Show and Tell December 2021

Cutting board from last week’s class with @j801496 Wood is walnut, dark walnut and soft maple.


Here it is during its christening:

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Beautifully done @Maker_K ! :clap:t3:

It was more tedious than anything. Not eager for another that size. The metallic paint is unforgiving as well. Fortunately I have found a painter/finisher who is a magician and bailed me out of a couple of headaches. I told the customer not to tell anyone where he got it … only half kidding!

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So glad you attended the class. And I absolutely love seeing it be used!

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Here’s my new toy! Obliviously not made at the Space, but inspired by it! Fell in love with doing laser cutting/etching at the Space that I decided to bite the bullet and build my own. I bought the plans for it from Rob Chesney who runs FurtherFabrication.com; it’s the Y-1200 model. I currently have a Reci W1 80W tube in it with closed loop steppers and linear rail on all axis. The cutting size as built is 1225mm x 598mm (48.25" x 23.50").

Bed after 1st “production” run of 40 gifts for GT kids my wife teaches.

Obligatory DIY Laser Warning

A cute Christmas Ornament showing off the fine detail it is capable of.

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It’s still a work in progress but I’m building a ~13kwh battery backup for some of the circuits in my house, specifically: fridge, air handler (gas heating), water heater (gas), garage door opener, network gear and my office.

I’m building a 48v LiFePO4 battery from 16 cells (280ah each), which should give me a runtime of 24+ hours. Here you can see the cells in a temporary setup to test the BMS. I charged the pack up until one of the cells hit max voltage (3.65v), then I took the whole thing apart and put all the cells in parallel to top balance. This is an important step for ensuring I can get the most capacity out of the pack.

Next step for the battery pack is to build a box, place the cells inside and then get it all wired up. Once that’s done I should be ready to start installing inverter/charger, autotransformer and sub-panel.

I decided to use a 230V inverter for this as it allows me to power heavier circuits if needed, allows for a bit more flexibility in sub-panel selection and will make expanding the system a bit easier in the future. Of course since most of the systems I want to power require 120V I need an autotransformer, which will “split” the 230V into two 120V split-phase lines just like the normal power coming into the house. It also allows me to provide the full 5000W to either phase so I don’t have to worry too much about balancing the load.

I made a crappy mspaint diagram of how it will all be laid out. Under normal conditions the inverter will actually be in “bypass” mode and power from the main panel will go to the autotransformer and sub-panel. When power is lost the inverter automatically kicks in and starts providing power from the battery pack. This is basically a bigger version of the battery backups many people use for their desktop computers.

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Progress on my cutting boards. All four glued up, trimmed, drum sanded to 180, and handles routed into the ends. Time to bust out the orbital sander…


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Beautiful. I love the motion in the end grain!

Neat! Is that balancing step only done once? What kind of costs are involved to build it yourself if you can talk about that? Is building your own powerwall equivalent something you could teach as a class at DMS?

Okay, I got a sense of the retail costs for the main components looking online myself.

@Evan_Lott showed me how the 3D scanner works today and we got some scans of my supercharger. I have a few more scans to make before I can finish my project, but this is step 1 done.
Also 3D scanning is AWESOME!

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I still need to clean these up, but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. RIP my fingerprints though.


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Christmas ornaments, in hindsight next time I’ll stain first then cut.

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Wow! Lots of super cool stuff this month. This is nearly totally completed… just a few more color additions and some gold gilding, but I’ll submit what I have so far. Made this for a friend. We politically disagree on virtually everything but in the end we remain good friends. A friend like that is worth keeping!

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I made this rug for my niece who is obsessed with cats. It’s latch hooking with rug wool and the pattern I created from an online cross stitch tool called Floss Cross. The size of the rug is roughly 4 ft x 6 ft. Happy to show anyone latch hooking who is interested!

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Wow! Beautiful. I can’t even begin to imagine how much work went into that.

Cut this on the plasma table for @IanLee. his wife made the file… I help make Ian a Hero :joy:

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Wow December has been a busy month… my son loves Halo… Tikki game me that idea of making one for my boy… just need to paint it tonight…






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Made this stove cover the other days at the space… Beatle Kill pine… finished in arm r seal satin… engraved on DMS laser “Big Thunder”




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Ornaments I made this year…



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