Dallas Makerspace Show & Tell - March 2018

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! And we’re all makers at heart, so share with us any tidbits you’ve learned.

Posting here promotes Dallas Makerspace and 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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Que the project and story that wouldn’t end.

I bought a house in October.
In said House I have a converted garage/pool room with a bar and assorted stuff I will use possibly two times a year. I’m about five years behind on design trends so I decided it would be fun to do an accent wall.
Que Pinterest stupidity.

Collect palettes.
Stack palettes at school.
Classroom firehazard fun.
Load pallets in truck.
Trucks dead.
Bugger.
Flip car off in freezing rain.
Walk home defeated in freezing rain.
Attempted friend rescue.
Tow truck.
Car runs.
Bugger.

borrow tools from Tom.
Tool rescue Tom.
Promise I’ll only borrow them for “like two weeks max”
That was December.
Know he’s secretly disappointed.
Start energized on project.
Yes, I’m a maker.
Instantly send a nail into the line controlling internet and all tools.
I’m not a maker.
Hate all decisions I’ve ever made.
Question everything.
Call friends.
Friend rescue.


Que the cold.
It’s really really cold.
Stain some wood with vinegar, steel wool and teas.
Looks horrible.
Like “I found this in a gutter do you think it’s infected” type of horrible.
Fabric dye for the win.
Paint a ton of wood.
A ton.
Find a $5 gallon of stain.
Stain a bunch of wood.
Mix the stain and dye.
Paint more wood.
Seriously.
A bunch of wood.
Decide this is going to be awesome.

Start putting more wood up.
Run out of wood.
Decide this isn’t awesome.

Repeat process.
Decide the whole thing looks like the inside of an apocalyptical hut in the wood.
Hate your decision.
Push forward.
Stack wood instead of fixing it to save time and sanity.
Hate it more.
Decide to paint a giant bullseye.
Decide against it.
Question your entire style.
Call your friends.
Appologize for Tom for keeping tools so long.

I don’t even have a picture of it finished. Hahahahaha

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https://youtu.be/nv5CEyetVxk

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I lasered these today. I don’t know how to make the LED bases, so I got those on etsy.
https://scontent-dfw5-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/feced521bf4b0ffd6951e40734167937/5B35F87A/t51.2885-15/e35/28430131_2081118258789804_3856798683831992320_n.jpg

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I took a soap making class from @Josh_Melnick. Brought back memories of chem class and all of the associated amazement at mixing chemicals to produce something very useful. Found this soap calculator online: http://soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp. Decided I needed every kind of oil on the planet that you can make soap with. Just wanted to try different mixes. Didn’t know what GHEE was before making soap with it. (It makes a beautiful bar by the way! See the yellow ones below.)


I used the recipe below for the yellow bars. A couple of things I’ve already discovered.

  1. There are a million permutations of oil combinations you can use to make soap.
  2. Commercial soap pales in comparison to homemade soap because of the LACK of glycerin in commercial soap
  3. Buttermilk, goats milk or any kind of high fat milk makes for a very smooth and silky soap
  4. Honey and beeswax are great additives for soap. They give it a great smell and add other desirable qualities to the soap
  5. I now know what humectant and superfatting mean and finally
  6. that you can make soap with a cold process, hot process or hand milling process all of which have their various characteristics and purposes.

Here are some of the soaps I’ve made from several batches. My son, who assisted with the chemistry, is taking some of them to the office for his friends. He designed the dark brown bars. They are scented with a chocolate scent and made entirely of NUT oils, like walnut, almond, peanut and others. (Actually, they also contain coconut oil, too.)

!

The most frustrating part of the cold process is allowing the saponification process to complete which can take several weeks. Then drying the soap another couple to harden it. When it rains and the humidity is very high the soap weeps, too. This is a NATURAL event with high glycerin soap because glycerin is a humectant.

The roses are an eczema recipe which contains aloe vera gel, buttermilk, carrots (pureed) for vitamin A and olive oil, exclusively. Soap made entirely with olive oil is called Castille soap and is supposed to be great for the skin. The soap also contains the pumpkin spice mix so they smell like pumpkin pie!

