Tag: make

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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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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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Maker, Failure

Maker, Failure

Yesterday I tried to make something, and I failed pretty miserably.

I was smart enough to use the drill press, and mark where I needed the holes, but it wasn’t enough. There was too much tension on the fit, and I ended up breaking the piece of wood I had cut. No problem, I actually had two spare pieces of wood. For the second one I drilled the holes bigger, and it fit really well. I then assembled the two pieces of wood, only to realize the first piece was too small anyway. (It’s a camera mount, and this time I decided to make it adjustable to hold other cameras, but failed to realize that other cameras would be larger than mine.)

It’s ok to fail. In fact, anyone who says “failure is not an option” is a liar. Failure is more than an option, it’s a requirement.

If you look through some of my projects, all of them have had some degree of failure mixed in. It’s a part of making.

This specific project I’m working on now, I’m actually pretty confident about, but I’m also stretching my skills a bit by making things more complex than they need to be, but that’s because I want to push myself. In the end, I should know a lot more than I do now.

And this is the easy one! I’ve got two larger projects planned. The next one is actually worrying me a bit, especially since it has a deadline, but if I succeed, I’ll be very pleased with myself. (And if I don’t, and least I’ll have learned a lot along the way.)

Anyway… get out there an make something, or fail at making something. Try your best, and see what happens.

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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.