Dallas Makerspace Show and Tell - March 2016

This will be the place to post all your projects you finish in March. Look forward to seeing all the creative and wonderful projects.

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Whelp. Here’s what I’ve been up to for Show-off and Tell.

Cookie Stamps transformed into Candy Molds. Start off with the stamp and a 3D printed cup that’s just a little bit larger than the stamp. Put in a rim on the bottom to compensate for the rounded bottom of the stamp.

Snap 'em together to get…

Add a little bit of food safe silicone and you have…

Add a little chocolate to produce…

Add a lot of chocolate to manufacture…

For the record, the cup/shells used to make the mold was deliberately left thin. It’s hard to remove the mold from this shape so the wall of the mold holder was made to be sacrificed.

The North Texas Irish festival is going to eat well this weekend.

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I made progress on my project from last month’s show-and-tell thread - I have cut some first article pieces on the FSL.

One was cut at remmended settings and almost cut cleanly. The other was triple-pass with lower power and practically fell apart when moved.

Initial fitment is good, but I clearly need to better contour the front end - good thing I didn’t commit to the entire stack!

Chisel off one strata at the clip engagement point and it clicks into place solidly.

Now I just need to tweak the profile, design the electronics (battery contacts, drivers, switching), accommodate said electronics, figure out the optics, etc etc etc.

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Do you need an AS9102 FAI form? Be happy to help you complete SAE AS9102 Forms

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That would merely add complexity to the process of something that’s never going to please a standards body of any reasonable stature…

Made this as a birthday present for a friend. It’s about 12"x12"x3" and is made with some IKEA Dioder LED bars, 3D printed LED 45 degree stand-offs (that direct the LED light away from the front and towards the reflective back), wood, and frosted acrylic.

Some upgrades/changes planned:

  • The Dioder LED bars are $20 for four white LED bars and they are the same size as the RGB full spectrum ones so I’ll probably switch them out at some point (although I may design a new case that would accommodate the color-changing panel). I also found a decently priced LED 5050 light strip on eBay with an IR remote that I’m going to purchase and see how well it works.
  • The LEDs are a warmer white than I’d like as I was trying to go for a white/black contrast but it’s growing on me. Only the back panel (where the LEDs are directed) was painted flat white. I’m gonna try some smaller scale tests and see how reflective gloss white, clear gloss, metallic/foil, etc is vs what I did.
  • I still plan to put a black photo frame around the box so that everything will be mostly hidden when looking front on.
  • There was still some light leaking out of the edges of the spiral and a sharpie on the frosted acrylic helped a little bit but I’m thinking I may need another piece of acrylic or to sand some clear acrylic myself to control how frosted/opaque it looks. Also some of the 3D printed standoffs were kind of visible behind the acrylic (but that may of just been because I printed them in red instead of white or neutral like I should of).

(The gold wall stencil is an earlier project and is 4’x4’ design made with a 2’x4’ stencil that uses the corner of the wall to hide the seam.)

-the purring dork

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Finished two pairs of earrings for my Indiegogo campaign rewards:

(lapis & chalcedony, sterling)


(iolite & carnelian, sterling)

And also played around with some of the enamel headpins I made awhile back:

Not sure what I’ll do with these. Maybe keep, maybe etsy.

Yesterday I started a bunch of stacking rings and a druzy necklace, so hopefully I’ll have some more things finished before April!

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Ordered a case of PB Blaster after several questions on if we had any and organized the auto shelves

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I built a DLP based SLA 3D printer. The first picture didn’t have the mirror installed when I took it. With the 1080P projector i’m able to get <50um resolution in X and Y. I’ve been super impressed with my prints so far!

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Last week I welded up a post for my mailbox from some used horseshoes.

Last month I made a 3D relief map of one of our favorite riding areas in Colorado. Took USGS digital terrain files, generated the contours, exported them to InkScape, color-coded them and cut them out on the laser.

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After some touch and go with scaling (thanks, Pearce), I did a test set on some donor MDF.

It stacks up generally right, but since 1/4" MDF isn’t actually 1/4" (0.217 or some such), the cumulative error on the vertical stack is roughly a material thickness.

The scaling problem lead to a critical fitment issue with the baseplate.

The general idea, complete with the enormous heatsink on top.

To do: figure out why scaling continues to be a problem…

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end table

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Here is a miniature microscope I made. While it has lenses, it is non-functional. I turned all the smaller parts (lens housings, turret, knobs, feet, etc.) including acrylic lenses on my micro-lathe, then I turned/milled the wax for the castings. With much help from @L_Becker, we (OK, mostly she) cast my brass parts (including a silicone mold she made of my wax masters “just in case”). I used the small brake shear to cut the aluminum for the “stage”. After soldering the brass bits together, filling any casting pits with epoxy putty, primer, and paint - here is the finished item.

     Chris

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I love that you added “non functional” :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Well. Given Chis’ past, functional miniatures, someone was bound to ask…:raised_hand:
As always, your work is impressive.

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Here are some VECTOR folks doing VECTOR things. I will try to take more photos on a day to day basis when I visit the space because there are always people doing cool and inspiring things almost 24/7 in my experience.

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Here are some highlights from Saturday the 19th.

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One more thing, Ken’s (@Lampy) shockingly entertaining Van De Graaff generator. I hope he does a class on making these and the science behind them! Thanks @KrissyHeishman for taking the video.

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Luke was the first volunteer (victim) that did the hair demo with a beard. It did separate and point away from his body. Pretty Cool.

Next time I’ll put in a new belt for more HV fun.

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