Home/Crafts/Make:/Vol 88 - Spring 2024/In This Issue
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024CONTRIBUTORSDavid Battino Folsom, California (Rising to the Acacia) Ha! My desk is buried under four toy robots, three rubbery-mouthed coin banks, two plastic pigs, and an electronic chicken monster. Claire Danielle Cassidy Portland, Oregon (DIY Graffiti Projector) My 30W CO2 laser cutter. I hacked it to be quieter and less fumey, but it needs an annual deep clean. Joshua Pearce London, Ontario, Canada (Walk This Way) Our lab — we have been saving tons of waste plastic with the anticipation of putting a massive, open source hot press into operation this spring.…1 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024MICRORECYCLERSA few years ago in 2020, my dad showed me this great YouTube video called "Precious Plastic — The Story Behind” (youtu.be/EPA2l1bi2pQ). We were inspired by the Dutch grad student who created the video, Dave Hakkens, after hearing him talk about the plastics problem. He told us how there was plastic waste all over the world. Globally only about 10% of the plastic we put in the recycle bin actually gets reused. The vast majority of it goes into our landfills, streets, oceans, and even into our bodies — according to a study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, the average American consumes up to a credit card’s worth of plastic every week. And, CO2 levels everywhere in the world are rising, accelerating climate change. My friends and I wanted…6 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024TO MULTI OR NOT TO MULTI?For as long as FDM/FFF 3D printers have existed, we’ve been trying to find ways to make our prints colorful. You can read about the existing landscape of multicolor systems on page 28, but once you get a printer, there’s still a lot to consider. While machines like the Bambu Labs printers with Automatic Material System (AMS) are pretty amazing, they waste a lot of material and time. Consider for a moment that every color change takes about a minute and spits out a “poop,” and this can happen several times per layer. Because of these issues, it may still be to your benefit to approach multicolor more like we used to in the old days, by basically ripping our models apart and printing the parts separately. Let’s look at…3 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024OPPORTUNITY ACTIVATEDDIGIFAB: 3D-Printed Casts Makers often look at a problem and think, I can fix that. But not many follow through to the point of creating a business, especially in a highly regulated industry. Diana Hall pulled off that sequence in about a year after recognizing a problem potentially solvable with a 3D printer. It started when Hall was volunteering for an organization that supported children who were victims of abuse. Some of these children had broken bones, and often were in temporary living situations where hygiene was a problem. Their plaster casts got wet and dirty, leading to other health issues. She wondered if 3D-printed casts would be a possibility. Trained as a chemical engineer, with an MBA and professional software experience, she knew just jumping into manufacturing was unlikely…4 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024CAN AI MAKE 3D PRINTS?With all the hubbub around generative AI, it isn’t a stretch to start wondering in what new areas of making we might see this stuff proliferate. You can easily have ChatGPT write text for you or analyze your writing. You can instruct Midjourney, Dall-E, and other image generators to draw highly detailed, pixel-perfect creations in a variety of styles. What about 3D printing though? Can you type into a text box and obtain the perfect custom 3D printable model? Right now the answer is: kind of. However, in the very near future, that answer might be a resounding yes. As of winter 2023–24, there really aren’t any systems advertised with the intent of 3D printing, so I’ll talk about the general concept of text to 3D model. This goal was…3 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024DIODE POWER!I used to say diode lasers were “throwaway lasers.” They were so underpowered that I felt that they were almost pointless, especially when you could buy a K40 — a common, super cheap CO2 laser cutter — for $350–$600. Back then we would regularly see diode lasers touting 6 watts of output power on flimsy frames. Compared to the 40 watts (realistically 20W–30W output) of a K40, they just didn’t seem worth the time. Over the past year or two, this has changed. Diode lasers can be stacked to increase the tool’s power output, but still, for a long time that only pushed into the teens. Now we’re seeing machines pushing 30 or even 40 watts of laser output — fully capable of competing with a K40 or even something…2 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Plushbot MenagerieMy experiments with electronics and plush patterns have resulted in this menagerie of charismatic companion bots with a range of capabilities: 1 Rosie the Radiant Rodent and her plush rat friends have illuminated ears and tails, sensors that “feel” touch and “see” faces, and servomotors that move their heads back and forth. 2 Sluggo the Sloth slowly turns his head from side to side, powered by a small stepper motor. 3 Beacon the Soft Robot has touch sensors in its hands, controlling LED patterns in its ears and antenna. 