RasterWeb!I cranked out a bunch of paper circuit Valentine’s Day Cards for Brown Dog Gadgets. These can all be made with the Paper Circuits Kit which features conductive Maker Tape, tons of LEDs, batteries, and other supplies. Add all the free templates and resources and you’ve got yourself a good time.
Picture You and Me Together Valentine’s Card
The Cake is a Lie Valentine’s Card
You’ve Got Mail Valentine’s Card
Here’s this week’s progress on the wax ball feeder mechanism. These are actually 2D files that were laser cut, but I sort of like the look of making them 2.5D so you can see the dimensionality.
Oh, to make the 3D render I exported a DXF file from Inkscape, load it into OpenSCAD and then use the linear_extrude function.
And yeah, these files are already outdated as there was one mistake (which I fixed with the bandsaw) and I’ve assembled it and found room for improvement.
You can see some earlier iterations here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Which is to say, if you want to see minor updates with very little context, follow @raster on The Instagram.
You’ll notice an issue with the balls getting stuck in the chute, so there’s a bit of work to do there. I’ve got a few ideas, just need time to test them.
And don’t worry, at some point this might all make sense, once you see the rest of the thing. Or maybe it won’t… who knows!?
I’ve made a lot of laser cut enclosures over the years. I typically make them out of 3mm or 6mm Baltic Birch plywood, and sometimes I even mix the two sizes, which is fun because you need to remember which tabs need 3mm and which need 6mm.
As much as I’ve made a lot of enclosures, I still occasionally screw up, or get things not quite right the first time. Typically I design the entire enclosure in software and then cut things out. If I’m smart I’ll first cut it using cardboard to prototype how it all goes together. Cardboard isn’t always the correct thickness, but it can often get you close enough and reveal flaws in your design that you can correct before you start cutting wood.
One of my recent discoveries is that if your cardboard is too thick you can squish it in the hydraulic press and it’ll stay pretty squished. There’s a little bounce back, but it’ll be thinner than it was originally.
I was at a robotics event a while back and saw so many omni wheels I got inspired to try to design one. I remember looking up omni wheels years ago and seeing how expensive they were, so 3D printing my own seemed like an obvious choice.
I mostly succeeded in designing and making one, but it’s also quite a bit of a failure. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fun exercise, and I tend to enjoy a design challenge, but these aren’t gonna work.
I had planned on brushing Plasti Dip onto the wheels to give them some grip, or maybe casting them from Silicone. (Someone else suggested printing with TPU filament.) If I get back to this project I might consider some of those ideas…
So where was my big mistake? When I modeled this, I did not model in the hardware. Sure, I modeled in the holes for the hardware, and what I thought was enough space for the heads of the bolts, but the bolts stick out just a bit too much. As I said, this was a fun exercise, and maybe I’ll revisit it in the future but…
I went looking for omni wheels again and found this VEX IQ 63mm Omni Wheels (2pk) for about $10, which means for $20 I got 4 really nice omni wheels. They might also serve as a reference if I try redesigning my wheels, now that I have a good example to go from. Maybe my choice of 3mm hardware was a poor one. Hmmm, I’m already thinking about the next iteration.
Billy, one of the new Board Members at Milwaukee Makerspace, was interested in having some letterhead made up so he could solicit donations in a more professional manner, so I designed a letterhead and also made up new cards while I was at it.
In case you didn’t know, I actually have a degree in Graphic Design. I don’t do a lot of “classic” graphic design for print, and most of my design work nowadays is in developing products and projects and physical things. Still, it was fun to do a little design work.
Here’s the front of our “generic” card which we hand out to anyone, at events, etc. Basic info about the space. I brought back our old “Conceive, Collaborate, Create!” motto. (Weird spacing at the top is due to issues.)
On the back I added the part about being open on Tuesdays. Telling people to come on a Tuesday at 7pm is the most common thing I say.
Each member of the Board of Directors also got a card designed. They could choose if they wanted their phone number on it. (Not all members wanted cards.)
The letterhead itself has a clean look, and a line that says “Milwaukee’s Hackerspace and Fabrication Lab” which is also found on the web site and a call back to the early years of describing ourselves.
Since this is a makerspace (or hackerspace) at least one member had to argue about the cost of having letterhead made. We pointed out that the cost of letterhead was a fraction of the amount of money Billy had already saved us by soliciting donations and getting us cheaper services from our waste collection company and Internet service provider. (Some people just like to argue.)
We got the printing done using one of those “cheap” online services where you upload your files and then show you a preview and you hope it’ll all work out. Things are not 100% perfect. The cut lines and bleed were not totally right, but they’re good enough for our purposes. (Spacing on the letterhead is much better than the cards, but again, we’ll survive.)
Big thanks to Billy for pushing me to get this done, so he can do more awesome things for Milwaukee Makerspace.