Thank you Josh for introducing me to a very interesting and gratifying hobby. I’m now investigating some of the more interesting techniques for soap making like swirls, multi-mix multi-layer bars, floral additives, various other additives like oatmeal and the decorative packaging of bars. I suspect I’ll give most of them away, but they are a load of fun to make so I’m sure I’ll have plenty to use around the house.

If you’ve never made a bar yourself consider taking Josh’s class.

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I really need to take that class, I break out if sap has coconut oil in it
so I have to find handmade soap

Great work there with the St. Marks Acrylic signs.

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wow amazing work! Thank you for sharing and the shout out!

I’ve developed what I believe I can call a habit at this point and unlike all of my previous habits to date, this is a healthy one. I’ve noticed the down side to going to the gym routinely and shoving weights around all willy nilly while avoiding eye contact with the other gym goers is how fast you blow through laundry in a week. Consequently, I’ve made friends with the vinyl cutter and have been going on a bit of a tear adding “flair” to my recent influx of blank t’s. Originally I was gonna do all anti-gym themed shirts… because Groucho Marx. Instead, as pictured in the sampling below, most are apropos of nothing… because A.D.D.


Was caught off gaurd while listening to this audiobook and snot-snorted when I heard it. Idk… It was super late at night. I haven’t snot-snorted in forever tho, so now it’s a shirt.


Peeps are always asking for someone to bring da ruckus. Pretty self explanatory imo


Oh ya - I Banksy’d some of my shorts… (both non-Nike and actual Nike shorts - I’m unclear what this says about me.)
I think either I missed the point OR alternatively I went meta. Don’t know or care - moving right along


This is the last the one I made and consequently my current favorite. It took some time but I thought ahead and used a font that required as little weeding as possible.

Zoomed in shot.

Yup… Friggin Nailed it.

Also, just as a teaser I’ve done a couple test runs to fine tune my first multicam-centric project which I will post here in the next week or year. I’m just gonna go ahead and say it now, that the project I’m working on will probs be the dopest most super sweet thing the multicam has ever produced. I’m saying this in full confidence having seen all (read: 2 - 3ish maybe?) things made on the machine. Until then… ya, some shirts and whatnot heh

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I modified my small delta printer, the SeeMeCNC Eris with a better part cooling pump and hotend fan. The stock Eris doesn’t cool PLA too well resulting in ugly prints. I designed all the parts in Fusion 360 (I am slowly learning with tutorials).

BTW Microcenter has the SeeMeCNC Eris for sale if you’re interested, they’ve been discontinued but they’re excellent little printers.

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I made a bushing for my Sun Gear bushings. I tried a few others but they were too sloppy & caused the bushing to get cocked. So I turned a bushing on the lathe. The tolerance to the inside of the bushing was about .010". However when I got home, I discovered I turned the outside diameter too tight. So yesterday I turned about another .010" off the diameter.



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I made a captured-marble cheese slicer on the induction forge last night and finished it up at home early this morning.

7.5” of 3/8” hotrolled steel pre-split with a band saw, 1” glass marble, and 0.030 stainless steel wire for the cutter. A 1” steel ball bearing was used as a stand-in for the marble during shaping. The devil is in the details on this one, sequencing the work so one can shape the metal without the other parts getting in the way. “Convenience bends” are key.

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That turned out fantastic!!

I made a 13"x 6" snare drum out of a plank of Padauk (wood).
It took FOREVER, but actually sounds wonderful.
It is made from staves, like a barrel.
Cheers!

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In anticipation of tomorrow’s Intro to blacksmithing class, I made a couple of sample forged leaf keyfobs/pendants.

These will be an option for folks with a couple classes under their belts looking for a challenge. I’ll also be teaching S-hooks for hanging bird feeders/tools/camp lanterns/whatever for folks just starting out.

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Those are really neat!!!

This is interesting! My girlfriend and I would love to take a class. I’m kind of a noob on here so can I just add @Josh_Melnick
and he will see this post as well?

Thanks in advance, Henry

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Yes. If you include a user’s name/id like “@Josh_Melnick” he’ll get an email as part of your post. @Josh_Melnick teaches great classes and he teaches quite a few of them. Check the events page of dallasmakerspace.org to see when.

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thank you for the kind words

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