4 Karma the Chameleon drapes comfortably around her human companion’s shoulders while the person detector in her head identifies faces, wagging her tail’s 9g servo in response. Her head pivots up and down and side to side, powered by two standard…1 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024HammingIt UpYes, you read that right. A tin of ham can indeed be transformed into a ham radio antenna. In the DIY world, where creativity intersects with utility, the question isn’t “Can it be done?” but “How can we make it happen?” This ethos is at the heart of my latest project in my ham radio journey: I am showcasing my adventures as a newly minted ham radio operator less than a year into having my license, on my YouTube channel Ham Radio Rookie, youtube.com/@VE6SFX_HamRadioRookie. "WILL IT HAM?" This project started as a tongue-in-cheek dare from my friend Marshall. At a gathering, he asked if I could “turn anything into an antenna,” referencing my videos where I had already transformed duct tape into a J-pole style antenna for a handset. In…4 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Walk This WayWalkers, a common adaptive aid for the mobility-disabled, are often not accessible or affordable across the global market. Private insurance and even countries with universal health coverage may not cover the cost of a walker, which can cost $100 or more. My colleagues Anita So, Jacob Reeves, and I at the University of Western Ontario were determined to learn if mobility aid costs could be reduced. MOBILE DEVICE DEVELOPERS After interviewing people who use walkers and examining commercially available models, our team developed a low-cost static walker, aka walking frame, by using freely available Onshape CAD software, simple hand tools, a 3D printer, and wooden dowels. Though strength will vary depending on the wood type chosen (e.g., basswood, beech, maple, oak, pine, etc.), we built it from relatively lowerstrength basswood…9 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024FINE FINISHING FOR FUSED FILAMENTSKILL BUILDER: 3D Print Smoothing 3D printing your own models and props is a fun hobby that takes you on the adventure of learning … that there’s a lot of work involved after the print reaches 100%. We’re going to highlight a few ways of smoothing out 3D prints once they’re finished printing. It’s easy and you only need about $50 to get set up to finish lots of prints. ELIMINATING LAYER LINES Why finish or “smooth out” your prints? Most printers, even at their finest settings, will still leave layer lines. You’ll be able to see these layer lines if you just paint over the texture. A great way to start is with a mixture of Bondo Spot Putty and ordinary acetone. Bondo Spot Putty is creamy, and great…2 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024FROM THE EDITOR'S DESKBETTER THAN A DEGREE I don’t normally share praise but this reader feedback made my day. You took a chance on my book, Dale, and I will never forget that. You made it possible. Thank you. —Charles Platt, author of Make: Electronics and many more Make: books Starting Make: More Electronics. I enjoyed your previous work. Your writing style is straight to the point, easy to understand but not dumbed down. Made me a better engineer. Probably as valuable if not more than my electronics degree. —Joseph Boyle FULL CIRCLE Thank you so much for inviting me to contribute to Make: mag. It has been a dream I didn’t know I had. I first got into electronics after buying the Make: Electronics book, and now I’ve contributed to it in…1 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024THE MAGIC IS BACK BYTHE BAYFEATURES MFBA 2023 Fantastic,” I heard someone call out, on the sixth and final day of Maker Faire Bay Area, as makers were packing up, ready to take their creations back home. Keith Johnson was climbing on Jon Sarriugarte’s Project Empire, the enormous, bright green space vehicle, and as I got closer, Keith hollered out: “Maker Faire was fantastic.” I was happy to hear that. I was happy to see the relaunch of Maker Faire Bay Area at Mare Island and hear that everybody loved the new waterfront venue. I was happy that so many makers returned who had been at Maker Faire before as well as a whole group of first-time makers. Keith Johnson and Merrilee Proffitt, who brought their Cupcake Cars to earlier Maker Faires in San Mateo,…8 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024THE RISE OF COLOR IN 3D PRINTINGDIGIFAB 2024DIGIFAB: Multi-Material 3D Printing I remember the utter dismay I felt when I was looking to buy my first 3D printer. They all seemed to print in just one color. Plastic things were all around us, and they didn’t seem to be limited to just one color — so why couldn’t 3D printers print in lots of colors, too? It wasn’t until I started printing that I began to understand the technical challenges of getting more than one color into a model that was built one G-code line at a time. For this article, we’ll focus on filament-based 3D printing, also known as FDM (fused deposition modeling) or FFF (fused filament fabrication), specifically in the consumer and hobbyist realm. Color printing does exist at the industry level with a…9 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024FILAMENT PAINTING3D printing is always surprising us with new and inventive ways of using the somewhat simple machines. In this case, it’s new software called HueForge (shop.thehueforge.com) that creates beautifully rendered 2D artwork using the very limited colors and materials allowed by 3D printing. You