I haven’t seen this guy, Gavilan Simon’s, work before. I like the clear, straightforward way that he explains how he used his Darwin RepRap machine to fabricate a better extruder head for it, and then, used the improved Darwin to fabricate a Mendel (the next-gen RepRap model)
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Darwin prints own head, then a Mendel
With just over two weeks left to World Maker Faire New York , the countdown is on! Our first full-scale East Coast Faire will take place on September 25 and 26 at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, which was originally built as a pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair, the perfect location to showcase the newest maker-made art and tech. In the lead-in to the Faire, we want to showcase the Maker Faire’s most important collaborators: the makers themselves. Today we chat with RuBot creator and Mechatrons director, Pete Redmond.
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World Maker Faire NY: RuBot II interview
The MakerBot CupCake is a thing of beauty, an open-source 3D printer whose $750 price undersells the commercial alternatives by a ton. Plus, you get a fanatical group of users who’ll help you debug any problem. Yes, the Dimension uPrint can make tighter models and outputs them quicker, but $20,000 excludes most amateurs.
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Commercial 3D printers will one day undersell the Makerbot. But does it matter?
Nick Marsh’s Nike Air Max sneaks have been tricked out with Wii accelerometers Balance Board load cells that connect to a belt pack. Computers are becoming an ever increasing part of modern life and gaming is a large part of this, being used to relax, socialise and more recently, exercise. Gaming platforms such as the Nintendo Wii have made it possible for people to get their own personal sports work out from the comfort of their living room, using hand held controllers and a balance board to participate.
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Wii-controller Nikes
Wooden Bowl Bottom Cut Out Stainless Steel Bowl, Filled With Lead Centre from Scotch Tape Hard Disk from PC. Cheap Pin Vise from Ebay I don’t think the captions from Ganoksin Project user Shaun750′s video , embedded above, showing off his clever kitbashed engraver’s vise, are meant to be appreciated as blank verse.
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Homemade engraver’s ball
I have an old vintage tube radio and have thought about putting modern electronics in it, too. This one has some cool features, like it actually plays the MP3 and modern AM and FM tuners through the original AM tube radio, using the last two channels 340 and 307 KHz, so you get that crap…
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Biennophone radio from 1953, now with MP3
Self-assembling photovoltaic technology can keep repairing itself @ KurzweilAI … MIT scientists have created a novel set of self-assembling molecules that can turn sunlight into electricity; the molecules can be repeatedly broken down and then reassembled quickly, just by adding or removing an additional solution. In an attempt to imitate the process of photosynthesis, Michael Strano, the Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, and his team, supported by grants from the MIT Energy Initiative, the Eni Solar Frontiers Center at MIT and the Department of Energy, produced synthetic molecules called phospholipids that form disks; these disks provide structural support for other molecules that actually respond to light, in structures called reaction centers, which release electrons when struck by particles of light
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Self-assembling photovoltaic technology can keep repairing itself
Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks , is kicking off his book tour tomorrow night at HacDC: HacDC is happy to be hosting Jeff Potter, author of “Cooking for Geeks” for a one night only presentation in DC on the finer arts of food science.
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Cooking for Geeks DIY book tour starts Wednesday 9/8/2010 at HacDC
The $1,500 closed-source UP! Personal Portable 3D Printer (PP3DP) does its thing, putting the heat on open alternatives like the Mendel and MakerBot. We have been developing the UP! printer for more than one year, it is completely based on our own efforts, we have not used open-source solutions for this design. We understand and follow the RepRap and Fab@home projects with great interest, however these designs follow a quite different direction than we have chose for the UP! printer development
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UP! 3D printer pr0n
Morten Nisker tweeted this serviceable little portable electronics bench he built so that he could carry all of his electronics tools and supplies in a handy carrying case. He realized that he didn’t do that many electronics projects because it was kind of a hassle to scare everything up from far flung corners of the house.
