposedly immune to Human Body Model (HBM) static discharges, needing some serious current to make them fire. I wouldn’t be too concerned about it, but always wear your safety glasses and keep the business end pointed away from you.

(I know that there is at least one video showing a Wimshurst machine detonating an airbag, but they generate high voltages at significant current. It is unlikely your body would store that much charge.)

I made new turn signal indicators for the cruel-bus dashboard

Clear orange acrylic with painted light masks

20 Likes

Sandcast a seahorse for a brooch in pewter. It still needs some clean up where the sand crumbled.

18 Likes

We made Dopp Kits (Toiletry Bags) in our last project class. This is made from 3/4 oz finished leather, 1mm Tiger Thread. Class was scheduled for 3 hours, but we went 5. Stitching by hand takes a while!


24 Likes

Gauge cluster in the Ranger has some blank spots…

So after an hour or so cursing Ford engineers for making it pointlessly hard to remove the gauge cluster (need to disassemble half the driver’s side dash), I swapped.all the general illumination bulbs:

It’s not so apparent, but the outermost gauges are not well illuminated. I suspect this has something to do with the original filaments aligning so as to do something tricky with the light guides whereas the LED bulbs I installed don’t align conveniently for such tricks.

11 Likes

I’m happy to report that another member has completed the torturous HAAS class and obstacle course. Congratulations to Bud Farnham for completing your domino. I look forward to more projects.

14 Likes

This looks great compared to “The Alice in Wonderland” gauging on the Mancermobile (formerly the Allenmobile).

The gauges are erratic so they should really have probability curves … I think they were built by Schrödinger Inc., who knows what the hell the engine is doing. Is the oil pressure alive or dead? Does looking at the gauge force it into one state or the other?

2 Likes

At least they are not Heisenburg gauges. You would have to break them to read them…