posts tagged with the keyword ‘makerspace’

2012.04.22

The Arc-O-Matic Drawing Machine

Arc-O-Matic

Once again Gallery Night was a blast… This time myself and the Milwaukee Makerspace guys joined forces with Bucketworks and showed the art-lovers of Milwaukee what we do. (Make things!)

Since both Drawbots were busy at the Art Milwaukee Wedding event, I needed something new to show. (And yes, I did say “both” because there are now two rolling drawbots.)

Anyway, I saw this blog post over a year ago, and made a mental note to explore the idea more, and I did, and the result is the Arc-O-Matic: a robotic drawing arm that makes arcs. Well, that’s basically what it does at this point. See the Arc-O-Matic project page for all the details.

People seem to really like seeing machines that draw, which means I’ll probably keep on exploring the world of art robots.

File Under: FUN.

(Also, if anyone knows who I can talk to at Sharpie about a sponsorship, I’d appreciate it!)

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2012.04.22

Wooden Knuckles

Wooden Knuckles

I made some wooden knuckles. Why wood? Well, brass knuckles are usually made out of brass, which is a hard metal, and may hurt someone. Wooden knuckles use wood instead, and shouldn’t be as harmful, or dangerous, or heavy. Also, I may have a history of making safe/odd weapons.

I also published this on Thingiverse, which means if you’ve got access to a laser cutter or are really handy saw, you can make your own. It’s derived from 3D printable “brass” knuckles which would look lovely in glow-in-the-dark ABS plastic.

These may or may not be something you want to take through security. I mean, they are definitely not metal, so they won’t set off any metal detectors, and really, they are more “art” than “weapon” in my opinion. (I have no idea what the TSA might think about these…)

If you want to make your own laser-cut wooden knuckles, you could probably do so at the Milwaukee Makerspace if you were a member, and had some 3mm Baltic Birch plywood and a bit of glue.

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2012.04.18

Laser. Cut. Files. (Part III)

SVG file in Inkscape
SVG file in Inkscape

After my last post on the subject, Laser. Cut. Files. (Part II), I figured that I had something that worked… but then something came along that worked better!

Thanks to a comment from old pal Thomas Edwards on the Part II post:

Have you tried Inkscape Save as EPS, then Preview EPS to save PDF? (Inkscape Save as PDF might work as well, but I find Corel Draw gets messed up by fonts unless I start as EPS and then go to PDF)

I decided to give PDF files from Inkscape a try. They didn’t work. CorelDraw gets some crazy error trying to open PDF files I create in Inkscape on Mac OS X… but what did work was a two-step process!

Again, my goal is to do all of my design work on Mac OS X, typically using Inkscape, and then moving my files to the Laser Cutter PC running CorelDraw on Windows (yuk!)

PDF file in Preview
PDF file in Preview

So for now, my process is the following:

  1. Create vector art in Inkscape
  2. Save (original) file as an SVG
  3. Save (a copy of the file) as a PDF from Inkscape
  4. Open the PDF from Inkscape in Preview and Save as a PDF
  5. Copy the new PDF file to Laser Cutter PC
  6. Open a new document in CorelDraw and import PDF file

Save as a PDF (again!)
Save as a PDF (again!)

Windows and Linux users, your mileage may vary, and obviously you don’t have Preview.app, but on Mac OS X this process works for me. And as for the note in the comment from Thomas about fonts, I’d be sure to convert any fonts into outlines after I save my SVG file, but before I save my PDF file. (It’s an old print design trick.)

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2012.04.17

Spring Gallery Night 2012

Spring Gallery Night 2012

I’ll be joining my fellow makers from Milwaukee Makerspace for Spring Gallery Night this Friday, April 20th, 2012 at the World Famous Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin…

The last month or so has been crazy-busy, and it’s been difficult to find the time to work on a project, and I ended up shelving a few ideas and building something I’ve wanted to build for the last two years or so. It’s another drawing machine… sort of. It’s still very much in-progress, but you can stop by and check it out (along with much cooler stuff from some of my friends.)

Arc-O-Matic 328

ArtWorks for Milwaukee will also be there, and they do some great work with Milwaukee-area youths, so even if you don’t like our crazy mix of art, technology, noise, and robots, come on down and show your support for the ArtWorks crew.

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2012.04.12

Skill Badges (Part II)

Welcome to Part II of my self-awarded skill badges! (See Part I for background.)

Speaking of badges, there’s been some talk of badge systems, and some hackerspace/makerspace things happening where we might get to the point of awarding badges to members, maybe using Les Orchard’s Badger code, or maybe something else. It’s in the works… that’s all I can say right now. (And that’s pretty cool, right!?)

Programming

Programming: I will award myself the Programming badge based on the fact that I’ve gone from BASIC in the 1980s to Perl in the 1990s to PHP in the 2000s and Processing in the 2010s. That’s like 30 years of programming!


QR code

QR code: Flags on cupcakes for Bay View Gallery Night at Milwaukee Makerspace last year… Done!


Robotics

Robotics: I’ll pitch Friday Night Drawbot for this one… Some of the other things I build have bot in the name, but this might be the only true robot. (Plus, I just built a second Drawbot.)


Soldering

Soldering: Heck yes to soldering! I first learned to solder when I was a teenager, and I did take electronics classes in high school. I’ve learned in the last two years though that my technique was crap. No matter, it’s much improved lately. I’m only doing through-hole stuff, but I think that counts.


Welding

Welding: This one is questionable. I did a bit of welding at a demo we had at Milwaukee Makerspace, but I’m still not at the point where I could do it all on my own. I should do more welding this year…


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