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Portable electronics desk
Our latest member of the Make: Books family is Getting Started with Processing , written by the creators of Processing , Ben Fry and Casey Reas . When Casey and Ben approached me to write this book, they wanted to develop a Processing complement to Getting Started with Arduino , which is perfect, because one of the last things you do in the Arduino book is connect an Arduino to a Processing sketch
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Introducing Getting Started with Processing and our new series, Codebox
I actually had to send some snail-mail recently and remembered the clever Google map envelope trick from Beste Miray Dogan that made the rounds awhile back. Turns out, a friendly bloke named Stephen has created a handy generator website that lets you input your return address and then automagically creates a printable cut-and-fold pattern. More: AirMail: Felt / homemade Manila envelope laptop sleeve for MacBook Air The minimalistic no-cost iBook sleeve (it’s an envelope too) Letters without envelopes, cutting or glue Envelope and Letter Folding Read the Full Story
The latest from Denmark-based conceptual group N55: WALKING HOUSE is a modular dwelling system that enables persons to live a peaceful nomadic life, moving slowly through the landscape or cityscape with minimal impact on the environment. It collects energy from its surroundings using solar cells and small windmills.
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Walking house by N55
Volunteers attend Maker Faire for free and many tell us it’s more fun than coming as purely a spectator. We need help not just during the weekend but for set up and tear down too, every little bit helps! World Maker Faire New York 2010 at The New York Hall of Science September 25 & 26th The World’s Largest DIY Festival Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset
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Volunteer at World Maker Faire New York 2010
A nice letter (and photos) from MAKE reader Evan – Hi Phil – We’ve met a few times at MAKE meetings and at the FIRST competition at the Javits center – I taught at NYC public schools for seven years and mentored robotics teams around the city during that time. My wife and I decided to make a big lifestyle change and have been living for the past month in Hangzhou, China, where we are both teaching at an international school for two years. Given the difficult task of moving across oceans (and the increased difficulty of shipping things TO China), I made the decision to bring primarily clothes, laptop computers, and whatever books and documents we thought might be necessary over here.
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A New York maker moves to China…
Evan Roth wants a Graffiti Markup Language tag recorder badly enough to pay 1200 euros for one . GML Field Recorder Challenge An easily reproducible DIY device that can unobtrusively record graffiti motion data during a graffiti writer’s normal practice in the city. Project Description and Design Requirements: The GML Field Recorder Challenge is a DIY hardware and software solution for unobtrusively recording graffiti motion data during a graffiti writer’s normal practice in the city.
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Build a GML tag recorder, win 1200 euros
Deadline extended, if you do OSH – submit a talk! **Call for Speakers***Please Redistribute*** NOTE: CALL HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO AUG 3rd! OPEN HARDWARE SUMMIT: www.openhardwaresummit.org Bug Labs, Creative Commons and MAKE invite open hardware advocates to submit a talk to the Open Hardware Summit. The Open Hardware Summit will be a venue to present, discuss and draw attention to the open source hardware movement currently happening. The summit will focus on hardware as a system, thus encompassing conversations of software, management, legal, and other factors surrounding open source hardware
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OPEN HARDWARE SUMMIT: Call for Speakers!
The 24/7 hardware hacking juggernaut known as Jeri Ellsworth whipped up this controller hack for a Star Trek pinball game. You fire a Nintendo Zapper light gun at some IR sensors that trigger the flipper switches. Jeri shows you the simple circuit she used and the operation of the machine.
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Nintendo Zapper-controlled pinball
Faire photo taken by Matt Mets Karen Dybis has been doing some nice installments of her “Unfiltered” column on Time.com’s Detroit Blog . She concludes her series with ” Jules Pieri on Looking Back — at the Faire and Detroit :” I spoke to11-year-old Jillian who said, “I’ve always been good at art, and when I started reading MAKE magazine, I realized I could make science into art.” Jillian’s 16-year-old sister Alyssa told me about the family’s latest hacker project
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Looking back at Maker Faire, two perspectives
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics A twisted torus is a donut which twists as it closes on itself. It is a visually engaging mathematical design used by many artists through the ages. The origins of the idea are unknown, but below is a woodcut, published by the German graphic artist Johannes Lencker in 1567, which shows that the idea has been around for a long time.