don’t even need to have a multicolor setup to do it! To understand what HueForge is and why it’s so neat, we first have to break down the limitations of 3D printers when it comes to making 2D art: • Filaments come in a limited range of colors, and you’re typically limited to only four of them even when using a fancy auto color changer • The nozzle is relatively large, usually 0.4 to 0.6mm which is huge compared to a pixel on your screen or…1 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024MAKEY MARK!Makers, meet Makey Mark! I’ve turned Make:’s mascot, Makey the robot, into a 3D-printed benchmark object for testing various qualities of 3D printers and filament types. Inspired by features on other benchmark objects, Makey Mark adopts some of those characteristics while keeping the classic robot’s look. For example, the arms have a surface that ends in an edge, creating a shape with a round bottom and a triangular top. This mimics the bow of the classic 3D Benchy boat benchmark object, incorporating the iconic surface quality test into Makey’s design. Here are some of the tests that Makey Mark is good for: 1 Warping from the flat base2 Stringing between vertical surfaces3 Layer adhesion (durability of arms)4 Overhangs5 Bridging6 Round and spherical surfaces7 Sloped surface quality (like Benchy’s bow)8 Tolerance…1 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024PULTRUDER ALERTPET is a fantastic plastic for 3D printing— it’s tough, dimensionally and thermally stable, foodapproved, and has a glass-like transparency (see Make: Volume 85, “Transparent 3D Prints”). PET is also one of the main waste plastics littering the planet, in the form of beverage bottles. Luckily there’s a creative community of 3D printing fans who are dedicated to recycling waste PET into new printer filament. PET pultrusion is our method of measuring a plastic PET #1 bottle’s thickness, stripping it down to the appropriate width, and then pulling that strip through a heated 1.75mm diameter nozzle, reforming it into usable raw PET1 printer filament (Figure A ). It’s the easiest, most affordable way to make DIY 3D filament at home! Filament is commonly made by extrusion — a machine augers…6 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024DIY Graffiti Projector“Guerrilla projection, pioneered by artists and advertisers, has been increasingly embraced by activists in recent years as a new medium for delivering messages. The advantages are obvious: With a single highpowered projector, you can turn the side of a building into a huge advertisem*nt for your cause, plastering your message on a spot that would otherwise be out of reach. It’s legal, relatively cheap, and … most importantly, it’s visually powerful: You can literally shine a light on the opposition.”—from Beautiful Trouble, edited by Andrew Boyd and Dave Oswald Mitchell Got something to write on the wall? Write it big — with light! This tutorial is here to help you build a lowprofile handheld light projector from relatively accessible hardware store parts. The project should cost around $45–$60 in materials,…11 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Personal Pixel DeviceEach of us has a different relationship to time, and that relationship tends to vary depending on our mood and what we’re doing, among other factors. However, most clocks are built for passive observation, and don’t capture our sense of style or how we personally interact with time. It’s time we take matters into our own hands! Let’s build a highly customizable clock companion, that could be made to display whatever information matters to you while matching your unique aesthetic. I’ve made mine with an ambient sound visualizer, a simple focus timer, and a custom alarm that is only triggered at a specific time of day (to remind me to get to my ferry on time!). It’s built with the Adafruit RP2040 Prop-Maker Feather, an all-in-one microcontroller that makes it…10 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Watchful AI OwlWhether you want to make a robot that can navigate your room, a creature that responds to your movements, or a gadget that can recognize your voice, you can build it with household materials and an inexpensive micro:bit mini computer — and then train an external AI to give your project extra smarts and capabilities, enabling it to react to the world around it. YOUR FIRST ANIMATRONIC Have you ever noticed how some robots look and act in realistic ways, like people or animals? You can see these used often in movies and at theme parks. These are called animatronics — or more simply, mechanical puppets controlled by lots of electronics (and even more code). While we may not be able to build something as sophisticated as a theme park…7 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Weather BirdThe spinning Weather Bird wind vane points to tomorrow’s forecast! But how does it know? HOW IT WORKS As warm and cold fronts cycle around lowpressure areas, they create likely sequences of clouds and wind directions. If you can figure out where you are in these swirling weather patterns, you’ll have a pretty good guess as to what weather will come next. In this toy, the panel of cloud wheels is designed from tables of observed clouds and wind directions. Look up: If you see high, wispy clouds with winds from the north, then fair and cool weather is ahead! Why? Because you’re likely located west of a counter-clockwisespinning low-pressure system with a