Tag: diy

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Holiday Make-A-Thon 2011 ReCap

I had a fun time at the Holiday Make-A-Thon and everyone else there seemed to as well…

There was painting, and decorating, and soldering, and knitting, and 3D printing, and gourds, and ABS, and PCBs, and yearn, and glue, and even some glitter!

Big thanks to the Milwaukee Makerspace guys for teaching people to solder, and for helping me out with the wooden ornaments. More thanks to Bucketworks for hosting the event. Based on the feedback we got, I’m going to assume we’ll do it again next year.

Here’s a few snapshots I got during the event.

Ornaments

Some of the wooden ornaments painted and glittered up. (Thanks to Brant from Milwaukee Makerspace for the googly eyes.)

Penguin

I’m not 100% sure but I think this dried gourd penguin was made by Amanda from Milwaukee Makerspace. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) My kids told me it was the most awesome gourd they saw all day.

Reindeer

These reindeer from Brant are extra-cool because they were made from the scraps of the first test of my cucoloris design. They were sitting around the space near the CNC Router and he found a neat way to upcycle them.

Starclops

I may be biased, but Starclops, which was created by hot-gluing a star ornament onto a snowman ornament, adding a googly eye, and using a soldering iron to brand it, may be the best thing I made that day.

And finally, thanks to all the folks who showed up. Rather than battling the crowds at the malls you opted to join us and make something with your own hands… and that’s pretty cool. We need more of that in this world. :)

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Upcycle Plastic Repair

A year ago I saw a post on the Sector67 site that talked about upcycling the plastic from laundry jugs. After seeing the post I thought about how many of these jugs we end up tossing in the recycling bin, and if there were any ways I could make good use of them.

Laundry Jug
Empty Laundry Jug

Here’s a typical laundry jug, and as you can see I cut out a nice (mostly) flat piece from the side.

Plastic
Cutting the plastic with an X-ACTO blade

I wanted to cut a small piece into a rectangle to match a missing piece from a window blind, and using an X-ACTO knife and steel ruler are the perfect choice for such things.

(Somehow we’ve lost/misplaced these window blind parts, or they weren’t here when we moved in. I thought briefly about 3D printing a replacement, but cutting a piece from plastic I’ve already got seemed like a better option.)

Holder
New vs. Original

My replacement is not an exact match, but I’ve cut it a bit taller to provide some friction so it will stay in place. For the simple purpose it will serve, it should do just fine.

Holder in Place
Original and New

Here’s the original piece, and my replacement piece. Both are holding the blinds into the bracket reasonably well.

I’ll often just cut out the flat sides of laundry jugs and keep them in a stack and then recycle the rest of the jug. They’re handy to have around when you need one.

We’ve talked about building an injection molding machine at Milwaukee Makerspace (Mold-o-rama anyone?) so if that happens, I may have a few more uses for these plastic jugs.

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Holiday Make-A-Thon 2011

Make-A-Thon

Join us Friday, November 25th, 2011 at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the 2011 Holiday Make-A-Thon!

The event is family friendly, fun, and free. (Though donations towards materials will be accepted.)

The guys from Milwaukee Makerspace will be there… so should you!

Some of the activities include:

  • Learning to soldering
  • Gourd painting
  • Knitting
  • Hand-painting ornaments
  • Gift-wrapping station

See who else is coming (and RSVP) over on Facebook.

Those interested in helping out by volunteering, or who just want way more details, can check out this Atrium thread.

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Upcakes

Up Cupcakes

The latest creation from Emma, my eldest child/mini-maker. She made this for her half-brother’s birthday. I guess he likes the Pixar film Up.

My contributions were cutting the cardboard, attaching the house to the board with spray glue, and giving suggestions. So basically I served as a consultant, but she did all the hard of the work, including the baking, painting, decoration, and putting it all together. The size of the board is about 20″ by 32″.

Oh, and of course, I took the picture. :)

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Squeegee Making

Squeegee (in progress)

So two years ago I managed to acquire this long piece of rubber that would be perfect to make screen printing squeegees out of, but, you know, I’ve been busy making buttons and drawing on eggs, so I never got around to making the squeegees.

OK, the real reason I didn’t make the squeegees is because I couldn’t figure out a way to do it and actually have them look good and function well. That’s where Milwaukee Makerspace comes in…

I first started by asking some questions about cutting grooves into wood. That led to learning about dado blades (which are quite expensive!) and eventually about routers, and router tables, and how to use them (properly!) to cut grooves.

So last night I cut my first groove, slid the piece of rubber into it, and I’m this much closer to my first squeegee.

Squeegee (in progress)

I still need to drill some holes and get some t-bolts in place, but I’m on my way to having a collection of different sized squeegees.

When I worked at a screen printing shop, we had about 30 of them in various sizes. We’d pick one that matched the size of the artwork. It’s also handy to have a bunch of squeegees around, since there’s a 4-color screen printing machine at the Makerspace, and you’re gonna need one for each color.

(Oh, I also posted about this over at the newly launched Milwaukee Makerspace web site. I may post there from time to time as raster.)

Also worth noting, I celebrated this small victory by riding Mr. Overbeck’s scooter around the parking lot at high speeds, and then listening to the craziest noisebox I’ve ever heard courtesy of Mr. Bastyr.