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Math Monday: The twisted torus
I’ll admit to having wargame minis on the brain this morning. As a commenter on my earlier post pointed out, a cheaper alternative to Shapeways printing of your entire computer-modeled miniature army is to print just one of each unit type, then use the print as a master to make your own mold and cast a bunch of duplicates.
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How-To: Cast your own miniatures from a master model
When people think of ham radio, they usually think of high-frequency (HF) home radio stations. These are the stations that send messages directly to another radio station somewhere else in the world. We’ve talked about a lot of other types of amateur radio stations on MAKE: handheld radio VHF stations that communicate through repeaters and satellites , portable HF stations for hiking , mobile HF stations on bicycles
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Setting up a radio shack
And we’re back with our ninth installment of Your Comments . Here are our favorites from the past week, from Make: Online , our Facebook page, and Twitter . Alan wondered if the Current electric motor scooters were being reinvented: While visiting China a few years ago, I noticed that about every fifth vehicle passing me on the roads and sidewalks (yes, there are vehicles on the sidewalks there) was a zippy little electric scooter that looked strikingly similar to the ones above.
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Your Comments
If you haven’t taken a look at what’s going on at Shapeways recently, you might find it worth your while to go browse around for a bit. They’re constantly adding new features, new printing capabilities, and new models. And, perhaps most importantly, the cost of printing those models is falling rapidly.
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Print your own wargaming minis
Usually found on custom cars and sporting goods, the carbon fiber look is easily achieved with adequate funds and plenty of time. For about $8 XDA member My_Name_Is_Neo wrapped a Nexus One in a custom carbon fiber skin. [via XDA Developers ] So i got this idea from one guy who put the 3M carbon fiber skin on EVO, But the problem was the curvy shape of my beloved Nexus
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DIY carbon fiber skin for Nexus One
I’m here at the MAKE magazine booth at Maker Faire Detroit, and across from us is the Learn to Solder area, run and manned by Mitch Altman and Jimmie Rodgers. Mitch has brought tears to my eyes with his passion and enthusiasm for teaching folks to solder. I’ve witnessed him patiently and joyfully teaching people from 5 to 85 years old
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Mitch Altman rocks!
Alan Languirand has something called Project Lemon Battery set up at Maker Faire Detroit. It’s a solar-powered, 3G-connected webcam on a pole that takes pics every ten seconds and uploads them to a webpage. Project Lemon Battery is part of a larger initiative Alan is involved in to sell “micro real estate” in Detroit to raise money to support good works in the city.
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"Lemon Battery" webcam
Sashimi Tabernacle Choir. From Dave Hogg’s Flickr feed Twitpic image from today, spotted on @jonrjohnston’s Twitter feed One of the things I love about Maker Faire (and MAKE and Make: Television and everything else we do) is the relative mainstreaming we offer to creative weirdness. There’s always an element of fringe creativity and over-the-top whimsical invention at the Faires, makers who don’t paint inside recognizable lines — they march to their own drummer ’cause they are their own drummer — and they made the drum (and it’s unlike any you’ve ever seen or heard).
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Creative weirdness at Maker Faire
One of my favorite features of Maker Faire Bay Area was the Maker Shed soldering merit badges and the Learn to Solder tent. It looks like it’s a similar hit in Detroit . Marc de Vinck shares this great Maker Faire moment: Marc (asking a kid): “Did you learn to solder?
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Learning to solder at the Faire
Once again, the DIY Bigtop has thrown open its flaps; the tech and creativity circus has come to town! Cue up the circuit-bent marching bands, switch on the robo-clowns, rev up the art cars. It’s time for Maker Faire Detroit at The Henry Ford! If you’re going to the Faire, or just want to follow the action from afar: Download the PDF program View the Event Schedule Browse the database of amazing makers Follow us on Twitter Subscribe to the Maker Faire Detroit page on Facebook See a preview of the Makers Dozen – Detroit Edition Read the Full Story