cold front already past you. Keep in mind these tables are made for weather patterns in the…4 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024SPEED WEED!3D printers, CNCs, laser cutters, and other devices that move a toolhead around under digital control have become a major focus of maker activity over the last couple of decades. Often lost in the discussion of digital fabrication is a tool with a massive and extremely active user base: stencil cutters (Figure A). Often referred to as vinyl cutters due to the most commonly cut material, these tools are sold by the millions to makers, crafters, scrapbookers, DIYers, and professionals. Desktop craft cutters like Cricut and Silhouette have been sold in retail outlets far longer than 3D printers. Wide-format vinyl cutters have been a mainstay of sign-making companies around the world. The tool that these machines move is technically referred to as a drag knife — a sharp pointed blade…8 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Indie MakersIn 2008, David Pescovitz wrote one of my favorite articles for Make: (Volume 13), a profile about John Gaughan, who is a legendary maker of illusions — a magician’s magician, if you will. He’s not famous but the magicians like David Copperfield and David Blaine who hire him are. Back then, I was lucky to join David on a visit to the Los Angeles warehouse where Gaughan kept his workshop and museum of the history of magic. “Every surface, every shelf, in these cramped quarters is packed with apparatuses and ephemera that once delighted audiences,” David wrote. There was nothing corporate or academic about where John worked. Walking around, listening to his stories and looking at his collections, I was enchanted. The work he was doing was something he’d wanted…3 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 20243 MODESOF MAKINGFEATURES Teaching Maker Skills Making things can be complex and challenging work. There are times when we act as researchers, learning some new tool or technique. We scour the internet for tutorials, talk to friends, or look at back issues of Make: to help us gain the knowledge we need. Whether learning a new woodworking tool, microcontroller, or sewing machine, success requires patience, attention to detail, and a willingness to fail and try again. Imitating the work of others to learn new skills is one of the central tasks of a maker. But that’s just the beginning. Once we have a level of confidence with our tools and procedures, we have to figure out how to make something that actually suits our needs in real-world situations. We have to pull…9 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024MINIMIZING PURGESSo far, we have printer attachments that feed multiple filaments into the extruder, and we have products that splice the filament and send it to the extruder in the order needed for the colored print. Both approaches have one thing in common and that’s one extruder. Filament that goes into the hot part of the hotend melts, and the next color that comes in isn’t going to come out until the prior color is flushed out. That’s what the purge towers accomplish. The purge waste can be significant — I had a 12-gram jar in eight colors that had a 500-gram purge tower. Which is crazy, right? There are ways to reduce this waste. First, the amount of purge can be calculated and reduced to the minimum needed. For white…2 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 20243DPRINTING IN SECONDSDIGIFAB: CAL Instant 3D Printing COMPUTED AXIAL LITHOGRAPHY (CAL) “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” wrote Arthur C. Clarke. And with computed axial lithography, or CAL, we’ve finally created magic. CAL is a layerless 3D printing process invented at the University of California, Berkeley in 2019. There’s no growth, no buildup — parts are made entirely at once. The common question, after a few moments of trying to comprehend what was just said, is “How?” HOW IT WORKS First is the printing material, typically a UV lightcured resin whose chemistry is similar to those used in stereolithography (SLA) printing. The simplest material is comprised of a monomer and a photoinitiator. A monomer is a molecule that can react to grow long molecule chains and intertwine with itself, creating…6 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024SLICES ARE READY!3D modeling is used in a multitude of industries, but if you want to take one of those models and print it, you’ll need a bit of software called a slicer. In essence, slicers are pretty simple. They take a three-dimensional model and “slice” it up into layers. What happens next in the slicer depends on which type of 3D printer the model is being sliced for: • For filament-based printers, aka FDM (fused deposition modeling) or FFF (fused filament fabrication), the slicer’s job is to further divide each layer into a series of motions telling the printer how to move and when to extrude, or print the plastic. Each of those steps is a line of G-code which, combined with general settings, make the roadmap the printer needs to…6 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024PULTRUSION EVOLUTIONThe Recreator 3D isn’t the first PET pultruder, nor is it the last. Here are key contributions from the pultrusion community: • 2019: PET-PULL — early low-tech method from Russia, youtube.com/@zneipas2917 • 2020: PetBot — first commercial PET pultruder and kit, petbotkit.com • 2021: The ReCreator 3D — my pultruder reusing 3D printer parts, recreator3d.com • 2021: mr3Dprint — big influencer showing elaborate PET prints, youtube.com/mr3dp • 2022: PETamentor — DIY pultruder and adjustable bottle slicer, petamentor.com • 2022: Polyformer — sleek, compact, upright pultruder reiten.design/polyformer…1 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Build-a-Bot (Cuddly Edition)Hardware builds are seldom described as “touchable,” “cuddly,” or “cute,” but I’ve found that embedding programmable electronics in soft accessories like handbags (“Bag to the Future,” Make: Volume 87) and pillows (“Pixelblaze Pillows,” Volume 83) produces projects with surprising tactile and visual appeal. Inspired by some clever and creative robot builders, I’ve experimented with placing controllers and peripherals inside plush sewing patterns to create soft, interactive companion bots. The results have been irresistibly cute and undeniably cuddly. Make: has interviewed several talented makers whose companion robot builds started me down this path, and whose palpable enthusiasm provided the incentive to follow in their footsteps. Creator Jorvon Moss (makezine.com/article/digital-fabrication/me-and-my-robot-odd-jayy- interview) has designed an entire collection of clever robots with engaging personalities. Video host and hardware maker Alex Glow built an owl…19 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Summoning Super-Size SpiritsHere’s how I made a giant Ouija board, to summon giant spirits of course. I made this with Kyle Chisholm for Arcana, an occult-themed bar in Vancouver, British Columbia. The board can be remotely controlled by Wi-Fi through Adafruit.io to send spooky messages to bar patrons. This was an interesting and fun request that I was very excited to build! The idea was to make a Ouija board as large as possible. For me, this meant as close to a full 4-by-8-foot sheet of plywood as possible, so there would be no seams. Originally we discussed the idea of making a physically moving indicator (“planchette”) for the Ouija board. After looking at a variety of similar projects that used XY stages, strings, or other contraptions, we decided that the upkeep…10 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024Rising to the AcaciaTIME REQUIRED: 30 Minutes DIFFICULTY: Easy COST: $20–$60 Per Table MATERIALS » End table with approx. 12"×15" top for frame, such as Target 53107499 or Amazon B0B58PQX2S» Cutting board, approx. 12"×15" or bigger such as Target 87712370» Wood screws, 1" (4)» Washers (4)» Wax, oil, or polyurethane finish TOOLS » Drill» Punch or awl» Screwdriver» Paintbrush» Very fine sandpaper, 220 grit Stroll into any Target and you’ll find beautiful wooden cutting boards with a tragic future: Most buyers will slash at them with knives, splatter them with food juices, and then toss the scarred wood in the trash. But these boards are a great source of quality wood for DIY projects. In just a few minutes, I replaced the plasticky tops of two end tables with gorgeous acacia hardwood. The…2 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 20243D PRINTING CERAMICSCeramics are an ancient material, but we think of them as high-tech when it comes to 3D printing. However, as with many 3D printing techniques, what used to be a high-tech industrial process is starting to become accessible to the garage enthusiast. And if you’re already creating and firing ceramic pieces, you may have a lot of what you need already. There are two fundamental types of 3D printable ceramics. In one case, clay is directly printed with a special-purpose paste printer. In the other, you print “ceramic” filament with clay particles embedded in a plastic carrier or binder, and you need to “debind” out the plastic before firing the piece. There is also a (challenging) resin printer version of this latter method. In all these scenarios, a standard kiln…10 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024TOOLBOXPrusa XL (With 5 Toolheads) $3,999 as tested prusa3d.com The Prusa XL is Prusa Research’s much-awaited large, multi-head, Core XY printer that has been in development for quite some time. With up to five independent tool heads, you can use multiple extruder sizes or even work with multiple materials in a print area of 360×360×360mm. Multi-Material, Multicolor Despite the name, the biggest selling point of this printer isn't the size. The XL is for all intents and purposes the first commercial printer with a tool changer built in. Some have existed but not on this scale commercially. During my tests, I found the print quality to be outstanding, easily on par with or even better than my Prusa MK4, which was previously my most precise and high quality machine. Printing…7 min
Make:|Vol 88 - Spring 2024THE WORLD'S LONGEST PIANOOVER THE TOP Standard pianos use steel core wire wrapped in copper, aka piano wire, to get the standard notes you’re probably familiar with. The added mass of the copper lowers the resulting tone, so you can get a lower tone from a shorter string than with just the steel core wire. But how long would the strings need to be without that copper wrapping? As a student, Adrian Mann wanted to know, and it kicked off a passion for pianos that continues to this day. From its inception in October 2005 to its first concert in April 2009, Mann’s Alexander Piano took four and a half years to create. The piano measures 18 feet 9 inches (5.7m) long, with the longest bass string stretching to roughly 15 feet 3…2 min
